I supplied Allspark.com with some Animated Wreck-Gar art. Check it out.
Patch Together sent me this photo of Mike's statue, painted, this morning! Sweeet! I've asked them to change the way they paint his collar, but otherwise I figger that's what he's gonna look like. He's still up for preorder!
Hey, look, Amber's cosplaying as her least favorite Turtle.
And, of course, Book 3, Shortpacked! Is Totally Gay is still in the middle of preorders. Today starts Week 2, actually! So let's rattle off the sales pitch again:
This book covers the strips starting March 20, 2006, through September 8, 2006, plus a couple dozen Toy News International strips. There's also (sometimes) insightful commentary from me on every page, plus "Galasso's Secret Files" on all the employees in the store.
Book 3 also has a foreword written by Bob Forward. (It's a Forward Foreword!) It's true, there's an introduction from the co-story editor of Beast Wars, as well as the writer of episodes for Transformers Animated, BraveStarr, G.I. Joe, the Legend of Zelda shorts for the Super Mario Bros Super Show, and... the He-Man/She-Ra Christmas episode, of course. Naturally, I am beside myself. It is a great honor.
So, basically, this book is really awesome. Let's sum up: 136 pages, full color, buttload of strips and special materials, and there's a foreword by the guy who killed Dinobot. As of this writing, a third of the EXTRA (signed/doodled/numbered) versions are gone! So if you want the special version, you gotta hop to it! [2010/03/12 11:23 pm]
David McGuire has a book of his awesome comic strip Gastrophobia coming soon! It's called "The 12 Labours" and sells for $12. That's just $1 per labor! The book is due in April, and I recommend getting your hands on a tangible version of his work.
I'm trying out this Formspring.me thing, in which people can send me questions and I answer them and I can choose to port some of the answers through Twitter. I can't guarantee I'll answer all the questions I'll get (I have, uh, over a hundred queued at the moment), but if it's a good and/or humorous one, I'll certainly take a whack at it.
Meanwhile, thanks for sending me those preorders for Shortpacked! Book 3! We've sold through about a third of the signed/doodled/numbered EXTRA! editions, so that means there's not many of them left. Also, we're expecting the final painted prototype of the Mike statue any day now. I can't wait to see it! Preorders for him are still ongoing.
I'm also gearing up for my convention schedule this year, and I should have a wider variety of wacky things to offer you.
It's baffling to me, considering how gung-ho Robin was about the last candidate in last Wednesday's strip and her subsequent continued gung-ho-ness, why a handful of people thought Ethan's date would be anyone else! I have no idea why other folks were suggested. It was gonna be Mike, it was gonna be that chinbeard fanboy dude, it was gonna be Thad. But, well, hey, surprise. It's this guy. Exactly who Wednesday's strip said it'd be. Hooray! :)
Here's the rest of the Thanagarians from the six-pack "Starscrossed" set. The set also came with a normal Batman and a normal Green Lantern, but I think by now you can probably picture them flawlessly in your head. This picture's just of the new folks.
Not to surprisingly, it's just a male and female mold used twice. Hawkman's evil doppelganger Hro Talak and his gayly jealous sidekick Kragger are the same toy with different heads and deco. It is nice that their arms are sculpted to have their armor's detail on them, rather than it being only paint. And equally expected are Paran Dul and Hawkgirl's mold-sharing. Unlike the dudes, though, their arms aren't sculpted to have the armor detail. It's just painted on.
And thank god for those new belts. We don't need more flesh belts. [2010/03/10 11:12 pm] Shortpacked!:Solitude!
I'm back in the JLU saddle, baby!
As I mentioned a few days ago (and drew a strip about), I took that anonymous guy's suggestion and just ordered myself some damn JLU six-packs off the Internet. Great news, right! Ahahahaha, guess what, Graham was in the middle of being the winning bidder for a "Starcrossed" six-pack on eBay... for my birthday. So he was understandably a little frustrated when he read that I'd finally gotten my hands on a set. D'oh! But he let himself get outbid, and he told me to just open the one I ordered when it got here. I thought maybe he'd just wrap up the one I got for me or something, but no, he wants to get me a surprise gift, like it's my birthday or something.
The Hawkgirl in the middle is from the Starscrossed set. I think she's my favorite Hawkgirl toy of the three. It's rough, because the yellow and black outfit is definitely my favorite in the cartoon, but ... the Thanagarian Armor version doesn't have, y'know, a flesh belt. Also, the colors on the Thanagarian Armor version are so vibrant. They're just a little darker all around, and the eyes are painted better. She looks really nice. And usually, yellow trumps most other colors in my eyes, but the dark blue, red, and gold really work well together.
