Home > Resin the Barbarian > Archives > 2006 > February
February 2006
Two mornings of meetings
I was among a group that gathered in conference rooms Monday and today, talking about ways we can re-evaluate and rethink the things we do as a newspaper. Ideas are starting to be generated, people are getting excited. It could lead to lots of interesting stuff and I’m happy to participate.
However, given last week’s business travel and illness, I’m now about as far behind as I get on my job and feel panic creeping in. Gonna put my nose to the grindstone for the rest of the day and phone calls coming from a New York area code (“Have you sampled our new fruit smoothies, now available everywhere on the East Coast? Will you write a story about how good they are for you?”) are likely to get shipped to my voice mail.
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Clearing the desk
Lots of rest and a megadose of antiobiotics have cleared enough out of my system that I was able to return to work this morning without feeling like a walking biohazard. Still struggling to keep my hands away from my face long enough to type for more than a minute at a stretch.
After clearing out the work I’ve fallen behind on, I’ve got to clear out a lot of garbage on my desk:
I’ve snorted in disgust at this mess a dozen times today. Then I look at Gary Harmon’s desk and feel better:
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Friday morning weigh-in: 204.5 pounds
Up half a pound this week, to 204.5. Two factors killed all attempts at dieting this week. The first was business travel to Austin, which forced me to eat out for three days. The second, bigger and continuing factor: A nasty, nasty cold. I’m not eating much, but I’ve had a lot of 7-Up and practically no exercise.
My goal right now is to lick the crud this weekend and make it up next week.
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Resin the Barbarian, Episode IV: Jeff Yagher’s Aurora Box Art Bride
A garage-kit profile.
“Aurora” is an important name to anyone who enjoys monster models. It was the company that introduced the world to such kits back in the ’60s, first with the Frankenstein Monster and followed by many more, including a wonderfully detailed kit of the monster’s Bride:
For the record, the picture above is the kit issued a few years ago by Polar Lights. It looks pretty much the same as Aurora’s, although I hear the glass parts on the original weren’t cast in clear plastic. The PL kit isn’t hard to find; original Aurora Brides are.
Truth is, while many of us love the classic Aurora kits, we recognize that the figures inside the boxes weren’t as spectacular as the box art paintings, most of which were created by artist James Bama. Here’s how Bama painted the Bride:
Similar to the kit, but better, right? A lot of Aurora nuts (and I became one of them in the ’70s) just accepted that this was how things were. But finally, all these years later, super-talented sculptor Jeff Yagher has translated Bama’s artwork into three dimensions:
The Bride Of Frankenstein Aurora Box Art Tribute Kit is a brand-new offering from Monsters in Motion. It’s the latest in a continuing series of Yagher-sculpted Aurora box art tribute kits, including the Phantom of the Opera, WolfMan, Dr. Jekyll as Mr. Hyde, Dracula and King Kong. Pictures of all of these can also be found on MiM’s site, but I’m linking to the buildups by Mike Rutherford, who is the biggest fan of the series I’ve encountered and has a gift for making them look just like Bama’s paintings.
Monsters in Motion’s new Bride is a pressure-cast resin kit, more than 40 parts, 1/7 scale, priced at $199.99 plus shipping and scheduled to be available at the end of February. Price got you intimidated? Hey, I understand, but it’s not like these garage kits are being mass-produced by sweat-shop workers making a nickel a day in China. Kits like this are available in very limited editions, and this one in particular is sculpted by one of the most talented people you could hope to encounter.
Speaking of whom, you may not think you know anything about Jeff Yagher, but there’s a pretty good chance you do. He’s a man of many careers, most visibly as an actor. He’s got a ton of titles to his credit, including the “V” television series, “Six Feet Under” and many, many more. He even played one of Elaine’s sponge-worthy boyfriends on a 1996 episode of “Seinfeld” titled “The Rye.” If you’d like to read a detailed (if slightly dated) interview with Jeff, look for issue 15 of Amazing Figure Modeler magazine. For now, here’s a short e-mail Q&A:
Me: Were the Aurora box art pieces your concept or someone else’s, and what attracted you to doing them?
