Live Wire WizKids HeroClix Figure Model Sheet by Tom Grindberg

All my life, I've loved to collect things. Rocks, coins, figurines, commemorative spoons and decorative plates... I've finally found my true collector's passion with comic art, but before that, it was plain old comic books, and before that... it was HeroClix figures. HeroClix is a tabletop strategy game where the characters are represented by these adorable little figures, and you track things that happen by twisting - and "clicking" - their bases. I've never played the game once in my life, but when I was a high school senior, I was just in love with collecting and displaying the figures. Even back then, I was only interested in the Legion of Super-Heroes characters, and discovering HeroClix was especially exciting because while there's not a whole lot of Legion merch out there, they have a decent bit of representation in the HeroClix world!

When I started collecting art, I was delighted to find out that HeroClix had its representation here, too! The little figures often had model sheets drawn for them to give the sculptors something to go off of. When I just started out here on CAF, there were three available that I wanted: the Legion founders, Cosmic Boy, Live Wire, and Saturn Girl. Well, I dragged my feet and found other things to buy, and when I finally decided it was time to buy the model sheets, only Live Wire was left.

I'm still very happy to have been able to walk away with this one, though! Tom Grindberg did a delightful job coming up with a heroic and dynamic pose for Live Wire, and even though he's not using his lightning powers in the actual figurine, you can still tell that that's what the pose is meant to evoke. The two drawings on the left and right are the front and back shots of the model, itself, but I like that Grindberg included a third illustration in the middle - maybe to familiarize himself with Live Wire's design, or maybe to give the sculptors a better understanding of what the character looked like. I just love the amount of care and detail used to render Garth's robotic arm. One of my favourite things about the Heroclix figures themselves is how much comic-faithful detail the designers gave each one (even if it's hard to be accurate with the paint job on such a small scale), and remembering to include Garth's arm is one such detail.

In the additional images, I've also included some pictures of my very own Live Wire figure that I bought back in high school! The first image is my best effort to match the figure to the exact pose Grindberg drew on the model sheet, and the last two are just to show off the design and paint job.