Lost Light Insider cover - special Get Me Off This Ship edition!

(Not a lot to this one. I imagine this is still in the early zine days where whoever is making it is homesick or tired of being on the ship. Also, I apparently imagine "early zine days" for my fan-made tribute to a nonexistent magazine read by fictional robots appearing in a comic book.)

An Impromptu Bike Trip With Custom Downshift (A RwC Special Event)

Got on my bike and just headed north. Had an absolute blast. Here's a pictoral adventure (after the jump, under 1mb to load.)

Lost Light Insider - Madness! RwC update.

I haven't had time to archive Robots With Coffee on here like I'd like to. And I have plans for a dot com page. A dot com, I tell you.

IN THE MEANTIME!
Robots With Coffee - Tumblr (NEW! Newish.)
Robots With Coffee - Facebook
Robots With Coffee - Twitter

I'm working on something to give to a friend to take to Botcon. It'll be...something. Anyway, here's another EARLY issue of the LOST LIGHT INSIDER. Stop by these social media places and say hello.

Lost Light Insider includes this football shaped phone!

I made a few more. Then I blinked and @robotswcoffee had a bunch more followers.

Because:

.@robotswcoffee My god, an *IN-UNIVERSE* MTMTE fanzine. As a 90s TF fanzine addict/contributor this is possibly my favourite thing ever.

— James Roberts (@jroberts332) May 17, 2014

These were ending up on other people's tumblrs, by the way. I can't really do anything because I'm taking images from...well, you get the idea. But they're at least listing RwC as a source. Anyway, -paul

BONUS! Lost Light Insider subscription!

Not really. But I made another fake cover.

Seriously though, I have to go and do some other art thing not related to transforming robots.

MTMTE 29 - The Lost Light Insider

If I had all the time in the world I would make this a real fanzine:

I have too much time on my hands. Really. Sad.

But I don't, and it's sad enough that I'm such a lonely near-middle age man to make that in the first place. But it got me a surprisingly large amount of retweets. Like more than five.

EDIT:

@robotswcoffee You are a genius.

— James Roberts (@jroberts332) May 15, 2014

MTMTE 29 came out and it was great. Continues on with 28's back & forth of modern day Lost Light living & Megatron's trial, making more sense of everything. I haven't combed over every damn panel but there doesn't seem to be as many mysteries or clues BUT I AM PROBABLY WRONG so whatever, I will enjoy it on its zillionth read. Hey, there's a jump discussing this and, more importantly, Windblade. Possible Spoilers!

Silly page!

Haven't sighted any TFs lately. Swerve & Cosmos are showing up around the burbs but not in the city.

Lookie what Angry Canadian Decepticon found! I love Devastator and I am amused by KO's. The packaging art is pretty interesting. NICE FIND, JOE!

Here's a silly page. It might not be that funny. I've been busy drawin' my own stuff lately.

See, because the dinobots are old, and so are cassettes...oh, forget it. It's late.

MTMTE 28 Kinda-Review and Speculations.

There's going to be spoilers; probably none that you aren't familiar with with the preview that's online. But after the jump, I will go into some detail, and I will ALSO be speculating very, very, very wildly.

The great thing about MTMTE, or at least my opinion if you've read my rants about it here, is that there are casual parts of the conversations between robots that in fact are huge plot points. THAT'S the kind of writing I love. Hence why I love the movie Midnight Run so much.

"Season 2" of MTMTE starts this week with issue 28 and it's a nerve-wracking introduction to the new crew. I didn't feel a sense of dread or tension with issue 1 of the series, and that's with everyone on Cybertron thinking the Lost Light was dead, finishing with a bizarre warning from the future. Here, it's tense because Megatron is on the Lost Light. The story flips back and forth between a six month span of the crew on the Lost Light adjusting to whatever it was that was decided on Cybertron to do with Megatron.

It's a good issue, much in the way that issue 1 was good. I thought I'd hate the series when it first came out and though I liked the first issue, I thought it was trying to hard to set stuff up and introduce characters. Yet of course now I love it. This issue is of course similar, but with Milne's art instead of Roche's for the beginning of the series, which I think means we'll get more consistent clues from the setup issue this time. This is CRAZY talk from a CRAZY person who, after the first "season," now reads into EVERYTHING. But it's a good read and a good reintroduction to the cast.

