Hey, look, some new stuff.

So I ordered a lot of new Reprolabels sets after their recent update, which was a great idea because most of my toys are still packed away.  I got to do some digging!

I was most excited for the Reveal the Shield Perceptor upgrade set because of the monocle sticker.  One of the reasons I liked RtS Perceptor is that he reminded me of Perceptor's appearances in Last Stand of the Wreckers, and the only important visual detail that got in the way of Complete LSotW Power was the lack of a monocle.  The upgrade sticker set comes with three of them, because it's hard to apply and they're easy to lose.  They're tiny.  They're super tiny.  And getting them onto the face itself is really challenging, since it's a recessed area smaller than the tip of my finger.  I lost the first of the three, managed to get the second onto the face, pushing it up into place with a prong of a fork, and then realized that I needed the third one as well.  Just one sticker doesn't really over the eye that well.  I used both.

The rest of the stickers are pretty good, but not as important to me.  It's nice to get some color on his stomach, since that was a silver piece on the original toy, and I think the tech readouts look better than the gray windows they cover up.  There's some smaller stuff as well, like the  headlight stickers and the "14X" and "United States of America Antarctic Program" stickers.

The one set of stickers I used but wasn't sure about are the ones that go on the thighs.  They call back to the original toy, but I don't know if I think they're attractive.  I might remove them later.  I'm not sure.

And I'm certainly not replacing the rub sign faction symbol with a normal Autobot symbol, no.  I love that gimmick.  IS PERCEPTOR AUTOBOT OR DECEPTICON????

Eeeeeeearly tomorrow morning I'm out the door on my way to Wizard World Chicago! I have to admit here that this is probably the least prepared I've ever been for a convention.  I have been living and breathing nothing more than moving, sorting, arranging, furnituring, and comic stripping for the past month or so.  I am really out of it.  (And I've been really crappy at getting store orders out the door.  I apologize.  I continue to apologize.)

Seriously, I am going to arrive without pants.  I will forget my pants.  That is my state of mind.

Regardless, please come see me.  I packed books in the trunk already!  I'll have those at least!  And I found my posters, which I had to tear the entire new house apart to locate.  And, hey, guess what, I have like half a day's worth of free bookmarks to pass out.  Just Shortpacked!.  No Dumbing of Age bookmarks at all.  I was in serious need of a reorder following ConnectiCon, but that was just one of those many things that fell through the cracks.

So, I am totally slumming Wizard World Chicago.  Which is too bad.  I was really really excited for it, back when moving my everything wasn't my world.  It's a pretty swank show.  And they even put me on their frontpage!  As if I were important!

Over at Dumbing of Age, we're voting to get a Joyce statue made!  If you're interested, pop on over to PatchTogether.com and put in your vote!

I was really hoping to have access to my Giant Wall Of Toy Bins before getting to talking about Timelines Side Burn, but our basement is still a mess from the move.  It's still the place where we shove everything that we don't know yet what to do with.  So no photos of Side Burn with Timelines Sky-Byte.  Or with Classics Prowl!  D'oh.

Man, getting this guy was an adventure.  Fun Publications sends their Collectors' Club incentive toys via third-class mail.  Third class mail doesn't care about your fancy mail forwarding!  You can forward your mail all you want, and watch how many f***s third class mail does not give.  I found this out a few weeks ago when I called FP to give them my new address.  It was also too late, I found out, to get the mailing label altered!  So, great.  Long story short, two days after we were officially out of our old house, I was reaching my arm down into the mailbox that deposits inside the building.  I was stealing my own mail!  (The landlord lives in San Diego, so she wouldn't be of any particular, immediate help.)  But hooray!  Side Burn get.  Well, Side Burns.  Grabbed my roommate's, too.

Side Burn is intended to be a Generation 1 version of the Robots in Disguise character.  In RiD, Side Burn was a fun guy, but his toy was horrible.  It was a mess.  Side Burn is one of the reasons why the fandom has the term "shellformer" in their vocabulary arsenal.  And so years and years ago, when I was thinning out my collection to pay some bills, he was one of the first to go.  Easy decision.

And here he is, back again!  And in a more tolerable form!  Classics Rodimus, the toy he's redecoed from, isn't really a terrific mold or anything -- he's got some articulation annoyances, for example -- but he's leagues beyond RID Side Burn.  And so I heartily welcome my newer, better Side Burn.  The translation of Side Burn's deco to Rodimus's toy is near flawless.  It's amazing.  The particular shade of desaturated blue (bordering on indigo) is very striking, and all the tiny little dabs of paint here and there really sell him as Side Burn.  He's even got his larger targeting monocle painted over one of his eyes, and elements of his deco are asymmetrical.  It's a commendable job.

