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by David Willis on January 18th, 2012 on January 18, 2012 at 12:01 am

I couldn’t not have a comic today, being a generally obsessively punctual person, but felt the REAL LIFE CAREER-THREATENING NEWS was important enough to at least mention.

Here are a few easy things you can do:

  • Educate yourself about how SOPA and PIPA work.
  • Print and mail letters to your state’s senators and representatives, urging them not to support this. Physical mail is harder to ignore than email. It piles up. You can find representatives’ addresses here and senators’ addresses here. Remember that PIPA is a Senate bill and SOPA is a House of Representatives bill.
  • Call your senators and representatives on the phone and urge them not to support the bills. See above links for phone numbers or click here to get a quick list of representatives based on where you live.

Unrelatedly, I totally busted my site today.  I’ll be slowly massaging it back to health.  God dammit.


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Shortpacked! is old, buy art of it

by David Willis on January 17th, 2012 on January 17, 2012 at 11:25 am
Posted In: Blog

BERJAYA

The “The Shortpacked!: The Movie” posters arrived in the mail this very morning, on Shortpacked!’s seventh anniversary!  Pretty damn sweet!  I tried a million times to get the colors to show up correctly on my camera, but this is the best I could do.  Imagine it looking roughly 400% prettier.

Though they are limited, there are still some of these left! You can even splurge and get a piece of original character artwork from me as well!  All proceeds go to the “David and Maggie need to get the hell out of the house for once” fund.

I will start putting some of these in the mail to those who ordered them just as soon as it stops being The Deluge out there.


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Lex Mex

by David Willis on January 16th, 2012 on January 16, 2012 at 9:22 pm
Posted In: Blog
BERJAYA

If only this thing had a Presidential seal on it.

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?


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Vigo the Undeliverable

by David Willis on January 15th, 2012 on January 15, 2012 at 9:22 pm
Posted In: Blog

BERJAYACan you believe I ordered this guy exactly a month ago?  That’s how long it took for him to wind his way through the post office.  But after a several-week detour stop in Lexingon, Kentucky, Vigo the Carpathian is finally mine.

Hooray, sort of!

See, his index finger kinda got snagged inside the card bubble, and so it’s permanently jutting off at an unnatural angle.  You can see it in the photo — no, that’s not his thumb.  And his articulation is really frustrating.  You’d think they’d want you to be able to replicate his stance in his painting!  But no, that’s impossible.  All they needed were some elbow swivels so he could get his one hand on his hip and his other arm in position.  So close.  So close.

I am a little disappointed, but not surprised, that he can’t do a crazy action pose.  That would tickle me in all the right places, but his skirt keeps him from doing much with his legs, even though he has the ankle articulation to support a wider variety of stances than are available to him.  So he’ll just stand, arms awkwardly jutting off his torso in whichever direction looks the least dorky.

The sculpt itself is very good!  He looks like Vigo.  (At least, as I compare him to the painting replica.)  The painting replica is also a good accessory.  It’s lenticular, so as you turn it back and forth, Vigo appears and disappears from the painting.

But he’s no Walter Peck, that’s for sure.


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Y’all best be Stepper

by David Willis on January 10th, 2012 on January 10, 2012 at 9:00 pm
Posted In: Blog

BERJAYA

Toys are a lot bigger these days.

Loooong ago, Japan had their very own redeco of Jazz which they gave Cyclonus’s Targetmaster gun, and they called it Stepper.  It was very expensive to buy in America, once America figured out this thing existed.  Years later, it’d get released as “Ricochet” in America as a Toys”R”Us exclusive for $30, eventually clearanced to… less than that.  Long story short, if you bought an original Stepper as an investment or something, let’s hope you sold yours before like 2002.

There’s a new Jazz in town, and that means there’s a new Stepper.  He’s once again a Japanese exclusive, and once again he’s stolen his concurrent Cyclonus’s gun.  Given the circumstances, he’ll probably be more hotly contested on the secondary market than the original.

Reveal the Shield Jazz, from whom this was redecoed, is a pretty fantastic, solid toy, so I’m happy to have a second character from it.  (And we’re bound to get at least one, if not more, of this toy in various colors at BotCon this year.)  I don’t have a huge fondness for Stepper/Ricochet the character, but I do love Targetmasters.  And I’m enamored with the comic which featured Stepper that came out earlier this year.

BERJAYA

Maybe the Targetmaster partner can get his own little sidecar.

I do wish they’d taken the time to drill a 5mm hole into his roof so Nebulan/Nightstick had somewhere to go in car mode.  That seems like a missed opportunity.  And the white paint on half his knees doesn’t quite match the white plastic on the other half.  It’s a conspicuous difference in most lighting.  Otherwise, I’m pretty happy.  I also haven’t gotten a new Transformer in what feels like an eternity, so I’m probably going to be a little happy regardless.  But I feel confident I’ll still like him later.

