Once again, you can find me this weekend at Mid-Ohio Con!  I'm going to be somewhere in the Columbus Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday.  It's weird having a convention that's just a few miles downtown.  I swear, I'm gonna leave the convention hall late Saturday and be confused when I step outside and it's not Hartford or Seattle out there.  I will approach the first local I see and ask what a good local joint is, and they will respond "Donatos Pizza."  And there will be this great tumult in my brain.

Tomorrow morning Maggie and I are driving back to Indiana for my grandfather's funeral, and will be returning Thursday afternoon, hopefully in time for Maggie's mom to arrive, for she is visiting!  It is a busy week for us, apparently.   We may or may not still have one hamster left when we return.  Gnngh.

Today I watched the new DC animated direct-to-video thing, Batman: Year One.  Since I've read the comic itself enough times, and this cartoon adaptation was extremely faithful, I was actually pretty damn bored with it.  That story needs a beginning, middle, and an end, am I right?  Bryan Cranston was excellent as James Gordon, but I feel like he was starring in a calendar, not a movie.  But, tell you what, if you like your Frank Millerspeak, this is the movie for you.  And I know some of you do, so that's not intended to be an indictment.  Plus it's very beautifully animated.

Thankfully, Arkham City is here to pick up any batslack.

This here is Fractyl!  His only real toy was from BotCon 1997, the year before I started attending them, so I've never owned a Fractyl.  Now I own a fake Fractyl!  He's the last 3H Wreckers guy I intend to make.  I'm technically missing the Alpha Trion repaint of Beast Machines Snarl, but if I'm gonna waste time and money painting something, I kind of want to direct that effort towards a character appearance that actually has a character appearance.  No, the one blurry two-panel fly-by silhouette doesn't count.

I like Fractyl.  He's a scientist.  He's a nice scientist.  The Botcon 1997 toy theme seemed to be "sympathetic bad guy and a jerky good guy."  Y'know, to mix stuff up a little.  And so he's this awkward antisocial creature who just wants to study some rocks, dammit.  Stop shoving him into his locker, Inferno!  Oh, what a geek.

And the Transmetal toy that they never made would have been beautiful.  Too bad.  My attempt at recreating it kind of sidestepped some of the beauty.  I wasn't able to find the proper greens.  My Fractyl is a reasonable approximation, but it falls short of the ideal.

Yay, Fractyl.

Boo, funerals.