His profile card, on the other hand, is a relentless siege on the English language.   It embarrasses me as a literate fan of Transformers, and we shall not speak more of it.

If the Side Burn toy has a downside, it's the age of the mold.  Side Burn isn't as solid as previous iterations of the toy, and when you go to pull his shoulders out during transformation, his ball-jointed arms are likely to remove themselves instead.  I choose to interpret this as an homage to the original Side Burn, who had similar cohesion problems.

One more thing.  The original Side Burn's "thing" was that he hit on red cars.  He was on Earth during Robots in Disguise, and so his running gag was he'd go ga-ga over the dumb (and red) unsentient vehicles driven by the humans around him.  It was kind of weird, and it didn't speak much for Side Burn's intelligence, but it was cute.  Timelines Side Burn, however, is still on Cybertron.  He has to hit on red cars, as per his M.O., and so the red cars he hits on are sentient females.  Somehow this is creepier.  I can't explain why.  I can't even really defend why.  Finding your own species attractive should be more normal, versus hitting on inanimate objects.  Maybe it's because directing his traditional behavior towards beings with minds makes adorable ol' Side Burn into a womanizer, which is generally less endearing.

Anyway.  Idle thoughts.

There's a Dumbing of Age Joyce statue that could get made, and it needs your votes!  If that interests you, head on over to PatchTogether's website.

You know, there's so many supervillains with a "Doctor" in their names of which I question the validity.  Does Dr. Destiny actually have a doctorate?  Dr. Doom?  Dr. Light?  No idea.

But I'm pretty sure Dr. Victor Fries has a doctorate, and yet he calls himself Mr. Freeze. Mister.  He's the only supervillain I can think of offhand that purposefully undoctorates himself.

Mr. Freeze is one of the only Batman villains that had a "recent" six-inch toy that I hadn't picked up.  The best version of the original DC Superheroes Mr. Freeze was a NYCC exclusive, so I hear, and that isn't cheap.  And as I understand it, the original version didn't have modern-style articulation.  As I understand it.  It's hard to glean this information off images and Internet reviews.   But this version from the new "Batman Legacy" line does!   It's got the modern-style DCUC hips, with the hinging outwards coupled with the rotating forwards.  And there's universal-joint, ratcheted shoulders.  Those aren't things I'd expect a mold of its alleged age to have.  But I could be wrong, easily.

One thing that is definitely different are the hoses.  According to images, they used to run from the detachable backpack back into itself.  Now they run from the detachable backpack into the forearms.  This means you can detach the backpack still, but it's attached via the hoses.  This also means the water squirter doesn't work, because the holes where the hoses plugged in before are now open, so if you submerge the backpack in water, water goes in, but if you take the backpack out, everything just pours back out the holes.  Otherwise, the water squirter gimmickry appears to still be intact.  This causes me sadness, because water squirter.

A gimmick that remains is the way his neck is connected to the direction of his hips and legs.  Rotate him at the hips, and his head turns.  Otherwise you can't turn his head.  It's under the dome, which you can't remove, so that's a fun solution.

His colors are based on the DC Superpowers Mr. Freeze.  Loosely.  Is that why he's labeled "Silver Age" Mr. Freeze on the box?  If it is, I'm pretty sure that wasn't the Silver Age.  It's kind of confusing to me.  (And wasn't he called Dr. Zero back then?)  Regardless, it's an interesting Mr. Freeze color scheme, if not the traditional one.

I was surprised I ended up liking Damian Wayne so much.  "The bratty son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Head" isn't really a character pitch that grabbed me.  But after these past few years he's really grown on me.

Part of that, though, I insist, is because he isn't paired with Bruce Wayne as Batman.  Batman's cranky, Damian's cranky... it's not a very diverse duo.  But when Dick Grayson is Batman, that's where I saw how Damian Wayne worked as a character.  Dick Grayson's a happier, more social Batman.  That's a good foil for Damian, the little brat with a (very buried) heart of gold.  But Dick doesn't get to be Batman anymore, and after the Flashpoint reboot, Bruce is going to be Batman to Damian's Robin.  It's nice that Damian's staying around, but I think pairing him with his dad sort of misses the point.  I hope I'm proved wrong.

But seriously, where's my damn Dick Grayson Batman toy?  I am kind of annoyed.  Instead, this DC Direct Damian Wayne comes in a wave with back-from-the-dead Bruce.  Dick is totally skipped over!  Grargh.   I snatched up Damian anyway, though, not only for myself, but because my wife thinks he's great.  Only with Dick, of course.