The Hawkgirl on the right is from the other six-pack in the wave. This is Hawkgirl with "Eclipso" shards embedded in her skin, making her evil. You can tell because she has no painted irises! Spoooky.
I wish in real life when people did evil things, their eyes glowed. It'd make politics way more interesting. Or way less interesting. I'm undecided. [2010/03/09 10:59 pm] Shortpacked!:Have I done mirrors before? This felt new, anyway.
Yeah, I ain't drawn anything on paper for over a week now. Yay, Cintiq! And for whatever reason, it leads to more extravagant backgrounds.... probably because it's much easier to doodle them in with colored brushes, versus the usual ink-then-color route. We'll see where this takes me.
Bob Forward, who wrote the Foreword to Shortpacked! Book 3 (preorder it now!), is mostly responsible for my insane Dinobot collection. The remaining percentage is due to the sheer number of times they redecoed and retooled his toy. I have no idea what it is that compels me to own every version of a mold once they reuse it more than four or five times. Though I thankfully fight this 99% of the time. But with Dinobot? He's my boy.
So in that vein, this is Kabaya's "candy toy" model kit Dinobot. See, in Japan, you don't pay tax on candy, so Kabaya makes these kits and various figurines based on various properties, throws in an obligatory stick of shitty gum, and woo. No tax to pay from Japanese children with little money. I have a couple of these Kabaya products in the Hot Shot variety, what with the Shrine, but none of those were transformable.
Well, sorta transformable. This Dinobot figure needs assembly in more ways than one. It comes as you see in the first photo, of course, and then you snap and peg him together. But the transformation requires taking him apart a little and rearranging him. The toy's not an expensive thing, but it wasn't supposed to be. Remember, these are supposed to be cheap. Almost as cheap as the gum. To transform this Dinobot from robot mode to raptor mode, you take off his legs at the hip, peg those underneath, take off his robot arms, switch them so the elbows bend the right way, and then remove his tail just like his "real" toy. The tail splits apart to reveal a sword, same as usual, though this rotate blade doesn't spin, of course.
It was pretty fun to do. For a guy who has as many Dinobots as I do, the act of physically putting the design together with my own hands was kind of... cathartic. Except for the stickers. They actually stuck on the plastic better than I thought they would, considering this thing is 15 friggin' years old. I was sorta suspecting them to just flake off the paper onto the ground when I opened the box. Naw, they still stuck. And they stuck just well enough it's possible they haven't degraded at all. I can totally imagine this being as well as they stuck back in 1996. That is, not very well. And, heh, isn't it always the way that using Superglue adheres your skin better to the plastic than it does the sticker paper? Ahahaha. Man, the teeth sticker that wraps around the front of the dinosaur head is the worst. The absolute worst.
But all in all, it's a neat little artifact to have. In robot mode, it's generally Basic-sized ("Scout" in modern jargon). And he has a little rotate blade and a rigid grill structure.
Just don't eat the gum. For the love of God, no.
EDIT: Holy crap, I was just asked on Twitter why I totally neglected to mention that March 9 was the anniversary of Dinobot's death. "Code of Hero" aired on March 9, 1998. Man, because I'm a loser, that's why. Dudes! [2010/03/08 11:01 pm] Shortpacked!: This is not a permanent character model change.
Since I put up Shortpacked! Book 3 for preorderyesterday, I am contractually obligated to mention this either every day until the end of time or until when I get enough preorders, whichever comes first. Such is the sad reality of self-employment. (Book 3 up for preorder.)
But this is still a toy blog, so there still must be toys!
I got Shattered Glassreprolabels for my SG Decepticons a lifetime ago, but I didn't get the SG Autobot symbols until just recently. I'm not as enthusiastic about the evil mirrorverse Autobots. Do they have Ravage? No. No, they don't. So nyeah.
But here is my photo of my repurposed toys as mirrorverse characters. These are (clockwise from the top right) Brawn,Beachcomber, Camshaft, Huffer, and Arcee. They are all evil in various ways, except Huffer, who seems to be less evil, somehow. Well, he's way more friendly, at any rate.
