Saturday 28 February 2015

The Darth Vader Helmet Project part TWO.

The Darth Vader Helmet Project is moving along slowly but surely. I may not be the fastest but i do get there in the end... I have a VERY bad habit of doing things like this on a Wing and a Prayer... and if i can walk away with all my fingers and toes then it's all good!!!   
But all joking apart i do need to be more careful doing things like this... 

So the Darth Helmet is one step closer to being finished. I started working on the eyes. Cutting out and roughly sanding down the eye sockets.


This was a lot harder than i first thought. I thought to myself i would just get the Dremel tool and just cut the plastic around the inside of the eye socket. That was a lot harder than i thought. I mean yeah it started out well enough i did the parts by the bridge of the nose   did the upper curvature of the eyes then started on the bottom of them.... Then i hit a few problems... 



Now i ran into a little snag.... i couldn't workout how to get into the corners. Silly i know but i was afraid if i used the cutting disc i would end up cutting in to the helmet. maybe the Dremel tool was too big and i needed a smaller one, Getting into the right angle no matter how i held the helmet was very difficult. i tried doing it right and then left handly.   



Now i know i should not be holding the thing while i cut but i don't have a workbench or anything like that. I have to do everything in the garden and hope for the best. (...Wing and a Prayer and all that...) Which has me a little worried when it comes time to paint the thing... 
But one hurled at a time and as my late father used to say "Adapt and overcome..." that and he would say "As above, So below" though i am not sure how the second one helps but he would of said it to me before walking off and leaving me to work things out for myself.
It was at this point i started to use the sanding bit and that worked pretty well. Should of used that to begin with. But with every step i take i learn a little more. 



Now that i have gotten rid of the plastic the eyes are a lot bigger and will give me better area of view.
So with at part done i can move on to sanding, filling in and making good before i paint. But before i do that i will probably do the neckline and try to get rid of the flaring on the right side. I am hoping that a hot air gun and hot water will do that... And that is as far as i have gotten with the Helmet. It is slow but i am getting there. 



And now on to some very sad news it is with a heavy heart that we say goodby to the actor Leonard Nimoy. For most people he will be remembered as Mr Spock from Star Trek. 
He will alway be remembered.
Live long and prosper 

Leonard Nimoy 1931-2015




  




Sunday 1 February 2015

Star Wars #1. A look back at my history with the #1 Issue.

In a post from 30th March 2014 The Comic Shops. A Trip Down Memory Lane. I was talking about being a child and going to comic shops in the 90's. Now you're wondering why i would bring this up in relation to the Marvel Star Wars #1 issue that came out last week or the week before...
I had it on mail order so it took a little longer to get to me... I would of taken a trip to Ace Comics in Richmond or the Forbidden Planet in London but i have been super busy at work and just didn't get the time to get the issue on the day of release. So this little look back and thoughts on the comic is written a little later than i had hoped.
But back to the point.
Marvel have the new licence to do the Star Wars comic after 23 years (...December 1991- August 2014...) of  Dark Horse Comics doing them. So i pulled out The old #1 issues of the comics from my collection and looked through them again. I will say this. I stopped collecting the comics at around the time of Episode One The Phantom Menace so that would be 1999. This was mainly due to the comic shop in Hayes closing and i couldn't go to a comic shop regularly enough to carry on collecting. So i started getting the graphic novels instead. Not the same but close enough. Also at around 1994 I started to get heavily in to Anime and Manga.
Now you must remember i live in the UK so the size of the comics here are different to the size in the US. And yes i have over the last 24 years gone back to get the normal size US comics of Dark Empire. but i wanted to look back at My issue Ones that i had or was able to buy at the time.

So let's begin at the beginning... 


The 1980's 
Star Wars #1 the Over sized comic was given to me as a child by my dad who told me to look after it as it was old well this would of been in the mid 1980's and the comic is dated 1977 so less than 10 years but i kept it safe to this day. It is a special collection of the first  three issues that made up the film adaption but Marvel comics. These issues have been reprinted so many times over the years in annuals, graphic novels and so on but they are drawn so well i love the art it's so 70's and i prefer the art in comics from the 70's and 80's. The Movie adaption covers about half the movie up to the rescue of Princess Leia and i loved that book. for a long time it was star wars for me. After all the VHS was expensive and it was only on TV at around Christmas so i only had the comic read all year round. until we got a VCR player and i could record Star Wars one Christmas.    

The 1990's
Star Wars featuring Indiana Jones #1 this was a comic that came out in the UK and was sold at newsagents it was magazine sized and was longer than the normal 22 page comics at 48 pages. This issue had the UK printing of Dark Empire #1 and a back up comic from the Indiana Jones comic also done by Dark Horse. Dark Empire was the start of the Dark Horse Star Wars comic line and came out in December 1991 but here in the UK it was printed in October 1992. It came out monthly and on the back of each issue it had the release date of the next issue. I can remember running after school to the newsagents that was just down the road from my school to get the new issue. As far as i can tell this comic only lasted 10 issues and ended in July 1993 in the back of the comic issue 11 is listed but i was never able to find it. But luckily it was around that time that i started go to the comic shop in Hayes and Northfields... Which i finally remembered the name of the shop just outside Northfields Station. It was called Outlander... and it was at Outlanders where i was able to get the US comics. and the back issues from the year before.
Now Dark Empire#1 is a great read i read that thing so many times in that first month i had to buy a second copy because mine had fallen apart. After all this was at a time when there was nothing Star Wars out. From about 1985-1992 there was really no Star Wars products being made unlike today... No comics, no Cartoon's, no toys, no books and NO MOVIES!!! so it was a dark time really and then Hair to the Empire came out in book shops and that was followed but the Dark Empire comic and everything changed. Just sitting on my bed reading that issue you could feel a change was coming and my fandom was renewed. The art as well  was like nothing i had ever seen before. The art was done by Cam Kennedy. It was set about five years after Return of the Jedi and followed Luke as he battled the Dark Side of the Force from within. 
Just like the above this has been reprinted countless times and can be found very easily. And if you have never read Dark Empire and it's sequels Dark Empire II and Empire's End i highly recommend them.


The 2000's
This takes us to today January 2014. Marvels new Star Wars #1. Now i must say that i think the whole Variant cover thing has and is out of hand with around 68 different covers...Why are there so many??? Any way i decided to get the cover with Jaxxon on it. Only because Jaxxon was a Green Rabbit from the old Marvel comics from the 70's and 80's.and he reminds me of Bucky O'Hare.
Now this is a good comic and i enjoyed it. It is completely different to Dark Empire and i can not wait to get issue 2 and find out what happens next. I am also debating weather or not to get the single issues or the graphic novels... It was upbeat and feels like a continuation of the events that followed Episode IV A New Hope. The art is good and everyone looks like Han, Luke and Leia. I have high hopes that is will last just as long if not longer than the Dark Horse run and with new Films and TV shows coming out The future of Star Wars comics is looking bright. 

And that is a breath history of me and Star Wars issue #1's i could go in to getting the US comics and that but they don't have the same kind of attachment to me as the ones above. And with that out of the way my next post will hopefully be an update on my Darth Vader Helmet.