Back around to Marvel United for today’s models. In the last week, I chose to paint both of these models because they were one-offs, meaning no corresponding model in Marvel Zombies – and although Punisher is in Crisis Protocol, the model isn’t in an outfit that needs to be consistent with this figure. They also both happened to wear a lot of black. Or in practical painting terms, dark greys.
On Frank, I avoided the earlier and more comic-book schemes that involve white gloves, boots and belt in favour of the more grounded and realistic look that I prefer. This is also why I kept the ATGM that he’s holding to shades of green with somewhat realistic markings and some weathering instead of painting it with bare metal and coloured furniture like a 40k weapon. I gave him a five-o’clock shadow on his chin and also used a grey-flesh tone in his hair’s short sides and attempted to show some grey in his hair as well as the obvious highlights.
Frank is a difficult one in a lot of ways – like Captain America, his origins are tied strongly to a war in a particular era, but unlike Steve, (or Natasha – he hasn’t had any special serum to keep him forever young, nor any other “special” elements to keep him forever young (radioactive spider-blood, gamma rays, being a mutant, nanites, etc….) So when I was last looking into his comics, he was visibly aging, but also keeping himself in good physical shape. That’s why they have to keep updating the relevant war in the various films and other media.
With Noir-Spidey, painting an aging face was all a non-issue! He’s got a black outfit, with a(nother) black trenchcoat – which I can only assume increases his agility while juimping around on walls. He was actually a pretty straightforward models to paint, and was the first of this pair that I worked on. One of the other reasons I chose him aside from what’s written up top was because of the all-black outfit, and wanting to do some more practise on painting dark clothing while not doing the “Black Templars” hard armour edge style of painting to off-white, and instead keeping it dark and soft – and only really bringing it up on his grapple gun.
The only other real point of interest is the wall – I painted it in colours rather than B&W, since in the game he’s clearly going to be a part of the shared “non-noir” world with the other characters – so therefore – colour!
I’m pretty pleased with how both of these came out – the very different styl;e of these models means that while we can still use most of our “standard” miniature painting techniques, there’s a real opportunity to push myself to make the most of the stylistic differences – the huge, caricature-style heads and not-quite-chibi proportions really call for a different way of working compared to a standard 28mm head. Much like painting busts, or larger scale models, or realistic armour kits, or planes and naval models – or even just terrain – all things I know many of you who read this blog often do – these steps outside of painting standard marines or orks or what have you that force you to do things differently if you want the best results are almost always a good thing.
At least they are for me!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Excellent work on both mate, and appreciate the ageing to Frank, gives him a more levelled up look in my opinion.
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Thanks Dave! Frank here is still about 20 years too young, but it’s still better than 1 perpetually-35 year-old-looking Punisher.
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I know it won’t come as a surprise to you to find out that I don’t who these guys are (yes, OK, I have heard of Spiderpig, err, I mean Spiderman) but these are brilliant minis! :-) Love ’em!
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Spider-Ham. 😉
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Spider-Pig was an indirect Simpsons “Character” for a few moments in one episide – I think John may be referring to that…! 🙂
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Aha!
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Thanks John! It’s a fun little game, and like most of these things it’ll look better with more of these painted models to play with! 🙂
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Nice little models sir and, as you say, good to be able to push the skills out on something a little different
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Thanks IRO! Appreciated!
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That Noir Spidey really shows off your way of painting black clothes. I could be wrong, but wasn’t the last time we saw Punisher with white gloves and boots, back in the 80s? I’m sure they dropped that look when he started sporting a trench coat at least. Nice job on him, and the weathering on his bazooka weapon is a really nice touch.
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Thanks Faust! 🙂 – I haven’t read Punisher comics in quite some time now, but I have seen a fair few scattered bits of artwork with him featuring the throwback white gloves and boots since then. When looking at pics recently around this post, I saw that they’ve just made some more Marvel clownshoes decisions around the character, with a new skull and trying to make him into a hand-to-hand ninja character, so I’ll just keep my memories of the character untarnished and back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. God only knows what sort of a ridiculous depiction the current MCU would have!
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I didn’t mind the gloves/boots when Miller did him, because he drew him more hardened and gritty than before. Janson dropped the spandex costume, gave him a bulletproof vest with a spray painted skull and then the character started to feel like he was going in the right direction. Not sure why they decided to go back or make him a ninja hth guy, but that doesn’t sound good!
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Oh yeah just took a look (https://blackdragoncomics.com/cdn/shop/products/75960620744200311_1280x.jpg?v=1705517850). I think I saw that before. I doubt the MCU will take that approach, but shoot me now if they do!!
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Apparently they changed the skull due to the previous one being “problematic” etc due to its use by armed forces, police, etc – and given the direction that the MCU has taken over the past several years I’m not especially hopeful. Apparently the ninja skull got both “classic” readers and “woke” readers upset for different reasons – “cultural appropriation” of course was the issue for the latter group, because for some people you can never draw inspiration from a different culture to your own. 🙄
Things like that (and the actual apparent storyline) make me glad I’ve been emotionally detatched from mainstream comics for the last couple of decades.
The boots and gloves version can and has looked good from a fair few artists through the years (it’s a striking combo after all), but yeah, Janson and Jim Lee both did great things with the character’s look as he evolved to become more “realistic”.
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Great work on both!
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Thank you, Dave!
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Both of these look great but I am especially excited to see Spidey Noir. The very brief and probably not commercially successful, Marvel Noir line happened when I was reading comics the first time and I’ve probably read the Spider-Man issues, though I’d have to go back and check to be sure. In some ways, he looks more like Pulp Spider-Man than Noir but who cares! The visual designs from those comics are really cool and the mini and the way you painted it up show that off nicely 🙂
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Thanks mate – I only know Spidey Noir from that one 360 game Shattered Dimensions which I really quite enjoyed until I got to one level I just couldn’t pass. One of the large outdoor platformy 2099 levels I think maybe? – and of course more recently, the Spider-Verse!
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I haven’t played that one. For some reason, I didn’t play any of the Spider-Man games until the recent PS4 series which I liked. I have heard some of the old games were fun so I probably missed out a bit there!
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That was really the oly older one I played that I can recall. I know a lot of people liked the PS2(?) games, but I also never played them.
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They look like fun models to paint, and your paintjobs are impeccable as always!
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Thanks mate! These models have been a nice change of pace (mostly!)
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