"I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker"

A while back I stumbled across this great thread in the Workbench section of the Lead Adventure Forum.

A group was rounding up orders for, or gauging interest in, a Victorian version of a certain nemesis of a caped nocturnal vigilante.

Well I was in for it immediately. The sculptor, who goes by Vermis but is, I believe, named Warren, was even doing alternate heads -- one based on Conrad Veidt, the star of the German Expressionist silent film "The Man Who Laughs," from the Victor Hugo novel (and a big inspiration for Bob Finger's original design of The Joker), and the other with the skinned and reattached face we've seen in recent comics.

There had apparently been an earlier drive to craft the Gentleman Vigilante himself. I opted not to purchase one of these, but they do look good.

So I had to get two of Mr. Grins, and they arrived at my secret base in the heart of a dormant volcano yesterday. And they are every bit as wonderful as anticipated.

Here's a pic of my two minis in the metal. These are really clean casts. There was one tiny piece of flash attached to one of the top hats, but I took care of that with a judiciously applied fingernail. The only mold line of any significance runs along the underside of the figure's right arm, but a file should get rid of that with minimal effort.

I don't exactly have a plan to slot him into the world of "Brass & Blood" yet, but it'll come to me, no doubt. I mean, every setting can use a psychopath disfigured by a Glasgow smile, right?

And the vigilante haunting Victorian smokestacks and alleyways to stop him is already in my collection.