Masterpiece Rodimus Prime was revealed (in color) at this weekend's C3X Hobby in Japan.  Okay, woo, so he transforms from  Hot Rod to Rodimus Prime to Hot Rod's car to Rodimus Prime's truck, which is sort of neat, I guess, if you like awesome things.  But it all pales in comparison to him finally being the right color.

Oh, yes, he's magenta, folks.

He's gonna be about $200 to import, so I think I'm going to pass on him.  I do that kind of money for Grimlock, but not Hot Rod.  If he comes out in the states, I'll probably pick him up, but there's no promises that he'll remain that purply color, so it's a bittersweet decision.  Though, as I was reminded by AllSpark dude Powered Convoy, a large-ass Rodimus toy would go perfect in a Wreckers display.  Now that's tempting!

Personally, I'm just excited that he exists, but I liked the punchline too much.  Ethan is so frustrated.  He shouldn't be!  He's getting some!

(And, really, the whole thing is really Blaster's toy's fault anyway.)

Here's a Toy News International strip for you!

Next weekend I'm going to be at the Canadian GIJOE Convention in Toronto!  Hooray!  I went last year and it was a blast.  And now that it's in Toronto instead of a Toronto suburb, it'll be a bigger blast!  If you're Canadian or something, come see me.

I'm also in the middle of attempting to get my ass to Anime Fest in Dallas, Texas, which is Labor Day weekend, aka the first weekend of September.   Just a few days before I'm scheduled to be at Intervention in D.C.!  (Which is the same weekend that Roomies! turns 13.)  I am all over this continent, dudes.

I'm determined to get two books out this year.  Shortpacked! Book 3 is the preorder everyone should be familiar with by now, but Roomies! Book 2 better be out by the end of this year, too!  It's faaarr too soon to solicit it, since SP!B3 is still in production, but not too soon to finish putting it together.  An idea for the cover hit me last night, and no sooner than this afternoon I had it completed to my satisfaction.

Take it in.

Also, I was sorely in need of some freebies to hand out at C2E2, so I designed and ordered some double-sided bookmarks.  There's a strip on each side - my recent Skeletor/Luthor team-up strip for ToyNewsI seemed suitable, and of course you gotta have Batman DDR on there, so I cropped it down into the requisite number of panels to fit.  I'll be handing these out at Penguicon this weekend.  A huge purpose of convention-attending I've been neglecting is the romancing of new readers.  This'll help me fix that.  (If you're already a reader, you're still, of course, allowed to grab one.)

Since the new site went live, one of its most awesome features is the ability to order prints of individual strips simply by clicking the $ icon below each strip.  Ha ha ha, so obviously the first one that got bought was Mike's freaky smile creep show.  This is great, because I had to take this file into the print shop and have them give me strange looks as it comes up on the screen and again out of the printer.  How much is my dignity worth?  Apparently $10 and shipping.