May | 2018 | JFsculpts

SPACE SAMURAI FANG (Supēsu Bushi Fang) aka ROCKET WOLF FANG (aka Roketto Ōkami Fang) is a character I made up when I was a little kid. I wrote a lengthy origin story on the Harvard mainframe (where my mom worked), which garnered me a fan letter. He’s the last survivor of an alien race, whose been recruited by the emperor who killed his people. (I think the plan was that Fang would eventually get revenge: I’ve always been about the long-unfolding plots, I guess.)

This 1/6th scale mini-bust was sculpted with Sculpey Firm, Super Sculpt, and Apoxie, and painted with acrylic paints.

Here’s a teenage drawing of the character, then a sketch from memory from a week or so ago that lead to the sculpture:

FANG SKETCH 01 FANG SKETCH 02

Created in 1930 as a disembodied narrator for radio crime dramas, the Shadow eventually gained a persona, backstory, and has had many bloody adventures on radio (voiced by a young Orson Welles, among others), pulp magazines (mostly written by magician-turned-author Walter B. Gibson under the pen-name Maxwell Grant), comic books, and film (a 1994 feature starring Alec Baldwin). Having learned to “cloud men’s minds” in the Far East, Lamont Cranston (a.k.a. Kent Allard) returns to his native New York City and wages a brutal war on crime, aided by agents from many different fields of expertise. His famous catchphrase “who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” was often accompanied, on radio, by his chilling, humorless laughter.

The Shadow was a precursor to Batman, and a huge influence on Batman’s creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane. Batman spent his first year occasionally toting a gun and dispatching criminals as ruthlessly as the Shadow did.

This 1/6th scale mini-bust was sculpted with Sculpey Firm, Super Sculpt, and Apoxie, and painted with acrylics and cel vinyl.