No, seriously, he did!  He won the Transformers Hall of Fame!  Even though there was Soundwave involved!  Holy mother of crap!  It's insane!

I take full credit.

(Hey, Bob Forward, if you read this, you totally rule.)

EDiT: The first thing I did after writing this blog was email Beast Wars co-editor (and "Code of Hero" director) Bob Forward was email him about Dinobot's deserved win.  I got this response from Bob Forward, which he wrote for public dissemination:

I think it's fairly well known that Dinobot was my favorite character.  He wasn't perfect, he had some very human failings, but he never stopped trying. He had ideals that he tried to live up to, and when he didn't, no one could give him more grief than he gave himself.  From the very beginning, his greatest ambition was to to die nobly in battle and have a glorious funeral.  That the battle would be one of atonement for his own betrayal, and the saving of innocents that he had unwittingly helped place in harm's way, was something he could never have anticipated and certainly would not have chosen.  But when the die was cast and his duty lay before him, he faced it without flinching and did what had to be done.  Even writing about him changed me, made me examine my own everyday choices in a new light, and I believe I became a better person because of it.  Others who watched the show have told me that they still hold themselves to a higher standard than they might have otherwise, simply because of Dinobot.  He lived a warrior, he died a hero, and to those who now honor his memory by electing him to the Transformers Hall of Fame, I'm sure he would extend his humble gratitude.

If you've been wondering where this week's strips have come from, this should be an informative video!

Wednesday's strip was so hella long because cutting up the action into a week's worth of updates wouldn't have felt like it was in the spirit of the source material.  Dinobot tearing through everyone takes up maybe 30 seconds, tops, and it's a dense 30 seconds.  So I decided to pile it all into one strip so it kept the same feel.  Action sequences are kinda dumb when metered out six panels at a time, anyhow.  You lose all the excitement.

At any rate, hope you enjoyed my tribute to Dinobot.  There's a short epilogue on Monday, and then we'll be back to the usual in the days thereafter.  I promise Ghostbusters, Batman, Mario, Optimus Prime and even Superstar Funana!

Today is the last day of the Hall of Fame voting.  Throw one more Dinobot vote onto the pile, would you?

The comic I drew about Optikk endeared him to me.  I had to have him.  Masters of the Universe figures are, in general, really fucking goofy, but Optikk, I feel, has some extra special goofiness that I enjoy.

1) He's an evil Space Mutant.  He's an evil Space Mutant that has a special sticker decrying his goofy Space Mutant-ness right next to where it says "ADULT COLLECTOR" on the packaging bubble.  (there is no shame here)

2) He's an eyeball man who can communicate his given name only through a series of blinks... despite having no eyelids.  He can't even speak his native language!  He is, for all intents and purposes, a mute eyeball man!

3) He is a mute eyeball man named Optikk with an eyeball-themed shield and an eyeball on the end of his raygun.  (A raygun, mind you, that has an external revolving bullet chamber.)

And he was originally a New Adventures of  He-Man villain, which I think was underappreciated.  Campbell "friggin'" Lane makes a charismatic Skeletor.  Hell, and with He-Man voiced by Garry Chalk, it's practically a Beast Wars voice cast precursor.

Optikk's articulation is what you'd expect from a 6-inch Mattel action figure.  His chest detail is actually a plastic vest attached around your default Masters of the Universe chest.  (That's right, he's got nipply pectorals under there.)  I read that his arms and legs are recycled from Trap-Jaw, but with them done up entirely in gold, it's not immediately obvious.  Sculpted into his back is a fake little dial that corresponds to the original Optikk toy's gimmick: if you turned the dial on his back, his eyeball would move back and forth.  On this figure, you can do that just by manually turning the head itself.

He comes with an extra red eyeball that you can swap in for the green one, if you so choose.  Apparently that's what color his eye was in the original cross-sell photography?  That's sort of neat, I guess.  I'm more in favor of it being an eyeball accessory for other figures.  Some of my Transformers have heads small enough that they can fit up into its balljoint socket, so that's some more hours of fun.

Since I missed out on buying Optikk myself because MattyCollector.com is a piece of shit,  a generous reader called Mysterious Stranger managed to grab me one and mail me it.  He requested that there be a photo of Batman punching him.  His wish has been granted.

Thanks, Mysterious Stranger!

WildPig II is live! Come see me.

Wherever I am.

You know it's been a lull in Transformers purchases when the previous batch has already started breaking in the interim.

