Ricochet is one of the seven figures in the Descent Into Evil box set available to those who bought the largest BotCon prereg pack. He's the one I paid the least amount of attention to, so I figgered I'd talk about him first today.

Hoo boy is this guy black. The picture up above is one I took of Ricochet next to three of the other four versions of his mold. (I don't own R-Blade.) Other than his light blue missiles and blue transparent cockpit/visor, all of his plastic colors are now black. Hurray!

To compensate for this, however, Ricochet is loaded with new paint apps. Not quite enough to make me forget he's entirely black, but enough to make him interesting. The silver lining around his visor is really great. That, his fist, armfin, and some lower leg details are elements of the mold that have never been painted before. In jet mode, he sports a jagged red electricity(?) pattern.

Black with red, silver, and electric blue is not a new color scheme for a Transformers convention toy. Last year's Megazarak featured the same colors, though the concentration of silver and red was more prominent than in Ricochet.

Still. Black. Lots of it. I wish they would have made the plastic in his upper arms and thighs gray or slate blue or pale yellow or something. But oh well. But hey, it's just one black toy, right! They were just getting the black out of their system on this one, I'm sure.

...

Ricochet's bio writes him as a spy. A somewhat shady and uncharismatic spy. I sat in on the rehearsals/try-outs for the BotCon script reading which features him, and it made him interesting to me. He described himself as a guy who did the dirty work that Optimus Prime wouldn't admit that needed to be done to win the war. It was a nice angle.

Sadly, we found out in the actual script reading that he was actually Obsidian in disguise. Damn.

So I guess I'm back to slightly better than "sure, whatever" on him. I don't know where "sure, whatever" falls on a scale of 1 to 10, but probably not very high.

So I spent $50 recklessly after Expensive Botcon today on Ultimate Spider-Man for the Game Cube. It's fun to swing.

The thing about swinging, that's amazing, is that unlike the recent free-environ Spider-Man games, you actually have to be low enough on the level to attach your web to actual objects for swinging. No jumping from the Baxter Building, shooting a web up into the open sky, and having it attach to a cloud or whatever. If you're out in a football field? No deal.

It's groundbreaking!

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Give me $2000 dollars!

Friday night was happy hour! Free likker!
Two Michaels sign at the autograph corner. On the left is Michael Dobson, the voice of Armada Starscream, and on the right is Michael Chain, the voice of G1 Red Alert, Powerglide, and Hoist. He has crazy rock hair.
Lith and Michael Dobson are hugbuddies. Lith loves Starscream like I love Taco Bell. Sort of.
The dealer room was absolutely tiny this year. It was about half as big as last year. Dealers must have been scared away by the high dealer-registration prices, the hurricane, or both. (I was gonna try to be a dealer myself, but there was just about no way I'd make back what I'd have to pay.)
Aaron Archer, head TF guy (see today's strip), draws Batman for us. Before Transformers, he worked on Batman.
I found Thylacine2000 and Billy in the lobby asleep early Sunday morning. Some of our friends went to a strip club the night before. My group of friends played frisbee in the pool. My friends are diverse.
Hooper needs a job.

One element borrowed from the G.I.Joe conventions for Transformers was the Elaborate Diarama. BotCon has had one or two in the past, but I think there's some sort of Diarama Gene in all Joe fans that allows them to kick Transfan ass in this department.

Wide shot of the display, which was located near the entrance to the dealer room, before any of the tables. Here you can see everything involved -- lots of shrubs and trees, with a smattering of toys in front.
A closer shot of the toys in front. We see Dirge and some clones, Fallback, Ironhide, and Deathsaurus.
Counterclockwise around the display was Buzzsaw, Ratchet's MARB and Chromia, who's fighting another clone.
A marsh seen behind Deathsaurus here emitted fog. Very nice.
The rest of Ratchet sneaks up on some more clones.
Clones fly and perch high up above in the treetops.
And finally, Flamewar hides deep in the forest, stalking alone.

There wasn't any hurricane at all! Rita swept east at some point, so the worst Dallas got was some mild winds. I'm actually a little disappointed.

However, when our plane landed in Indy, it was raining all the way back to Columbus. Apparently it was safer in Texas.

Holy crap, Brian Savage said grace before the semi-formal dinner.

All the pagans and atheists at our table coughed up their tea.

We're headed off to BotCon tomorrow. And because we're super-cool, we're driving 3 hours to Indianapolis and taking a plane from there. Why? $175 price difference. We're totally cheating. This is the first time I've flown to a BotCon since 1998, when it was in Anaheim, California. This is also the first time I've flown not-alone anywhere since that same time. It's been so long. Yay, friends!

BotCon this year is in Frisco, TX, a suburb of Dallas. So, uh, we're going to be expecting some winds and rain on Sunday, certainly. Most of Blank Label Comics is hosted in Houston, where Hurricane Rita is going to hit in a few days, so in case something goes wrong, our tech buddy Bookworm has asked me to tell you to check Starslip Crisis' page for updates since it's hosted in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, strips will (hopefully) update as they did during Comic-Con. Which means I'll have my laptop with me, and I'll be drawing and uploading strips over the weekend while I'm at the Con. Which, as always, depends on Internet access, but we'll see!
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This is the first Transformers convention in years that I haven't been on volunteer staff, so I guess this will be an actual vacation, instead of, y'know, fun yet excruciating work. If the new folks mess anything up, I'll, uh... well, okay, I won't do anything. They're bigger than me.

But most importantly, Maggie's going, so that means happy luffs will occur. I miss her so!

So Stealth finally hit the dollar theatres in Columbus, so it was definitely time. Not only that, but Tuesdays turned out to be 50-cent night! So woo!

Man, I would have paid the whole dollar. After a slow beginning that had absolutely no raison d'etre at all, the last 2/3 was pretty awesome. And by awesome I mean completely ridiculous to the point of hilarity. As Graham said afterwards, "They didn't tell me this was going to turn out to be a buddy movie!" Wow. So... everything... wrong...

Yet really fun. If you're up for this sort of thing, I totally recommend. Certainly for a dollar.

Gonna be in San Diego with my sweetie! I ain't seen her in entirely too long. Be back Friday evening! Comics should continue as normal. (Though I've put up both Tuesday and Thursday's updates on the Joyce and Walky! member page, since those aren't automatically update-scripted.)

Also, this week (starting tomorrow!) is the Hurrican Katrina Webcomic Telethon! I drew up a full-page color comic for it, so click that banner up above and look for it. And, uh, donate some money!