Well, at least you can't say this Transformers Collectors' Club figure wasn't ambitious.

Universe Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's toys were engineered to be capable of having two different robot modes so that each twin could have their own.  That was a call for a Punch/Counterpunch retool if the fandom had ever heard one, and they heard it and they demanded it.  They demanded it so much that this guy's preorders sold out in four days, which is unprecedented.

Punch is an Autobot who spies on the Decepticons as his alter ego Counterpunch.  He's not shown to be especially good at it in the cartoon, since Counterpunch refers to Punch in front of Decepticons as his "Autobot counterpart" and then leaves and then immediately comes back having transformed into him.  They share the same vehicle mode and mostly the same color scheme and mostly the same name.  It's kind of transparent, but I think that's part of the charm.  (It is why I forgive that this new toy's license plate reads "P CTRP," which I would think would telegraph his dual identity fairly immediately.  It's like if Clark Kent walked around in a t-shirt that says "SPRMN.")

Sadly, Punch/Counterpunch is another Club-exclusive toy that had some problems along the way.  My Seacons had some amazingly bad QC problems, Nightbeat's ears got lopped off, and Heatwave's super robot head had some storage issues.  (Oh, and Airazor was the Energon Slugslinger mold, but that's a different kind of problem.)

In P/CP's case, the problem is obviously the size of his head.  Look at it!  It is comically tiny!  He left it in the dryer too long or something.  Apparently the factory shrunk his noggin down a size or two without asking if it was okay and then produced the toys and sent them along to America without so much as a "sorry for your loss (of noggin diameter)."  We only know about this behind-the-scenes story not from Fun Publications, but from someone who heard it from Fun Publications, which makes me-the-consumer feel all kinds of special.  Even if the problem was outside their control and not their fault, it's best to, you know, "control the narrative" or whatever, rather than let conspiracy talk fill the void.  That FP has pointedly never shown robot mode images (because they never received samples, they say) sure fueled the fires.

Anyway, it's a tiny head.  It's not so bad as Counterpunch, since his face is a little more abstract than Punch's.  Plus Punch's hood chest is much wider and bigger than Counterpunch's rooftop chest, so that just dwarfs it even more.  Punch also gets the worse configuration of the legs so I think I'm going to be keeping him as Counterpunch.  This is just as well, since I'm gonna have three of this mold as Autobots by the time Red Alert comes out this fall.

Punch's face seems sculpted into an emotion I would call "on the verge of a breakdown."  His eyes are narrow and his eyebrows raised in the middle, like he's about to cry.  The strong downturned lines at the edges of his mouth don't help.  Punch is often characterized as an emotional and mental wreck anyway, so I suppose that works for him.

The head wasn't the only problem as I took him out of the packaging.  Mine was misassembled, which meant Counterpunch's roof chest wouldn't rotate all the way into robot mode configuration.  It stayed cocked at an angle, and any attempt to force it further would remove it from its hinge.  Great!  I learned later that this is fixable if you take apart his torso with a screwdriver (five screws!) and fiddle around with the head piece and the gear teeth inside.  (See, his toy has a "head reveal" gimmick that raises his head as you rotate the chest piece.)  This took me an hour and much trial and error.  The gear teeth don't want to stay where you want them to as you screw it all back together.  The gear teeth are very small and shallow, so even the tiniest nudge will result in everything back to being fudged up when you get those five screws back in.

Three people in #wiigii! so far have reported having this problem.  It might be widespread, or maybe our IRC channel is just that unlucky.

But he's not a total loss or anything.  There are things I like about him.  He's Punch/Counterpunch, to start out with, which is an awesome 1987 character choice. I like the little paint touches that distinguish Punch from Counterpunch, like the purple and green on the tailgate to make Counterpunch feel more Decepticonny.  I like the use of rub symbols!  There's two of them, one on each robot mode's chest.  (This unfortunately means that Punch's vehicle mode is always a Decepticon, but oh wells.)   I also like that his headlights are painted over in vehicle mode to better match his original toy.  I also really like Punch's yellow face.  That might be another factory mistake, according to how he's presented in art, but it's one I'm thankful for.  I like his yellow face.

