Kreons! And some more Botcon pics!

Kids, I don't know what has taken me so long because I don't have anything to report that has been keeping me busy. Got a few drawings in, been hanging with my nieces, some band practices, feelin' tired from work...I don't RECALL anything that keeps me posting beyond not feeling like being on my computer that much. I haven't seen the new Transformers movie but I DID see SHARKNADO, the Rifftrax live event, with my pal Sean H. It was incredibly funny but I couldn't look at the screen for the last two full minutes, it was that bad. Thundercracker's Sharkticonado would be a much better movie.

SO. ANYWAY.

Here's what I got yesterday:


That's Highbrow and Misfire from the first "movie" Kreon wave. It's actually a bunch of G1 Headmaster/Targetmaster figures and a tiny Trypticon but whatever, why nitpick when the real purpose is to get teary eyed over the harsh level of adorableness involved with the Kreons. Highbrow came with two propellers but as far as his robot mode goes, you're only supposed to have one on his back. Probably because if you have both from his arms (not that unlike his actual G1 version), well, then you can't MOVE his arms. I like the way he looks with two propellers.

Like with any TF figure I buy, I pick 'em based on my Geewunner preference, and even then I'm probably even more selective because there's a good chunk of G1 I normally wouldn't care about...such as the Headmasters & Targetmasters. It was nice to find the G1 Hardhead but kind of embarrassing that Duros was a more fun figure than the complete Hardhead itself. Thanks to IDW, I pick up anything related to the comic story. I definitely don't have a consistent approach to my TF character purchasing, and it's not worth figuring out. I'm here to hopefully provide you with a few laughs, okay?

Please note that unless I'm suffering from eye strain (and I might be these days), Highbrow has a Decepticon signal, and Misfire an Autobot. What the what? ARE WE IN SHATTERED GLASS TERRITORY?

EDIT!

I also bought two Kreo Slipstreams, I mean Slipstrike. They were at Walgreens near where I got the Kreons above. My nieces like Legos and I figured they could have some lady Kreo figures to fight the good fight with UniKitty.

Okay, after the jump, there's an Altered News Comic! Here's a few figures I SAW at Botcon, mainly what I'm looking forward to.

silly page - Dark Cybertron! ...and SHARKTICONADO.

The altered comics page contains a minor spoiler for the Dark Cybertron series. So, it's after the JUMP.

In other news, yes, the preview to RID #28 is awesome. Thundercracker was one of the best parts of Mike Costa's Transformers run, and I was worried the current creative team was going to do something really stupid with the Decepticon left back on Earth. Instead, they did something so STUPIDLY awesome: they gave Thundercracker a dog and made him a screenwriter.

IDW did this. NOT ME.

Okay, I said I have little else to add. Been sick. Bunch of non-robots related stuff I wanted to work on is backlogged because I can't sit still long enough to draw my comics or type up stuff. I was on Twitter a lot with #sharkticonado, typing that up while laid out on the couch and watching baseball (and Frasier on netflix). Sharkticonado was fun but I should take a different approach.

ANYWAY, THE SILLY PAGE! AFTER THE JUMP!

Transformers Windblade writer Mairghread Scott interview on RwC

Yup. Mairghread Scott, a writer on some recent Transformers cartoon programs, was kind enough to do a q&a with ROBOTS WITH COFFEE. It's a Facebook page and you don't need to 'like' the page to read the interview, but if you DID like RwC on the ol' FB, I'd appreciate it.

Click on the photo (by Jason Enright, @jasonenright on twitter) to read the interview!

Okay 'bots,  you ALL want coffee butNONE of you know how to refill the pot?

I want to say that I'm proud to feature Mairghread on RwC. Make sure you give Windblade a shot! You can still get your local comic book store to order it for you!

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.

Generations...HOIST! And I interviewed Brian Shearer for Robots With Coffee.

So I mentioned the ROBOTS WITH COFFEE page. Well, BRIAN SHEARER, of whom I've referenced here in the past, did an email q&a with me for RwC. So check it out. It'll be reposted here sometime in the future. Enjoy! I'd rather you hit the like button and comment if you've got a FB account, but if not, go ahead and chime in on the comment section.

