So of course the BotCon 2012 brochure goes up Christmas Eve. The timing isn't actually a genuinely terrible thing, since it's just a brochure; the registration itself won't happen until later. This is just information nobody can do anything real with yet.  But still, I am a creature of Internet Discussion and Speculation, and so the night Botcon brochures go up is sort of already basically Christmas for me already. But you have to pay attention to family! And open all their gifts! And not be starting threads with your phone about BotCon 2012's brochure while you're supposed to be paying attention to family and opening all their gifts!

Anyway, the theme this year involves the "mirrorverse" Shattered Glass Transformers invading the universe of the "real" Transformers.  Big war!  Etc!  And according to TVTropes itself, this is right up my gay alley.  (see "Author Appeal") I have to admit, multiversal bullshit is one of my favorite subjects.  Plus, dude, you cannot believe how many new Recordicons are now eligible in Recordicons.  I have now officially been given too much power.

Blah blah blah, SG Ultra Magnus leads a team blah blah blah there's also Overlord.  You know the drill.  Things.

It's one of my favorite strips by one of my favorite people, and I'd say check it out, but I'm pretty sure there's nobody left on Earth who doesn't read it.

I will say you should really try out one of his Super Stupor mini-comics. I say "mini," but they're really only mini in height/width dimensions.  The story is dense enough to fill a mainstream comic trade paperback.  I'm always surprised at how, in addition to Randy's usual daily comic, he can simultaneously whip up this amazingly orchestrated and emotionally provocative story that plays brilliantly with superhero tropes.  So jealous.  I love these little things.  They're glossy genius.

Hopping on a plane to Austin in just a few hours!  I'll be there, along with some of my best webcomic buddies.  It's gonna be crazy awesome.  Get more information on Dragon's Lair's website!

I will have a bunch of Shortpacked! Book 4s with me and... three Dumbing of Age Dina hats.  Just three.  Perhaps their owners will be determined by brutal gladiator sport.

The local Toys"R"Us finally restocked their Prime Deluxes, so I managed to pick up the rest of the wave, Starscream and Arcee.  I already  had Arcee in pink, so Starscream was the toy in which I was most interested.  And people who had him kept on saying he was great, so more reason to be excited.

He is pretty great!  Now, I have to qualify this statement in a number of ways.  He's a Transformers jet, which means you can expect there to be a lot of robot stuff hanging off the underside of his alternate mode.  Half of Starscream's mass in jet form is his legs hangin' off him.  And the middle of the fuselage is clearly his robot mode chest, fake eyes and all.  (If you look closely, you'll notice that Prime Starscream's chest is a swipe of Movie Starscream's face.)  With these two things in mind, his jet mode is pretty strongly compromised.  But it's still a fun little jet mode, and I'll tell you why I don't really mind, all things considered.

The robot mode is where Starscream shines.  It's rare that a toy captures the personality of its subject so ... readily.  That characteristic slump of Starcream's spine is built into his architecture.  It's nearly impossible to get the toy to stand in a way that does not evoke the character's essence.  The worst you can do, really, is align the arc of his legs wrong, which results in a pelvic thrust.  And, let's face it, that's still pretty Starscreamy.  He's kind of a filthy jerk.

There's a larger, Voyager Class-sized Starscream coming out next year which will undoubtedly work out a few of the jet mode's kinks.  I'm probably not interested, though.  This Starscream is scaled better to my other toys.  Who wants a Starscream that's bigger than (the inevitable Voyager Class) Megatron, anyway?  Megatron towers over Starscream in the cartoon, and anything else on my toy shelf would just seem wrong.

First, a reminder that I'm going to be in Austin, Texas, this weekend for Webcomic Rampage!  Click the bolded link to the left for more info.  I'll have lots of Book 4 with me!

Some of my favorite webcomics people and myself thought it'd be helpful to put together a shopping list of Items of Interest for the webcomics lover in your family.  This Christmas, give the gift of, let's face it, mostly fart jokes.

Eric Millikin

Evil Inc.

• Evil Inc. Holiday Pack

Girls With Slingshots

• Danielle's Etsy Shop


• GWS 6-book set

Not Invented Here

Sam and Fuzzy

Schlock Mercenary

• Schlock Mercenary 2012 Calendar

Shortpacked!

• Book 4

SMBC

• SMBC "Revenge" shirts

Spacetrawler

Unshelved

• Intellectual Freedom Fighter bags

Dispatches From Wondermark Manor

• Wondermark Greeting Cards

A Reprolabels "upgrade" set for Drift is one of those things I didn't know I wanted until I learned of its existence.  I'd never considered that Drift's toy might be missing some deco from Guido's original design.  And some of that deco is actually pretty nice, like the red that ran along the skirt of the car and, to a lesser extent, on his spoiler and hood.  Plus there's all the tiny bits of gold tucked away in his torso and face.

