Elsa Bloodstone

I’ve wanted to make my own custom Marvel figurines ever since I first discovered the gorgeous Eaglemoss Classic Marvel Figurine Collection (CMFC), and I got especially excited after I started seeing all the amazing work that other customizers have done. Elsa Bloodstone was the natural choice for my first custom because I love the character and I had not seen anyone else produce a version of her. She is visually striking and has been featured prominently in Marvel comics the past few years, so I knew she would make a great addition to the collection.

(Original appearance)

(Current appearance)

The character first appeared in the Bloodstone mini-series in 2001-2002, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, with art by Michael Lopez and Scott Hanna. In this story Elsa learns that her long-lost father was the famous monster hunter, Ulysses Bloodstone. She inherits a choker containing a piece of her father’s extraterrestrial Bloodstone gem, which grants her superhuman strength and endurance. After encounters with Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the Living Mummy, Elsa takes a liking to the monster-hunting life and decides to continue her father’s legacy.

Originally depicted as a plucky, wise-cracking teenage blonde (similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Elsa was dramatically re-invented in 2006 for the Nextwave series as an über-confident, foul-mouthed, take-no-prisoners badass who loves more than anything to make things explode. 

Things tend to burst apart when Elsa Bloodstone is nearby.

Writer Grant Ellis also played up her British background (in the original series she felt no particular allegiance to the culture, though she was raised there), while artist Stuart Immonen endowed her with an untameable bright orange ponytail and a matching orange costume with black stiletto knee boots and a gray-green half-length trenchcoat. And lots and lots of guns, which she typically carries in a guitar case and refers to as her “babies.”

Elsa goes to her happy place.

Elsa likes guns.... a lot

This remains her look and attitude today. Elsa's tireless crusade against things-that-go-bump-in-the-night has led to encounters with Wolverine, the Punisher, Misty Knight, Nico Minoru, various Avengers, and many others. In 2011-2012 she even learned to love (some) monsters when she teamed up with Morbius, the Living Mummy, the Manphibion, and Werewolf by Night to investigate a demonic plague infecting the monster community. (In fact Elsa’s relationship with the Werewolf by Night, Jack Russell, has occasionally gone beyond the merely professional.) Most recently she can be seen in the Monsters Unleashed series from 2017. 

We all get that way sometimes.

To make my Elsa Bloodstone figurine, I chose as a base figure Moonstone from CMFC. This sculpt has a powerful, no-nonsense pose and I thought I would put some rifles into her hands to recreate one of Stuart Immonen’s iconic images of her. After detaching the base and stripping the paint I had to cut away portions of her hair and sand down a few small details. Then I started building up Elsa’s costume with Milliput, including the boots and jacket. Of course I had to make sure to include her Bloodstone choker.

The hardest part to figure out was the guns. First I tried to sculpt them by hand, but they ended up looking terrible. The hardest part to figure out was the guns. First I tried to sculpt them by hand, but they ended up looking terrible. Then I looked at miniature rifles online (the kind you might decorate a dollhouse with) and even ordered some, but they were all the wrong size—either too small or too large. I was starting to get frustrated with the whole thing. 

The solution turned out to be the shotgun held by another Eaglemoss figurine, the character Shane

from the Walking Dead line. I obtained two copies of this figurine and cut off his hand with the rifle (what a waste, I know, but I don’t like the Walking Dead so it’s okay). After cutting off Moonstone’s hands I replaced them with Shane’s. Now the problem was adapting one of the guns to serve as her left hand. This involved shaving away most of the actual hand part and sculpting a new hand with Milliput. The final result is not perfect in every way but overall it creates the effect I wanted.

After lots of sanding (though probably still not enough) I coated her with a nice primer and she was ready to paint. I used FolkArt acrylic paints, and the tiniest brushes I could find. The hardest part by far was the face, and it certainly did not turn out perfect, but I figured I’d probably make it even worse if I kept going back to it over and over. I did a couple layers of paint and then tried to wash in some shading in certain areas, which turned out better in some places than in others. After drying, I glued her back onto the original Moonstone base, and I was done. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out. 

Elsa with some friends from the Legion of Monsters. Morbius and Werewolf by Night are regular CMFC figurines. N'Kantu the Living Mummy is an Eaglemoss Dr. Who figurine glued onto a Marvel base.

For the Eaglemoss-style cover, I used artwork from the cover of Monsters Unleashed #10 (March 2018), by R.B. Silva and Frederico Blee. The "Bloodstone" logotype is taken from the interior of Nextwave #10 (Jan 2007), with "Elsa" added in the Rapier typeface. 

* ESSENTIAL READING *

1. Bloodstone #1 (Dec. 2001). Teenager Elsa explores the Bloodstone manor inherited by her mother, discovers the Bloodstone choker and begins her foray into supernatural adventure.

2. Nextwave #1 (Mar. 2006) A new version of Elsa bursts onto the scene: the trash-talking, tea-drinking, gun-toting, irrepressible wild card of the extremely bizarre Nextwave team.

3. Legion of Monsters #4 (Mar 2012). The denouement of her greatest adventure yet, where Elsa must team-up with the very monsters she hunts, to save them all from an out-of-control virus. 

That's all folks.

Next up: Ultron’s killer robot bride, Alkhema!