Years ago, my nephew used to ask me questions about Marvel comics characters. For some reason, he really fixated on the Juggernaut, and ever since he was five or so, he's wanted to be the Juggernaut for Halloween.
If you're not familiar with the Unstoppable Juggernaut, here's an image.
But nobody makes a Juggernaut costume. And after his appearance in DEADPOOL 2, they never will.
(Not the worst image that came up, but...)
But when the boy brought it up again this past summer, I started thinking about it, about how we might pull off a homemade version of that costume.
I figured you buy a muscle suit, at any old costume or online store, and put brown faux-leather on it. Not bad. But the helmet, the most iconic part of the character . . .
. . . how would we manage that?
My first thought was to get a mixing bowl that was exactly the right size, then (somehow) cut eye holes and a mouth hole in it. Then we'd cover it with the same brown fabric, or spray paint it brown, or, if we were extremely lucky, we'd find a BROWN mixing bowl to do it with. But no luck.
Next, we went to the craft store and found these cool foam half-balls. They looked EXACTLY like what I had in mind, and were sort of hollowed out:
But they were unbelievably expensive (literally. I still cannot believe they dared charge that much for one), and were only fifty cents cheaper on Amazon. I still considered it, but the problem was, what if it didn't fit, or broke trying to carve out eye-holes? Then the foam investment was ruined, and for what?
I went to Walgreens after that, and saw a bunch of their huge inflatable rubber balls. Ah ha! I said, this is the perfect size and shape! We'll have no trouble cutting eye-holes for this! I can cover the rubber with the faux-leather, and if we ruin one, well, it's not a huge expense like the foam.
I bought one, cut it open, and immediately realized my folly.
It became, like my soul, a deflated shapeless void once there was no air in it, and though it was the right size to fit over my nephew's head, it would not keep any shape, let alone the iconic supervillain helmet one.
It wouldn't work, not as a costume, and now, certainly, as for a ball.
My sister mentioned paper-mache, and I sort of wish that's the way we had gone, but I worried that a) it would look crappy, and 2) that it would fall apart the second he took it off and put it on again. I still wonder if that might've been a better way to go.
I kept looking for mixing bowls, going to the thrift shop down the road. And that's when I passed the lamp section.
Hey, a couple of these didn't look half bad. They came in varying sizes, different materials, wide ones, squat ones, and, if I squinted, they kind of looked like the Juggernaut's helmet. Cool.
So I bought one, trying it on myself to see if it would be the right size. I purposely picked one up that was a little too deep, knowing I could cut material off the top and/or bottom to get it the right size for a ten year old head.
I knew I had the challenge of the top of it (this one had a metal lid that I could easily slice off and throw off a busy overpass), but I figured that would not be an insurmountable problem.
No, my chief worry was that, even if we covered it with pleather, the boy would look ridiculous. That it would obviously be what it was...
Right?
But I was committed. I was gonna be a cool uncle--maybe not as cool as that video of Patton Oswalt making his son a Doctor Octopus costume (seriously, check that out if you want to feel deficient as a parent . . . AND a man), but one who put in a little effort.
So, first thing I did was cut off the top of the lampshade (and throw it into rush hour traffic), then sliced openings for the eyes and mouth.
We made a sort of "roof" of the helmet out of cotton gauze so his hair didn't stick out the top.
I went to Walmart and got a yard of leathery fabric, which we wrapped the helmet in. My first idea was to have my mom sew it, but the lampshade was too breakable, so we used one of those hot glue guns to attach the material.
I used the same material to put on the chest of the muscle-suit we got him. I forgot to take a picture of that step, and also the brown pants we got him to wear (he didn't own any brown pants--who does?--so we went to the thrift store and scooped some up).
The "helmet" was way too wide on my nephew's head, so we encased it with gauze/cotton padding so it would sort of huge his head and face more.
Lastly, to look (sorta) like rivets, I hot-glued metal buttons to the helmet, then painted them brown.
We cut off a few strips of the material to go on his arms and knuckles. I hoped we'd find some moonboots we could also cover with the material, but had no luck, and he just wore tennis shoes.
I recognize it didn't come out great, but I thought it came out fairly well, at least.
And that was it.
ONE guy (that I saw) called out, "Hey, it's the Juggernaut!" But that was all (my nephew said there was another dude [a grown man, like I'm supposed to be] who thought the costume was cool and took a selfie with him, but I didn't witness that).
Later, I heard that my nephew wasn't entirely thrilled with the costume (I choose to believe that it's because it was awkward and heavy), but I told him we could improve it for the next comic con we go to. Maybe we'll try the papier-mache.
Maybe we'll try the Colossus version.
Nahh.
