I've finally got off my ass and finished my design for an Ethan statue.  Go vote for him!  Once he gets enough votes, Patch Together will start sculpting him and then we can begin preorders.

Robin, meanwhile, should be getting close to shipping out to everyone who bought one!

So this is the infamous half-blender of Webcomic Rampage.  For those readers of mine who still haven't heard this story, let me retell it here.  I shipped two boxes of books to the Austin Dragon's Lair comic shop ahead of myself so that I could sell them to my fans.  One box arrived easy-as-you-please!  The other box had been opened, books removed, placed in a new box, with the books exchanged with half a blender.  HALF A BLENDER.  So, yeah.  Post Office lost/stole/ate my books, and gave me an incomplete blender in exchange.  That was fun!  But a good story, I guess?

But the sad, sobering reality is that losing those books cost me a potential few hundred dollars in sales.  That blows!  So to share this story and to help recoup my losses, since there's no real legal recourse for me to retrieve these books or my lost potential sales, I've doodled a bunch of my characters on the surface of this blender with a Sharpie. And you can own it. Keep in mind, it is an INCOMPLETE blender.  You will only get what you see here.  Just the bottom, with a plug.  There's no top half.   The blender also has some scuff marks at some of the edges where its silvery finish was removed in transit.  But on the plus side, there's now all these Shortpacked! and Dumbing of Age characters on it.  Sweet, huh?

I've left a spot up next to Ultra Car where the winner of the blender can request anyone they feel is important that I've forgotten.  (Which, as it turns out, will probably be Mike.  Man, how'd I forget him?  Oh well, you can request him should you win.  Or somebody else!  There's also no Dorothy, no Reagan, no Sal...)

So, uh, yeah!  You can own this piece of dubious webcomics history.

It was getting to the point where I sat and thought to myself, how in Hell do I not own this thing? I have an insane love for Powermaster Optimus Prime.  I love toys in orange.  So why do I not own Fire Guts God Ginrai, which is Powermaster Optimus Prime in orange?

Okay, the real reason is that it came out ten years ago.  I was a college student.  I didn't have expendable income for $200 e-Hobby exclusives from Japan, especially ones that were just a same-character redeco of the $100 reissue I somehow managed to afford on my theme restaurant paycheck.  Plus, well, at the time I wasn't of the mindset that crazy insane redecoes of things I love were actually desirable.  My tastes have evolved over the years.  I'm more easily romanced by the absurd these days.

So, anyway, Graham pointed out to me last week that there was one going for not terribly much on Ebay (less than what the original thing cost, if my memory's right), and now I have one.  It's Maggie's fault.  I asked her if I should consider getting it, thinking she'd tell me no.  Instead, she enabled me.  She's an enabler!  Bad wife!  Bad, yet awesomely good wife!

I am under no illusions that Powermaster Prime is a toy that holds up to the standards of today.  No, my love for the toy is fueled largely by nostalgia.  I didn't have an original Optimus Prime as a kid.  And so over the next few years, my Transformers purchases were guided by trying to buy something as close to Optimus Prime as possible.  Red and blue guys were the order of the day.  It's why I chose Crosshairs.  It's why I chose Cloudburst.  It's why my Ultra Magnus cab was colored in red and blue washable markers that caused him to look like Easter Prime.  But for Christmas 1988, I got the real deal!  The first new Optimus Prime toy!  And he was featured in all the comics I was reading, and in the intros and outros for the cartoon's Tommy Kennedy season.  Powermaster Optimus Prime is, for all intents and purposes, My Optimus Prime.

But anyway, in Japan this toy was some kid named Ginrai.  And he had a Transtector that looked suspiciously like Optimus Prime.  And his Optimus Prime Transtector could combine with his trailer and form Super Ginrai.  And Super Ginrai could combine with his other trailer, God Bomber, and form God Ginrai.  And in the last episode, while fighting Black Zarak, he glowed orange with BURNING JUSTICE.  And over a decade later, Japan decoed their toy in orange as e-Hobby-exclusive Fire Guts God Ginrai.  And now a decade after that, I have it!

Fireguts God Ginrai substitutes the original version's blue for red and its gray and red for orange.  None of the paint applications are altered, which is why the uncombined robot has silver-painted legs which you cover in red stickers.  Thankfully, the colors of the stickers were changed.  Sometimes this doesn't happen, like with e-Hobby Laser Ultra Magnus, where what you get is just the original stickers unaltered included with your redecoed toy.  And, boy, are there a lot of stickers.  Most of the stickers go on the Super Robot's armored battlestation mode's many flat surfaces.  (I got Powermaster Prime and Fortress Maximus for Christmas on the same year.  Yes, yes, feel free to hate me.  I only mention this because I want to bring up how I spent like two hours putting their stickers on.   Those were two sticker-heavy toys.)

