Judge Fear - Prepwork: Intro & First Steps

As much as I am less-than-thrilled about the work-intensive month that lies before me, there are a few positives to look forward to. One of these is paring away at the to-do list of pieces on the bench. . .

As some of you might recall, I mentioned that there are some interesting/curious deviations from canon on this figure that require evaluation: 

• Belt buckle: Fear does not normally wear the usual winged, fanged skull belt buckle-variant adopted by the Dark Judges. Instead, his buckle was a shrunken head. How- ever, in the must-read Batman/Dredd crossover, "Die Laughing" (sequel to "Judg- ment on Gotham"), Fear does in fact wear the very thing. As a sidebar note, the shrunken head is revealed to be an explosive weapon (grenade) in "Die Laughing".
• This iteration of Fear does not have knee pads. AFAIK, the only depiction of Fear without the de rigeur knee pads is in "Die Laughing".
• Fear usually carries a gin trap on either side of his belt buckle. These are curiously absent in the kit (NOTE: There is a chained, set/un-tripped trap molded onto the base. . . perchance a nod to "Die Laughing"?).

All the evidence suggests that this is in fact the Judge Fear from "Die Laughing"; however, this is not "my" Judge Fear. So for starters, I have removed two of the three shrunken heads, and one of the padlocks. . .

More to follow. . .