Jeff: I’ve been wanting to do these box art kits since I was a kid. I was always a little disappointed that the kits didn’t look exactly like the art but it was the same for every kit on the market. At the time I had no idea how to produce one so I used to make my own heads out of homemade clay I concocted of bread dough and Elmer’s glue. I’ve been contemplating this notion for about 10 years and no one would sponsor it, even though they thought it was a good idea. Thirteen is a big commitment. Finally Terry at Monsters in Motion said he would give one a try and it sold so well he has commisioned others. Now everyone who hesitated on the idea is kicking themselves.
Me: I presume you are at least interested in the original Aurora model kits. What did you discover first, the kits or the movies that inspired them?
Jeff: My first kit was the Aurora Mummy and my father helped me and my little brother Kevin build it on our kitchen table. I was 6 years old. (Kevin is now a Hollywood makeup artist… he created the makeups for Freddy Krueger, the Chucky Child’s Play doll, HBO’s the Cryptkeeper and dozens of other film makeups and special effects.)
I’d never seen the Universal films but had a kind of natural interest in monsters and science fiction even then. It was the kits that led me to the films…
Me: Do you plan to continue the Aurora box art series, and if so, what character(s) do you want to do?
Jeff: After the Bride, I’m not sure what the next installment will be. Terry makes up his mind after doing his own market research. Sometimes it’s just intuition … I hope it’s the Forgotten Prisoner … always one of my favorites…
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Friday morning weigh-in: 204 pounds
On Monday, I was starting to live with the idea that I’d have to post a bigger number today than I did a week ago (205). After leaving the house last Friday, I embarked on a binge that lasted through the weekend. I had a breakfast burrito, soda, TWO doughnuts at the same time(!) and more snacks than I remember. But then I laid off and actually managed to be down another pound for the week, which is good.
Sometime soon I’m going to have to start thinking about sustainability because I can’t binge for three days and then go hungry for four the rest of my life.
On another note, I’ll be out of town next Monday through Wednesday — in Austin for the Cox features editor conference — so unless I find some kind of computer access, this blog’s going to be quiet a few days.
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Resin the Barbarian, Episode III: Night of the Living Dead with Al Matrone
A garage-kit profile.
Back in my grade-school days, I’d sneak out after bedtime Friday nights to catch “Shock Theater” on late-night TV. I saw some wonderful horror movies, including a lot of the Hammer Studios stuff and some classics from the ’30s and ’40s, but it wasn’t until I viewed George A. Romero’s cheesy “Night of the Living Dead” that I knew just how much a movie could scare me. The first time I tried, I couldn’t sit through more than four scenes of that 1968 movie about cannibalistic zombies at a stretch. I’d turn off the TV, hide under my covers a few minutes…and then sneak back out for more.
The thrills started with the guy in the picture below, played by Bill Heinzman, who showed up early on while a timid woman’s irritating brother taunted, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
“Night of the Living Dead” is an upcoming offering by GEOmetric Design, a long-standing garage-kit company founded by George Stephenson (last I heard, he was serving as a trial judge in Minnesota, appointed by former Gov. Jesse Ventura) and now run by Al Matrone.
The zombie is a 1/8 scale resin kit sculpted by Joe Simon, should be ready around April and the price will probably be in the $100 neighborhood. Al was unable to give an exact figure because, he wrote in an e-mail, he was “thinking of adding another piece to the kit, like a piece of an eaten body part.”
Watch for information about the kit at the GEOmetric Web site, then order it from Al’s Phoenix Comics if you’re interested. He also welcomes people to give him a call at (570) 457-2691.
Here’s a little bit about what Al had to say in an e-mail exchange:
Me: What got you interested in producing garage kits?