And it's tense, and that's even before it gets foreboding. SO, the JUMP, a list of things I noticed (that are obvious and maybe not obvious?) and questions, and with a WARNING from the FUTURE: there's SPOILERS for the issue. And even WORSE, there's SPECULATION. Wild, wild, terrible speculations.

MTMTE #28 due out! Woo! Also, C2E2 recap.

HEY!

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE comes out Wednesday, April 30th! Make sure you pick that up!

I'm pretty excited. I mean, more Nautica! And the epic journey begins! Drama! Action! Jokes! Can't wait.

C2E2 was fun. This strip I picked up from Brian Shearer should give a slight recap. (Eric from Til All Are Mine took the Bumblebee pic.):

RiD #28, & a new silly page!

Haven't check in lately, but hey hopefully that gave you more time to look up Windblade #1. Good stuff!

The next step of Dawn of The Autobots starts with Robots In Disguise #28. Prime & some of the gang head back to Earth to see if they can find Alpha Trion. And Thundercracker is still there. And is doing the best thing that a Transformer has ever done in this series: he's a dog owner and a hopeful (hopeless) screenwriter.

I am not to be listened to, but: IDW, stop with the good vs. evil, Autobot vs. Decepticon. A comic about Thundercracker trying to become a writer is what I will read. And promote every day.

ANYWAY, it was probably one of the better issues. More Than Meets The Eye has attracted readers with robots chock full of personality unseen beyond Prime vs. Megatron vs. Starscream. It's a high bar and a few people, albeit with an otherwise positive response to RiD 28, wonder if John Barber is trying to amp up the 'side' characters' personalities in this comic to match MTMTE's "success" (both comics seem to have similar print sales numbers) (maybe "popularity?" "fan cred?").

It's not perfect, but it's an improvement. RiD may have meant to be the main title, and it's not bad (and better than the initial IDW TF comics), but it's definitely overshadowed by the tight plotting and character drama in MTMTE. I hope some focus remains on Thundercracker. His G1 tech specs had hinted that he questioned the Decepticon cause, but this was a potentially awesome plot that never came up in the original cartoon or comic book.

OKAY, I bought another page from Brian Shearer, from Robots In Disguise #16. More Sideswipe and Arcee, with Skywarp and Rumble in the fray. Neat, right?

Windblade #1 - Hooray!

Well, I read Windblade #1 and I really dug it. It's the first of four issues. I'm sure the creative team would like to see it become an ongoing, and there's several reasons why that should be, beyond that it's a really good comic and a fresh, exciting look for the Transformers.

-Mairghread Scott wrote a great introductory comic, not just to a miniseries, but for people who don't read the IDW Transformers comics (even if they are fans of the toys or cartoons or movies).
-Sarah Stone's art is awesome the whole way through. It will appeal to new comic readers. Maybe younger comic readers.
-It's easy to be cynical about the fan-made character gimmick and the Poochie vibe about the whole thing. The Windblade character in this book is done so well that we can now stop talking about how the fans made up the character; the character now exists in this book through the comic team.
-The supporting cast and Cybertron setting? If Optimus Prime & friends are heading back to earth in Robots In Disguise for their ongoing monthly adventures, then Windblade (the title) should be ongoing just so we can have more stories about Cybertron life.
-I don't know what sales are like digitally for the TF comics. Beating out Batman on iTunes for a day, is this impressive? After Heart Of Darkness, IDW was a little twitchy on more miniseries (hence why Chaos was integrated into the regular TF series, alternating with the Police Action story). It's hard enough to convince retailers to NOT cut indies, especially IP titles, in the middle of New52 and Marvel NOW deluges (seriously, that's how my store picked up customers; other stores wouldn't order indies for PULL LISTS for their customers after New52). If sales for a TF mini from distributor to comic store aren't strong, then there won't be an ongoing.
-But if Autocracy and Monstrocity can survive digitally (with collected reprints), why can't Windblade? DC's Batman '66 is doing this too and it seems pretty successful. Windblade beat out BATMAN (albeit on ONE digital distro channel, I don't know how popular iTunes is for comics no how Windblade did on Comixology). If that's the platform, keep hammering at it and hopefully stores will follow.
-And why not a series of miniseries? That might even be a draw for new readers: these stories have an end. It's not always "to be continued."

