It Takes Guts!

(Posting early... )

If your travels don't bring you within certain specific nerdy circles, today's post will be particularly obscure. Basically, in the early 70's, the large sized GI Joe line gave rise to a toyline in Japan called Henshin Cyborg (in which Henshin means "transformation"). Henshin Cyborg eventually gave rise to Microman, which in turn gave rise to Diaclone, and then Transformers. And in fact, Microman's 3.75" scale figures had probable influence on GI Joe converting to that scale in the 80's, bringing things full circle, but I digress.

Today's post is Dokuro King (dokuro is Japanese for skeleton, incidentally), a villain from Henshin Cyborg:

click above for larger view

I drew this some time ago, shortly after the Skeletor sketch that I used to launch this blog. Back then, my thinking was focused on skull-themed villains rather than He-Man in general, believe it or not. The coloring was something I only got around to recently, and hopefully it is clear that his guts are visible through his transparent purple body, as per the original toy. As is my custom, I have given a bad-ass villain a bat-cape, in the hopes of making him even more bad-ass. hopefully you will find this to be the case. In retrospect, I wish I had deviated from the toy and drawn a skeleton under the King's transparent skin as well.

There will be more skull-themed villains and Henshin Cyborg to come in the future, I assure you--though it might not be soon.


For More on Henshin Cyborg and Dokuro King:

• To see a photo of the original Dokuro King toy, go here and scroll to the bottom. And more general Henshin Cyborg info can be found here.
• And check out Visible Innards for an excellent Henshin Cyborg-centric forum.