Al: I was selling them as a product line. And I always liked models when I was a kid. I always liked the superheroes or science fiction line the best. So George was closing the company down and I had nothing to lose, so I asked him what he wanted for it. Then one thing led to another. At times I still find it hard to believe that I own it.
Me: Is producing garage-kits a money-making proposition, or a money-losing one?
Al: I make money, but I won’t give up my day job. I am making enough to keep doing more kits. If you want to become rich and famous then this is not the business, but it is a lot of fun.
Me: Have you met any interesting people as a result of producing garage kits? If so, who?
Al: You meet a lot of great people. The hobby is fun. I like making the kits. By summer, I will come out with a kit of my own design.
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Sometimes I wonder if Roald Dahl liked kids
My 5-year-old and I are down to the final chapters of Roald Dahl’s most famous book, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” It’s the fifth or sixth Dahl book we’ve read together, and once again a big part of me wonders if Dahl had something against kids, or if he was just all-around strange. Consider a few examples:
— In “Chocolate Factory,” four children suffer terribly for being spoiled. They’re stretched, squeezed, shrunk, juiced, face the threat of incineration and more. At the end, while leaving the factory, they’re in horrible shape and facing possible lives of hardship.
— Characters are eaten alive in “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.”
— The hero of “Esio Trot” lies to his attractive neighbor and steals her beloved pet turtle. She falls in love with him and they marry.
— Children suffer horrible abuse at the hands of negligent, TV-swilling parents and a bullying headmistress in “Matilda,” including a girl who is thrown like a shot-put by her long, beautiful hair.
— The heroes of “Danny, the Champion of the World” are poachers.
Heck, I’m all but certain Dahl was simply a strange guy, but I also think he had a lot of faith in his audience. My kid can be jumpy at times and plenty of stories have given her nightmares, but she’s never had a restless night after we read one of Dahl’s stories together.
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Where was our mail? The strangest place…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the very late arrival of a package from my parents to our daughters. The package, containing two pairs of crocheted slippers, was shipped from a post office in Arizona before Christmas and finally reached our house in the last half of January. The package was torn up but the contents were intact; there was no explanation about where it had been. My wife, Lisa, called the post office to ask, but all she got was stonewalling, which is at least better than the disgusted looks and snorts I got from a clerk a couple of years ago when I suggested that a letter I sent by registered mail should actually have reached its destination (but I’ve forgotten all about that, really I have).
On Monday, Lisa didn’t find out how the package got so badly beaten up, but she did learn where it spent at least some of its time in the Twilight Zone. It was at a house about half a mile away, on another road with an address that looks on paper very little like ours. Fluke of flukes, though, it was in the hands of a woman Lisa knew through a mother’s group she has been part of on and off since our older daughter was born five years ago.
The woman who had the package said it reached her house in that awful condition and she thought she’d cross paths with Lisa to give it to her sooner or later, but finally decided she’d better give it back to the carrier who apparently serves both our houses. Then it finally made its way to us. On Monday, the woman and Lisa met while both were at a pool for our kids’ swimming lessons and she checked to see if the package arrived.
I half suspect someone is messing with our minds, trying to drive us crazier. If so, it’s working.
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Is canceling a crime?
Want to sign up for Dish Network? No problem. Do it online. Call and someone will speak to you in seconds. It’s easy. Same if you want to expand your service.
Want to downgrade or, even worse, cancel? You can’t do it through the Web site, can’t even find a reference to it without some serious digging. Try calling and your rear end will go numb in the seat while you wait for someone to answer the phone, and then you’ll have to speak to two people just to get them to believe you’re serious.
So it went with me last night when I called to arrange to have our Dish Network service deactivated after being a customer more than eight years. We’re moving and we’re not interested in taking advantage of their “Dish Mover” service because we want to leave the equipment for whoever buys our house. First time I called, I navigated through the various options only to be disconnected. I suspect that was on purpose, something designed to get me to hang up in frustration. But I called again, and waited the entire 15 minutes it took to speak to an actual person. Then I spoke to the account specialist I was redirected to. Then, despite several polite suggestions that would keep me as a customer, I got her to believe I wasn’t interested in negotiating.
