Today I have a model from Marvel Crisis Protocol to share. This one is actually a queue jumper in terms of completed-paint-to-blog timing! After reading Justin’s post on Gamora and Nebula yesterday, I basically forced myself to work on Crossbones, who had been sitting on my desk since the start of this year, just barely started. Unfortunately, my usually-reliable black spray primer decided to go a bit fuzzy on old Not-Frank Grillo and so that caused some issues, with a bit of detail clog and just general grittiness, which really put me off working on him. Luckily(?), this is a model that can kind of absorb some of that kind of paint damage and still work, at least much more than a more spandex-clad, or metallic, or smooth-skin models. And besides, I really didn’t want to have to try and strip the spray primer off a MCP model, as I don’t entirely trust their plastic…
Colour-wise, I decided to eschew strict adherance to the card art. I figure my angle with these Crisis Protocol characters will be to get the characters recognisable – and not go fully Comic Canon or MCU-Canon, and simply do something that works for me. After all, the number of subtle costume changes that all of these characters have had over the decades – whether between two different MCU films – or more to the point – simply the “same” costume, as drawn by different artists is going to be, well, rather numerous. So this, along with Crossbones being a “blink and you missed him” MCU character, and me being completely unfamiliar with him from my comic reading days – whether that’s because I didn’t read a lot of Cap, or because I completely forgot any of his appearances that I may have read elsewhere means I really don’t know or care about this character.
This freedom allowed me to paint the model with fuzzy primer not twisting my psyche, and also to go a little “Wahammer” with the scheme. By that, I mean I drew direct inspiration from Burkhard, who gave him camo pants (based on the MCU film), as well as adding metallic paint where there really would be black plastic, or black-painted metal instead in a more “realistic” combat gear/clothing situation.
So that meant along with the camo pants and metallic buckles and webbing rings all over, we’ve got metal skinguards, bootguards, kneepads. The eyes of his mask hadn’t fared well with the fuzzy paint, so I was realistically unable to get any flesh visible in there. We’ll just say he over-applies makeup around his eyes like the Batman. 😉 I scraped away the worst of the fuzziness off his arms – at leas tthose being mostly-smooth parts of the sculpt I was able to do it. Missed the boots, unfortunately. I did add a little reddish flesh to the elbows as well as a touch of turquioise mixed with the flesh tones for the veins. This guy clearly follows Ann’s workout regime!
….and speaking of Ann – Crossbones also qualifies as a model painted for the second annual “Paint the Crap You Already Own!” challenge. It’s almost enough to make a low-level supervillain reform, ain’t it?
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great work mate, all your changes suit the model, and give a gnarly mercenary feel to the whole model, which fits the character well
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Thanks Dave, he’s come out decently enough – especially for a character that’s very much “who?” to me! 😀
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I like em! Like you, I did not recall this character from my comic book youth, and what I did learn from some background work was he was with Red Skull and Zemo, so like you I took poetic license to paint his with my own scheme. I did the same with metallics in place of black plastic, but when german uniform colors for the pants and shirt. I also tried eyes on the front of the mask, and if he sees much play time, I may go back with blacking out those eyes – unless you can get the eyes just right I think your use of blacked out sockets looks better!
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Yeah, I wasn’t really a Captain America reader when I was young. Not being American he really never had the same appeal so I knew the basics about him through comic-osmosis – though I like the MCU version a lot. But that didn’t include knowing much about his stable of villains/arch nemeses.
With the blacked out eyes, I think both can look good, but I reckon I prefer them like this on my own model. After all, it it was good enough for Michael Keaton… 😉
I’ve googled a few more paintjobs of him, and it looks like the Promo/Prototype of the model we got (probably a resin print, as it has more details) has his shins and knees and knuckledusters also painted metallic, quite similar to how we both went with the production model! 😀
I’ve also been planning on using metal colour on my Ulton as you have done. He’s in the queue to get started shortly. Just gotta finish one or two other bastards first (and clean up/reset my whole paint desk!)
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Lovely result. And really humbled to have inspired you!
