CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT/CUSTOM
BASE FIGURE: SKYWARP (HEROES OF CYBERTRON)
MATERIALS USED: ACRYLIC PAINTS, SHEET PLASTIC, SUPER GLUE
FIRST COMICS APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS #1

"That's Starscream.  In his 'friendly' way, he's become one of the most murderous mechanical beings in the galaxy in the last few million years."

Preamble: Starscream's actually one of the few characters from the G1 Marvel Comics stories who's as interesting as his animated counterpart.  In a universe where half the character dialogue consists of lines like "I'll blast 'em to scrap with my vibra-guns, MUDFLAP!" and "Not if I melt them with my thermo-blasters first, WINDSHIELD!" it's certainly a welcome addition to the story.  Simon Furman did away with most of the clunky exposition that characterized the early stories, but believe it or not, it was actually the Budiansky-era Underbase saga that really defined comics-Starscream a memorable character for me.  (Furman wrote him as a whimpering suck-up when he brought him back as a Pretender, rather than the cold-blooded, wisecracking villain that Bob Budiansky had previously portrayed him as.)  That said, the real reason I wanted to do a PVC figure of Starscream from the Marvel Comics is because he's got such a freakish color scheme.

Construction:  The goofy colors were my impetus for this project, of course, but I knew from the onset that I wanted to do something a little more than a straight repaint.  I deliberately based this project on José Delbo's version of Starscream, whose interpretation of the character is decidedly off-model (particularly the face) but still pretty distinctive.  He was working from the same illustration of Starscream that appears in TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE #3, in which the right side of Starscream's helmet is partly hidden behind the air intake on his shoulder, so he always drew Starscream with only one audio receptor.  So, I chopped off his right ear, whittled away at the rest of his helmet a bit, and glued a new forehead plate in place.  In addition to fiddling with the helmet sculpt, I also wanted to change the way the figure was standing in order to put him in what I feel is a typical Delbo-esque pose, so I gave him some Devastator hands and rearranged his legs a bit.

Starscream seems to have at least two distinct color schemes in the comics.  Originally, he was consistently depicted with a blue upper body, right up until he was destroyed by Omega Supreme in issue #19.  He took a break for a while and didn't return until issue #47, in which he now had a red upper body.  (One supposes he got a new paint job after he was rebuilt, though I suspect it's more likely Nel Yomtov just forgot what colors he'd been using.)  In any event, the original color scheme is a lot more distinctive, and helps differentiate him from the cartoon version of Starscream, so I went with the original colors.

Comments: Now that I've done Marvel Comics versions of Megatron and Starscream, I really need to find an extra Heroes of Cybertron Soundwave so I can give him a mouth and paint him purple.  No, I'm serious.