I was just transforming him out of tank mode!  I noticed Bludgeon on the shelf in tank mode next to the television and he looked like he needed to be fiddled with.  So I start pulling his hands out of his forearms and... oh no.

Well, that won't do.  And Bludgeon is one of my favorites!  And he has to be able to hold swords, so gluing the fingers back on and leaving it the hell alone is not the answer. So he must be replaced.  Immediately.

My mail-in Recon Ravage came with a $5 off coupon, so I ran over to Walmart this morning.  Thankfully, Bludgeon's still plentiful.  If this happened a few months or a few years from now, I'd be in trouble!  The coupon says $5 off any Transformers purchase of $20 or more, which must include sales tax, because this Bludgeon started at a sale price of $19.97 and it still worked.

Let my misfortune serve as a cautionary tale to others.  Be careful with your Bludgeon hands!  Don't shove that sword in.  Of course, you kinda have to shove it in, because it's a tight grip.

So, basically, you're screwed.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The Transformers Hall of Fame voting, as expected, began early yesterday.  In addition to the four automatic fictional robot inductees and the five fictional robot nominees we're voting on, four real-life creative folks are being inducted this year:  Bob Budiansky, Peter Cullen, Yoke Hideaki, and Kojin Ohno. The one I'm most excited for is Bob Budiansky.  Everyone remembers him as that guy who wrote 50 issues of the comic before Simon Furman took over, but few realize that he's the guy who named and characterized the first several years of Transformers.  He named Jazz, Starscream, Megatron, and everyone else, and he was also responsible for those Tech Spec numbers and bios on the backs of all the packaging.  In many ways, he is Transformers.

Fun thing we learned today.  Transformers.com says we can vote once every day for the three weeks the poll will be up.  What they don't mention is that you can also vote once per computer you own.  And once per browser.  Interesting!  Remember, Dinobot, though honorable, wouldn't necessarily frown on such an action.  He'd be open to cheating, so long as everyone was offered the same opportunity to cheat.  It was just the heavily one-sided battles he frowned upon.

Now, since this voting is going on for three weeks, I, uh, don't expect to have Dinobot-related content throughout.  That'd be annoying to both you and me!  But here, have art I drew of Dinobot if he transformed into a more up-to-date velociraptor.  You know, with feathers.

UPDATE: Vote HERE

Today (Monday), Transformers fans are called to flock to transformers.com to vote on five nominees for the new Transformers Hall of Fame.  Hasbro automatically inducted Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, and Starscream, because, really, let's get those guys out of the way, and they left the fifth inductee this year up to us.  The winner will be announced at BotCon.

Last month, a bunch of participating websites, including the Transformers Wiki, held separate polls to get their own lists of five worthy Transformers.  The results were sent in, and Hasbro used these results to create a list of five final nominees, the ones we'll be voting on today.  The first five were pretty obvious:  Soundwave, Grimlock, Jazz, and Shockwave.  The fifth I imagine was a surprise, as this week's TNI strip addresses.  It's Dinobot!  Some guy from friggin' Beast Wars who hasn't appeared in any other series!  He showed up on almost everybody's lists, and was the #1 choice from the Transformers Wiki.

This is because Dinobot is awesome.

(Though not everybody thinks so.  Some folks from TFW2005 were very adamant that Dinobot was shoved into the Nominee list by Hasbro, as part of some underhanded coup, because Hasbro hates the fans, because nobody would vote for Dinobot!  Nobody!)

Of course, I don't think he's going to win.  He doesn't have a chance in hell against Soundwave.  Dinobot may win some local polls at certain websites, but we're talking general transformers.com traffic here.  Soundwave's got it locked.  But a man can still dream, and I'm still voting Dinobot.  (Well, when the poll on transformers.com goes up sometime today.)

I've, uh, probably exhausted my well of Dinobot toy photos, especially recently, what with me trying to get every use of his mold ever together in one spot.  But there is one thing I know I definitely haven't photographed for this blog, or photographed period for about 15 years.  In 1997, disappointed with Dinobot's toy (what was wrong with me???), I bought a blue 5" Iron Man figure, covered him with sculpey and paint and called it a day.  His rigid grill structure's kinda broken off and he's been at the bottom of  a toy bin for a decade, but other than the paint wear that resulted, he's still in surprisingly good condition.

So enjoy this little bit of personal action figure history.  In 1997, Dinobot was a big part of my world.  In 2010, even though he hasn't appeared in a television series since then, he still is.  That's why I'm voting for him.

Starting Monday, a new storyline: "Vote Chopperface."