Ok, I've had Kwinn on my "to-do" list for some time - I just never found any parts I was happy with - especially the head. The comic pack head was WAY too small for big-ass Kwinn. So he was on the back burner until the CCII "Make a Joe-Universe Character Challenge".
I had found a SGT Savage figure (don't know which one, maybe D-Day?) and figured his head was perfect and I liked the hugeness of the figure. I thought at first that he was too big, but I remembered Kwinn's dossier from Issue #2 where it listed him at 6'10". A little math shows that at true 1:18 scale, a 6' man would be 4" (the same size as most of my customs) and a 6'10" man would be...drum roll please........ 4.555555". The SGT Savage fig is 4.5", so he's actually a perfect match, he just looks huge because Kwinn was always drawn inconsistently in the comics (sometimes he was the same height as Dr Venom, others he was a monster.) So I'm happy with his scale.
As for his overall look, I figured it's pretty dumb to think that he was always running around in khaki shorts. We only saw him in 2 story arcs - one in the Arctic, where he wears winter gear, and the other in Sierra Gordo, where he's in his summer "tourist outfit". It's logical to think that he had other clothes for his mercenary work, so I went for a simple brown shirt and camo pants. In addition to being relatively easy (no sculpting or Dremeling required), I think it just looks right. Throw in some Microman hands (since the Savage hands, just like the ARAH models, can't hold crap) and you have a winner.
His weasel-skull necklace was originally going to be removable. I heated and stretched it so that it fit his neck, but it never laid right, so I just cut it and glued it in place so that it appears to be looped around his collar.
I'm trying to find a suitable .30cal Browning for him, but haven't had any luck - I think I'll go back and start searching through the BBI & 21st Century WWII toys and see what I can find.
I went ahead and 'resurrected' Kwinn using a not-quite-fleshed-out backstory where Cobra got ahold of his body floating in the North Atlantic (where SE sent him in his Kayak) and they saved the corpse and somehow Mindbender reanimated Kwinn, making him an agent of Cobra for some time before he regained his sense of honor and blah blah blah..... I liked the character too much to have him die, so he's alive again. Yay me
So here he is:
With his buddy "Shadow Man" - - the height disparity is EXACTLY what it should be for a 6' SE and a 6'10" Kwinn. Looks freaky, but I'm sticking with it.
Cheers!