And again: ambition.

It's too bad.  It's an awesome club toy that's mired in an unfortunate accident.  How much you still like him depends on how well you'll cope with his pinheadedness.  It doesn't bother some, and Transformers aren't really known for having human proportions anyway.  It doesn't bother me much in Counterpunch mode, but Punch just makes me laugh.  He's not a total loss.  It's just... unfortunate.

Woof!  I have too many books in the living room!  Please, someone fix this!

I think it's a testament to the growing sensibilities of the world that my books arrived so problem free.  This was the first of my four books I've done that hasn't been held up stupidly in customs.  The first book that said "BRIGS BACK THE EIGHTIES" on the boxes was flagged for customs.  The second book that said "PLUS THE DRAMA TAG" on the boxes gathered suspicions.  The third book that said "ROMMIES OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BEER" was held up for weeks in a warehouse somewhere.

But boxes that say "SHORTPACKED IS TOTALLY GAY"?  Totally fine!  Hooray!  Civil progress!  Gay folks, you can now marry.

Anyway, back to waiting for Cyclonus and Punch/Counterpunch to arrive.

Oops!  I forgot to link yesterday's Fans! Well, here you go.   I'm not used to seeing my art published so large.  Rikk's so big you could smooch 'im.  Those easter eggs in the background that I'd hoped would be less conspicuous are about as big as the characters in my strip are normally!  Well, take it all in.

I'm looking at a delivery time for Shortpacked! Book 3 tomorrow between 10-2pm.  Then I can start shipping them out to you!  (Well, interrupted by a week-long BotCon trip, of course.)

Speaking of convention trips, I'm now confirmed for Intervention!  That'll be in Washington, D.C., on September 10 through 12.

And hey, I've still got that art auction going.  Check it out!

BotCon is next week, so to raise some spending money I'm throwing up for auction all the convention art I have remaining from C2E2, Penguicon, and Wildpig. There's some sweet stuff here, some I'm sad to see go 'cuz they're awesome.

It's nine pieces of art, with seven of them being full-color.  Starting bid's just $20, the auction will last 5 days, and then I'll get them mailed off to the winning bidder before I leave for BotCon next week!

Good luck!

I got word that Shortpacked! Book 3 should be getting to my doorstep sometime this week.  Hooray, the wait is over, so get your orders in if you haven't already.  If you don't order one, you will be sad.

There's a Bob Forward forward by Bob Forward (Bob Forward!), followed by 130 pages of strips, both full-page and Toy News International-style, commentary for every single one, and "Galasso's Secret Files" for each of the store's employees.

It is amazing.

It arrived!  It arrived!  The best Transformers Club Freebie EVARRRRR!!

See, it's Hot Shot.  In orange.  Orange and blue.  And white.  These colors look gorgeous together.  Orange and blue has always been a favorite color combination of mine, which is why Joyce has been in those colors since the beginning of time.  Those colors look pretty good on Transformers, too, especially coupled with sheer white.  It's a supremely attractive toy.

This is Dion's second toy.  His first was a Japanese e-Hobby exclusive redeco of Wheelie, which I also own.  Though that version was in yellow and a more saturated blue with cream instead of white, that was also a pretty attractive color scheme.  I think the brighter orange/blue/white is better, between the two, but both color schemes work a similar color wheel magic, so they both occupy a similar happy spot in my brain.

Dion was one of Optimus Prime's work buddies before the war, when Prime's name was Orion Pax and they worked together in a shipping dock.  When Megatron and his Decepticon goons encountered the dock early in the war, at first Orion and Dion were in awe of him.  But, well, your mind tends to change when those guys reveal they're there kill you and steal your dock's stuff.  Orion Pax survived to be rebuilt as Optimus Prime by Alpha Trion, but Dion had no such luck.  The original story dropped all mention of Dion once he was shot, and he was presumed dead.  The writer of the episode confirmed that Dion was just there to die and fuel Optimus Prime's desire to defeat evil, but, well...

