Since I no longer have to link my blog posts to my comics, what with having a real RSS thing now, should I still post these blog posts at update time?  I guess I could do them at any time of the day, really.  But hey, let's have tonight's at update time, for old time's sake.

(Update time is midnight EST now, in case you ain't noticed.  Bet you were refreshing for an hour, weren't you?)

Anyway, I promised some images of Beast Wars II Thrustor, and here they are.  I bought one back when he first came out, and he was really awesome then and he's really awesome now.  So why did I get rid of him if he's so awesome?  Well, I was trying to ensmallen my toy collection and it's not like I have a Beast Wars II display.  He'd probably never see the light of day, despite his awesomeness, so I sold him.  Little did I know that a decade later I'd have a new need for him.

So let that be a lesson, kids.  Don't sell any toys because you might want them later to fulfill some weird unforeseen compulsion.

Thrustor was the first retool of the original Dinobot toy and by far the most extensive of the two.  Sure, Hardhead got a new robot head, a new beast head, and new legs, but that's small potatoes compared to Thrustor!  Thrustor's an asymmetrical "Cyborg Beast."  Half of him is robotic and the other half organic, but never the same half.  So he's got an organic left dinoarm and a new mechanical right dinoarm.  His right dinoleg remains unchanged while his left dinoleg has mechanical parts. His head is retooled to be half mechanical as well.  He's got new robot thighs, a new inner robot body, and a new tail that looks like it could kill you just by pointing in  your direction.

His tail is no longer just any ordinary rotate blade.  Instead of a sword being concealed inside it, there's a spring-loaded clawed missile.  There's a saw sculpted into the launcher, but it sadly doesn't spin.  The halves of the tail still do, of course, and it looks way more threatening with all the additions.

He's got an entirely new weapon, as well.  Since he doesn't have the old segmented tail sword anymore, he's given a new serrated blade.  Instead of storing inside the tail, it stores in between his robot legs while in cyborg-raptor mode.  I like to keep it pointing out and forward in this mode.  It reaches just beyond his jaws.

This toy is by far the best version of the original Dinobot mold.  The toy's biggest weakness was its primitive, First Wave Beast Wars sculpt and the prominence of his robot legs in beast mode.  The retooling negates or at least reduces both of those.  He's a cyborg raptor, so he can have as many mechanical chunks hanging off his chest as he wants, and the newly sculpted cyborg parts obscure how dorky the original raptor mode looks.  Plus, again, the better, spring-loaded rotate blade and the extra serrated blade.

It's a crime, really, that neither Hasbro nor Takara ever redecoed this version of the toy.

Shortpacked!@TNI: The island isn't done with them yet.

Nedroid draws the best Jacob.

Joyce and Walky!: Meanwhile, back in HTMLworld...

So, yay!  This site should be up everywhere now.  We're operating on the superschnazzy ComicPress plugin for Wordpress, a feat which was orchestrated by Our Friend Phil from frumph.net.  He is, perhaps, the greatest man alive.

Why?  Well let's see what we can do now.  First of all, dude, we have real storyline navigation.  That's something I haven't really had working since moving from Keenspot, and this is 30 times better than that was.  There's a narrow menu bar on the right under the first adspace which will take you anywhere in the archives.

There's also tags!  Once everything IS tagged, you'll be able to look through comics by character or pop culture reference.  The first thing I did was go through and tag all the Batman strips, so if you want to see them, all you hafta do is look at the right on the very bottom and there'll be a tag cloud.  (I got through tagging all of them before I realized I had given Robin (DeSanto) and Robin (the Boy Wonder) the same tag.  Whoops.  Well, it's fixed now, but...)

There's also a Random Strip navigation button.  This will eat up all your time.

Also on the navigation bar, if you like a strip, you can buy a print of it.  You can even bundle it with a book, if you like. And there's a comments section and whatnot.

See the first narrow menu bar on the right?  If you're reading through the entire archives, you can click a button and keep your place!  And then later you can return to it and resume reading.

And have I mentioned: Real Honest-to-Gosh RSS feed?  Click that Autobot logo on Robin's mammobombs.

I am serious.  This is the best site in the world.  There are still some things to do, so bear with me, but please take a look around.  But hey, unlike joyceandwalky.com (still), it's not running on 15-year-old code.  (That 15-year-old code was fucking awesome 15 years ago, I tell you.)

Some new additions:
1) The update time is now midnight EST, or one hour later than usual.

2) The link to the BLC forum will be up at the top soon.  It merely got overlooked in the move.

3) Please don't post which tags are needed below each untagged comic!  I will tag all the comics when I can, and the lists of tags needed don't actually accomplish anything for me.  Instead, they just flood out the other posts I need to moderate.  Thanks, though!

Shortpacked! is currently undergoing a site change and DNS change, some people see the new site, some people don't. The DNS address needs to populate all around the globe of course so it will take up to at least 24 hours for everyone.

There are still a bunch of little things to do to the site, but one of the things to look for is to check the archives to make sure all of the comics are there.

If anyone finds any problems or want to talk about the site design and features please comment to this post.

- Phil (Frumph)

Shortpacked!: Decisions.

Hot damn, I lucked out.  You know how I was just one Thrustor shy of having every single use of the original Dinobot mold?  Well, I gave up looking for him for a while while trying to conserve cash, and then just the other day I looked him up again on a whim.   $25 boxed on Amazon!  Holy cow, that's less than what I paid for him in 1999 or whatever.  (And stupidly sold him.) 

And he arrived today. 

And I have so many Dinobots.  

