Raphael is my favorite Ninja Turtle.  Sort of.  Raphael was my favorite Ninja Turtle from the cartoon of my youth, but that rendition of Raphael is an aberration.  In the original comics (and thus everything else besides the original cartoon) Raphael was the dark angsty rebellious one.  (Basically Wolverine.)  And so I'm generally SOL on new Turtles stuff since the part I liked the best isn't ever repeated.

The part I liked second best?  Krang.  Whoops.

Look, the nine-year-old in me just wants the red guy to be the cheerful dumb-wordplay spouter.  His job is to be funny and not in a "he's kind of touched in the head" sort of way Mikey is.  His job is to be Yakko Warner, but as a fork-carrying anthropomorphic turtle.

(Apparently being Yakko is Donatello's new job.)

And so I picked up the "Classics" Raphael from Laughing Ogre yesterday.  He's kind of massive.  See, he's a six-inch toy, but not six-inch scale, where one inch generally represents one foot.   This is too bad, because this means he can't hang out with anybody but his brothers, who I sure hope I don't end up buying.   He sees eye-to-eye with Batman, and that's just wrong.  But I understand.  At proper six-inch scale, you couldn't get nearly all the joints they've packed into this guy.  (He'd basically be the size of a G.I. Joe, and I don't think those have individually-articulated toes and universal-joint thumbs.)

Yeah, all his digits are articulated, and his thumbs additionally so.  He's got some wrist articulation,  his elbows and knees are double-jointed so they can bend more realistically, and he's got balljointed mid-torso joint as well.  Not many Ninja Turtle toys can turn at the waist.  The only thing I really found lacking was how shallow his neck articulation is.  With all of this limb range, it would really help if his head could look up.  It kind of makes the whole exercise a little futile.

He comes with a sewer grate with his name tampographed on it and a few footpegs.  This is nice because he's a little backheavy FOR SOME REASON, and his many many joints don't always support him well, and so the stand aids stability a bit.  His hands grip his sais well despite his finger articulation, plus the sais can store in his belt.  I do kind of wish he had a swappable head or a different expression.  The classic Ninja Turtle 8-shaped grimace isn't really how I picture happy-snarky 80s toon Raphael.  But I understand it.

Of course, if Playmates ever wants to expand their Classics toys to other characters, due to the 6-inch thing, Shredder would be a pretty damn huge toy.  I would buy it, but it would be huge.

I would also buy any Krang.

Aha!  I remembered to get a TNI strip done while at the convention this weekend.  However, I brought an uncharged camera and no charger, so today's strip is brought to you by the good graces of Chris Hallbeck (The Book of Biff), who took a photo for me yesterday and emailed it to me when he got home for the night.

The Sunday dealer room at Penguicon is only open four hours (11 - 3) so this'll be a quick day. Then I'll be packing up and starting the 3-4 hour drive home.  My thanks to everyone who came to visit me this weekend.

Here's a quick question: Is there interest in me going to TFCon in Toronto?  It's the weekend before San Diego Comic-Con, which makes me pause, but it might be interesting to do.  Let me know if there's Canadian demand for me up there.

Argh.  Well, first, let me address everyone's missing weekend comics.  I had a Joyce & Walky! done days ago, but for some reason the old FTP wasn't working (J&W! is still at the old server) and I couldn't get that fixed before I left.  And I planned to draw TNI's strip at C2E2, but then I forgot about it.  D'oh.  Anyway, I'm a loser, and you'll have your comics when I get home and things are resolved and/or drawn.

Some of these images are kind of gross.  Three of them, in fact.  They are mere links, because, you know. (You may recall that Jeph Jacques and I have a "feud."  In fact, you obviously do recall, because you guys keep asking us to act on it in ways such as this.)   I recommend not clicking on the links that sound Not Safe For Work, because they undoubtedly are.

I'm asked to draw myself pooping in Jeph Jacques mouth.  Of course I'll draw that.

Same person got another book.  So this is Batman pooping in Commissioner Gordon's mouth, because why the hell not.

And Jeph responds.

So as we were debuting the new site this weekend, Frumph says to me, hey, guess what, this is awesome.  See all those folks with no avatars?  Well, what if I told you that if you uploaded your own avatars to a certain directory and did some Comicpress magic, they'd be randomly assigned to unavatared users?

So I says, holy balls!

And so after crankin' out a handful every day since then, there are now a total of 24 avatars in the pool.  If you don't have an avatar and you post, you'll get randomly assigned, say, Sodomuffin.  And then every time you post, you'll keep that Sodomuffin avatar.  (... at least until I upload a new image into the pool, which restarts the math and they all get switched around again)

Since I have so many, and I put so much work into them despite being tiny 64x64 things, I thought I'd show them to you big as a wallpaper.  You are also free to crop them out and make your own avatars on other boards, so long as you give me credit.  I am also wondering if maybe I should try to do this a print or a poster or something in the meager number of hours I have remaining before C2E2, but we'll see.

Enjoy!