Not a whole lot accomplished so far, but I thought I'd post the before/after shot of my ever-so-slightly restyled Superman head:
I found with the eyebrows a little less strange-looking, the trademark Superman forelock didn't bother me as much, so I left it as-is. I gave him a little more neck, since I'm planning on changing the attitude of the head slightly from the kit's version. I primed with [ironic for an alien] Tamiya Flat Earth, figuring that would be a good basis for flesh tones and hair to come.
[The molding still bears an odd resemblance to one of Gerry Anderson's marionette puppets. He looks like he should be flying one of the Thunderbirds.]
Main body parts are quite well sculpted. Torso bits are together, in various stages of puttying and sanding:
For those who haven't seen the old Aurora kit, it has Supe busting through a brick wall, which I will go with unless I can think of something more interesting. The brickwork sections are actually pretty well designed as far as final appearance goes, but each section is molded with front and back, and the seams are a bit...well...random:
I don't honestly recall how big the gaps were in the "old days," but I'm sure 50 or so years of on-and-off production haven't helped the molds any. I guess the good news is that putty and ragged mortar could look pretty much the same. Still, I suspect doing a decent job on those bricks could take longer that the whole body. [But it beats doing 36 identical road wheels, right?]
Still fiddling with ideas for replicating a new cape, but no pictures yet.
Hope everybody's making progress. Up, up and away!