I didn't have much to say as far as a review. I dug it, and I dug it A LOT. I don't feel like rambling. The reviews I'm reading praise it. The skeptical knowitalls who were cynical about Windblade being a marketing gimmick that ruined their hobby? They love it and/or were pleasantly surprised and will read the whole series. And whatever minor problems I had (not saying, because I don't want to mention any spoilers even if they're minor) I realize later are because this comic was written as an introduction, not just to Windblade, but to the IDW TF comic franchise. I could ramble on a lot about my experience as a comic retailer, trying to push comics on people, trying to push TF comics even to TF fans, every little detail of what I like and didn't like, but I've rambled enough. I've already handed my copy to someone else interested in the comics but hasn't read them. Windblade is really good if you've been reading so far with amazing art and surprising depth for the fan made gimmick, it's truly a great first TF comic to pick up and start reading.

So dig in. And let them know what you think. #windblade on twitter if you can.

Fracture enjoys the comic, even if it's about an Autobot.

Robots With Coffee q&a: Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots)

The author of Darth Vader & Son, Jedi Academy, Vader's Little Princess...and INCREDIBLE CHANGE-BOTS did a q&a for Robots With Coffee. Click on the pic below to read it (on Facebook...you should be able to read it without logging in).

These comics are awesome. The coffee is good too.

G1 Headmaster Hardhead & Duros

Hardhead & Duros would be the worst cop show ever.

I was picking up my comics and hanging with one of my pals from the TFW2005.com board and I mentioned we should walk up the street to a new vintage toy shop by the comic shop. The number of vintage toy stores that I know about has doubled in the last half year. This one has a few toys, and by few I mean "a lot of He-Man figures, some other stuff, that's pretty much it," and the rest of the store space is arranged into a hipster thrift shop with a small and expensive record (vinyl) bin. Lots of young people with terrible mustaches is what I'm saying.

We found the small section of TFs on a table. Because I had seen little to mention of my few previous visits, I'm not sure what really compelled me to stop by this time other than that a TF fan hadn't been there yet, even though I thought little of the stock. This time, there was a G1 Hardhead, nearly complete (missing 1 of the guns) and in great shape. And, uh, at a pretty amazing price. I opened to cockpit, and there was Duros, the Headmaster head. SO, I bought it.

The few things I notice about Hardhead:
-He's got a hollow abdomen/butt area. That really stands out; a few thin plastic walls comprise a noticeable amount of his torso. This makes Hardhead seem like a Flimsybot (TM).
-I think I lucked out with the hinge on the armor piece that protects the tech spec area. It's perfect! Nothing broken on it.
-Duros's own face? Amazing for such a tiny robot. Puts all the city combiner faces to shame. TO SHAME!
-His legs are kinda weird looking.
-Careful with those feet. They are hard to lock into place, and then hard to push back in. I was afraid I was going to break them.

Well, not sure what else to say about this figure or the Headmaster line. I think it was a far better gimmick than the Targetmasters, though at the same time, you will always have just ONE robot as opposed to the two or three total you get with Targetmasters. The head (Duros) himself has a lot of moving limbs!

I never liked the idea that a human contortionist forms the head of the robot so that the robot itself can be active. That makes the robot very dependent on the human (or Nebulos). I've asked before, what if the human has to go to the bathroom? Gets cramps or aches while folded over? DIES? The sentient mechanical being that will generally outlive his human partner will be screwed! So I like the Japanese backstory better.

Anyway, enjoy the pics.

Duros' amazingly detailed face.

Tonight, on Airwolf. I mean, Groundwolf.

This doesn't come in a T-top?

Don't come UNHINGED. HA HA HA HA!
Seriously though, I lucked out.

Kreon wave 4!

LtoR: Cyclonus! Sandstorm! Kup! Brawn! Alpha Trion! Slipstream! Rodimus!

Slipstream was the one I wanted the most out of this batch.

There's some quality control issues with the Rodimus. You see that he's leaning over. His legs won't align straight enough for both feet pegs to stand on a brick. Kup was almost like that too. And I had a REALLY hard time putting on Brawn's helmet all the way.