I started this process while my wife was making dinner and finished long after she and the kids started eating.
Would it have worked to simply send a letter? I don’t know, but didn’t want to take a chance that it either wouldn’t get to the right person or that it would simply be ignored.
Thing is, there was at least a chance I’d sign back up for Dish Network someday because I know Bresnan Cable has more than its share of problems (including the inability to get an actual human being on the phone and absolutely no listings for Bresnan phone numbers in Grand Junction), but not anymore. The old-fashioned free-TV option is looking pretty good right now, perhaps augmented by DVD rentals from Netflix, which also isn’t perfect but doesn’t make you jump through hoops just to cancel your membership.
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Friday morning weigh-in: 205 pounds
Down another pound this week, to 205. My diet has changed drastically in the last year but I didn’t think I did all that well this week, so dropping more weight is a small surprise. I’m convinced my most important weight-loss strategy is to lay off the sodas.
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Resin the Barbarian, Episode II: Nuked Supes by Mad Dog Resin
A garage-kit profile.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … a roasted Kryptonian!
“Nuked Supes” is a 1/4 scale resin bust available from the friendly folks at Mad Dog Resin for $55 plus shipping. It was sculpted by Gabe Perna and inspired by a harrying sequence involving the Man of Steel and a Soviet warhead in Frank Miller’s 1980s epic comic miniseries “Batman: The Dark Knight.” “The Dark Knight” gave comics in general and Batman in particular a major popularity push and helped persuade Warner Bros. to make Michael Keaton’s first Batman movie in the late ’80s. The latest, best Bat-movie, “Batman Begins,” is heavily inspired by Miller’s work.
If you haven’t read “The Dark Knight,” it’s readily available in the graphic novel sections of many bookstores, through various Web sites such as Amazon and even on the shelves at the Mesa County Public Library District’s central branch.
As with most garage kits, only a handful of copies of “Nuked Supes” will be made, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. In fact, a companion piece of the Dark Knight called “I Am the Law” came and went within a matter of weeks (I’m one of the lucky folks who got one). What you get when you buy Supes is an unbuilt kit in three pressure-cast pieces; the one pictured was painted by Dan Cope.
I’ve traded a few e-mails with Charlie of Mad Dog Resin; here’s some of what he had to say:
Me: Was “Nuked Supes” your concept or Gabe’s? What attracted you to the subject matter?
Charlie: I have been a fan of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” since it was published back in the mid-’80s. It really was unlike anything else being published at the time, and as a kid, it got me hooked on comics for years to come.
“Nuked Supes” comes from that book. There is a scene in the book where Superman diverts a nuclear missile headed for the U.S.A. The bomb goes off, and Superman gets … well … “Nuked”. The result is what you see, a crispy, zombie-looking Superman.
This was something I had wanted to do for a long time, and I thought Gabe’s style fit this piece perfectly. There are very few Superman kits out there, and most of them are pretty standard … this was taking the traditional character, and doing something different with it, but still having it based on actual material from the comics.
If you are familiar with the book, there is not a lot of reference material for this rendition of Superman. Gabe did a great filling in the blanks, and fleshing this one out.
Me: What’s your favorite garage-kit subject matter?
Charlie: You know, I really don’t have one particular favorite subject matter. I’m pretty much all over the board collector. If I see something I like, I buy it. I’m not a huge fan of the classic Universal monsters, so you’ll find few of those in my collection.
I lean toward the comic book characters, modern sci-fi and horror stuff, but you’ll find a little bit of everything in my collection.
As far as producing garage kits….I’m mainly filling voids in my own collection. Subjects that I wanted for myself, that no one else had produced.
Me: Have you met any particularly interesting people because of your involvement with garage kits?
