Crashing THE ARK...and, uh, a lesson about shipping books, for some reason.

This ended up being a long one, so I put in a page break. Dare to read a boring tale about low cost shipping options when all I started off to do was tell you about a die-hard fan friendly book that I'm STILL on the fence over recommending.

A few months ago I was surfin' around some TF related blogs and in the back and forth on various archival type sites, I ended up looking at this book, THE COMPLETE ARK. It's by Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster, in that they compiled animation models and various background sketches from the G1 cartoon(s) provided by professionals behind the scenes (most notably Bob Budiansky) and hardcore fans.

It was published by IDW, the current licenseholder to the TF comics. This particular collection is made up of two "complete" books published earlier, the first dedicated to the G1 cartoon and its animated movie, the 2nd dedicated to the various Japanese cartoons that carried on the G1 legacy (only recently released in the US on DVD). It came out in 2010 yet everyone seems to be out of it. When I saw it on Amazon, it was $30 from one of their sellers. Well, I figured why not, and bought it. Like the More Than Meets The Eye series by Dreamwave (not to be confused with the current awesome comics series by IDW), it's hard to find at its cover price. The Dreamwave MTMTE books collected bios (and drawings) of the TF G1 characters as written and drawn by the DW staff, and since G1 characters had been pretty much the same in most versions of the G1 story up until IDW, I figured it was a pretty good reference to have (of which I own the first collection and the comics that make up the 2nd collection).

Anyway, I saw this "Complete Ark," it was under $30, the 1st book was over $100, so why not. I've mentioned before I've been having more fun looking up TF art and tech specs, this should be interesting and who knows if I will get a chance to see this at close to cover price provided I don't see it at a major comics convention (that I'll pay $30 to get into, you know?).