My Original 12” Mr. FREEZE
By Les Walker  -  April 12, 2006

This figure began in early Summer of 2005 as an ongoing conversation between myself and a buddy of mine, Kevin Wahl of Chicago, who makes countless Mego style customs, about how much we both liked the Batman villain character Mr. Freeze, and how fun it would be to make our own figure versions of him.That conversation grew into a much larger dialogue on Will O’Connor’s Custom Batman Figure website, that eventually grew into a voted upon, site-wide extravaganza of custom making excess and fun.

What began as a one or two figure jaunt between two buddies, became a rather huge event that I think spawned some amazing custom figures. Eleven in total were made of the same character, once the final tally was in and posted for the first time on March 1st, 2006. These are also recently posted at online CustomCon 14 on the Friday postings. You can see the Wild Willy finals here at this link:
http://wildwilly.proboards21.com As for my entry, he began as a simple attempt to make a more realistic, real world,  12” version of the Animated Batman character design and became something more as he grew.I began to change what I was doing with him over the months that I worked on him, until he was the figure you see. He was much more than the component parts, many of which I had on hand when I started. The extensive final recipe consists of the base body, which is a Dragon male 2.5 style body, a head from a carded 21st Century bald German General that was extensively repainted…and repainted, a 21st Century set of goggles, a 21st Century Junkyard Jack figure set of leather pants and coat, a set of Dragon Stray Dog Panzer Cop gloves, one 1 7/8”w x 3” Glass display dome cut down by 1”, Cygirls Aurora parts, trimmed bubblegum machine dome segment, 14” Kenner Electronic Darth Vader shoulderpads, Soldiers of the World, Welder tanks, very reworked and repainted vintage GI JOE Astronaut boots, Cygirl Aurora Shoulderpads/2 sets for knee and elbow pads, Christmas giftbag handles for hoses, Elastic hairbands for various body tube hosing, metal craft springs and a metal button cover and a few other small parts. The Freezeray gun consisted of a GI JOE Welding gun, GI JOE thermos top, a reversed 21st Century Uzi silencer, 12” Grandpa Munster test tube set, Sideshow Angel holy water bottle, plus assorted other minor parts. I have included my graphics idea of how the gun would work if it were "real". But, this whole list does not in any way explain the ages of time and frustration spent on which of these particular items to actually use, of all the stuff I had on hand, as I had no real go-by to base this on. I spent more time thinking of stuff I didn’t use that what I did. He came out as a surprise hodgepodge of what I had more than what I expected.
However, as I worked on him, he began to “need” some stuff and “reject” other things. It was like a design was being served from my subconscious. So, I trusted my instincts and went with it, only stopping here and there so as to not overdo him. I did spend a great deal of time on his face and eyes, hopefully that is apparent. His eyes are layers of clear over metallics that create an almost reflector effect so he looks really creepy at times. His skin was desinged to look like it had frozen and craked so there could be some movement over the surface. Overall, a nasty fellow to come in contact with. Included are a couple of computer retouched images to show what I thought his freezegun would look like in full, horrifying operation. You can almost hear the loud whine of the turbine as it fires...So, here he is, what you might pretty much call my Ultimate Mr. Freeze.