I got my Blank Label Comics 2006 calendar in the mail today. It's terrific! It's enabled me to become much more jealous over the art skills of my fellow Blanks. Man, that inkwork blown up to calendar size is amazing. I'm looking at you, Brad Guigar. And at the rest of you, who I can't bother to remember the names of.

I do 2.3333~ pieces of art in this calendar. One each for Shortpacked! and Joyce & Walky!, and I pencilled the collaborative group shot piece for January. (Steve Troop did the inking and Paul Southworth colored the thing.) Not only do you get awesome art from each of us, but you get extra holidays! Now you can take off work for Howard Taylor's birthday and Kris Straub Launches Starship Crisis Day. It's like being Jewish! Even Your Mom's Day is included.

Get one! Seriously. It is mighty.

Beast Wars 10th Anniversary toys have started showing up in midwestern Wal-Marts, bringing along with them the next wave of Alternators. Skids, Sunstreaker (both new), Tracks (brought back 'cuz he was really scarce), and Prowl (good as new) are in this assortment, so it's a damn good set to buy a case of, if you are so inclined. I will be after Skids like a mo'fo'. Sure, he was barely in the cartoon, but in the comic he got washed by sexy cowgirls, so he didn't come off half bad. (At last year's OTFCC, we asked writer/creator Bob Budiansky if that scene was intended to be as provocative as it appears. It was. Score!)

There's more Kong in this week's free Joyce and Walky!. I realized too late (and was brought to my senses by an anonymous forum poster) that my latest limited print should have been Kong-inspired. I mean, c'mon, I have a giant robot monkey. And a cute blonde, I'm pretty sure. So I'll probably do it as a J&W! members-only wallpaper as a consolation prize.

Today's Shortpacked! was inevitable, considering there's apparently a War on Christmas waging in the battlefields of our retail stores. This month's strips sure have been Jesusy. Must be something about the time of year...

eHobby is redecoing their reissue of G2 Laser Optimus Prime as Laser Ultra Magnus. Yes, that's right. Why? Because eHobby is freakin' awesome, that's why. I might have to buy it. He's just a photoshop alteration here, but I predict the final product will be totally spankin'.

(If there's a sticker on the trailer depicting Laser Magnus burning down a forest, it's a guaranteed sale.)

And, hey, check out this Vader statue. I'd never buy it, but I've always been a sucker for that pose. I mean, dude, Head Alien.

It's true! Beast Wars is 10 years old! Celebrate with some 10th Anniversary figures! I will be getting all of them. Every single one. And I will bathe in them.

And though I do have enough Justice League figures to bathe in by now, I wonder why. As I mentioned Wednesday, I picked up two new three-packs. The first had Copperhead, Lex Luthor, and Mirror Master. I've been jonesing for Copperhead for a long while now. He's awesome. Also, orange. And you know me and orange. Despite that tail of his, he stands better than most normal guys. And speaking of normal guys and my growing JLU-collecting regret, Lex Luthor has a problem. His legs appear to be of DIFFERENT LENGTHS. Perhaps one of them is merely warped, I don't know. But he doesn't stand upright. He's from one of those V8 commercials, apparently. God damn. Mirror Master, amazingly, stands perfectly fine.

God damn, Luthor. Just when I thought I had seen it all...

The other set is three of the Justice Lords, an amoral version of the Justice League from a parallel dimension. Of the three, only Wonder Woman's head is a new part. Everything else is merely repainted, which means that we can see Batman and Superman's molded boot-and-pant lines under their new costumes. D'oh.

Why do I keep buying these? BECAUSE I LOVE JUSTICE LEAGUE.

'Scuse me while I go out and look for the Green Lantern 3-pack, Supergirl, and Steel.

Penny-Arcade raised $80K for charity. Eighty thousand dollars.

Eric Burns at Websnark wrote about it. And Cheezus Christ, it didn't take three seconds for a few people to try to tear the whole thing down. Questioning Tycho and Gabe's motives. After all, we can't be positive that they're completely altruistic about it. Surely there must be some way we can poke holes in this accomplishment!

That's absolutely disgusting. It's the most vile thing I've seen in a long time.

I can't call them snivelling assholes on Websnark itself, because Websnark is a respectible place and flaming is against the rules. But my blog has no such integrity.

32_Footsteps? William G? You two are a waste of flesh. There are few things more reprehensible than blasting a childrens charity to feed your own miserable hate-on. No matter what the fuck you think they've done, they'll never be as big a monster as you.

So after rounding up new comics this week from The Laughing Ogre (sadly, I only had Ultimate Iron Man #5 to pick up), I went searching for King Kong toys. I needed one. Toys R Us always seemed to have the biggest range of them, so we went there.

