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......how long did we wait for the return of Bad Company?

At least 3A stuff is worth the wait. 

Beat me to it!

Oh Goddddd. Why now, after forking out for my first holiday in 11 years...? 

Happened to me last year and to a fair few others - don't take things so personally, Dr X! 

Is there a story where the SJS Judge is shown?  I'd like to know his story a bit more.

He appeared in two previous stories before Titan, both of which are collected in the Fallout collection. Obviously he returned in the two Titan sequels as well.

Just annoyed that I didn't really take any pictures of the basic bodywork coming together! Especially as it was a stage that took weeks to do...!

I'm thinking it'll be Bat Mugger, Fairly Hyperman, maybe Cycle of Violence/Marauder, the Eric Powell Dredd from the Free Comic Book Day prog. For Bisley... did any of the Heavy Metal Dredds feature some kind of superhero pastiche?

Yep, just what I was going to suggest - plus that Spurrier/Ezquerra two-parter from the Meg a few years ago.

Sounds like it must be the collected Batman crossovers.

Trust me, if you're selling a Dredd/Batman collection you're going to want Batman's name in the title somewhere! And even if you don't, DC would insist on it...!

And here's the long-awaited size comparison shot with Mongrol!

[Mek Quake 4: Like a Robot in the Headlights]

Mek Quake 4: Like a Robot in the Headlights

So this is how things stood last time -



With the fiddliest bits of the floor largely done, I could start building up the side panels. Fairly straightforward, this. A polystyrene base for bulk without weight, then some very thick card panelling – wanted this as a base for the plasticard on the sides because I could bend a single sheet of card into shape (not so easy with plasticard!) Constructing the flared sides out of separate plasticard panels alone would have left them too prone to break apart if put under any sort of stress (the card itself is reinforced with plenty of epoxy putty on the underside angle.)



You'll see there's a recess in one side – this would be the top step of the wee stairs leading up from the flatbed. With the inner side walls on I could finally sculpt the remaining stair.



Then it was a case of panelling all this with plasticard; fixing gaps and bits with epoxy putty; sanding smooth; filling again; sanding again. A very, very long stage of which I apparently took very few photos!

I sculpted various other industrial-looking gubbins onto the insides. On the opposite side to the steps, just to break the long side panel up a bit, I cut another recess and used wooden dowels to stand in for pipes of hydraulic fluid. Also added these metal rungs (found in my toolbox) to the bodywork, whereby a passenger would pull himself up.



Next thing was to add some headlights – if you've read this far you know the drill by now; polystyrene, card, milliput.




It was also time to start thinking ahead to much later stages of the build...

The idea for the neck came to me early on and although I pondered other possibilities for constructing it nothing better really occured. A flexi-neck lamp would provide the skeleton and give me a way to move the head/neck into different positions that would hold their pose. A visit to a well-known Swedish DIY store ensued...



I drilled two holes into the base of the chassis and screwed the light into place from underneath. This would give me a 'spine' of sorts to build the rest of the torso around later.




Which meant I could build the next storey of the torso – again, nothing much to it. Polystyrene, card, milliput – except that I used two halves of a plastic kinder egg toy (the blue bits) to help add a bit of extra detail besides the ones I sculpted from scratch myself.





And it was all starting to look that bit more familiar...

As the first 1/12th figure, it makes perfect sense to re-release it now that the line's gained some proper momentum  - there must be a fair few people who've jumped onboard with Sam/Dredd/Death etc but missed out on Mongrol all those years ago.

I did have to double-take for a second - I thought 'Eh? I don't remember taking that photo of my Mongrol custom!' 

Is that epoxy putty stuff easy enough to use? Just discovered I'm in need of something to finish a project.

Well I think so - as you can see from Spike, it allows for some fairly intricate little bits of sculpting once you've gained a bit of mastery with it, and it's pretty darn durable stuff, too.

If there's a drawback it's that - unlike, say, super sculpey or any of those modelling clays where you bake the sculpt to cure it in one go - you tend to have to wait until one bit has dried and cured before you can attempt to sculpt something else on top. Sculpts can take what feels like an age because you're working on it in loads of little sessions. I don't personally mind this because I tend to have a few models on the go at once so there's always something else to work on while I wait.

If you're just thinking of something more in the line of filling gaps and making repairs, then I recommend it with very little reservation!

  Touche!

Giant is 'small'...?

"Something big and something small for 1/12th scale coming out in a relatively short amount of time.

Satanus and Ro-Jaws...?!

It was expressly stated to be illegal in the story, is what I meant - but no, on the whole I didn't think it was, either. It doesn't make much sense for a city whose biggest problem was always over-population and endemic unemployment. Maybe that's changed post-Chaos, though.

Wasn't Vienna pregnant with that Sov agent's baby or something? She seemed fairly childless last time she appeared though

Because abortion is illegal in Mega-City One (apparently) she gave the baby up for adoption. That was eleven years ago, so sov-sprog could be ripe for a return any time now.