Bane got me back into reading comics. I seem to come around to comics every two or three years: during the Knightfall saga, I really got into the whole thing all over again. I mean, the guy gave Batman some serious Nadine Jansen-like back problems. As in, he broke the Bat in half. Awesome.

Bane's costume has been tweaked and tinkered with in his short history, but one thing stays the same: he's a big-ass dude in rasslin' mask. He's been reinvented to have blue pants (which is fine if you want him cartoony), red-skinned (which is fine if you're into onions), or zipper-mouthed (which is fine if you're in Ving Rhames' ass).

Mattel produced a Bane (it's probably still on pegs at a Kmart near you) in its DC Superheroes line, and I dug it and all, but I wanted him to be ginormous and fearsome, and that was undercut by his stance (bending at the knees) and his Gold's Gym tank that left nothing to the imagination. The DC Direct Kelly Jones version had some great elements also, but while both were great figures overall, neither had that Goldilocks just-right vibe for the McShelf.

I reused a lot of different parts for Mr. Bane from existing Bane figures, a testament to those figures' coolness. I think Bane would make for a great movie character--sorry, Jeep Swenson, but the portrayal of Bane in Batman & Robin was a goddamned Biff Loman-size waste of space.

I've always suspected that Bane was the child of Mr. Wrestling II (Mid-South Wrestling rules, man!).

For my version, I've used the Kelly Jones head and hands on a SOTA T. Hawk body. I believe the venom injector was ripped off from the DCSH Bane, but I'm not sure. The tanktop and upper boots/lower pants were sculpted with MS. The rest is just paint.

Bane could totally kick Magnum TA's ass.