DCUC The Captain

Being a child of the 80’s, my most vivid memories of Captain America are mostly around the time period of the Mark Gruenwald/Kieron Dwyer era. Captain America was forced by the US Government to either start working for them, or to kick rocks. Steve Rogers takes the moral high ground, and heads off on his own, adopting the new monicker “The Captain“.

Pretty cheesy, I know.

Not so cheesy though, was his new and altered costume. A take on the classic Cap uniform, but with some changes. Black, red and white were the colors, and it looked great. Of course looking back, the reason it looked as good as it did was probably because of Kieron Dwyer’s amazing art, but still.

Over the years, there haven’t been too many great Captain America action figures, and even fewer Captain figures either. You can see in this WIP post showing where I started from, taking a DCUC Red Tornado figure and sculpting on some new bits, dying the figure black in RIT dye, painted with custom acrylic colors (ranging from a dark maroon, to a metallic sky blue), stealing a Cap shield from the Iron Man prototype Captain America armor figure, and sealing it all with a little matte Future Floor Wax.

I learned a pretty valuable lesson with this custom, as I’d never been much of a fan of acrylic paints before. They always felt chalky, and never as sturdy as the enamel paints I’d grown so accustomed to using. Oh man was that a bad idea though. Enamel paints will begin to eat into softer rubbers, especially the kinds of rubber most action figures are made from (versus the harder plastics things like Transformers and other toy made from hard plastics/ABS, which take enamels fine for the most part). And so, the enamels never fully cure, emitting a horrible smell. Thanks to a few tips from some customizing friends though, and a couple bottles of Testors Model Master acrylics, I was able to finish this figure the right way.

Pretty happy with the final outcome, so much so I may have to make myself a regular Captain America version too someday…