Hey, I found Hoist! My pals said they'd look for me, as they found him at the same place I'd check the day before. But now they don't have to. I passed on the FOC Thundercracker from this wave (for now) though I DO like the paint job on Thundercracker as opposed to the Flimsybot (tm) FOC Starscream. So maybe I'll see if someone wants to trade up or something.

Anyway, Hoist. He's like Trailbreaker but green, with a Hoist shaped head, and no "shield." The crane turns into a gun, and it's actually a cool weapon. I know there's 3rd party upgrades to replace one of his (and Trailbreaker's) hands buuuuuuut I'm not too concerned about it. Like the Trailbreaker comic, the one included with this toy is written by James Roberts, the writer behind IDW's More Than Meets The Eye series, and it's really good. Not sure what else to say about this, I'm happy with Trailbreaker so I'm equally happy with Hoist. I don't like the weak, hollow feel to this wave of smaller Generations, I'm not amazed by his or Trailbreaker's vehicle modes, but he's still a good stand in/homage for the G1 and I'm glad this character finally got a figure. So kudos! Just one picture, enjoy. (Whew! So many posts in such a short amount of time.)

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!

Generations IDW tribute ORION PAX

Though I'm not disappointed by Trailbreaker(cutter), the smaller size (that's the consensus) of his Generations figure compared to previous Generations/Classics lead me to decide to skip out on the remainder of the incoming figures (with a few exceptions like Hoist and Skids). There might be a trend in using less plastic or maybe just an overhaul in all upcoming designs that relies on shell-formers, fake wheels, and flimsy appendages, perhaps to reconcile these designs to something closer to the movie figures (to the point where Gen. Trailbreaker could be retooled into a new movie figure with ease and match the other figures? I'm speculating wildly.). I think it's also because many of these characters have already had Deluxe sized Classics released, so I can skip out on another Bumblebee (which looks like meh, or worse) or Megatron (which actually looks okay, but I like the FOC tank better). I already have several Classics Bumblebees and passed on having several different Starscreams and Megatrons.

Orion Pax, part of this wave of IDW inspired/designed figures, is TECHNICALLY a different character. Prior to becoming Optimus Prime, Orion was a dockworker in the G1 and in the IDW comics series he was some kind of police officer or something. He's still a red and blue truck, but more of a retro themed pickup truck. He's not a bad looking figure and the transformation is pretty good too. His axe is reminiscent of  the one he has in Fall Of Cybertron, his gun a G1 cartoon homage (is this the closest to his G1 cartoon?).

His head is TINY. Maybe it appears tiny in scale due to his tiny figure which should still be larger than the other deluxe figures. My figure's head happened to be stuck, or at least very hard to push down in position, the point where his face actually POPPED OFF in my figures. His head is on a swivel joint, and not a ball joint, and his face just slides off. Unlike other bots, his face and back of head aren't screwed together. So when his face pops off, you get this:

Creepy Baby Clear-Head. Better trademark that character name, Hasbro.

At the very least, if I don't like this figure, I can paint this weird clear head and have a NEW figure.

Like Trailbreaker, his stats on the back of his card seem off. Even the guy not yet reconstructed into Optimus Prime should have strength above "3." The figure comes with a comic (a reprint of an IDW one-shot from earlier this year) and the Orion Pax here seems to handle himself well in battle, with plenty of firepower (1 on the card) and takes a beating and survives pretty well (endurance at 4 on the card). Orion Pax wasn't Steve Rogers prior to the Super Soldier serum. In every G1 version, he's a pretty bulky and tough character. So who is putting these stats together?

Don't answer. I'll be back soon.

but WAIT! Trailcutter's tech specs! Oh noes!

G1 spec #s are represented by the glowing white dots, themselves forcefields to protect what's left
of Trailbreaker's self-esteem.

Okay, apologies to Hasbro, but I gotta point this out. Above is the tech spec from the Generations Trailbreaker, primarily the yellow line. I added the white dots because I thought something was amiss when I glanced at it. Mainly: this is one average Autobot. There is nothing special about him. All his stats range from 5 to 7.

