Danielle Corsetto is having a Week of Insanity, so I've given her the night off.  Go check out my guest strip at Girls with Slingshots!  GwS is one of my most favoritest webcomics in the world, so I was really really happy and honored to be able to draw it this once!

Even better yet, you can find both Danielle and I at Webcomic Rampage this weekend in Austin, Texas!  It will be so friggin' rad you can't even believe it.

If you're wondering who the toy is, it's this dude.  He looks like one, but at least he isn't named after one.

Hey, look, it's Justice League Unlimited Parademons!  They come in packs of two.  So why do I have four?  Well, let me tell you.  On Hell Matty Ordering Day, I ordered myself one set of Parademons and one Peter Venkman.   That box arrived, easy as you please, and I was reasonably happy.

Then another identical box arrived two days later.

Did I get charged twice?  Did I get a free duplicate order?  I haven't actually investigated.  All I know is that the Matty ordering system is carrraaaaaaazy fucked up, yo.  And I decided to keep the extra set of Parademons because, hey, troop builders, and MattyCollector's been hinting that the JL line needs all the love it can get if it's going to continue.  I can't return these!  That's the opposite direction that I want for the line!

I am, however, selling the hell out of that Venkman, which will probably recover any lost funds if it turns out I got charged twice.

So, hey, Parademons.  They each have three points of articulation, with two at the shoulders and one at the neck.  They're, uh, pretty simple.  Which is fine.  Maybe I can have one of them hang out with Deadshot, Bane, and Harley as part of a scaled-down Secret Six.  (C'mon, Mattel, you're just a Batman redeco away from a Catman toy!  I don't care if he didn't look like that in DCUAnimated continuity!)

Hey, troops!  (Hmmm, I like using the word "troops."  Can I start addressing you as troops?)  Next weekend I'm gonna be in Austin, Texas, at the Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy store for Webcomic Rampage, joined by all of your other favorite webcartoonists.  Part of the gearing up for this special event is the Dragon's Lair's podcast, which this past week interviewed both myself and Joel Watson.  You can listen to this podcast on their website!

If you're planning on attending the Webcomic Rampage panel that opens both days of the event, be sure to RSVP via Facebook or phone, as there's limited seating available!  After the panel there'll be some signing and some wares snagging.  You won't want to miss it!

Reveal the Shield Tracks is kind of insane.  He's insane in a way I don't think I'll be able to express fully until his retool comes out, but I'll give it some lip service here, because it's on my mind.

Much like Universe Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, Reveal the Shield Tracks's toy is intended to eventually do double duty as Wheeljack.  What's different this time, though, is the severity of changes between the two toys.  The only difference between Sunstreaker and Sideswipe was a headswap and rotating the waist 180 degrees.  From what we've seen of Wheeljack's toy in promotional photography, though, shows stuff that blows that out of the water.  It's crazy.  I told you, it's insane.

Back in 1984/5, Tracks and Wheeljack were two totally different molds that were entirely unrelated to each other.  They transformed pretty similarly, with both getting the roof-chest, hood-legs treatment, plus they both had wings.  It seems like a smart move to make the new Wheeljack the same guy as the new Tracks, but with a new head and a twist of the waist during transformation.  But, like, holy cow.  The number of new parts we're getting on Wheeljack is crazy.  He's got a new front bumper, a new spoiler, he gets wrenches instead of missiles, different wingtips, and the super-crazy part is the entirely new robot shins. Why are they new?  I dunno!  The robot parts of the shins end up on the back of Wheeljack's robot legs, so you don't even see them!  But apparently it's just that important to make it so that Wheeljack's front wheels can fold down by his heels where they were on the original toy.

Anyway, enough about the toy that Tracks isn't.  It's a hard subject to avoid, since it informs a lot of my feelings about him.  So much about him is just there to be Wheeljack later.  He has Wheeljack's stumpier proportions, for example.  The original Tracks was tall and lean.  His hand weapon is just Wheeljack's shoulder-mounted missile launcher with a 5mm peg.  His wheels are on a hinge that rotates around the upper bicep so that you can position them on the front like Tracks's original toy or out to the side like on Wheeljack's original toy.

