Paraphrasing one Nick Fury, “I recognize that Atomic Mass Games has made the decision to package Cassandra Nova with Jean Grey, but given that it’s a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.” Well, maybe that’s a little harsh. While Cassandra Nova isn’t a character who I would place in my top-tier list of X-Men villains, there’s plenty of good canonical reasons (cough, Genosha, cough) for Atomic Mass Games to have picked her out. That said, these are my X-Men miniatures and nostalgia is god, and therefore there was some kitbashing in order on this build.

Jean was a pretty straightforward model and I more or less had her done in a single day, which was a pleasant surprise for me. I’m very happy with how the painting on her yellow bits came out, as well as her hair, which years of Howling Banshees definitely helped prepare me for. I also loved working on that “psychic” effect below Jean, and doing some OSL around it and up near her eyes and forehead. She’s definitely one of the best-looking X-Men I’ve finished so far.

But is she Emma Frost? No, no she is not. And Emma Frost is one of my favorite characters from the comics so I really wanted to try and bring her to life by repurposing the Nova model. My concept while working on this was that this is a teacher Emma, or “Headmaster/Headmistress” Emma. In one hand she has a fancy diamond cane with the classic Cyclops head bit on it, because I wanted something a little fancier than the stock cane, and in the other hand she has a very fancy, tall, not-Starbucks caffeinated beverage so that she can deal with all of the daily stresses that come with bossing around the X-Men.

These are definitely two of the models that have turned out best so far, between the base effects, getting to play with kitbashing, and just how well I feel like the colors turned out. This also probably won’t be my last Emma Frost, since I’ve been poking at possible proxies that look a little closer to the comic-canon versions of the character, and have found a Canadian printer who has them on hand. More on that to follow. But I’m really looking forward to seeing these two models on the tabletop, taking names and melting faces.