Behold My Mighty Hand!

The 90's were a terrible time for comics. Almost every superhero was trying to be a badass and ended up acting out of character and being all angsty.

Then one bad guy came and wiped it all away. Onslaught be thy name.

After years of being far too forgiving, Professor X wiped Magneto's mind clean. Magneto was left a vegetable, but this one tantrum on Xavier's part left him corrupted by his dark subconscious. Over the next few years Xavier was slowly taken over by his dark-side which called itself, "Onslaught."

Onslaught went ape shit and became an evil god, threatening the entire world with destruction. Most of the superheroes sacrificed their lives to put an end to him (but luckily were reborn a year later with all their angst and badassery removed). A means to an end, but an enjoyable superhero romp nonetheless.


So here he is:


Onslaught is about 12" tall and has a fairly complex paint job. I felt early on that if I just painted him bright red, he wasn't going to look very evil, so I tried to keep a lot of dark areas on him, especially on his head so that those evil eyes really shine out of the darkness.

I always felt that his armour was a little beetle like, so I tried to give him that pearlescent colour scheme on the purple armour.

He is fully articulated and I made sure that the wings of his armour and the various spikes around him don't stop him from being posed.

His chest is hinged at three points, allowing it to open and reveal Charles Xavier trapped inside the black goo of his own dark subconscious. Not a subtle metaphor, but there we are.


Xavier's head and hand also move altho it can be a little difficult to get at him with all that black goo getting in the way.





Work in Progress Shots and Description

I used a Marvel Legends Icons Venom figure as the base for Onslaught.



I felt that Venom had the necessary upper body bulk for Onslaught and didn't have any costume complications to get ride of.

I trimmed his face off and began to lay down some basic shapes for Onslaught.


Then building up a smooth head and basic chest detail. I was going to tear his chest apart to make the secret compartment, but wanted to set down how it was going to look once finished. You can see in the pictures that I'm using 2 kinds of clay. My usual epoxy putty, Miliput (the grey stuff) and a cheap, air hardening clay.

The air hardening clay crumbles too easily to use it completely for action figures, but I used it here to get a good idea of how I could build up the foundations of his armour. It was a good test to see how the armour would have to be spaced out so that he would retain most of his articulation.
The shoulder pads were made from a cardboard Easter Egg box covered with my usual super hardened papier mache. I used flossers for the spikes and the shoulder pads off another Onslaught toy for his gauntlets.


The shell on his back was also from another Onslaught toy, and it saved on a lot of sculpting.

And here's Xavier making an appearance. His head was from the Marvel Legends Xavier toy, but I resculpted his serene look into a grimacing one, and the hand is from a Green Goblin toy that had been quartered for some nefarious past purpose.

The black goo was made from hot glue painted with Tamiya Smoke.

Xavier was the first part that I finished, and I then coated the entire body in a red base coat.


I worked on the paint a lot, but noticed that the red I was using didn't actually suit Onslaught when he was removed from the comics. He was far too bright and just not evil looking.

I used a lot of dark washes and blending to try and make him look more imposing.