I'd
always felt Bane was a weak character. I felt his design was
even weaker. But the new school design changed my mind. A
leather-studded Bane is suddenly very frightening to me.
Alas,
creating a custom of new school Bane was a long time in coming.
Simply repainting the older Bane figure was out of the question,
as the sculpt wouldn't be appropriate. I knew his legs could
be made from a new school Bats, but his torso and arms eluded
me until recently. When I saw the photos for the Batman Beyond
Happy figure, I knew I would have the Bane parts I needed.
His torso and arms were perfect, plus his gloves match Bane's.
Unfortunately,
I didn't foresee the amount of work involved. After using
the Dremel to sand off Happy's jacket, the torso looked like
Swiss cheese. I used plumber's epoxy to fill the holes and
then sand smooth again. Happy's head is somewhat hunched over,
thus his neck protrudes too low on the chest for Bane to stand
up tall, so I had to sand Happy's neck stump into oblivion,
then refill the chest and sculpt a new neck.
For his
noggin, I used an old school Batman head, swapping the jaw
with that of Dr. Terror of the Speed racer line. It took some
doing, but it worked perfectly. The legs were swiped from
a new school Jet-pack Bats. The feet were closer together
than the standard Detective Bats legs, and looked more on-model
for Bane. The belt and gauntlet were
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