I fully expected this hedging to make the toy into a fiddly mess, but Tracks still remains a solid toy that has a lot of Tracks-specific features.  It's not as clean of a transformation as RtS Jazz, but it's not anything near a disaster, either.  The only problem I've ever had transforming him back and forth was finding out exactly where to shove the forearms into the car shell so that they fit.  And now that I have that figured out, it's no problem at all.

Once again the clip-on weapons make the toy enjoyably versatile.  Tracks has three.  One of them, Wheeljack's shoulder weapon, as I mentioned previously, has a peg on it so that Tracks can hold it in either of his hands.  Tracks also has two other clip-on weapons that approximate his dual shoulder missiles.  They can clip under the doors in car mode and either stay stowed or fold out at an angle to the sides, or you can attach them to the back of the car mode via a panel that rotates around a hinge to unveil notches that the missiles can peg onto.

Just like the original Tracks toy, this one also has a winged car mode.  It's, uh, about as good as the original, which isn't saying much, but it's still fun as hell.  I've been keeping him in winged car mode probably more than robot mode, but then I've had a predisposition to flying toy cars around in the air since I was a child.  When I was little, I had a little Matchbox car with little opening doors.  I'd swing them open and pretend the car had wings.  That's... basically where the idea for Ultra Car came from.  A car with wings.  It's basically the best possible vehicle ever, I tell you!

I'm still loving the open-sculpted hands.  Tracks's are particularly good, since I like how bulky his fingers are, like he's wearing hockey gloves.  They add so much personality to a toy.

I really like this toy as Tracks, so I'm bound to like a partially-different toy as Wheeljack!  I look forward to him so hard.  But, man, I am not complaining for having to have 70% of the toy twice.  This is a good toy.  And, Jesus, the lengths they're going to distinguish the two is admirable.  Hasbro/Tomy's outdoing themselves here.

Like Thunderwing, Skullgrin is also an oft-used Decepticon Pretender from the old Marvel Comics stuff.  Skullgrin didn't ever lead the Decepticons or anything, nor did he get to run around eating people with the Matrix, but he was still a memorable grunt.

Skullgrin got his biggest spotlight in a one-off story that featured him almost exclusively, in which he becomes a famous movie star.  I am serious.  Scorponok had sent him on a fuel-gathering mission, and when he's discovered by famous movie director Rollie Friendly, who offers to pay him in fuel to star in his sci-fi flicks, well, that's a win-win!  Rollie doesn't even know he's a Decepticon, what with his Pretender shell disguise. Of course, there's some King Kong undertones, especially since Skullgrin has trouble controlling his rage in front of flashing cameras, plus his friendship with the film's leading lady, Carissa Carr.  Anyway, long story short, Circuit Breaker finds him, the end.

What makes the story for me is that it's mentioned in later issues.  The other Decepticons make fun of Skullgrin for, y'know, having been a movie star.  It doesn't help his credibility an evil bad guy, especially with all those humans he befriended!  I do wish we'd gotten to see more of that, especially since poor Skullgrin was casually killed off a few years later in the Generation 2 comics.

So, fuck yeah, Skullgrin!  He's Straxus with a new ram skull-like head, courtesy of the new "everybody gets a head retool" policy.  Though choosing Skullgrin is kind of a left-field kind of thing, it does kind of make sense.  Both Straxus's toy and Skullgrin's original toy transformed into half-track tanks.  Skullgrin also carried a bladed weapon, so that's kind of analogous to Straxus's Pick-Axe Of Deathtiny.  The robot mode proportions also remind me of the build of the old Pretender shells.  They were all big chunks of thing.   Straxus's toy with a new head makes a pretty damn good Skullgrin, all things considered.

There were some color shifts, of course.  The original Skullgrin came out in a period when pink on a kid's toy wasn't something you did if you wanted to lose lots of money.  1988 Skullgrin's shell was white, gray, and pink. Basically, he was Arcee's colors.   The inside robot was gray and purple.  He was a giant evil ram monster from Hell decoed like a Barbie doll.  Oh, 1988.

But this is 2010, so new Skullgrin shifts that pink more towards the red side.  There's a hint of magenta, but for the most part, his pink is now red.  And, hey, though I dig bright terrible colors, I'm not complaining here.  It's a beautiful color scheme.  If Straxus weren't Straxus, then I'd like this version of the mold more, just from the colors.  He looks very nice.