Otherwise, the mission of being way cute has been accomplished.

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!

BIG McLARGEHUGE! Oh, and Scoop & The Ammonites.

I promised a review of Scoop and the MiniCons, who came in about a week and a half ago. "I've been busy" is what I'm going to say to the deep empty universe awaiting a "review" of toys.

As usual, the toys come with comics, though I'm not sure what parts of the Dark Cybertron story these are part of. The MiniCons are known in the comics as The Ammonites, a faction of another set of transforming robotic life-forms engaged in their own war, and are not called such on the packaging. But whatever.

The first thing I noticed about the combined form of the MiniCons is that, when you look at the robot from the back, the face of the figure making up the legs of the combined figure is...

...THE COMBINED FIGURE'S BUTT. Granted that piece's arms should be blocking the face, but I'm incredibly immature and will be pointing this out to EVERYONE. The figure was easy to take apart and turn its three components into regular bots. There's very little transformation on that end.

I think the helicopter figure on your right is a ladybot, based on the diamond-ish shape of its head and her high-heeled footware. I do NOT have to point this out to anyone. I have more proof and more to gain that the combined bot's butt is a face.

Never got into the TargetMasters part of the TF lore because the Headmasters were much more interesting and, despite being just as blocky, better designed. G1 figures after the movie weren't based on specific vehicles (other than the Throttlebots?) and so they looked LIKE toys, and the Targetmasters especially looked like toys holding other toys. So other than Cyclonus, here's the first actual Targetmaster redone in Generations mold. The construction vehicle looks pretty good and the transformation is pretty easy. There's not much else to say about that other than that he's holding two implausible weapons (living people who turn into guns, at least in the original G1 world; they're robots in the IDW comics, of course). The weapons can stack on top of each other, which for those of you with a dirty mind...

ANYWAY.

I was at a gathering of local TF collectors, and my pals Til All Are Mine and Collecticon were present, and good times were had. The host, Rick, who organizes Atomic Sketch, gave me this:

It's a KO tiny Fortress Maximus! It falls apart easily! The transformation would only risk further damage and lost pieces! And it's called...

Which makes me think of this wonderful MST3K bit:

Shockwave With Coffee

Okay, DARK CYBERTRON #10 (aka MTMTE 27) came out today. It was really good. I don't like how the first half of the series was paced or that it interrupted the momentum of MTMTE. I'll say more later. I also owe a review of Scoop and the Minicons, aka Ammonites, but I don't have much to say about them.

Today was all about the comic books. More Than Meets The Eye was so anticipated that I COMPLETELY forgot that Stray Bullets #41 came out today. That was one of my all-time favorite comics, and always the first on my new comics pile that I would read, and then reread, before touching the other comics. The comic had been in limbo for, I don't know, a decade? Limbo? Forgotten? I followed David Lapham's other projects and I stopped after Young Liars. He's had success with other things I'm sure but this is the one comic I wanted to see finished, and kudos to Image Comics (despite their publisher's "not real" speech) for allowing Lapham to finish off the series, with another six issue mini that started  today as well...and both were GREAT!

But I read MTMTE 27 first.

Anyway I took Shockwave around work today and ran some errands with him. IT WAS PART OF HIS PLAN! HAIL MEGATRON!

Robots With Celebrities

Coming soon: "reviews" of Scoop, the Minicons, and...Dreadwing? Dreadwind? Darkwing? Darkwind?

WindDark?

Point is, I got a few 'bots (cons) and I'll write 'em up, albeit briefly, soon.

IN THE MEANTIME!

Joseph Cranford, who played Pete Ross in Man Of Steel, tries to finish up his takeout cup while Fracture talks to him about her fanfic ideas. Her, terrible, terrible fanfic ideas.

Talk soon.

Testing: Gears' video blog comic strip

This is a test. IDW comics colorist Josh Burcham asked on Twitter @jcburcham what it might be like for some of the characters in More Than Meets The Eye to have their own blog, to see what their adventures are on the Lost Light separate from the main cast (& focus) of the story.

So I did this kinda quickly. Sorry. It's a test, AFTER THE JUMP.