LEGO Minifigures Series 14: Monsters!

The new Monsters set of collectible Minifigures (Series 14) is on sale now, and it provides a lovely selection of new creatures to help diversify any GM's collection. The sixteen characters are imminently suitable for RPG miniatures as is, but they also provide useful pieces for creating new models. Some of course, are more interesting--and original--than others.

Werewolf: At first glance, this werewolf is very similar to previously produced wolfmen, but this one has a new touch: a bushy tail that attaches between the torso and legs. For GMs of D&D and Pathfinder games, werewolves (along with Wolf Tribe characters from the Legends of Chima theme) also make excellent gnolls.

Zombie Pirate: It's easy enough to make a zombie pirate out of other minifigures, and the old Pirates of the Caribbean sets included a number of undead sailors. But this one is an excellent blend of the more cartoony aesthetics of the Pirates and Monster Hunters lines. It's one of my personal must-haves in this series, because I run a campaign set in Freeport: The City of Adventure, which has plenty of ghost ships.

Crazy Scientist: One of the previous Minifigures series included a mad scientist, but this one has obviously been experimenting upon himself: his cranium has expanded to fit his enlarged brain. This makes him excellent for use as a comic-book mutant supervillian. Unlike older beaker props, his is the first with opaque contents, and has a fly printed on the side--he's clearly the creator of the Fly Monster, below.

Wacky Witch: The Minifigures line has offered a witch before, too, but this one is goofier looking, with a ragged, bright purple dress and striped stockings. I vastly prefer the earlier, scarier hag (which was modeled after the Wicked Witch of the West). The pouty-looking black cat is the best part of the new one.

Plant Monster: The plant monster is still consuming its last victim, whose frightened face peeks out of its mouth. If you want to make it a little less silly-looking, replace the minifigure head with one of a solid color--preferably black or red--or with a 1x1 cylinder brick. This makes the mouth look more maw-like. (The mostly-teeth head from an Atlantis Hammerhead minifigure works even better.)

Fly Monster: This character is easily the most freakish member of Series 14: a winged humanoid with a large insect's head, and one hand mutated into a pincer-like claw. It also has a very different look from previous bug-like LEGO minifigures such as the aliens from Galaxy Squad and the scorpion and spider tribes from Legends of Chima. It's perfect for the retro B-movie horror look of this series.

Specter: This character and the Banshee, below, use the same ectoplasmic lower-body piece that was first used for some of the ghostly villains in the latest Ninjago storyline, but in new colors. The Specter is a lovely ghost figure, except that his derpy face doesn't inspire much fear. That can easily be fixed by replacing the head with a different face, such a skeleton's, or a blank black head for a hollow look. (Even turning the white head around to the blank side would make him more menacing.)

Zombie Cheerleader: This character is cute, and delightfully cheerful for a rotting corpse. Apart from the head, though, she isn't much use as a RPG miniature except for modern-day games,

Tiger Woman: This figure has tiger stripes painted on her legs, arms, front, and back, as well as on the hard-rubber tail that attaches at the waist. She's perfect for a weretiger, rakasta, or catfolk, or an anime catgirl. The smirk and the whip give her a ton of attitude, too.

Gargoyle: This gargoyle has the classic horns, fangs, and bat-wings associated with his type, allowing him to be used as a D&D-style gargoyle, imp, or other devil. Substitute normal-sized gray legs to give him a more imposing stature, or remove the wings and headpiece to make an animated stone statue or golem. The wings are perfect for a tiefling or succubus, or can be used to turn a Lizard Guy, Ninjago serpent, or Chima Crocodile Tribe character into a man-sized winged dragon. These many alternate uses for his elements make the gargoyle the most versatile entry in this series.

Skeleton Guy: It seems to be a tradition that every Minifigure series includes one character in a Halloween costume, and this set is no exception: this is a normal guy wearing a skeleton costume. The paint job faithfully copies a LEGO skeleton over all four sides of the body, This figure could be repurposed as a skeletal ghost, or a body that hasn't completed lost all of its flesh. However, it would probably serve best for a cultist of a death god, who is trying to look more like one of the undead he reveres.

Monster Rocker: This figure is my least favorite in the series. He's simply a Frankenstein's monster--the third or fourth version of such that LEGO has produced--with a guitar and a lot of denim.

Zombie Businessman: Like the cheerleader, this character is of limited use as a miniature outside of modern-day games. (He'll probably end up haunting my cube at work instead.) His mussed hair is the easiest element to reuse.

Banshee: This character was easily the one that I (and my two children) wanted most, The Banshee is a beautiful ghost figure, with a translucent hair piece (a first!) that complements her transparent lower body quite nicely.

Square Foot: This version of Bigfoot is identical to the earlier Yeti minifigure, but with a new color scheme and a change of props. He would serve well as a sasquatch, ape, or bugbear.

Spider Lady: This woman is clearly a vampire, but with a spider fetish instead of the classical bat theme. She comes with a clear plastic, two-piece cape and a beehive hairdo, giving her an Elvira: Mistress of the Dark vibe. Her outfit, with its web patterns and spiders, just begs to be used as the base of a drow noble or priestess character.

Overall, Series 14 is extremely satisfying. Every series will have a few characters I don't care for, but this set has very few (two or three at most) that I'm indifferent to. My personal favorites are the Plant Monster, Tiger Woman, Gargoyle, Banshee, and Spider Lady.