We didn't get Godbomber in America until the Toys "R" Us reissue several years ago, and there's a pretty good reason.  He's the worst Transformers toy of all time.  You might say, dude, that is a big claim.  I put it to you that it is nevertheless correct.  He's a trailer, you see, that's made out of robot parts.  You take him apart and peg him together.  Neither mode looks remotely good, and one of them is a trailer. His whole reason for existence is to give Powermaster Prime/Ginrai/Whoever platform shoes, a new chest, and tiny stubby wings.  Even at this he's not terribly adept.  If you thought Prime had stubby thighs before, wait until you add giant new feet under his old feet!

God damn, Godbomber sucks.  He sucks even more when he's entirely red plastic!  Ah well.  He's not what I'm here for.  (Man, before he was reissued, some people would pay hundreds of dollars for Godbomber alone!  We didn't get him over here, and so he was special, like some terrible Holy Grail!  Have pity for these folk.)

To summarize: He's Optimus Prime.  He's orange.

Webcomic Rampage was friggin' awesome and one of the best times I've had.  Everyone was super nice and I got to hang out with some of my favorite people!  But the awesomeness isn't exactly why it will go down in infamy.  Here's something I posted on the Dumbing of Age site this past weekend that I meant to post here, too:

So here's a fun Webcomic Rampage story.  I'm pretty sure I'll be telling this one a lot.  It's a doozy.

I mailed two boxes of books to Austin.  One arrived perfectly!  The other arrived, too, but in an interesting condition.  It was, in fact, a completely new cardboard box, with the old, shredded cardboard box inside.  The mailing address, return address, and postage had been exacto-knifed off the old box and taped onto the new box.

Inside the old box inside the new box was half a blender.

Yeeeeaaaaaah.

Yeah.

Man, fuck a Dixie Kong.

Every three months or so, I remember to check the Internet to see if that third wave of 2-inch Super Mario Bros mini figurines exists yet.  Last week, this amazingly birthed sweet fruit!  For both wave 3, which had already begun to show up in stores, plus listings for wave 4.  Years ago, when this all started, we were told that there were four planned waves, so maybe this is it?

And, hahahaha, there's no Bowser.  There is, as Amber lamented in her typically over-the-top fashion in yesterday's TNI strip (which I can't link right now because I'm writing this before I leave for Webcomic Rampage last Thursday night, hope I didn't die!) some Dixie Kong.  Great!  Dixie Kong!  Wonderful.  Also in wave 3 is Donkey Kong, which is fine and expected and boring, and in wave 4 is yet another Donkey Kong and a Diddy Kong.  Man, they are really backloading this series with fucking Donkey Kong guys!  Wave 3 is also home to Princess Toadstool, Toad, Fire Mario, and another Yoshi.

(You can totally tell how oldschool I am by how I don't call Princess Toadstool "Peach."  I am an old man.)

But, seriously, it's a wave of all good guys!  Well, Donkey Kong used to be a villain, and that's basically how I'll categorize him, but, let's face it, he's a good guy.  Both wave 1 and 2 had two generic bad guys in them, and I was really looking forward to more.  They were my favorite part of the first two waves.  Instead, woooooo, Dixie Kong.

I'll end up buying Donkey Kong, Peach, and Toad.  I've found DK and Toad, after a few Gamestop haunts, but Peach still eludes me.  If the past is any indication, I'll have roughly a year and a half to pick her up at any Target in the area.

Wave 4 promises a non-Para Goomba and Boo, so at least that will be a return to form.  But screw you, Wave 3!  And screw you, Dixie Kong! You know, I was wrong, before: Wave 3 does have a villain, and it's you!

A few weeks back, 1986 Transformers: The Movie writer Ron Friedman put up a whole buttload of never-before-seen rough draft materials up for auction.  The Transformers fanbase wanted to make sure this stuff landed in the hands of somebody who would share it with everyone, rather than sit on somebody's shelf somewhere, so we banded our resources to get a few of the items.  And now the stuff is starting to hit mailboxes, like a very early draft of the animated Transformers film.  Jim "AllSpark Almanac" Sorenson scanned the script and put it up on his website for others to download, which I did this morning at the Columbus airport and read during the flight to my layover in Tampa.

Oh holy jeez, parts of it are insane.

First of all, it's much more incredibly violent.  Some of the violence made it into later drafts which the fandom has had access to, but it's still a crazily violent movie where terrible horrible things happen to even more of your favorite characters.  Unlike how the systematic death of the first season's cast is relegated to the first five minutes of the movie, in the early draft this massacre sprawls on into the middle of the film.  Blaster has Windcharger parts falling on him from the sky.  WINDCHARGER PARTS FALLING ON HIM FROM THE SKY.

We'd also heard small bits about the "Anibots," which were a concept that made it neither into the finished film nor into the toy stage.  But this early draft reveals that the Anibots lived in a "Roboto-Zoo" in an area of Autobot City, including a lion named "Simba," and that they would combine to form "Dragon Beast" to fight Devastator.