The only speedbump was Brawn, on whom I needed to use a sticker to cover up his Sector Seven logo, but that's just below an unpainted sculpted Autobot logo. So, uh, yay, he looks a little ridiculous with one logo right above another. Well, the original toy expected you to ignore the sculpted faction logo, so I guess I can continue doing that. [2010/03/07 11:00 pm] Shortpacked!@TNI:Oh well now I look stupid(er). Shortpacked!:Give that man a biology book.
It is Monday, and that means you can now totally preorder Book 3: Shortpacked! Is Totally Gay! This book covers the strips starting March 20, 2006, through September 8, 2006, plus a couple dozen Toy News International strips. There's also (sometimes) insightful commentary from me on every page, plus "Galasso's Secret Files" on all the employees in the store.
Oh. And those of you on Twitter may know this already, but Book 3 has a foreword written by Bob Forward. (It's a Forward Foreword!) It's true, there's an introduction from the co-story editor of Beast Wars, as well as the writer of episodes for Transformers Animated, BraveStarr, G.I. Joe, the Legend of Zelda shorts for the Super Mario Bros Super Show, and... the He-Man/She-Ra Christmas episode, of course. Naturally, I am beside myself. It is a great honor.
So, basically, this book is really awesome.
I'm also opening preorders for the reprint of Book 1 with the awesome new cover. You can either preorder it separately or... hey, look, you can preorder it in a bundle with Book 3 for $5 off. How interesting. Huzzah? Huzzah. Because it will very likely take a lot longer to gather up funds for this reprint of a book folks already have, the Bundle includes postage for two envelopes so that I can send Book 3 immediately when it gets here. But if you want Book 3 held back for when both books are available, let me know and I'll refund you the additional postage.
So this is the last of MattyCollector's JLU Internet-exclusive four-packs.
I've passed on a couple of them. There are some sets that just weren't that compelling to me, at least not for $40. That seems to be the general problem. Folks weren't forking over the dough for four-packs of super-crazy/obscure dudes. But the nice thing is, well, I could find them! I've stopped being able to find the JLU stuff that's released to physical stores. This is partly because our area Targets seem to be giving up on the line, and so there's no allotted shelf space for, say, six packs or three-packs anymore.
But hey, there's a new spot for single packs! And the new wave of those are all dudes I already have. Damn.
Mattel did show off some more guys for this coming year at Toy Fair, but I've stopped feeling certain I'll ever own them. The pile of stuff I've never seen has started to accumulate.
So, uh, yay, I may not be all that into the Justice Guild, but at least they're here, for me to have.
Wish the set had a Catman, though. [2010/03/04 10:59 pm] Shortpacked!:Signs.
Look, it's another cover!
Panic time: I am practically out of Book 1. I have maybe a dozen of them sitting behind my desk chair, half a box at my in-law's house in San Diego, and that's it. No more! (So, uh, yeah, mad dash if you want one of the very last copies.)
This means I gotta make more. It's Book 1, which is The Most Important book. At conventions, sometimes folks just won't buy any if they can't get "the first one." More! Must be more! And the handful in San Diego won't last a day at San Diego Comic-Con this summer.
So let's try a different cover. Different spin on the original title; probably the more obvious one. Went all crazy painterly today, which is not a style I try regularly. Killed my hand. But it was worth it.
Look at it. Paw at it. Lick your screen.
I don't expect many people to preorder this second printing. Most of you folks already have it. (Or you'd better!) But those of you who don't, let's see if we can't put a down payment on it or something. I expect to have preorders for both this and Book 3 on Monday! So gather your Paypal funds.
So this is the last day of WRECKERS AWARENESS WEEK. I was worried I wouldn't have enough stuff around that wasn't from the Beast Era Wreckers, but here I am on the last day, and here's our first.
It's Apelinq! He leads the Wreckers 300 years in the future. And he transforms into a gorilla on a hoverboard. Sure, you think this may be weird, but at least one of his arms isn't an anvil and the other arm another dude. Actually, the hoverboard isn't real. He digitally downloads it into reality using his Transfer Interlink. He can digitally download pretty much anything into reality: guns, bigger guns, clubs, medics...
Apelinq can do this because he is a Scientist. A super scientist. Like Jetfire, he's close to what TVtropes calls a "Flat-Earth Atheist." Despite living in a world full of very verifiable deities and magical artifacts, he's all about technology and rationality, nor is he big on religion, and he has a supreme distrust of mysticism. So, of course, he gets sent on a quest by the Oracle. And, later, he gets transformed into half of an agent of God, a walking, living vessel of his power.