Charlie: As a whole, the garage kit community is filled with great people. I’m continually amazed at the talent out there. I got jibes from people sometimes about “playing with monsters” but I don’t think they consider the skill it takes to produce some of these sculptures, and then the time, effort, and talent to bring them alive with paint. They are really little works of art.
I’ve met some great people, and made some good friends, all over the world through this hobby, I never would have met any of them if I wasn’t involved in garage kits.
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Not sure how to put this…
It’s a simple fact that Grand Junction — a city I love and have called home almost a decade — is mostly populated by white people. Diversity comes in many, many forms and we’ve got it here, but not so much when it comes to the most obvious form: race.
I don’t know why that is, but it is. And just for the record, I’m just about as white as anybody can be.
Sometimes I look around and am struck, again, by how many white faces I see around me, and I’ve seen plenty of other people of various races do the same. I wonder, is there a chance my kids will miss out on something important growing up here?
Ah, maybe it’s a stupid question. I just hope it’s not an ignorant one.
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Long-distance embarrassment
My 2-year-old daughter is testing some boundaries, including the rules regarding being good while Mommy or Daddy are on the phone.
Last night, my younger sister called from Security while my wife was out of the house. Sandy and I don’t talk often enough, so I was happy to hear from her. After about three minutes of letting us talk, my daughter started making a nuisance of herself. She jumped into my lap, squirmed, cuddled and, when none of that got my undivided attention, starting jumping on me like a trampoline.
I put her down, told her to be good.
She went and tried to swipe a book from her big sister, age 5. She screeched when her sister didn’t cooperate. I had to bust them up. She went back and tried again to steal the book; big sister wasn’t having it. I looked over and saw my older daughter with her head ducked between her legs while the 2-year-old, baby teeth gritting, was taking roundhouse swings at her back and head.
I carried an electric child to her room and held the door shut so she couldn’t escape. And I tried to maintain a level of coherence on the phone with my sister. I think I failed, but she’s got two boys of her own so I think she forgives me.
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Packing up
Got a contract on a house, now the really hard part begins: Packing up and moving out of the place we’ve called home for almost a decade. It’s unbelievable how much STUFF you accumulate over years and it’s going to take hours and hours to get it all ready to move out.
Right now, I’m spending a lot of time looking for boxes. I know I could just buy a bunch, but who wants to spend a ton of money on boxes that are going to hold our stuff for a couple of weeks, travel a few miles, then head to the trash after they’re unloaded? Seems like a waste.
Considering how many clean boxes you can find in cardboard-only Dumpsters around here, I think I’m going to try to do a little real-world recycling.
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Friday morning weigh-in: 206 pounds
No matter how many times I stepped on it, the digital numbers on the scale kept showing 206 this morning. Seven pounds left with eight weeks to go and I’ll achieve my resolution of getting below 200 pounds by the end of March. Then I’ll worry about taking off another 15 to 25 pounds.
We’ve got a contract on a new house, which has less outdoor space than our current home but has a lot more room inside — including a garage. I’m thinking it’s time to get a new weight bench, and I need to make frequent use of a nearby walking trail.
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Resin the Barbarian, Episode I: Forbidden Zone’s Young Frankenstein
Growing up, the classic movie monsters were right up there with superheroes as my favorite things. I spent hours reading comics and magazines such as Famous Monsters, and I loved building model kits of my favorite characters.
I rediscovered the plastic-model hobby about four years ago, and shortly after that I found out about garage kits. Ever heard of them? Basically put, they’re model kits made of resin or vinyl, usually in very limited runs and often produced by people who simply enjoy the subject matter. The producers seldom make much money doing it, even though people like me barely think twice about overheating our credit cards when we find something new we like and know we really might miss out on if we don’t act soon.
