Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch
I
hesitated a lot when it was time to decide what figure I would enter in
the villains bonus round of the Analogue painting Challenge. After all, with me painting an Oldhammer
Chaos army the choices were plentiful! In the end I went with the
Jabberwock for two reasons: it's a really cool figure and I figured
there was no way someone else would submit one!
The Jabberwock was always one of my favourite
Chaos monster. I mean, just the name "Jabberwock" is awesome and for
some strange reason fits perfectly with the beast's appearance. I
remember seeing a picture of one in the Warhammer 3rd edition bestiary
and thinking I needed one of those! Just...so...bizarre!
The figure I used was released in the early 80s, 1982 I believe, by
Ral Partha, and was sculpted by Tom Meier. While not a Citadel figure
per se, it was sold in Europe by Citadel under license. I bought that
figure, actually sold in the Citadel packaging, in the late eighties, in
a now long defunct hobby shop "bargain bin". I undercoated it, lost
interest and the poor fellow spent more than 20 years in the bottom of
my lead box. The figure has aged remarkably well I find, and it is still
today imho the best looking Jabberwock available on the market. Few
sculpts of the Jabberwock have been made in 28mm; one by Ral Partha, one by Citadel and a recent one from Reaper.
The
great thing with this creature is that you can truly let your
imagination run wild as there is no "accepted" reference, and most pics
are black & white. I went mostly with a striking green to match the
colour scheme I intend to give to my chaos force.
He's one of many weird monsters I would like to paint and he will more than
likely have a place of honour among my Chaos monsters, as I really like
him.
This weird creation of chaos gives me 70 pts in the contest (extra points for the bonus round).
