Odds n ends. Just plain odd.

Though I'll probably trip and fall on them in mass quantities at big box stores without even looking, I preordered SWERVE and TAILGATE with my pal Eric from Til All Are Mine, through Big Bad Toy Store. No hurry.

UPDATE! My Hasbro Toy Shop order of Scoop & the Minicons has shipped! According to an email HTS just sent me! With tracking #s that I don't understand what service they belong to! But I give it about a week. So, keep those fingers crossed. Yo.

MORE THAN MEETS THE NEWS: More Than Meets The Eye Vol. 1 is, as of this moment (Feb. 27th) and until the end of the day possibly, $3.99 on Comixology. That's the "Death Of Optimus Prime" 1 shot and issues 1-3 of this awesome comics series. BUZZER! It is back to $7.99, which is still a good price.

Speaking of MTMTE, look to your right and you'll see MTMTE movie taglines. James Roberts had a contest on Twitter for movie poster taglines if MTMTE ever got a movie...and I submitted 117 lines. And they're terrible. Enjoy!

Okay, that's it for now. Looking for Generations Skids for a few friends, so if you got one and it's not a billion dollars then hit me up and I'll see if I can connect you, yo.

Oh, I'll have some ROBOTS WITH COFFEE news soon. It'll be fun.

Enjoy these too (click on them to see them at their original size):

My idea for a Roguelike game: SWERVE-QUEST!

Okay, bear with me. I was thinking about the Rogue game today. If you don't know, it's a simple computer game from the 1980's that has been modded and redone a billion times or so. Why look, here's a Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)

So think D&D style, turn-based with strategy involving weapons and magic spells, upgradable hit points, and letters in the alphabet to signify enemies.

ANYWAY, I thought, what if the main character were SWERVE from More Than Meets The Eye?

What if it were up to him to save the day?

I don't know programming so I don't know where to start. I did see a "how to code a roguelike game" page so I know there's info out there...but it's not as easy as just copying the code and replacing "dragon" with "Seacon" or something like that. And I'd reduce the number of items (like curing potions with various types of Energon) and cut out things like magic.

So I wrote down some ideas. Loose plot, who the enemies are, what kinds of weapons, things like that. It's all after the jump here; there are More Than Meets The Eye SPOILERS even though I take liberties with how things happen for this game idea.

IDW's More Than Meets The Eye series - seeds and payoffs.

MAJOR EDIT: I duplicated the "Seeds & Payoff" to its own page. And I added issue #22. All future updates will be on that page. Thanks.

Continuing and concluding with my ranting and praise of MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE!

So here's the meat of what I'm getting at: More Than Meets The Eye is either a comic where some jokes were later turned into plot points because, "Oh yeah, I said THIS about THAT back then, maybe I can squeeze it in" OR James Roberts planted some seeds in what must have been some amazingly descriptive scripts, because artists Alex Milne (and Nick Roche, and many others) put these things right on the page and mind-blown fans have gone back and reread the book several times, only to wonder how on Cybertron they missed it the first time. (It's the latter.)

Transformer comics are not known for their subtlety. Transformers, the brand and the characters, are not known for subtlety. But these moments in the book that you giggle at, or just pass over with your eyeballs while wondering when they're going to address a lurking evil in their midst, pay off out of almost nowhere; Suddenly you GASP because their Darkest Hour is at hand, and what Lights it and saves the day was that gag you found so funny a dozen issues ago.

The plot, again: Rodimus, thinking the empty Matrix is a map, grabs a crew of disillusioned Autobots and heads into space to find the Circle Of Light, a city full of pious religious robots who moved away from Cybertron to live in peace from the war, yet still ready to defend themselves in bad-ass ways. They pick up some old (and not previously-seen) friends along the way, and run into some trouble here and there. It's the journey, not the destination for this book.

You already know from the previous posts that I REALLY like this comic book. After issue reading issue #21, where many threads were tied up (but not all resolved, of course) I have to say I'm really impressed. It's not a perfect book; there are inclusions of characters who happen to have toys being released shortly afterward (mostly in the return of the Spotlight books) and so you have to wonder if some focus had to be diverted from the planned plot to include, say, Metroplex and the Titans every so often. There's also a flashback narrative where one wonders if it was mandated by the corporate property owners to include a story about Optimus Prime, considering that he is currently out of the regular narrative in both ongoing titles (Robots In Disguise being the other)...but what is great that this narrative is in fact a story ABOUT a narrative. And the inclusion of the Titans (Metroplex sized characters, now available at Toys R Us) isn't jarring in the least bit. "Hey everyone, it's POOCHIE, the dog! He's a 1/3rd Fonzarrelli!" You know what I mean.

What follows after a jump: a summary, a few problems I have with the book, and a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF SPOILERS, because I went through page by page and tried to pick out every seed planted and where it pays off, and POSSIBLE seeds for...future issues! This last bit will be only good if you've read the comic.

JOIN ME!

More Than Meets The Eye and how it stands out from other TF comics

Here's another rambler, gushing about the MTMTE series.

I promised a "review" of More Than Meets The Eye. But did I review the series in the LAST post? I just wanted to post a quick update that I was going to write something long and tangenty about the series, and instead I wrote something long and tangently basically praising the series as something special to the Transformers comics and storytelling brand. Because it's a BRAND, and as a BRAND stories about it are going to have limitations. They're going to have editors and copyright holders standing over them saying "no, you can't do that, we have toys to make" and whathaveyou. And that goes for REGULAR superhero comics too, because if you know anything about the history of comic book publishing and the REGULAR content that drives the industry, superhero comics done by committee represent BRANDS just as much as constantly re-booted stories about iconic fictional robots do.