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Thanks mate – your MCP work is one of the main blogs that keeps on doing so! 😀
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Cripes, those camouflage trousers are bloody excellent! 🙂
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Thanks John, but honestrly I think Burkhard pulled them off better. I missed some richer browns that he got on there which do make them look even nicer.
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Nice! Good old spray paints behaving badly, they do challenge us at times don’t they? Not that it’s noticeable on this guy, and as you say he looks (and I know even less about his backstory than you do) like the kind of guy who suits a grittier scheme anyway. As for slight changes to his consume, I must confess – and this is where comic fans will come round and rough me up for my heretical attitudes – that I’ve never believed that these heroes and villains go out dressed in exactly the same clothes year on year, getting in fights and being blown up on a minute by minute basis, and never have to wear something slightly different because their usual get-up needs a wash. Anyway, the way you’ve painted him suits him nicely so rule-of-cool wins the day for me.
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I think the costume point really depends on who we’re talking about. Obviously someone Like Iron Man has as many suits of armour as suits him, and that’s without getting into his magical (I mean “nanotech” suits of armour) while the mystical and magical and biological heroes and villains like Venom or Silver Surfer etc just do what they do.
For others, I do recall an issue of Spider-Man back in the day where we got a look at his wardrobe, and he had two lines of identical costumes (red/blue, and also the black) in there, and I think that would be the case for a lot of others. Shit, I have three pair of the same work pants and enough tops that look basically the same which I wear form work – so unless it’s summer, most people wouldn’t be able to tell them apart (except by my lack of stench!)
Then you have guys with a more …shall we say “practical” look. I think more grounded heroes and villains like Crossbones, Punisher and so forth would fit in here with a much wider variety of “work” clothing…. 😀
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what an intelligent, well-considered answer to a silly question looks like! 🙂
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That is absolutely terrific. I quite enjoyed the simplicity of the sculpt when I painted Crossbones, but your work on his trousers really lifts this up.
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Thanks Mate! I really wanted to do something reasonably simple to make him more visually interesting to me – even if it wasn’t “realistic”. In the same way Space Marines all seemingly have silver weapon barrels and brown leather pouches when it really makes very little sense… 😉
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Job well done mate, looks great to me!
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Thank you, Alex!
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Looking good, really dig those pants, you’ve done a great job there.
Out of the core box characters I think Crossbones has seen the most variance in paint scheme – nobody seems to be able to remember him and nobody can be bothered to do any research; I just followed the card art (BORING! Lol!).
And thanks for the mention mate 🤗
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Welcome, mate!
I guess there’s card art, a quick google, and then “I don’t know or care about this character, so I’m going to go with what I think looks good and pay lip service to the card and/or google image search!” 🙂
Admittedly, that’s going to be my main driver for all of the heroes and villains – just with greater or lesser degrees of “I don’t know or care about this character.” mixed in – but I foresee going with a mix of MCU and Comic schemes, as well as combinations of those elements on individual models.
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I’ve always been a Marvel comic fan and that’s where I’m trying to go with my MCP characters. I knew you’d add your own twist to things and you always do it so complimentary to the mini – I wish I had that kind of vision, I tend to have to copy something rather than come up with things off my own head!
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That makes perfect sense, and I’d have done the past if I were closer to my comic-reading days, though these days I’m closer to the MCU (but not the Fox X-Men films), so a combo suits me best. 😀
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Nothing wrong with the occasional queue-jumper. This turned out great! And for some reason makes me think of Bane from DC, but that might just be me.
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Not you at all. I showed the pics to someone at work and their response was “that’s Bane, isn’t it?” 😀
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Looks excellent, loving the camo on the pants!
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Thank you, Steve!
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I’m the same way with Crossbones. I can’t remember him being in any comics I’ve read and know him mostly from the MCU movies. I like the comic design better than in MCU where he is more mechanical. You did a great job keeping all of those black surfaces from becoming bland which is not easy. I think the movie/comic likeness is strong and he is instantly recognizable. Its neat seeing you paint Marvel characters and I’ll be looking forward to seeing what else you paint up when you get around to it 🙂
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Yeah, he wasn’t in the stuff I read (as much as I can remember) but even so he would have looked different to both the version depicted on this model as well as the MCU. The next pair of models of models I’m working on will be pretty straightforward, though!