So? Well, Trailbreaker has a forcefield, which in nearly every version of the G1 TF stories (cartoon, comics) has saved Autobot trunks time after time. See Megatron's Master Plan, when the Autobots were sent to the SUN, their ship blew up, and who kept them functional? Trailbreaker's forcefield, which I imagine was reason to give his endurance a "10" on his G1 stats. Did someone think, "well, his force field is a power, so his endurance doesn't come from his actual robot mode. Knock that down a few notches."

A superpower like a forcefield that protects your pals from an exploding ship a few miles away from the sun's devastating heat is weighed by his lack of speed, fuel consumption, and resulting insecurity. Maybe I am reading too much into these things (I am), but the Generations tech spec suggests a troop builder figure more than a specialist. And that's what makes the Autobots special: most of them aren't brave warriors (unless they're every damn Autobot in the movie universe, but whatever), they're architects and maintenance crews and theoreticians forced into battle and using their powers, despite their weaknesses, to overcome the Decepticon tyranny. They have strengths and failings. Bumblebee was a little guy who thought he had the most to prove, never a bad ass warrior who blows everything up at a moment's notice. Trailbreaker isn't an anonymous troop. He's a low key guy with self-image issues who has saved Autobot time after time with his one trick (see MTMTE).

Okay, rant over. I got the G1 #s, in white dots on the above spec, from Botch The Crab's site. That's the real reason for this post, go there and check things out. Fun.

Lucked out: found Trailcutter. I mean Trailbreaker. Well, whatever. Found 'im.

It's none of your business but I'll tell you anyway: I was buying toilet paper at Target and thought to look at the action figures. On a whim. This particular target seems way behind other chain stores of any kind to get figures. Well, kaPOW, I see the 30th anniversary Generations comic book tie in of...BUMBLEBEE! You know, the IDW "ongoing" run by Mike Costa where Bumblebee is elected leader of the Autobots and gets some body work done, giving him his adorable Bumblebee face on top of a bitchin' Camaro. (And if you don't know the Dead Milkmen, stop RIGHT NOW and get on Spotify or whatever else and start listening.) Anyway, the figure itself looked a little cheap. I pushed it aside to look at the figure hidden behind it... Trailbreaker!

Though it's super duper nice to have figure designs inspired by the recent IDW comics, I'm on a budget, and I have had enough Bumblebee figures. And I have a feeling that since it's Bumblebee, this figure will end up in another wave whether we want him or not. Trailbreaker, well, I know plenty of people excited over it and Hoist (myself, documented on this blog, duh). So I snatched him up.

He's sturdier than the recent FOC figures, which I had hoped for. There's some things you should watch out for while transforming or even posing him.

-His front wheels; his shoulder part is attached directly to the "inside" of the wheel, which is stationary. Be very careful turning it into place.

-Same thing with the shoulder ball joint connected to his arm. It feels like I'm twisting the plastic when moving his arm.

-His chest is held down to his torso with a tab. It might be the part that loosens the quickest, and then his upper body will swing backwards, like the G1 seeker jet cockpits/heads in robot mode.

I don't care for the shield bit. What the hey, I'm not too thrilled with his car mode either.

But otherwise, I do dig this figure as far as a Classics tribute to Trailbreaker goes. I was worried he'd be too much like FOC Sideswipe, what with the head (Barely) popping out of the chest and the arms locking into place. This is a pretty good Classics figure.

C2E2 - I bought a page.

Not a full report just yet, but I went to C2E2 (a comic convention) and had some fun.

And...I bought a page! A comic book page!

From Transformers: Robots in Disguise, issue 15! Brian Shearer, who inked the issue, sold it to me from his table in artist alley. (Artist Alley is always the best place to hang out at a comic convention.)

It featured Arcee and Sideswipe, two of my favorite TFs, though not because of this particular comic. They were both on the page. Actually, it's pretty action packed, and features Blitzwing, Starscream, Astrotrain, Dirge, Bumblebee, and Metalhawk. That's some Transformer star-power!

And, uh, Dirge!

And at a reasonable price!

I scanned the page! There is no color or text, so I filled in, from my memory, what I think was the dialogue.

Let me know what you think!