DESTROY!!!

This was my entry for Wyrd Games' 2nd online painting contest. I missed the first one (with the Reaper wereshark) so when they decided to run the next one, I was ready to go. It helped that it was themed "Total Testosterone" - I had the perfect mini in mind...

If anything exudes pure testosterone, it's Reaper's Clay Golem! Ben Seins scored a solid hit with this figure - I've often seen it converted into superheroes, but never the Red Basher!

So you're thinking, "Who the heck is the Red Basher?!?" Well Scott McCloud's DESTROY!! is one of the greatest comics ever written... As far as superhero parody books goes, this is one of the best! It's a non-stop, all out slugfest in the middle of New York City. The Red Basher, enraged over his ex-girlfriend dating Captain Maximum, screams "Destroy!!" in almost every panel of the comic as he battles the good captain. It's ALL HE SAYS until the last few pages! Famous landmarks are demolished, citizens flee in terror as the Red Basher and Captain Maximum level the city! What's not to love?!?

The comic superhero is so over the top I wanted the mini version to look just as angry, crazed and destructive. While the excellent sculpt helped a long way in the feel department, for the complete package I decided to make a vignette of one of the Red Basher's "landings" in New York.

The asphalt is Durham's Water Putty (a kind of wood filler) cast and broken to simulate the asphalt, as is the broken sidewalk. The mailbox and trashcans are HO-scale train items, weathered, damaged and positioned to "blow" backwards from ground zero. The figure himself was almost perfect out of the blister! (He even had bare feet like the Red Basher.) I just sculpted some bracers and the crew-cut.

It paid off with a 1st Place in the contest (both for Alternative Category and Basing) and Best in Show!