The final issue of Last Stand of the Wreckers dropped on Wednesday.  Holy cow, dudes.  The trade isn't until August.  You can't wait that long.  Go get the individual issues.  The individual issues have character profiles that aren't gonna be in the trade, anyway.  (Which is kinda bullshit, but whatevs.)

(Also, issues 1-3 are available on iTunes.)

There was something else I wanted to talk about today!  Man, I can't remember.

Getting old.

BotCon online registration finally went up today at about 4:30.  So, hey.  Congratulations, everybody! You're out $300, just like you always wanted.

A week ago I asked about me maybe going to TFCon.  Well, here's an alternate idea.  I went to Canada's GIJoe convention last year, and they want me back!  As a guest again!  And it's two weeks later in the same town (Toronto). Would that be amenable?  It's a smaller show, but a fun one.  I would love to go back.

(Remember to vote for Dinobot.)

WildPig II is live! Come see me.

Wherever I am.

While the masses get increasingly restless as BotCon is roughly one month away with no preregistration yet, we do get some raw meat thrown down to us.  A few days ago we got to see Clench!  He's Onslaught with a new head, in sparkly dark blue and bright pink.  This means he's awesome.

We also got to see this year's convention shirt, which glows in black light.  I've sworn off black BotCon shirts, since I just have too damn many, but I probably can't resist a G2 blacklight shirt.  I mean, c'mon.

What we don't get is BotCon preregistration three months ago.

I'm gettin' up early today for my trip to WildPig II in New Jersey.  Guess who I'm road-tripping with?  Why, none other than Randy Milholland, because I'm pretty much on his way from Texas, so why not?We're gonna pile up in his truck and godspeed ourselves to Springfield.

We may headbang.

Hey, you folks near New York City!  Did you know that to the west, just over the river, there's this other state?  And right there, in this mystical land called "New Jersey," is the humble town of Springfield.  It may or may  not neighbor Shelbyville, but it is going to be host to WildPig II.  And I'm going to be there on Saturday and Sunday.

And not just me!  My webcomics brethren Randy Milholland (Something*Positive), Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots), and the illustrious Box Brown will also be there.  That's like three awesome people plus me!

I'll be there with my usual stuff:  Comics, posters, stickers, prints, magnets, sketches!  You should come see me and my buddies.  I'm excited!  I'm excited to be in friggin' NEW JERSEY.  Randy Milholland is driving TWENTY-FIVE HOURS from TEXAS to be in NEW JERSEY.  So you know this is serious.

You know it's been a lull in Transformers purchases when the previous batch has already started breaking in the interim.

I was just transforming him out of tank mode!  I noticed Bludgeon on the shelf in tank mode next to the television and he looked like he needed to be fiddled with.  So I start pulling his hands out of his forearms and... oh no.

Well, that won't do.  And Bludgeon is one of my favorites!  And he has to be able to hold swords, so gluing the fingers back on and leaving it the hell alone is not the answer. So he must be replaced.  Immediately.

My mail-in Recon Ravage came with a $5 off coupon, so I ran over to Walmart this morning.  Thankfully, Bludgeon's still plentiful.  If this happened a few months or a few years from now, I'd be in trouble!  The coupon says $5 off any Transformers purchase of $20 or more, which must include sales tax, because this Bludgeon started at a sale price of $19.97 and it still worked.

Let my misfortune serve as a cautionary tale to others.  Be careful with your Bludgeon hands!  Don't shove that sword in.  Of course, you kinda have to shove it in, because it's a tight grip.

So, basically, you're screwed.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The Transformers Hall of Fame voting, as expected, began early yesterday.  In addition to the four automatic fictional robot inductees and the five fictional robot nominees we're voting on, four real-life creative folks are being inducted this year:  Bob Budiansky, Peter Cullen, Yoke Hideaki, and Kojin Ohno. The one I'm most excited for is Bob Budiansky.  Everyone remembers him as that guy who wrote 50 issues of the comic before Simon Furman took over, but few realize that he's the guy who named and characterized the first several years of Transformers.  He named Jazz, Starscream, Megatron, and everyone else, and he was also responsible for those Tech Spec numbers and bios on the backs of all the packaging.  In many ways, he is Transformers.

Fun thing we learned today.  Transformers.com says we can vote once every day for the three weeks the poll will be up.  What they don't mention is that you can also vote once per computer you own.  And once per browser.  Interesting!  Remember, Dinobot, though honorable, wouldn't necessarily frown on such an action.  He'd be open to cheating, so long as everyone was offered the same opportunity to cheat.  It was just the heavily one-sided battles he frowned upon.

Now, since this voting is going on for three weeks, I, uh, don't expect to have Dinobot-related content throughout.  That'd be annoying to both you and me!  But here, have art I drew of Dinobot if he transformed into a more up-to-date velociraptor.  You know, with feathers.

UPDATE: Vote HERE

Today (Monday), Transformers fans are called to flock to transformers.com to vote on five nominees for the new Transformers Hall of Fame.  Hasbro automatically inducted Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, and Starscream, because, really, let's get those guys out of the way, and they left the fifth inductee this year up to us.  The winner will be announced at BotCon.

Last month, a bunch of participating websites, including the Transformers Wiki, held separate polls to get their own lists of five worthy Transformers.  The results were sent in, and Hasbro used these results to create a list of five final nominees, the ones we'll be voting on today.  The first five were pretty obvious:  Soundwave, Grimlock, Jazz, and Shockwave.  The fifth I imagine was a surprise, as this week's TNI strip addresses.  It's Dinobot!  Some guy from friggin' Beast Wars who hasn't appeared in any other series!  He showed up on almost everybody's lists, and was the #1 choice from the Transformers Wiki.

This is because Dinobot is awesome.

(Though not everybody thinks so.  Some folks from TFW2005 were very adamant that Dinobot was shoved into the Nominee list by Hasbro, as part of some underhanded coup, because Hasbro hates the fans, because nobody would vote for Dinobot!  Nobody!)

Of course, I don't think he's going to win.  He doesn't have a chance in hell against Soundwave.  Dinobot may win some local polls at certain websites, but we're talking general transformers.com traffic here.  Soundwave's got it locked.  But a man can still dream, and I'm still voting Dinobot.  (Well, when the poll on transformers.com goes up sometime today.)

I've, uh, probably exhausted my well of Dinobot toy photos, especially recently, what with me trying to get every use of his mold ever together in one spot.  But there is one thing I know I definitely haven't photographed for this blog, or photographed period for about 15 years.  In 1997, disappointed with Dinobot's toy (what was wrong with me???), I bought a blue 5" Iron Man figure, covered him with sculpey and paint and called it a day.  His rigid grill structure's kinda broken off and he's been at the bottom of  a toy bin for a decade, but other than the paint wear that resulted, he's still in surprisingly good condition.

So enjoy this little bit of personal action figure history.  In 1997, Dinobot was a big part of my world.  In 2010, even though he hasn't appeared in a television series since then, he still is.  That's why I'm voting for him.