more silly...drawing!

Inactivity. Here's some drawings.

Haven't bought much or have much to report. Hasbro NOT 3RD PARTY combiner stuff, even for mockups, look great. Hooray!

Been drawing some goofy stuff. Here's a few!

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.

A piece of Pipes' mind - another Botcon recap.

Hey, been a little busy. Here's some fun I had at Botcon. The IDW people were obviously wonderful.

More BOTCON day 1 / a quick MTMTE 30 theory.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE! #30! SPOILERS! THEORIES! SPOILER THEORIES! After the jump!

Botcon day 1

I'm meeting new people!

I AM PASSING THIS AROUND!

The Lost Light Insider: Botcon Edition!

Generations Legends - Swerve, Tailgate, Cosmos!

So I picked up a figures! And here they are!

Tailgate! And though it's awesome to have another figure from More Than Meets The Eye, this is my least favorite of the three. It's because of the tabs on his shoulders, the tabs that connect to make the hood of the car. These tabs will bump into the windshield/shellformer back of the car. Is the windshield/back part supposed to be moved further down (such as when he's in car mode)? Because you can move his arms back much with the tabs clashing into it.

Cosmos is a great figure. I figured the previous (Universe) toy would have been acceptable and was going to skip it, but a lot of people who bought it gushed about it, so when I saw it I picked it up. Well, gotta say, it's pretty amazing. You might have trouble pulling the head back out when you go from UFO to robot mode. Payload is a really cute companion too.

SWERVE! Worth it just for the smile. Best package art in TF history. Well, I have a bias. But I love the figure. I think most fans will dig Cosmos but I think Swerve is the best figure of the bunch and of this size (again, BIAS). Flanker is neat, especially when it converts into a weapon. However, fans will be disappointed that Hasbro didn't make a My First Blaster or drink tray. Why let a 3rd party beat you to it?
So just slightly disappointed with Tailgate; I can see kids (yes, toys are for KIDS, right?) getting frustrated and breaking it. I can see ME breaking it because I'm clumsy.

The little guys that come with these? Flanker is the most impressive as a TF AND weapon, Payload is probably the cutest 'bot, and Groundbuster...um...he looks like a pooper scooper when held by another figure.

Okay, got some work to do. Hadn't written in a while. I'm going to Botcon (as stated earlier) and I'm going to have a small 8 page Lost Light Insider with me. Woo!

Head west, young man, that's the place to be.

Going to Botcon! Me! Going to Botcon!

Other news:
-Picked up Swerve, Cosmos, & Tailgate. Pics soonish.
-All the support & love for the Lost Light Insider: thanks everyone. And if YOU'RE at Botcon, I'll have something special for you there. And it will be shared here.

Okay, that's it.

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.