Custom idea. Coming soon: MTMTE review.

Thinking about doing a custom. The little medical drone from More Than Meets The Eye. Speaking of which, make the jump here and read my blatherings about the comic book.

I got another comics page! And some randomness, like me clearing out a few TFs.

NOTE! MINOR COMIC BOOK RELATED SPOILERS AHEAD! Er, BELOW! Whatever, just read the post. There will be a jump, so strap yourself in.

Latest acquisition. Penciled by Alex Milne, inked by
Brian Shearer, written by John Roberts,
published by IDW.

CHECK IT OUT! I got another page from More Than Meets The Eye from Brian Shearer. I was fortunate to meet him at C2E2 and he was selling his pages from various IDW books he worked on, including both G1 Transformers titles (Robots In Disguise and More Than Meets The Eye). You may have seen a comics page with some new dialogue inserted in; that page is from Robots In Disguise. I really dug that page as it features Sideswipe and Arcee (and some whazzizwhozziz characters like Bumblebee and Starscream or whoever), in a moment when they fight back against the Decepticons (after I thought Sideswipe to be dead! nooooo!). I saw it in Brian's portfolio and I snapped it up immediately. But Brian wasn't done taking my money, as he had also inked half of MTMTE #12, which also featured a few of my favorite sequences in the comic's run, between Cyclonus and Tailgate. And lo and behold, he had THOSE pages, reasonably priced as well! (Pages I picked up? Not part of the linked preview, sorry.) They were sweet, sad, and funny moments in a comic about robots fighting each other, and whooptie do for me, I have them.

So yeah, MTMTE #18, the 2nd issue in a multipart epic which starts off with the most epic Transformers character EVER, SWERVE! I realized that hey, I have no pages from this series with Swerve in them. I mean, I'm lucky to have any at all, but still, why not any with the true hero of both comic series?

Well, this page has Swerve, armed & dangerous. The weapon is hilarious as is the last panel of the page. Please read the preview. I dropped Brian a line to see if he had this page lying around. He did. I sold some comic books (not MTMTE) as well as some action figures (non-Transformers!) to get the funds. The page arrived last week and I took a pic with my phone (and lightened up the brightness & contrast when I got home).

Brian's a great guy and is working on a few projects of his own. Please check out his site and see what other pages he has for sale on eBay.

My interest in the hobby has shifted from completing the G1 line, pre-animated movie, or getting every version of certain favorite characters. I've been reducing my collection to fit in a manageable space and checking out interesting things like the graphics from G1 boxes to, say, getting original pages from a comic book or cels from the G1 cartoon**. I managed to find "The Ark" book that was published by IDW, and maybe I'll review that soon. If you like the artists from these comics series, the prices for these pages aren't off the scale compared to pages from mainstream artists who work on DC and Marvel or have their own properties they are publishing or are having published. In any case, pages are one of a kind (or two, as these are just Brian's inks over a reproduction of Milne's blue pencils), make great art, and buying them directly from the artist helps them immensely. These were a deal (trust me, my budget for both the comics and TF hobby are nonexistent these days, I had to let go of a few things in the collection for this and some of the other recent acquisitions) so if you're interested in this part of the hobby, it's not out of your reach. I mean, people are spending $80+ on Masterpiece Acid Storm, right? Why not buy a page instead?

RANDOM THOUGHTS after the jump!

I can get behind another Generations (legends) Swerve. And SKIDS.

So I'm watching the Botcon news and pics trickle in.

After the GDO Generations Swerve (a slight retool of Kup), Hasbro is releasing a Legends figure that comes with...some tiny robot, I don't care. It looks like his More Than Meets The Eye comic counterpart, and though I tried my own hand at producing a similar figure, this looks really good, even for a Legends. And hopefully there's some smirk detail in that face. I will probably relinquish my GDO Swerve as a result. (Among the pictured is a similar sized Cosmos; I have a scout or legends sized figure from a Universe series many years ago, and that's adorable on its own.) I am glad I did not order the iGear Swerve; they dropped the ball by not molding his head after the MTMTE design.

The other item of interest are the Generation Deluxes, including (drumroll) Skids! Pictured are blah blah blah blah, I just care about Skids. You can click on that link and see Goldbug or whatever they're calling him, and Waspinator, which will be treated like a big deal. Skids also looks a lot like his MTMTE characterization. This will save me massive trouble of making my own Skids, based off a really great Radicon I saw, which used RTS Jazz, Generations Perceptor, and Revenge Of The Fallen Skids or Mudflap, which are three separate toys, which would be an expensive custom.

A Skids deluxe would pretty much complete the 1984/1985 standard set of Autobot cars and Decepticon jets, not counting minibots. Personally, that's awesome, because I had to make a choice with space issues and I chose the Classics line. I'll have a few G1 keepers (Constructicons, Insecticons, Soundwave & tapes, Dinobots, Grapple and Inferno, minibots) but it looks like I'll have a complete collection of G1 homages... is it strange I'd rather have the new versions of the classic G1 characters?

There's plenty other announcements but these are the two from Hasbro I'll be looking out for. I see a repaint of Blitzwing as DoubleDealer but...meh. You can visit TFW2005 or Seibertron for their up to the minute Botcon announcements. I'm not really one to parrot every rumor in the rumormill because there will be an official announcement, and all I'd be doing is trying to get excited about things someone could manufacture at any time for me to BUY. I will not be entrapped by this consumerist nightmare! And I will use "parrot" as a verb!

Another Swerve custom, and a BONUS easy custom!

Here's another custom. You may have already seen my "More Than Meets The Eye" Swerve. But I also painted the face of the G1 Swerve minicar to try to match his comic book counterpart.