Skullgrin should return to action movies.  I bet there's room for him in a sequel of the Expendables!

(The Singularikitty is the horrific offspring of Choo-Choo Bear of Something*Positive and Sprinkles of Girls With Slingshots.)

So, dudes, you folks with Transformers Collectors' Clubs memberships,  you should be starting to receive your magazines!  And you know what that means, another installment of my Recordicons comic strip.  This time, we see Ravage remember the Transformers' greatest battle on Earth.

(Yes, I realize that the second link doesn't go nowhere.  I'm being passive-aggressive.)

Man, on no other day I am more glad that I'm out of retail.  Have a conglomeration of fun toy photos.

I was gonna save this guy for tomorrow, but then I'd be talking about Jazz on Black Friday, and that's RACIST.

Man, how did it take so long to get the last of the Classic Pretenders into Classics/Universe/Generations form? Bumblebee, Grimlock, and Starscream came out in 2006! And finally, four years later, outta nowhere comes Jazz. (Of course, the reason we didn't get a new G1 Jazz all those years is because we kept on getting Other Kinds of Jazz. He woulda had to sneak out before the first movie toyline like the others.) I'm so glad I found him the same day I got Thunderwing, 'cuz you just can't have a Matrix Quest battle against Thunderwing without the final Classic Pretender, man. You just can't.

Speaking of finding Jazz, I found mine at Walgreens! Yeah, friggin' Walgreens! I noted in my ToyNewsI strip that he first started showing up in "Neighborhood Market" Walmart stores, and the closest one of those is 3 hours away. That's too far even for me! So I was happy to see the first sighting of Jazz in a store that Columbus has plenty of. Oh, we have plenty of Walgreens. We have too many of them. I've been to probably 20 Walgreens in the past 52 hours and I'm still not out of Walgreens to check. (See, I found Jazz, but Tracks is still out there.) If I were out of Walgreens, I could stop looking, but at this rate by the time I search the last one it'll be time to cycle back around again!

Did you know Walgreens are open on Thanksgiving?

This is a sickness.

Anyway, Jazz. If you're jonesing for a new Generation 1 Jazz, then I'm pretty sure this toy will be sex to you. It's really hard to find fault with this toy. Sure, the hood-chest transformation style is a little Done To Death, but whether that bugs you depends on what sorta person you are. Even so, the transformation has a few surprises. I'm tickled by how the "4" on the hood splits in half and is pulled underneath and away by the shoulder transformation. It's sort of an ingenius way of keeping the "4" on the hood yet not on the robot chest, as seen in the old animation model sheets. I don't mind the "4" on the chest, but I still find it fascinating that they tried to replicate this.

And with the arms no longer trying to both fit under the hood (they line up lengthwise along the underside of the car), he makes a very satisfyingly-proportioned robot. He's big and blocky, and a little stout, an aesthetic that I enjoyed from the early Transformers toys. The continued use of slightly-open hand sculpts pleases me as well. Jazz has got plenty of articulation, as well, including double-jointed elbows, bicep swivels, a balljointed head that can look around pretty freely, and a turning waist. The one thing that's missing is the ability for his arms to rise above his shoulders, due to his wheel kibble. He's basically John McCain. Poor guy.

Now, that's all super awesome, but ultimately secondary to what I found most fun about the mold. I've talked about the new little clippy-rod snap-on weapons that new Transformers toys are utilizing. Well, Jazz comes with two. They're speakers! 'Cuz, y'know, he loves to listen to Madonna. What's awesome about them is that there's little hinges down the middle of both of his windows so that you can open the doors, flip out the speakers, close the doors, and have yourself an awesome car with speakers hanging out the doors. That's sweet. You can flip them out in robot mode, too, of course. Plus you can snap them onto his blaster and make a super-weapon! That is some great versatility, and I keep moving the speakers around to all the various places and ways they can attach.

Plus, of course, you can give the speakers to anyone else that has the clippy-rod things. Don't tell me you don't see the hilarious potentialities.

Jazz also has a rubsign. And his rifle looks like his Classic Pretender rifle.   And his details are heavily-inspired by the original toy as much as his media appearances.  I keep on coming up with reasons why I dig this dude, which is great for a hood-chest car guy. You'd think I'd be bored of them by now. But this is a really solid toy. I want them to redeco and retool it a billion times.