…I got nothin’.
If your store ordered any and you’ve got $125 to drop, Diamond is shipping the Last Stand of the Wreckers Red Label edition to shops, but that’s the only Transformers book shipping this week. But don’t worry, it looks like August 28th is going to hit like a sledgehammer with MTMTE, ReGeneration One, and Beast Hunters all out on the same week. Spend this week preparing your Feels!
Over on Tumblr, our own forum-member Serika Izumi has posted readable images of the MTMTE #20 iTunes preview, which includes the first three pages of the comic. Get on over there and take a look!
Have you seen the sweet “Wreck And Rule” and Maccadams tees in this summer’s convention pics but couldn’t make it to a con to pick one up? Now you can finally get them online!
The woman behind the tees, Aimee (@ladyofwreck on Twitter and co-host of the Underbase podcast), has opened an Etsy shop to make these shirts available to everyone! These are printed on super-soft, 100% cotton American Apparel shirts and will quickly become your favorite tees – trust me, I have one! Click the logo below to get your own!
(Full Disclosure: …Actually, this was in no way solicited or paid for, I just think this is a great project and felt it deserved a plug.)
This morning the Collectors’ Club Twitter account shared some more news on the upcoming Subscription Service toys, specifically the turnaround art for Chromedome – designed by none other than fan favorite Nick Roche! They also revealed that one other toy for next year’s Subscription Service will have a Roche-designed head sculpt. Does this mean another MTMTE character is in the works for the FSS? Share your baseless speculation in the comments!
For those of you who’re Kindle-inclined, Amazon has More Than Meets The Eye Volume 1 and Volume 2 on sale for $3.99 each right now. There’s nothing saying how long this sale will last, and Barnes & Noble and comiXology still have it listed for their usual prices, so if you want these digitally, have a Kindle or something with the Kindle app, and for some reason haven’t picked them up yet, here’s your chance to get a deal!
So the official Transformers: Bot Shots website updated, and the biggest surprise is a redeco of Stormrazor Skystalker named Buzzclaw – who is not only an obvious homage to the Beast Wars Fuzor of the same name, but a brand-new female Transformer! Well… “brand new,” it turns out. Her character bio is in fact Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters Ripclaw’s on-package bio with the name changed out. Well, uh, maybe they’re sisters? They do have the same last name…
The website update also brings us Hydrax, another new character… whose bio is just Beast Hunters Lazerback’s with the name swapped out. Well, that’s an annoying trend – but not as annoying as the fact Bot Shots seems to be kaput in the United States, making the prospects of finding either of them incredibly slim.
(oh and there’s also new Bot Shot versions of Prowl, Smokescreen, Soundwave, and Strafe, but pfft, they aren’t TINY ROBOT DRAGONS)
Over on the Transformers Collectors’ Club Twitter account, they’ve announced three of the toys for the “2.0” version* series of Subscription Service figures:
I’m not sure who’s “so out of left field” there – They’ve done two of those characters already, if possibly in different universes, and everybody loves Chromedome right now (and then they die tragically). But there you have it. They also confirmed that Chromedome will have a new head.
UPDATE: The site has been updated with a picture of Treadshot’s head, which uses Warpath’s sculpt with an Action Master Treadshot deco. <pedant> Updated Action Masters are also not especially out of left field.</pedant>
*C’mon, guys, do you even computer?
There are no individual-issue Transformers books out this week, but hitting stores is the TPB collection of the Spotlight one-shots, Spotlight: Megatron, Spotlight: Orion Pax, Spotlight: Bumblebee, Spotlight: Thundercracker, and Spotlight: Hoist, under the title of “Dark Prelude”.
Also in stores this week is Jim Sorenson’s Transformers 30th Anniversary Collection, a massive hardcover looking back at 30 years of Transformers comics. At $50 this might be one for the Christmas wish-list, but it’s a beautiful collection that’s well worth having.
Okay, I try to keep the horn-tooting to a minimum, but since we’re just warming things up here I’d like to let everyone know that we now have a little annex over on Tumblr, iaconunderground.tumblr.com. In addition to links to our new posts, I (and whatever other staffers get involved) will be reblogging other fun Transformers-related things, from fanart to official art to news…art. If you do that whole Tumblr thing give us a follow – we follow back!
Sitting on my desk is a lanyard and a memo pad.
The lanyard, purchased from Five Below is green and has multi colored robots covering it. The memo pad contains a planning list of items to purchase. Both are in anticipation of my upcoming trip to the Transformers convention Charticon (combining Charlotte North Carolina and Sharkticon). Inside my head is the list of things to have ready for when I leave out Friday morning.
My sling backpack waits hanging on my closet doorknob with a fresh bottle of Germ X attached (because germs are everywhere), waiting to be worn while walking around the convention floor for storage of those items on the memo pad list and any instabuys as well. My 3DS sits on my nightstand receiving the newest system update, which will be important over the weekend. The new update updates SpotPass, which will be necessary as conventions provide ample SpotPass opportunities and I don’t want to miss out on any potential content.
I guess everybody’s 3DS will be having their own con.
My cars oil was changed yesterday (a must for any road trip) as well as the safety system firmware was updated (because… safety). Aside from packing and some last minute printing (backup mapquest, confirmation materials, etc), all there is now is the wait.
Damn the wait.
The last few days is like Christmas Eve night when you’re 7. Sitting, waiting, hoping the time will pass and the culmination of all this waiting will show and all will be right with the world for a few days.
Anticipation is a killer.
A con is a great thing, you get to spend a few days immersed in your fandom with your fandom friends. Checking out the panels. Scouring the dealer room for things you’ve been wanting and things you’d want. Talking to the guests and getting to know them more as a person than just a contributor. Seeing old friends and making new ones. Those group outings where everybody wants pizza and the place doesn’t have enough seating. That trip to a local store where you find that Generations Sandstorm (hoping) and your friend buys antacids (the pizza was spicy). The blur of a few days that will be over before you know it and the next week is filled with slight moping from post con depression.
Man, post con depression. Post con depression saddled with that sense of ‘well, what do I do now’ that follows after the con is over and all that waiting is over.
Then you wait for the next one.