Which leads me to this:
Man, Gene Wilder could do no wrong in the 1970s, not in my eyes. In movie after movie, he was the person to watch. “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” “Blazing Saddles.” “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask.” He was a hoot in all of them. But he was arguably at his best as Dr. “Fronkensteen” in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”
What you see above is the Young Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) Bust offered by the wonderful garage-kit company Forbidden Zone. It’s made of resin, 1/4 scale, sculpted by Howard Senft of Denver, and sells for $55 plus $6 U.S. shipping. The one in the picture above was painted by Steve Parke. The kit (unbuilt and unpainted) is available now but hasn’t made it to Forbidden Zone’s “merchandise” page. Check out “coming soon” to see more pictures and, if you’re interested, find out how to get in touch with Forbidden Zone by clicking on the “contact us” link.
My wife, Lisa, gave me two Forbidden Zone kits for Christmas: a Frankenstein Monster bust and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man kit. They reached my home in great shape and the castings — by Earthbound Studios’ Mark Brokaw, who has a well-earned reputation as the best at what he does — were nearly flawless. Some garage kits can come with a lot of air bubble holes and flash in the resin that have to be cleaned up, but not these. Seeing them convinced me to go ahead and grab the recently introduced Young Frankenstein bust and it’s every bit I hoped for.
Let me finish up with a short e-mail Q&A with Mike Allen of Forbidden Zone:
Me: What got you interested in producing garage kits?
Mike: Well, I guess my story is similar to a lot of folks in the hobby. I have always been a huge film fan…and specifically a classic horror film and sci-fi fan. When I was a kid, my father turned me on to the Universal classics. My favorite has always been the original Frankenstein…1931. As a kid, I had to have all of the Aurora Monster kits. In the early 90’s I discovered garage kits and I was instantly transported back to my childhood and the joy I had while building those Aurora kits. While I found some great kits being produced by other people, there were some kits that I wanted to own that weren’t being produced. A good friend of mine was producing great kits, so with his company as an inspiration, I decided to take a stab at it. I only intended to do one or two things…but it kinda snowballed out of control. Suddenly I was a full-fledged garage kit company.
Me: Is producing garage-kits a money-making proposition, or a money-losing one?
Mike: It has been my experience that no one in this hobby (that I’m aware of anyway) has gotten wealthy from this. I have had certain people tell me they have lost money. In my case…the company sorta sustains itself. I’m definitely not retiring any time soon! =)
I think most people get into it for the love of the characters…the films…the subject matter. I started off as a collectors…and I guess I still consider myself as such.
Me: Have you met any interesting people as a result of producing garage kits? If so, who?
Mike: I will say that, for the most part, everyone I have met in this hobby have been good folks…friendly and down to earth. There are so many talented artists involved in all of this! I consider myself an artist and I am always inspired by the work I see from the folks in the garage kit world. Many people may look at all of this and see plastic monsters…but I see fine art. Talented sculptors, painters and fabricators abound in this genre! I think to simply call it a hobby isn’t giving it enough credit!
As far as “famous” people, I have met great film industry folks that wouldn’t have normally had access to. Mostly great special effects artists like Ray Harryhausen, Greg Nicotero, The Skotak Brothers and Steve Wang. I have also met great monster fan/collectors like Bob Burns and Forrest J. Ackerman as well as Sarah Karloff and Bela Lugosi Jr. Sarah and Bela Jr. were a treat…since their fathers starred in my beloved classic horror films. I have also met actors like Daniel Roebuck, Jeff Yagher (also a great sculptor who has done work for me) and other actors and actresses form classic sci-fi and horror movies.
The one person that has eluded me over the years is Rick Baker!
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T.G.I.F.
Thank Goodness it’s February. January was hectic, and that’s all that needs to be said about it because I get tired of hearing me gripe.
February is often a fun month. You still have winter, but signs of spring start to appear. For me, this February might include buying a neat new home (we could know today whether our house hunt is over); going through items I’d forgotten I had (probably throwing a lot away) as we pack them all up to move; reading Stephen King’s new novel, “The Cell”; and building a snap-together Flintstones model car with my daughters.
Oh, and I have a dental appointment Thursday.
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