Oh, right, and those sculpted windows in the back corners, maybe they could use some color.

So, yeah, I'm happy this set exists.  Adding some color to the robot mode greebles behind his roof-kibble chest also helps, and bringing out the details around his exhaust pipes is appreciated.

Though it's not all gravy.  The set provides three potential stickers to line all his swords.  Problem is, his swords are very rubbery plastic, and on the super long "must only use this sword in the most dire of circumstances" sword, that rubberiness is very evident.

Stickering this sword is not a good idea.

Well, you could probably manage it if you never stow the sword ever.  If you keep it either in one of his fists or kept to the side, nothing will ever go wrong.  But once you try to stow the thing, it inevitably bends in on itself, and then the thing wrinkles up like it's been badly shrinkwrapped.  Yikes.  I will probably remove the long sword's stickers, now that I've photographed them.

Also the long-sword stickers are like a quarter of an inch too short for the blade anyway, so oh well.

If you want to see Drift pre-stickers, here's a link to my original review.

Today I found Junkheap at Target.  Two Junkheaps, in fact!  And they're buy-two-for-$11.99 or so, so I got one for Graham as well.  That's a $6 Junkheap!

And so Junkheap joins Wreck-Gar and Scrapheap.  Junkheap's name is probably meant to be "Junkyard," which is a name Hasbro owns and belongs to a pre-existing Junkion, but this is probably one of those things where Hasbro decided that "Junkyard" is "a G.I. Joe name" and gave him an alternate.  I'm thinking that's why they recently put out G.I. Joe Shockwave as "Shockblast," even though they owned the "Shockwave" trademark at the time.  "Shockwave" is "a Transformers name."

Junkheap is undoubtedly supposed to be the Transformer-previously-known-as-Junkyard, though there seem to have been some speedbumps along the way, even other than the name.  He's got a pretty similar color scheme and color placement, to be sure, but what clinches it is the head he got in the instructions.  It had Junkyard's upturned-corkscrew horns, as well as his shades and general helmet shape.  However, somewhere between the instruction art's creation and the toy's release, Junkheap's horns are now these tiny indistinct nubs.  A safety problem?  Who knows.  But it makes him look less like Junkyard.  Also, that mustache.  That doesn't help either.

Scrapheap's brown, gray, and red color scheme was kind of dull, and Junkheap's colors are similar. They're much brighter, but not in an interesting way.  Maybe I just don't like Junkion colors, which are kind of limited to the area of the spectrum between "rust" and "mustard."  My brain just wants there to be a vibrant blue somewhere to balance it all out.  Alas, it is not to be.

Dragons Lair is hosting the 3rd AnnualWebcomic Rampage at their Austin, TX, location on December 10 and 11! If you want to get into the Q&A panels, yougotta RSVP, as theres limited room. There is unlimited room for the buyings and signings.

Who else besides me will be there?

Danielle Corsetto ofGirls with Slingshots
Randy Milholland ofSomething Positive
Joel Watson ofHijinks Ensue
Bill Williams ofSide Chicks
Jeph Jacques ofQuestionable Content
Rob DenBleyker ofCyanide and Happiness
Nicholas Gurewitch ofPerry Bible Fellowship
Josh Lesnick ofGirly

It will be fantastic.

If you need fodder for questions, know that Joel and I will be sharing a hotel room.

Back in the late Eighties, Japan didn't get Thunderwing.  Instead, they gave Thunderwing's oni-styled Pretender shell a new head and chest and tried to pass him off as a different, fully robotic character.  He was Black Shadow, whose function was Space Mafia!

...well, it is if you're not very precise at translating his function from Japanese into English, anyway.

No, he's "just" a space gangster.  Which is still space cool, but I think the phrase "space mafia" evokes the imagery of a single guy who is the ENTIRE friggin' space mafia.  He is all space gangsters combined.  That always pumped up  his reputation in my mind.    He was not a dude to mess with.  He runs everything, and not nicely.  Black Shadow is a one-man Illuminati, with guns.

And because Hasbro was on the Good Crack this year, not only did we get a new Thunderwing toy, but they also made sure he had an extra head and chest somewhere on the tooling so that we could get Black Shadow later.  Though he's "Sky Shadow" and his bio mentions nothing about gangsters or mafias or even racketeering.

Boooooo!

Ah well.  Never look a gift horse in the mouth.  Its head might end up under your bed sheets later.

Here's the guys from that final Justice League Unlimited seven-pack I mentioned a few days ago.

I was very excited to receive them.

Or something.

I have some brief comments.  First of all, man, the scale for these guys is all over the place.  I'm not sure who The Creeper can plausibly stand next to without looking like a pinhead, but it sure ain't Johnny Thunder, human titan.  And who the hell is that sea monkey he comes with?

Ah well.

At least Speedy has a fish face.