'Reconnaissance' from PhilH: Mystique

Who better to conduct reconnaissance than someone who can disguise themselves as anybody?

Mystique

For this first theme round, I'm picking up where I spent a lot of Challenge VIII: superheroes from Marvel's X-Men. My first mutant antagonist in fact: Mystique aka Raven Darkholme from The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants*. Mystique is a shapeshifter and can mimic the appearance and voice of any person, though she's here in her natural state of blue skin and yellow eyes. A regular foe of the X-Men, Mystique typically gallivants around using her powers to assassinate important people, such as anti-mutant politicians.

*the Ronseal of Marvel universe organisations: does exactly what it says on the tin.

The plan for this Challenge is to focus on other projects, but characterful sculpts and bright colours mean they’re appealing to dip back into. She was a straightforward paint job, and a nice break from painting yellow.

Anyway, I reckon she could be justifiably shoehorned into this bonus theme, before I moved onto other projects.

For a myriad of reasons, 2018 wasn’t a productive year for either painting or blogging, so if you will indulge me I'll take this opportunity it’s to bring you all up to date with my X-Men project. You may recall I painted half a dozen of them throughout Challenge VIII. Moving house over the summer has limited my hobby time, but I did add a few more to the collection.

For clarity of scoring: the following three were all painted pre-challenge

Wolverine

Yellow...

Wolverine aka Logan. Probably the most famous and popular X-Man and typical tough-guy antihero played by Hugh Jackman in the 00s films, including the very average origin spinoff /X-Men Origins: Wolverine. His mutation manifested as bone retractable claws, Wolverine was kidnapped and subject to experiments under the Weapon X program, fusing his skeleton and claws with Adamantium and giving enhanced strength, highly accelerated healing and resistance to toxin and disease.

Rogue

...more yellow.

Rogue, an unusual mutant whose power is to absorb and steal the strength, abilities and even psyche of others, purely through physical touch (hence the gloves). The effect leaves the victim unable to use their powers and physically weakened, though isn’t permanent. This is the source of plenty of drama in the source material, with Rogue viewing her mutation as a curse. Oh, and she can fly too, which explains the unusual pose. 

Rogue also links the four mutants in this group: she was raised by Mystique (and originally introduced to the Comics as a villain), is close to Wolverine, reflected in the films as a father-daughter relationship, and on/off love interest (and later husband) of Gambit below.

Gambit

Gambit aka Remy LeBeau was my personal favourite from the X-Men. Born in New Orleans of Cajun heritage, he grew up a street thief before manifesting powers to manipulate kinetic energy, that he typically uses to charge playing cards as explosive projectiles. He also fights with a bo staff and sharp wit. No yellow spandex silliness, Gambit is one cool guy, and can definitely pull off magenta.

Playing about with OSL on his kinetically-enhanced card-flinging

Here's the gang together, poor Mystique looks like she needs some allies.