Firebrand: The head comes from a Mattel Batgirl and the body from a Hasbro Talia. For some reason that I'm sure made sense at the time, I switched Talia's arms with a Hasbro TRU exclusive Poison Ivy's, and for the sake of accuracy, I swapped Talia's go-go boots for a pair of Batgirl feet. I decided to prime and paint the head and body separately, so that I could paint all the little nooks and crannies before popping the head on. Of course, one all the paint was on, the head wouldn't fit snugly on the neck peg, so I had to resort to glue, and then repaint the damn thing anyways. All this for a character I don't even like. The costume design does translate well to the animated style, though.

Spectre: I had planned this one for a long time�Creeper body with a new-school Mr. Freeze head. However, I had a hard time finding a second Mr. Freeze, and I didn't want to butcher my only one, so I resorted to sculpting the head from scratch, using Freeze as a model. I used super sculpey around a plastic peg inserted in the neck, which allows the head to have some articulation. I took a cue from Hasbro and used a blue-grey for the skin rather than white. A cape from the ever-generous detective Batman finished the custom, which turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.

Wotan: Yeah, yeah, I know�it looks nothing like the comic character. But come on!! He was a mystical wizard who wore RED AND GREEN SPANDEX, for crying out loud!! Anyways, I decided to use the highly inaccurate but well sculpted body from a Ra's-al-Ghul figure (�cause that face on the chestplate looks a little like a stylized W, right? Maybe? Sort-of?) and a head from a Spiderman Dr. Strange. I added about �" to the legs to make Wotan stand a little taller and look a little more threatening, then gave him a snazzy paint job. Now he can threaten the world without the risk of putting a run in his tights.

The Ray: If you'll look at the Ray's recipe from CustomCon 11, you'll note that I said I didn't like using metallic paints because they didn't look accurate. However, after I used the iridescent pink on the Thunderbolt, I realized that the Ray didn't look shiny enough. Luckily, the figure fell off the shelf and chipped, which gave me an excuse to repaint it using two shades of iridescent yellow. Now I can be satisfied with a Ray who's shiny AND still yellow rather than gold.

Ragdoll: A simple recipe using a Hasbro Scarecrow with some sculpted hair, patches, and a ribbon tie. The off-kilter stance works perfectly for the triple-jointed villain. The color scheme is an amalgamation of the original golden age design and the creepier version seen in the modern Starman and JSA series.

Phantom Lady: The heroine with the world's most impractical costume was made from that funky TRU exclusive Hasbro Batgirl - a terrible figure in its own right, but I think the pose actually works for PL. The feet were swapped for Talia's high heels, the black light ray was a random gun bit from a Star Wars figure, and the cape was a random cape from the parts box. I did some sculpting to turn Batgirl's maguppies into Phantom Lady's bazongas, rounded her chin a little, and sculpted the hair. PL's hairstyle has been depicted in lots of different ways, but I wanted to hearken back to the Bettie Page 'do she had back in the late 1940's. The goggles are a piece of Pebeo Windowstick plastic pressed onto place. You can barely see it, but the eyes are painted really well under the mask - trust me.

Johnny Thunder and Thunderbolt: I actually completed JT over a year before I was able to tackle the T-Bolt. JT is made from a Riddler body, Robin head, and legs from an old-school Joker. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until much later that the new legs made JT taller than all the other All-Stars, which, as a scale-nazi, I couldn't have. So I had to slice about �" off his legs and smooth the seam out AND repaint. The Thunderbolt was a challenge, 'cause I definitely wanted him to have the lightning body he's most often seen with in the comics. I finally decided on using an upper body from a Mattel Nightwing and a head from a Creeper. For the lower body, I sculpted the lightning form using Superflex Sculpey over an aluminum wire armiture. Cut plastic was used for the small bolts on the head, and then the figure was primed and painted with iridescent pink paint for that magical glow. Even with all the paint the lower body still retains some poseability.