For my son Brett's birthday, he asked me to create for him his very own custom figure of his favorite character. Superman (while he does in fact like STAR WARS, Superman is still his favorite movie series...and hey! Why don't they have a boxed set?) So, I thought about how to pull this off, and still remain true to the STAR WARS universe.

Well, I thought that since we could barely see any of the senators in THE PHANTOM MENACE, except for a few here and there, it was possible that there were Kryptonian senators on Coruscant! (Which actually makes sense, since Krypton had their own "clone wars" in the WORLD OF KRYPTON mini-series.) So, I gathered my materials, and went to work...

• Blair from the WING COMMANDER line (head)
  
• Biggs Darklighter (neck stump)
  
• Carbonite Han Solo (body)
  
• Garindan (Kryptonian cloak)
  
• a sock (Kryptonian hood)
  
• Princess Leia (Earth cape)
  

This custom job took some planning, and got me back into the hobby after about 3 months off...I started off by popping out Blair's head, which prompty broke off! I had a Biggs "face stump" left over from a carved-out helmet custom, and glued Blair's head to the neck stump, which worked surprisingly well. Next, I carved off the collar on Han's chest, and made the "V"-shaped holes for the front of the boots. I next had to cut around the Garindan cloak so that it fit his body properly, and still had allowed his arms to stick out. I glued the cut off parts of the cape front onto the back of the cloak so he could "step inside" the cloak itself.

Next came the hardest part of this job. I wanted to make the Kryptonian robe a removable accessory, so I needed to go about making "sleeves" for his arms and a "hood" for his head, while still keeping it removable. I took a pair of socks, and cut out the material needed and glued them together. Sounds easy, right? NOPE! But, it finally worked out well enough, even though the material of course leaves strands everywhere.

After that, I just painted the figure, both capes, and the sleeves. That's when I realized I had made a mistake with the front of the cloak. In WORLD OF KRYPTON #4, Jor-El is shown with large "erasures" on his cloak, while in MAN OF STEEL #1, there are smaller ones. Brett did not care, and pointed out to me that this is not JOR-EL, but KAL-EL, so they could just be different designs! Hey! As long as he likes it, then I am happy. The only upsetting thing to him is that he can't play with this toy! I won't let him! HAHAHAHA

Finally, Brett has asked me to try and make him a package and a COMM-Tech chip, so check back for updates, as I figure out how to do it! Oh, before I forget....here is the picture (and reference photo) of Kal-El as you may have seen him before--on Earth, where the yellow sun gives him Super-powers! (I wonder how well he would do on Tatooine....? Hmmmmm.....)