As Monday's strip suggested, it's been a party tsunami up in here. More on that later, after everyone has absconded. But anyway. That's why I've been mostly elsewhere.

I told ya I'd get some photos of the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary toys next to their decade-old counterparts. And with marginably better quality! The new ones are in front to the left, and the old ones are in back to the right.

Cheetor -- BWX Cheetor looks like someone dunked the original dirty water. Both the yellow and the blue are desaturated. The spot pattern is the same, though the lines on the cheetah face are thinner. As noted before, BWX Cheetor is actually less show-accurate than the original, since they've changed his previously gold forearms and toes blue. (...I think I left BWX Cheetor's gut gun at my dad's. D'OH.)

Rhinox -- Similar to BWX Cheetor, BWX Rhinox's colors are darker than his predecessor, albeit not in the same way. His brown is much richer and the paintspray is reddish. The green is also darker. New gold paint detailing is on his head to better match the show's CGI model. Though, sadly, that's really all they could do for him, other than some slight color hue changes. The show's CGI model for Rhinox dropped the samurai motif completely, not to mention the "mutant head" gimmick, so you'd have to remove those parts to move him closer to that representation. (Which I plan to do, now that I've got my photos taken. The mutant mask halves will go bye-bye, as will the flip-down crotch piece. Both come off their hinges easily.)

Waspinator -- Now this is the prize of the set. Even Graham, who hates show-accurate tinkering, thought Waspy looked nice. Now, the original Waspinator I have is actually the Japanese version, which had some small changes from the original American release. (American Waspinator had lighter gray and a more olive-y green on the shoulders.) BWX Waspinator altered many things. It changed the light green color to a drab yellow and the gray to a medium green. There are now several paint applications on his head and even some paint detail on his robot legs which approximate corresponding details on the show's CGI model. The gold and black stripes in his wasp mode are now in a very metallic shiny paint. He shines. I love him. (What I don't love is that dinky Pred symbol on his wasp back. That would have looked so much better if it were scaled up to fill the whole area.)

Mmmm. Bring on wave 2!

I got all three Beast Wars 10th Anniversary (BWX) toys and Alternators Skids while I was home in Indiana. Yay, Valparaiso Wal-Mart!

I haven't seen any comparison photos between the original versions and the anniversary versions, so maybe I'll do some later. For now, have a uselessly tiny one.

So it's Armageddon Week on the History Channel! After we did the gifts and food thing today, Maggie and I, thinking we were biding our time until Daily Show repeats, watched a special on the Anti-Christ.

It was hilarious. Why? Well, the same reason any History Channel documentary is awesome -- dramatizations. Their Anti-Christ fellow was great. Dark hair, long side burns, clean-shaven, and always wearing a very nice suit. He walked city streets in slow motion. Sometimes the camera would turn around him as he looked up into the heavens, arms outstretched. Other times his eyes would go all white and milky as he grinned evilly into the camera. And my favorite shot is the one of him running at you from a distance (in the same city street) in slow motion, arms outstretched, teeth in a snarl.

These were, of course, punctuated with shots featuring an actor playing Jesus upon his return. A guy in a beard and a white robe stalked some sort of open desert, and would stop only to open wide his arms for an unreciprocated embrace...never directly at the camera, but slightly off to the right, addressing an unseen audience. Was one actually there? Who knows. Jesus might be back already, but he's wandering around New Mexico and nobody's noticed.

Maybe he should have hit the streets like Mr. 666. There were people there. Remember, there's three rules in End-Times Strategy: Location, location, location.

Well, here I am at the airport, waiting for my flight to start boarding, so I decided to update Shortpacked! a little early. It's Christmas, after all! And if you don't know what's going on, you didn't watch enough TBN when you grew up. All I'm gonna say is that all those time-travelling kids in the Bible have got to start tripping over each other eventually. They can't all help David defeat Goliath.

My taxi guy was on time, very nice, and got me to the airport swiftly. Big tip for him! And gosh dang, it's rainy today. Rainy and warm and gray. (Well, by now, dark...) Christmas shouldn't be rainy and warm and gray!

I hear it's freezing cold in Chicago.

Man, I gotta pee.

Yeah. Probably shouldn't have gotten that Faygo "Chocolate Cream Pie" soda. Yeugh.

Just one or two nights left in this bed of mine. And that's good, because I'm getting worse and worse at sleeping in it. I tried at around 5am, gave up around 6, and then wandered over to the local CVS at around 8 to get some sleeping pills. Still didn't fall asleep until about 10. Yikes.

Man.

Hey, here's a lesson for the kiddies. You ever wondered why Hasbro gets a leary of revealing info on toys early? I think I got a textbook case for you. At BotCon in September, we were shown an early test shot of Alternator's Mirage. And, hey, look, lo and behold, guess what went up on Happy Well's website (not Firefox friendly)? Yeah. Their own Ford GT Transformer that's practically the same damn transformation and everything. D'oh. Well, now we know.

(Though, hey, the website says theirs is 1:12 scale. Dude, that's big enough to work with 6-inch figures.)

Everyone in the Columbus area is gone home for Christmas, so I've been holding down the fort myself. It'll be that way until tomorrow afternoon, when I get on a plane to Chicago, where I'll meet up with Maggie and my dad and stepmom. Hoorah!

Today I learned how to order a taxi. Hrm. "Order"? Is that the correct term? Rent, maybe? Hell if I know.

What, there's no Laser Magnus fanart yet? Well, I fixed that!

In the UK Transformers comics, Galvatron was an unstoppable tsunami of evil, almost a force of nature. He'd travel back to the 80s from ... well, now, actually, to fuck people up. And always, there'd be Ultra Magnus, throwing himself suicidally at Galvatron in futile attempts to stop him. My drawing is a homage to a panel in one of the issues in Target: 2006, drawn by my childhood hero Geoff Senior. Magnus, in his new body, finally comes out on top, triumphant.

Although Geoff Senior was my favorite artist as a kid, I think I appreciate him even more now. His linework is almost Bruce Timm-ish in its simple dynamism. He uses straight lines, abstract shapes, and an isometric attempt at camera angles to convey raw action. If you compare my art to his, mine is weakened by not being abstract enough. On his, Galvatron has this line of motion running across his shoulders up his lifted arm that I've pretty much destroyed by drawing more of Magnus' actual contours. And look how he gets away with drawing Magnus' right arm from the top down. There's no way that arm can even connect to his torso that way, but look how striking it makes his pose. If it wasn't drawn like that, the effect would be lessened.

I'm 26 and I'm still in awe.

There's a new Shortpacked! today, of course. Next week I'll be out of town, and so we'll be running some stand-alones I've been building up. Which is too bad, actually, since after completing today's strip, I suddenly had an urge to have Amber take Robin home for Christmas. But not only do I not have time to draw that before I leave, but it would further delay the end to this Faz story, and I've already had enough single-day-gag delays along the way.

I'm having a little trouble balancing the story and the strike-of-the-moment gags. By the end of It's Walky!, I'd abandoned single-day gags entirely, devoting myself completely to the service of the ongoing story. But I don't wanna do that here. I like being able to take a break to draw Batman or Aslan or whatever's in fashion. It's freeing. But, at the same time, I also lose a lot of story potential. The fact that I only update 3 times a week contributes to that too, but I don't think I can do full-page color more often than I do already. Damn.

And lastly, have an oldie but a goodie. Don't cry out loud.