The toy is a standard DC Direct figure.  There's some minor articulation, a stand, and some accessories.  Damian looks a little older than 11, though.  I kind of wish he had an alternate head possibility with his hood over his head.  I kind of like the hood over his head.

Anyway, in conclusion, this is required reading.

How ridiculous is it that I'm gonna have to disambiguate this guy as Prime Prime.  Well, at least there's no Prime Primal Prime yet.

I didn't go to San Diego Comic-Con!  But Emerald Beacon did.  He's a guy who's done some artwork for Fun Publications and he's the mastermind behind those Bat-Con t-shirts.  I have one!  I wore it to the Dark of the Moon premiere.  It's a swank shirt.  And since he's a swank guy,  he picked me up some SDCC swag.  Among them was this FIRST EDITION MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP OPTIMUS PRIME.  I think that's its name, anyway.

It's the first Transformers Prime toy, unless you want to count the War for Cybertron stuff.  And it's gonna be the only Transformers Prime stuff until November or December, so even though I'm gonna be owning this toy again when I get the "Entertainment Pack" that comes with the three PVC human kids, it's worth it to me to have this guy five months early.

Plus, dude, his packaging.  He comes inside a Matrix, which you can wear, which comes inside a box that looks like Optimus Prime's chest, sealed with a magnet.  And  you can remove the toy no problem from the Matrix without wrecking it.  You just pop the plastic part, sort through some layers, and voila.  Removeable, returnable Optimus Prime toy.  So when my next convention comes along (Wizard World Chicago, is it?) I can put him back in and wear him around like a dork.  You know, versus shilling my webcomic at a table like a dork.

The toy is more complicated than I was expecting.  I'm not sure why I was expecting simpler.  It's not, like, insanely complicated, it's just more complicated than I thought it looked, apparently.  The thing explodes to transform from one mode to another.   And I'm increasingly used to Optimus Prime toys having fake robot mode windshields, but it feels a little crazier to have his fake robot mode windshield to fold up and cover his real truck windshield.  That feels like a whole new level of absurdity.  But I understand why.  His robot mode windows don't actually look like his truck mode windows, so whatcha gonna do.  Damn those character designers.

Another thing that weirds me out are his shoulders.  They look for all the world like they're supposed to become the truck's air foil, and it's kind of frustrating that they don't.  In both this Deluxe Class toy and the upcoming Voyager Class toy, the air foil instead becomes the heels.  Again, I understand why, what with the placement of the parts in each mode and the designed hinging in the front of the shins, but it rankles my brain a little.

In conclusion, this guy comes with a wearable Matrix, within which is a toy which won't be out for several months.  How much either of those two details tickle you should determine how dedicated you are to hunting him down.

I have been slow in mailing out orders to people who ordered from my store these past few weeks.  I apologize!  I need to get back in the game.  Speaking of which, the "Moving Sale" will probably end soon, what with me not moving any more!  Hop on those sales before they go away.

Preorders for the Ethan statue are over.  Those will be shipped out soon.  I didn't receive a lot of orders for this guy versus the other statues, so I'm gonna have to re-evaluate whether I should continue designing more of them.  Maybe I'll see if statues for Dumbing of Age are met with more interest?  We'll see.  Regardless, I'm super excited to receive my Ethans!

Moving has put a huge damper on getting Book 4 printed, what with my address being in flux and all.  But with things settled, that should move forward now.  I also still need to send out some of the original pages and whatnot for those who donated above-and-beyond.  Yay, moving!  You are not good for my job.

Threadsafe has posted some photos of my new t-shirts on their Facebook page.  The "Honor" shirt looks really great!  I might have to get one for myself.

A while ago I did a guest strip for Questionable Content, which turns 8 years old today!  It was a guest strip about butts. And today I have a guest strip over at Real Life, which I drew several weeks ago in anticipation for the birth of the Deans' baby girl!  It is a guest strip about horrible birth defects.

And finally (I think) in the new Transformers Collectors' Club magazine, there's a new Recordicons from me.  It stars Ravage.  And Ravage.

Y'know, I actually still enjoy The Simpsons, but my cartoons don't always agree with me.

But this is the last TNI strip!  I told myself long ago I'd run until the 250th installment, probably "conclude" the old Robo-J.O.E. "storyline," and  here I've kept to my internal promise.  I hope you've been enjoying them!  Jay Cochran at ToyNewsI has always been a saint to me, and I had fun doing them as well.  Good feelings all around.

Man, why did #250 have to land on the weekend we finish moving out of our house.  That is the worst timing.