[Edited 1/9/2018 to add photo.]

Spirits of Halloweens Past

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, ever since I first started trick-or-treating as a small child. The costumes are fun, and I've always had a huge sweet tooth. As I got older, I learned more about the folklore and myths surrounding Halloween and Samhain--and monsters of all kinds--which just added to the appeal. And being an artist since childhood, I've always enjoyed the challenge of creating new costumes.

My family rarely had much money to spend on costumes, and most of them were homemade. Some years, my mom (who mother taught Home Ec) sewed costumes for us. For herself, she usually just pulled out her oldest, most ragged yard work clothes and escorted us dressed as a hobo. (At least one year, we had to make do with the same, because we were visiting Grandma Halloween weekend.) But even at a young age, I had an urge to make something that stood out from the other kids. Even if it was something I cobbled together from plain brown cardboard, like the Jabberwock costume I built when I was 10 or 11. The floppy claws attached to gloves and boots were easy. It was the wings (attached to an old vest with coathangers) and the mask (sculpted to fit over my glasses) that required some engineering.

I have two kids of my own now. The first year we took them out trick-or-treating, they were three and four, and they had very simple costumes: my daughter (who we call "the Blackbird" online) was a fairy princess, using some dress-up clothes passed down by her cousins. Her little brother ("the Owl") wore a store-bought pumpkin sweatsuit (which he proceeded to wear year-round until he outgrew it). I used some old garb from SCA and LARP events to dress as a pirate to take them out, while my wife Erika stayed at home to hand out candy. These have been our roles on Halloween night ever since.

After that first year, I made a point of making costumes for them each year. In 2009, The Blackbird wanted to be Max from Where the Wild Things Are. I decided that she needed a Wild Thing to follow her around, so built myself a costume--which remains the most ambitious costume I've ever designed, before or since. The Owl had trouble choosing a costume, so I made him a superhero costume. We had a bit of fun at his expense, though: one of our nicknames for him was Captain Obvious, because he had a knack for stating it, so that's the hero he got to be.

In 2010, I put most of my energies into their costumes, leaving mine (a black-robed sorcerer) to be thrown together at the last moment. The Blackbird has been obsessed with unicorns since she first learned what one was, so I built her a head to fit over her hoodie. She wanted a flying unicorn, so wore her fairy wings with it. Similarly, the Owl has been in love with Thomas and Friends since he was a toddler, so wanted to be Emily, one of the other engines. That took quite a bit of time to research, sketch plans, and build, but he was over the moon when it was finished. The costume--a cardboard train engine that hung by straps over his shoulders--was actually too big to keep in his room easily, so I eventually cut off the front (face, bumpers, funnel, and front wheels) to hang on his wall. (When we moved to Kentucky last year, we packed it and it's still hanging over his desk.)

By the next Halloween, the kids had been exposed to the LEGO Ninjago theme, and wanted to dress up as their favorite ninjas. My wife actually contributed more to their costumes than I did that year, by finding instructions for making ninja hoods out of folded t-shirts. For my part, I reused the aviator costume that I put together for InterCon (a LARP convention) the previous spring.

Three years ago, my son (now 7) was watching Kiki's Delivery Service as often as we'd let him, and wanted to dress up as the title character. We found a black dress at a thrift store and a cheap broom at a costume store. and I built a cardboard cat to perch on the broom. My daughter, on the other hand, embraced her love of monsters and asked to be Godzilla. We found her some green clothes, and I built her a head, spiny back, tail, and claws to wear over them. This became the Blackbird's equivalent to Emily--a bulky costume that she loved enough to move it across country. (Unlike previous years, I didn't have any Halloween parties to go to, so didn't make myself a costume.)

The kids followed in the same vein the next year, which was our first Halloween in Kentucky. I made a cat costume for the Owl so he could be Kiki's cat Jiji, and a kraken costume for his big sister. Stuffing and sewing together four pairs of tights to make octopus arms was so time-consuming that I had very little time to work on my own costume. However, I have a Hawaiian shirt that I bought ages ago, so I bought a cheap black curly wig and shaved off my goatee to go as "Weird Al" Yankovic.

This year, my children had a new obsession: Wild Kratts. They wanted to be the Kratt brothers in their creature suits. The Blackbird wanted to be Martin as a (blue) peregrine falcon, and the Owl settled on Chris as a (green) lion. These costumes took some time to build: I fashioned creature suit vests and tails from posterboard, falcon wings out of posterboard and felt, a lion's head out of cardboard and a stocking cap, and boot covers with claws and talons. Once again, I had very little time, energy, and inspiration left over for my own costume. But then my wife found a bag of costuming stuff I had forgotten buying dirt-cheap from a costume store last November, which included a set of "demon wings" (black tulle over shapable struts). Ages ago, I made a nightgaunt mask by adding horns to a black faceless mask, but never had wings I was satisfied with to go with it. Now I did, so all I needs was to make a tail. (I'll have to post photos of the nightgaunt later, after my friend sends them to me.)

It's far too soon to determine what costumes I'll make for next year, but there are a couple of ideas I've wanted to try for quite some time. One of these is the serpent person from the cover of Tales of Freeport, but that's a project that will need far more than just one month of prep time! It's also a costume that I would love to wear to GenCon when I finally have the money and vacation time to attend it again--which, as every year, I hope will be this coming summer. But that's in August, so I'll have to start on this serpent person costume by spring....