You know fans and patterns.  They love them!  It's all very Aspergery.  Well, Dion just had to be rebuilt into one of Optimus Prime's current buddies like Ironhide or Ultra Magnus.  He just had to be!  Just like how Cyclonus had to have been made from Skywarp!  Patterns!    And so Dion's biggest deal for the past 15 years of the online fandom was not who he was, but who he ended up being.  This argument was a fool's errand because, you know, he wasn't ever supposed to be anybody and any attempt at an argument is grasping at stuff that just isn't there.  So that went round and round and round...

But hey, turns out that Dion is... Dion.  The Transformers Collectors' Club decided that Dion survived his ordeal and was rebuilt into a member of the Elite Guard.  And this orange Hot Shot clone is what he looks like now.  It's okay that he doesn't look anything like Dion did before the accident... it's not like Orion Pax looked terribly much like Optimus Prime!  But the color scheme is maintained, and so it's easy to buy this orange and blue Hot Shot as Optimus Prime's old, previously-thought-dead pal.

It helps that Dion is covered in all sorts of paint.  This is pretty radical for a Club exclusive, since their first freebie toy offering had a dab of paint here and there and the day was called.  Dion is smothered in paint, mostly in service of making him look more like Dion's original color arrangement.  I enjoy how much work seemingly went into the deco.   Though it seems to hit a snag in vehicle mode.  There's a bit of unpaintable plastic right at the front of Dion's car doors.

This is where a blue Autobot logo was placed.  And since it's unpaintable there, that means there's a big orange chunk in the upper corner of the logo.  It doesn't bother me as much as it does some people; my mind sort of automatically fills in that negative space.  If they moved the symbol further back along the door away from the unpaintable patch, that would look worse to me.  The symbol has to have room to have blue streamers behind it for the graphic to work, and moving it back would kinda create a worse eyesore.

The toy is as fun as Universe/Henkei! Hot Shot toy was, which isn't very fun, but since I'm not comparing its fun level to the original Hot Shot as much here, it feels more forgivable.  Instead, I'm comparing it to Wheelie's toy, which is always very flattering!  The joints on Dion are nicely tight except for one of his legs, which likes to pop off at the knee whenever it feels like it.

Dion comes with Cop-Tur.  You heard me.

So now I have two Dion toys.  It's all right.  One represents him before he got murdered, and the other after.  Boy, he sure got big.  I wonder if his shoulders hurt.

On top of today's Fans!, I did a guest strip for Axe Cop.  I am everywhere today!  You got four comics from me in the past 24 hours, so get on your hands and knees, dudes.  I am your lord and master.

I wanted to work within the spirit of the strip, but I don't have any six-year-old brothers to feed me awesomeness.  So I grabbed an idea from my 8-year-old self and illustrated it.  As you can see, I was pretty dumb at 8.  Malachai is clearly my intellectual superior.

My guest-artist stint at Fans! begins today!

Canon and Fanon, page 1

Though I only bought the set to get Dr. Venom, I certainly don't mind owning ... "Adventure Team Commander."  He's a 3 3/4"-scale version of the main 1960s 12-inch G.I. Joe dude, which was reintroduced into the later Marvel comic book issues as Joe Colton.  And then he stayed around for the Devil's Due stories as the grizzled G.I. Joe team leader.    Oh, hey, and he was in that last Joe/Transformers crossover.  So, yeah.  Wouldn't turn him down.  I like the idea of celebrating the early history of the line.

Like Dr. Venom, he's a mix of recycled parts with a new head.  I think he's got... Ace's arms?  Duke or Flint's torso with Snow Job's coat bottoms?  And I think those're Shipwreck's legs again...  The head looks like they took one of the 12-inch noggins and shrunk it.  It's pretty faithful.  I have an earlier Joe Colton figure up in storage and it didn't look half as faithful as this.

(He looks like Bob Vila.)

There are three accessories.  He's got a long-ass rifle, a handgun, and a backpack.  I had some trouble getting the backpack attached.  The vest is very tight on the torso, and it was positioned so that the backpack peghole was half-obscured.  Meanwhile, the backpack's peg was kinda soft.  It took a while and some care, but I did eventually manage to get that peg into the hole without breaking anything.

Man, that reads dirtily.