Snoova's Diorama Gallery - THE LOWER DEPTHS

     Back in the early 2000's, I got an idea to build a diorama from G.I. Joe:  Special Missions, Issue #21 - "The Lower Depths".  In the comic, Cobra agents are lurking in the sewers beneath New York City working on a new diabolical scheme.  Zarana, with Road Pig, commands the operation from the back of a truck trailer somewhere on the surface.  Her brother Zandar, along with Buzzer, are down in the sewers with teams of Vipers, Tele-Vipers, Toxo-Vipers and Techno-Vipers.  They are connecting mysterious canisters to the walls and stringing wire everywhere.

    The Joes have sent a 4-man team in to scout out the situation.  Tunnel Rat leads the group which is comprised of Airtight, Charbroil, and Spearhead with his bobcat - Max.  The team navigates their way through the maze of dark, slimy tunnels in effort to discover what Cobra has planned. 

    For the diorama, I chose the scene where Tunnel Rat's team stumbles across Zandar's team as they are finishing the weld on a gas canister.  They break into a small skirmish before the Cobras retreat to continue their work.

    For the figures, I used the proper four Joes.  Even though Tunnel Rat led the mission in the comic, I put Spearhead more front and center as he is supposed to be the Pointman.  Airtight is lagging behind a bit since he doesn't carry any heavy weaponry.

    As for the Cobras forces though, I changed it a bit.  I did use Zandar as the squad leader.  His team, however, consists of a Tele-Viper, a Techno-Viper and 2 Toxo-Vipers.  I didn't include Buzzer or the two regular Vipers as I had them displayed elsewhere.  Also, it might have been too crowded with the extra three figures.

    The diorama was built with several different materials including styrofoam, balsa wood, foam board and more.  The sewer water in the diorama was paper mache molded over some foot-stands for the figures to stand on.  Originally I painted the "water" a light green color that was mixed with a glow-in-the-dark paint for a cool effect when the lights were off.  Eventually though, I recolored it a solid dark green as I thought the glow green was too weak looking.  

    Speaking of the sewer water...  I don't know if I ever checked to see if the original "glow" effect ever worked??  Huh...

    You can see the streaks were the glue run down when I connected the pipes.  I thought this accidental effect was pretty cool.

    The gas canister had me stumped for a moment as to what to use.  Then I saw one of those little plastic bubbles that kids get trinkets out of at the grocery store.  So I had one bubble, with the top and bottom, then I glued another top to the opposite end, creating that pill-like shape.  Then I simply painted it red and there was my gas canister.

    I thought creating a sewer diorama was an interesting concept and I thought it came together well.  As I'm now starting to look into adding more dioramas and displays for my figures, I'm always on the lookout for ideas and inspiration.

    The individual stories of the Special Missions comics were great!  I definitely appreciated how they utilized many of the various characters that normally didn't see the spotlight!  I think Issue #21 might have been some some of Spearhead and Zandar's few rare appearances.  For me, it also provided an avenue to display some of my figures that I didn't really have a home for.