I ended up with Gripping Kong. He comes with an Anne figure, which was critical, and had a more neutral facial expression, so he wouldn't be roaring at her all the time. Yes, I want to have a happy Kong/Anne display because I'm a big fucking girl. (Besides, Anne is stuck in this very friendly wave gesture which would seem out of place if Kong's flailing her about while he kicks dinosaur ass.) He's also the "ultra poseable" one, but while he has lots of joints, they don't really allow a meaningful range of movement. Damn.

I also considered the Kong Vs. Juvenile V-rex set, with jaw-breaking action, but decided I'd rather have the neutral face. Which is too bad, because my Kong has nobody to fight. Maybe he and Optimus Primal can fight to the death or something.

So, anyway, thanks to the magic of Awesome Hangy Thing That Comes With, my Kong is delightfully carrying Anne up my lamp post. There's no sets that come with bi-planes for him to swat at, because Playmates is apparently trying to make me sad. Those rats.

I also found some of the next wave of JLU figures at Target! That was hurtful, because I just spent $10 on Kong, and there were 2 more $10 sets I needed. They were out of the Green Lantern 3-pack and the single-packed Supergirl and Steel, but I grabbed the two villain 3-packs. Pictures later!

King Kong is the best movie ever in the history of AWESOME STUFF THAT ROCKS.

Shortpacked! and Blank Label Comics scored some hot-ass accolades in Comixpedia's End of 2005 Roundtable. In particular, Karl Kuras named Shortpacked! one of his five favorite strips. I could quip here that Karl's check is in the mail, but that joke is dated. I am cutting edge and pine fresh, in an IN YOUR FACE sort of way. Instead, I'll just say to Karl: "DONG SCHLONG MONG DONG FONG LONG ZONG PONG KONG DONG"

Karl'll know what I mean.

Also, for all you Transformers peeps, Entertainment Earth has put up Hasbro's release photos of Mini-Con 2-packs wave 3 and Star Wars Transformers wave 2. Sunstorm is awesome. I collect all Sunstorms. Sadly, this Sunstorm sports a distinct lack of ORANGE. Furthermore, his robot mode is entirely black and white. DOUBLEYOU-TEE-EFF. GET ON THE BALL HASBRO. (I kid.)

And lastly, people, I know Aslan is a Christ allegory. Monday's strip was something known as a "rhetorical question." The double standard was the point of the comic, or the "joke," as we call it here in the business. I don't need it explained. I realize that most of you who are sending me these emails don't read this blog, but I'm just putting this out there anyway.

(I should do a comic about it. I sure don't get any "Hey, did you know there's Star Wars Transformers" emails anymore.)

((Man. Why don't I have more readers? It's like I'm doing something to push them away.))

(((The previous parenthetical was another one of those "rhetorical questions." Cheese almighty, don't send me emails explaining it.)))

I guess I should get around to mentioning my most recent limited print on the blog. Well, I have! So there.

Tonight I didn't go to bed. Well, okay, technically, I went to bed for about an hour or so and then got up, but I never actually slept. I'm insomniac by nature, and my bedtime had finally crept up to about 6am. So it's time to force another 18 hours out of myself so I can go to bed at a reasonable hour.

It doesn't help that my bed is the Most Uncomfortable Thing on the Planet. I can feel the springs, man. And the floor, probably. I've wisely asked my folks to get me a new bed for Christmas. Of course, this means I built up that Amazon Wish List for nothing. Drat. Alright, I suppose I have friends. WHATEVER.

So, anyway, here's to another 14 hours.

That new bed is going to be awesome.

Yeah, so we found wave 4 TFCybertron deluxes today. They're showing up in Wal-marts everywhere, usually as part of a giant display pallet, so they should be pretty easy to find. Ours were found hung up on the pegs like usual, so maybe there wasn't room for the pallet itself.

Anyway, it was a bittersweet toy search because while we did find them, the whole wave is really frustrating. I don't like them. Brimstone is easily the best, but that's just because there's nothing outstandingly wrong with him. He's simple and playable, but on the Way Too Simple side.

On the other end of the spectrum is Crosswise, who's axe-murderingly complex and unplayable. Remember the RiD car brothers? Well, he's definitely one of them. That means he's got thin, fragile car pieces hanging off every bit of his body and he's floppy as all hell. Mine does the splits constantly like he's a performing circus clown or something. And getting him back into car mode involves all the fun of rearranging his altmode shell-pieces back together Rubik's Cube-style that Big Convoy offers. Too bad. I was looking forward to him.

And do I really have to say why I dislike Thunderblast? Dude, she doesn't even transform. You wad her up into a ball and close the boat hull around her. Her feet barely reach the ground, that backpack is so big. There's absolutely nothing I can do with her.

So, um, yeah. Hello whiplash, what with Cybertron having been so pleasant until this wave. Oh well. The sad thing is that since we've reached Christmas, we probably won't get any new waves until March...