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Great work on him! I don’t know if it’s just because I’m old, American, or a comic nerd. but I recall Crossbones from his early appearances. There’s actually an excellent Captain America run by Ed Brubaker that used him and introduced us to characters like the Winter Soldier. The movies borrowed quite a bit from this comics run.
As for being faithful, don’t think you have any worries there. Easily recognizable and given his military/mercenary background, camo pants are perfectly fitting (and nice job on those!). Not sure if you could see his face through his mask either, so black around his eyes works fine too.
How is the plastics on these by the way? They look really cool, but man are they hella expensive. Just saw the Hulk recently for $30?!
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They are expensive, yes. But I have now painted 67 of the 68 minis released (bleeping Star Lord has been evading me) and with two exceptions I really, really enjoyed painting all of them, since they are such well
designed minis. Some of them would range amongst the best minis I have painted in about three decades.
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I guess if I was playing the game, it might be worth the cost of the minis to me. I’m tempted, but probably be awhile since I already have tons to work on.
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Which have you found to be the most enjoyable to paint? I’ve got a fair few of them now (though not all)
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I guess you could always pick up one or two as display models – or maybe the core set for a collection fo painting projects + the actual game to play? 🙂
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Angela was hands down my most favourite. I dare say amongst the top ten to top five minis I ever painted.
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Ok, cool. I have her and Enchantress in their box across the room. Except for the ones I’ve already opened up, I’m planning to conentrate on the core set models first to perhaps get a game in 2021 before getting to the expansions. Unless Punisher queue-jumps, I guess! 😉
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I’m probably as old or older 😦 but I really didn’t follow Cap outside of the brief run where he wore the black costume, as it looked interesting. I can’t recall much of it, but it was these ones:
https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/7718/captain_america_1968_337
Mostly I read Spider-Man, Punisher, X-Men/X-Factor/New Mutants/Excalibur as well as Gladstone Comics’ Donald Duck/Scrooge books, Judge Dredd (US reprints, not 2000AD) and a pile of what became Vertigo books. I’m sure there were more, and I dipped in and out of runs on other books like West Coast Avengers but those are the main ones I recall.
I felt like the camo pants, etc would work and not detract from him being recognisable (except for the Bane look!) to anyone who knew who the character is.
The plastic is… less detailed than GW’s stuff, and the detail is a bit softer. They are a larger scale, though. I think 40mm as a base, so something like Hulk is really quite large compared to a GW figure. Also I guess consider them more closely compared to GW character (or Star Player) models rather than line troops/BB players/gangers.
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Thanks for the info on the plastic, I didn’t realize the minis were much larger. That plus individual game minis and the popularity of the franchise, mostly explains the inflated cost. Maybe someday I’ll buy one up to check them out.
If memory serves, you are closer to my younger brothers age. I’m past 5-0 now. Whee!
Yea, I remember “The Captain”. I read quite a bit of different superheroes, 70s Avengers, and 80s Fantastic Four/Daredevil probably being my favorites. In the 90s I started to move away from DC/Marvel stuff, moving to Valiant/Image and then Vertigo titles. Then probably didn’t read much until The Walking Dead and Invincible came out. Next big thing for me was Ed Brubaker on Captain America and now I read whatever he puts out.
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Yeah, I’ll have to get some size comparison pics up – monthly round-up will be in a few days so that might be a good spot. Sadly, I’m closer to that milestone than not these days. 😡
I did follow Dardevil for a good run that coincided with Frank Miller when he did good, non-insane work. Sadly, the prices of comics just got too much for me to keep up with while having other hobbies, and even now that I’m sure I could ….aquire pretty much anything, I just don’t have time or the inclination to go back to most of them.
I almost got back into Spider-Man at one point years ago but apparently the Peter Parker I’d read for many years was a clone, and there were clone Carnages everywhere and Kraven was back after that excellent, dark storyline of “Kraven’s Last Hunt” and something something Mephisto and Mary-Jane, and my reaction was just ….fuck all this.
So now I just enjoy the MCU movies instead.
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