This is my most complicated custom to date, and I'm entering it in the Legions of Gotham 2004 Custom Action Figure Contest. Look here. The object of the contest was to make a figure of a Batman-related character which has never been commercially made into a figure before. This is a more open field than you might imagine, as there are tons of characters in the Batman universe that have never found their way into three-dimensional plastic. But since this was my first real effort, I wanted a character no one else was likely to make a custom of, and I think I've found just that.

Our journey begins in the pages of Detective Comics, Issue #235, which first appeared in 1956. Naturally, I don't have an actual copy of Detective #235, but I do have a reprint in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told (1988).

In the course of this story, Batman (notice he doesn't have the yellow oval around the bat-symbol on his chest yet), aka Bruce Wayne, and his youthful sidekick Robin (Dick Grayson, the first Robin) uncover a Batman-like costume while going through the personal effects of Bruce's late father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, along with a film which shows the elder Wayne wearing the costume at a masquerade.

The story goes on to show Dr. Wayne thwarting a gangster, blah blah, and in the end, Bruce ends up wearing the same costume while trying to arrest the same villain. A bit on the corny side, but most of the stories were in the Fifties, right?

Now the thing is, I remember seeing this comic when I was a kid, long before The Greatest Stories volume was published. For the life of me, I can't remember where, though I know I didn't own it myself (I'm not that old!), but perhaps it belonged to the father of a neighbor kid. I do recall that he had some pretty old Batman and Superman comics. Wherever I saw it, the basic story and especially the costume of The First Batman stuck with me. And so, dear reader, this is what I decided to attempt as my contest entry:

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