Though, man, somebody update his flame deco, okay?


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BotCon 2012 registration is up.

by David Willis on January 8th, 2012 on January 8, 2012 at 11:26 pm
Posted In: Blog

BERJAYA

Well, it was up Friday, but if you’re not after a customization class, there’s no rush to tell other folks after those first five minutes.  Getting into the customization class was something I indeed managed, but only because I happened to be page-refreshing at the time.  I lucked out!  I’d just walked away from the other computer, where I was drawing today’s Shortpacked!, with my phone next to me thinking I’d get Twittered.  But there’s enough of a delay between the registration physically going up and the Twitter/email notices that you lose a large margin of opportunity for the very limited classes.  Hell, I don’t think some people got the email until both classes were sold through.  I didn’t get the Twitter notice until I was done registering.

Even though I got in, it’s still discouraging, because I know how lucky I was.  I have to remind myself not to get used to getting into these classes, or think of it as a perennial thing.  I can’t allow my mind to think I’m “completist” on these customization class figures, or else I’ll get angry when luck doesn’t go my way the next time.  It’s just a fun thing to do, David.  It’s just a fun thing to do.

I know, I know, first world problems.

Anyway, enjoy tiiiiiiiny pictures of Metalhawk and SG Ultra Magnus.  We’ll get to see bigger pictures of them this coming week.


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Out of the leftest field.

by David Willis on January 5th, 2012 on January 5, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Posted In: Blog

I have two to talk about today!  I didn’t write up a post for SG Soundwave, since he kind of bugged me.  Conceptually I’d been looking forward to him more than most, if only because I want an up-to-date pal for my SG Ravage, but his execution left me cold.  The head looked off to me, plus the idea that you have to buy his trademark headband separately sounds like an actual strawman scenario someone would cook up to malign Fun Publications.  There may be very good reasons for it, but there’s still this nasty taste in my mouth.

BERJAYAToday’s SG Treadshot reveal makes up for it.  My favorite things in every BotCon set tend to be the absolutely insane toy nobody else would have thought of or asked for in a million years.  Treadshot is this toy.  Waaaaaay back when, there was a toy in Armada called Side Swipe.  It was a very terrible-looking toy.  It remains a punchline amongst Transformers fans.  And because Hasbro loves us very much, they redecoed it not once but twice, and just barely.  They changed the blue once to maroon and once to purple.  These were not desired figures.

But the maroon one’s name was Treadshot.

I have no idea what the thought process was that led FP to creating this figure, but Shattered Glass Treadshot is colored like Armada Side Swipe but with Treadshot’s hood stripe.  It uses the Jazz mold’s alternate head which hasn’t been used yet at retail.  And it’s pretty damn glorious.  I don’t know why it exists, but now that it does I am super glad.  It is craaaaaaazy.  It makes the whole BotCon charade feel less cynical.

(Plus there’s this part not-so-deep inside of me that wants to believe that the original Universe Treadshot and this SG Treadshot are the exact same dude.  Universe Treadshot was from a random, unspecified universe, and he was packaged versus an unspecified Ultra Magnus who seemed like kind of a tool.  Plus his symbol was the same maroon as the rest of him, making it neeearly SG Decepticon red.  Their stories could easily sync up.  It would delight me to no end to find out this 2003 Universe guy was from the Shattered Glass universe all along.)


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A sweet “Transformers: The Movie”-homage poster for y’alls.

by David Willis on January 3rd, 2012 on January 3, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Posted In: Blog

BERJAYABack before Christmas I mentioned that I was attempting to save up for a boat trip with Joel Watson (and our wives I guess), and so created some posters.  First I did one for Dumbing of Age, where I learned that posting news in the week between finals and Christmas is probably the worst idea ever, and then after Christmas ended I created and teased a Shortpacked!-themed fundraiser poster.

BERJAYA

This is what the desktop wallpaper version looks like, but smaller.

This is it! A beautiful mash-up of Shortpacked! and Transformers, rendered on 11″x17″ cardstock.  There are just fifty of these, and I’ll sign and number every one.  Postage is included in the $20 price, but if you just want a cropped desktop wallpaper version and not the hardcopy, I’ll send a link to you for half that.  But wait, there’s more!  If you want to super-size your pleasure, I’ll include a character sketch with your mailed poster for an additional contribution.  Offering character sketches is usually something I reserve exclusively for convention appearances, so if that’s something you’ve been craving, this is your chance!

Also, let’s be frank, I don’t put Ronald Reagan on much stuff anymore.

So if you want to help put me on a boat, then getting this sweet, quality artwork in return isn’t that terrible a trade.  One might even consider it mutually beneficial.  And you’ll be one of, like, fifty people in the world who has it!

And, let’s face it, Joel Watson’s shoulders don’t lotion themselves.


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