But the wierdest thing, and also ultimately a pretty darkly hilarious thing, is how much of the script is dedicated to the mysterious LIFE SPARKs.   A Marvel UK story had Cyclonus mentioned that he had been created from "what was once LIFE SPARK," but we hadn't had any further details on this until now.  According to this early draft, every Transformer has a LIFE SPARK that embodies their essence, much like how Beast Wars guys had things called "sparks" for souls.  (The similar name and function is absolutely a coincidence, but a fun coincidence nonetheless.)  But the difference between these early-concept sparks and the ones that propagated into importance later into the franchise's run is that the LIFE SPARK is a small spectral version of the Transformer.  There is no Matrix of Leadership in the film.  Instead, as Optimus Prime dies, he opens up his chest and a tiny spectral version of himself escapes and climbs into Ultra Magnus's chest.  Unless contained, these life sparks dissipate into nothingness, but if merged with another Autobot or contained in an urn, they can, in a way, persist in some state.

(This results in a scene where, later, Galvatron steals Optimus Prime's life spark from Ultra Magnus and carries it around in a bottle.  ha ha ha ha ha)

But the darkly hilarious part is how this all ends for Megatron.  He realizes he's dying just after his fight ends with Prime, and he pleads for the Decepticons to return him to Cybertron so he can be enshrined before his life spark leaves him and escapes.  The Decepticons don't care.  They fight with each other over who will be the new leader from the battle's end all the way to actually arriving at the Hall of Heroes back on Cybertron.  Megatron is dragged by them by his feet for the duration, as he pleads for them to please take three seconds out of their time to contain his life spark, he doesn't want to dissipate into forever nothingness, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT YOU GUYS COME ON.

Long story short, while the Decepticons fight each other, Megatron's pleading body is negligently destroyed by falling debris, and his body shatters into a million pieces.  His life spark flees and after drifting through space is eventually used to create Galvatron.  (Who serves, aheh, the mighty devouring entity, INGESTOR.)

Man, those Decepticons are assholes.

I'm gettin' on a plane to Austin, Texas (after a layover in Tampa), to Webcomics Rampage that leaves at 7:30 tomorrow morning!  You Austin folks better come see me!  Or, at least, come see Randy Milholland and acknowledge my presence.

I've got comics queued up on both Dumbing of Age and Shortpacked! through Tuesday, so we should be set!  That includes a ToyNewsInternational strip.  I'm so prepared!  (Technically, Dumbing of Age is queued up through the second week of 2011, but who's counting.)

(I'm counting.  Me.)

See you in Austin!

Hey, look, it's Venkman!  (...one of two, as I explained yesterday, with the unwanted,  unexplainable duplicate order to be auctioned probably tomorrow or something.)  But this first one I'm keeping!

Of course they save Venkman for last.  Sure, Matty teased us with the slimed variant first before giving us the "real" one, but we all knew this day would come!  Frankly, I expected it to come a little later, after Louis came out, or something.  Is there gonna be a Dana?  There has to be a Dana.

(This arrangement has me wondering how Matty's gonna handle their Back to the Future line.  Is Marty gonna be last?  Will they release "Marty-dressed-as-'Darth-Vader'" earlier on, as a similar tease?  And how can they possibly be doing a Back to the Future line when the entire cast can't use the same body?  And which Biff will I buy?)

Peter's got one of the better likenesses.  Actually, I think he, Winston, and Egon all have pretty good likenesses, with poor Ray looking off somehow.  Ray needed a taller body, I think.  They tried to make him look taller by making his head tiny, and he just looks strange.  But, Peter, he looks great.  Affably smug.

The first thing I noticed out of the package, because I don't pay any attention to these things apparently, is that, oh my god, his body actually has different parts.  His pantlegs aren't tucked into his boots.  He's wearing gloves!  It was quickly confirmed by my roommate, Steve-o, that the untucked pantlegs are Venkman's trademark.  So, hey, cool, that was a nice attention to detail.  The gloves though, after some Google Images research, they upset my OCD.  Peter seems to wears gloves only when everyone else is wearing gloves!  And none of the other toys are wearing gloves!  Grarrr.

Ah well.  Let's not stare a gift-retool in the mouth.

Venkman comes with a stand.  It's dumb and unnecessary, especially since nobody else has one.

But he also comes with a proton pack stream!  Now that is sweet.  It's two pieces that snap together so that it can fit into the packaging, and it's super long.  It's so super-long that I had to crop it off in the initial photo so you could see Venkman better.  The thing is, man, I kinda wish one of the other guys had come with one, too.  To get the full Crossing-the-Streams effect, you'd hafta buy a buttload of Peters.  (hahaha buttload of peters)  And I did get shipped that extra one, but I don't think its cost is worth it to me just for the accessory.  Ah well.

Anyway, complete Ghostbusters power!  Woooo!