Somehow, I got through the first round of Batman LEGOs, the Star Wars LEGOs, and (nearly) all of the Indiana Jones LEGOs.  No problem.  But now there's a new round of Batman LEGO also featuring some other DC heroes and villains and so now there's a goddamn Lex Luthor mech set.  I am only so strong.  And more than LEGO Batman, more than LEGO  Han Solo, what my heart really wanted was a LEGO Lex Luthor.

And he's even specifically businessman Lex Luthor.  CEO industrialist Lex Luthor.  Black-tie suit and all.  And he's piloting a huge-ass robot brimming with Kryptonite and weaponry designed solely to crush Superman.

How did LEGO know this is exactly what I wanted?

Fun fact: Angle Man's real name is Angelo Bend.  This is hilarious.

When you become known for certain things, sometimes you have to live up to your reputation.  For example, if you regularly follow this blog, you know that I love orange toys.  The more obnoxious, the better.  You also know that I love Lex Luthor in Power Suit Armor.  I especially love Lex Luthor in Power Suit Armor when he's making a goofy face.

And so this thing existed.

I mean, in one way, I'm kind of meh about it.  I didn't read any Darkest Night or Brightest Day whatever.  I've never read the Sinestro Corps.  I've never read a single Green Lantern book in my life.  I just don't really care about Green Lantern.  I liked John Stewart a lot in Justice League, but that's the extent of my interest in all things Green Lantern.  If I see the Green Lantern film this summer, it will be because I am a bigger fan of Ryan Reynolds.

But... bright translucent Lex Luthor in his Power Suit with a goofy-ass face.

Another wrinkle in my decision was learning that DC Universe Classics is also going to be doing a version of "Orange Lantern Lex Luthor" or whatever.  Mattel's stuff is way more poseable than DC Direct's, so it would be a more fun toy to fiddle with.  But it didn't have the goofy face.  I had to choose between better toy or goofy face.

I guess I chose goofy face.

Jay Cochran over at ToyNewsI was a little worried about this strip's Challenger explosion reference.  Even though the reference was just the setting of the joke, not the source of the joke, it was still a potential yikes!  Substituting some other sad topic for a national memorial service would have only been a lateral move, so hey, here it is on my own site, where we have no such standards.

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.