(Well, they're not all Dinobots.  Some are Grimlocks.  And there's a Thrustor and Dinotron and Hardhead.) 

Man,  Hasbro and Takara sure loved this mold.

I'll get some better pictures of him for you later!  Thrustor is, really, the best of all of them.  He deserves your attention, though at a later time.

Shortpacked!: Signifying nothing.

Still working on the site overhaul.  I have over 1100 comics, all of which gotta be assorted by chapter and subchapter.  You can imagine how much fun that is. 

But it's gonna be beautiful.  It's going to be beautiful and user friendly and it will be amazing.  So many thanks to ComicPress Overlord Frumph, who's been walking me through this hand-in-hand.  (But not in a gay way.)

I must have something for your eyeballs in the meantime!  I'm gonna be in motherfuckin' Chicago the weekend after this one!  That's right, C2E2 is April 16-18, and it promises to be a huge thing of bigness.  I'll be exhibiting with Chris Hallbeck of The Book Of Biff.  

Let's talk the merch.  Look, it's a poster!  Remember that really awesome Book 1 reprint cover I did?  Well, you can have an 11x17" full-color poster of it if you come to my table and buy a high-five.  (The poster comes free with the purchase of a high-five.)   But you can only have the poster if you come see me at the convention!  These posters are gonna be convention exclusive.  

(Why?  Well, I don't wanna take away one of the few draws to funding the Book 1 reprint.  But I also don't want to not make a poster of it.  So, compromise.)  

At the moment, I only have 25 of these.  Just 25!  There's a good chance that'll get depleted C2E2 weekend and I'll have to order more for subsequent conventions.  Regardless, make sure you get to me early at C2E2 if you want to guarantee a poster.  We'll be at booth WC E!  (WebComic area, table E)  If you see Erika Moen, we're the ones right next door shooting rubber bands at her.

Shortpacked!@TNI: Comparing notes
Shortpacked!: I'm a few weeks ahead, and so I kinda forget which one today's is.

Hey, you folks who are in the Transformers Collectors' Club.  On Friday, they finally put Punch/Counterpunch and Shattered Glass Cyclonus up for preorder, and they've already sold through 80% of P/CP and half of Cyclonus.  So if you want either of those guys, hop to it!  They'll probably be gone by tomorrow.  And I hope you like paying a lot for shipping.

EDIT: Aaaaaaaaand now he's gone.  FP is looking into whether they can increase their order last-minute. Still some Cyclonus, though.

(I get asked this a lot, and, yeah, I do believe they charge you right up front instead of in a few months when they arrive.)

Also, after some prodding from a few of you, I put up preorders for a Butt-Taco shirt.  But so far I've gotten... *drumroll* ... one preorder!  Yeah.  If I don't get a handful more by Tuesday, I'm gonna refund that dude his money and consider this a lesson in putting cartoon butts and/or tacos on shirts.

This Saturday is my birthday and Thursday is my roommate Steve-o's birthday, and due to scheduling conflicts, we ended up celebrating it last Friday!  And, woo, presents!   My buddy Ron got me a knockoff Hot Shot in awesome rally deco, Maggie, Steve-o, and Maggie's parents conspired to get me a new bike to replace the one that was stolen last year, and Graham got me the Toys"R"Us-exclusive Skeletor vs Lex Luthor two-pack.

Skeletor is my first MOTU "Classics" toy.  I have the old 2002 Skeletor, which I thought had more fun with the design than this guy, so I didn't throw $30-including-shipping at the new one.  But, dude, this one comes with Lex Luthor in Power Armor, a personal love of mine.  And I don't have him.  And it comes with a friggin' comic book.  And it's at a normal retail price.  So I was planning on picking these guys up when I saw them.  And in a rare moment of lack-of-toy-clairvoyance, I didn't even realize these dudes were out in Toys"R"Uses yet.  So, woo, great present.


These DC/MOTU teamup packs are loosely based on the original Superman/He-Man crossover that DC Comics published back in the day.  Mind, that only involved Superman on the DC side, and Lex Luthor is no where to be seen, so this two-pack is just a happy extrapolation.  If ONLY Lex Luthor teamed up with Skeletor.  The comic is some pure early-80s awesomeness.  It's drawn by Curt Swan, has some delicious comic-booky prose, and features Pimp Daddy Prince Adam.  I'm serious!  He's introduced with a hotty on each arm.  He's a slutty playboy.  And no pink and lavender tights.  (They're blue.)  It's the straightest He-Man has ever been!  And the issue ends with He-Man stabbing Skeletor.  Score!

The toys themselves are also pleasing.  Both are your typical modern-day 6" Mattel figure, articulation-wise.  Skeletor I would guess is missing some paint applications from the online-only release, possibly to more-closely match the comic book colors.  (If this was indeed the intent, I really wish they would have painted on the dark blue gloves they gave him in the issue.)  Skeletor comes with only his sword.  It stows on his back.

Lex Luthor is based on his Super Powers design!  He's the Lex Luthor I remember as a kid.  This means he's the Silver Age mad scientist Luthor, before he was revamped as an evil businessman, and the profile on the back matches.  (ha ha ha ha ha he hates Superman because he made him bald)  Weirdly, the art of him on the back is the Ed McGuinness power suit design, which is the modern Luthor.  Nerds notice these things.  The toy, again, is articulated everywhere you'd expect, though is limited by its design.  He can't move his arms up because of his big green shoulder chunks and his peripheral vision is pretty damn limited by the half-dome around his head.

He comes with four different kinds of Kryptonite.  Between the two toys in the pack, there's enough hands to hold them all, which is basically where this week's TNI strip was birthed from.