Complete Ark Amazon reviews

I go to Amazon to buy a birthday gift for my niece (an adorable frog humidifier, if you're curious) and what do I find? Why, it seems  Transformers: The Complete Ark  (order it today!) is up to ten reviews on Amazon.com! I do so like round numbers, so I figured I'd toot my own horn a bit. It's not quite as impressive as the whopping twenty-six five-star reviews that Allspark Almanac (order it today!) has garnered, but I'm pleased none-the-less. 

(For those keeping track, The Complete Ark has seven five-star reviews, and one each for four, three and two.  Two stars?!  Ouch, Brian, you wound me! Coloring book indeed.)

The Complete Ark was a ton of fun to put together, so I'm very gratified that so many people cared enough to review it in a public forum. I'd be very pleased to revisit this format at some time in the future; perhaps the Beast Era ...

Reviews!

All the great Amazon.com reviews of The Complete Ark and The AllSpark Almanac have put me in a review kind of mood. So, some random reviews.

First up, long-time Transformers scribe, (and personal hero of mine,) Simon Furman has recently started doing some reviews for Total Sci-Fi Online. His monthly column is called Comics Candy, and the first edition covers 28 Days Later #1, Punisher Noir #1, G.I. Joe Origins #6 (Scarlett), and several others.

Second up, I thought I'd post some reviews from around the world for the AllSpark Almanac and The Complete Ark. If you're a fan of the English language, Dave Van Domelen does an examination - you'll have to scroll down a bit. If you're more in the mood for some Japanese, you can read this for a brief overview of the Complete Ark - click next at the bottom (and scroll down) for a review of the Almanac. For a longer review of just the AllSpark Almanac, try here. Finally, friend of the blog Carlos gives us a review in Spanish for both books. Know of any reviews in other languages? Give me a holler and I'll post them here.

11/11/09 Addendum: I found a very nice Chinese review here. Warning, big images and slow loading.

1/21/10 Addendum: Here is another review in Japanese.

1/28/10 Addendum: Here is an English review of The Complete Ark

5/2/10 Addendum: Here is a third Japanese review.

Complete Ark - Five Page Preview and Review Thread

With all the attention that The AllSpark Almanac has been getting, I wanted to make sure that at least a little love was devoted to this bad boy:  Transformers: The Complete Ark, due out tomorrow, Wednesday the 26th. For those of you who have one or both of the two Ark books, you'll have a very good idea of what to expect from this collection. It's a full-sized (not digest sized as reported earlier) compilation of the two Ark books, with a little bit of extra material included as a bonus. That's 416 pages of character model goodness.  You can get it at your local comic book shop, or you can preorder it from Amazon.

For those of you who don't know, The Ark was a collection of character models from the US G1 cartoon. It spanned all four years, from More than Meets the Eye to The Rebirth. The Ark II followed in that tradition, covering all of the Japanese G1 series: Headmasters, Masterforce, Victory, Zone, Battlestars and Operation Combination. Unlike The AllSpark Almanac, the tone of the book is academic, though I tried to include interesting observations and facts that I dug up in my research when appropriate.

There was a bit of overlap between the two books, so I removed redundant pages and added in about a dozen extra, especially around the Masterforce era. I also added in a few small bits here and there when I had room, such as alternate head designs for Optimus and Devastator; some new weapons and tools for Sideswipe, Cliffjumper, Brawn and Ratchet; new angles on Motormaster, Galvatron, the Predacons, and the Sharkticon; interiors for Cosmos, the Seekers, Shouki, and Cyclonus; alternate backs for the Dinobots; and even the occasional brand new model, like another Quintesson scientist or Spike in a Space Tuxedo. There's more, but I don't want this post to devolve into a huge list.

The Complete Ark will be out tomorrow, August 26th. It's also available for preorder on Amazon.com. Here is a taste of what it's like:




I know this one isn't as new as The AllSpark Almanac, but if you pick up the collected version I'd love to hear your thoughts here.

AllSpark Almanac signing August 22 in Burbank

Bill Forster, Derrick Wyatt and I did a signing of The AllSpark Almanac today at the Emerald Knights comic book shop in Burbank today. It was a huge success! Thanks to everyone who made it out. We blew through all of the copies of The AllSpark Almanacs that were ordered by the shop and had to dip into our personal stash, though the shop will be replacing them for us. We also brought along a few advanced copies of The Complete Ark as a special bonus for those who showed up.

And it was quite a turnout. We had about fifty folks all told and had to go more than twice as long as our allotted hour. We had some fun guests, like long time friends of the blog Brian, the once-and-future reviewer of Headmasters episodes, and Lonegamer, our tireless advocate over on Allspark.com, in the classic anime photo pose. (Lots of other friends-of-the-blog, like Sam Levine and G.B. Blackrock, were also attendance! Thanks for showing up in force.)

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We were also fortunate enough to have some of the actual creators of the show show up. Irineo Maramba was here, and appropriately enough is actually in the book himself with a character model.
Overall, a good time was had by all. Many pictures were taken, here are just a few:

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Thanks again to everyone who showed up! We got to meet some terrific folks, with some terrific outfits, like the the Henchman #24 shirt (above) or the TK412 Stormtrooper outfit (where have I read that recently ... hmmm .... ) or the girl with the Decepticon symbol and flames (and the TMNT apparel - what's not to love?) I think a good time was had by all with the possible exception of the guy who arrived at 4:30 and found out that we were out of books. You guys all rock!

Complete Ark and AllSpark Almanac - that's a wrap!

In the shadow of the biggest Transformers event since ... well, since the last huge Transformers movie, I finished dotting the jays and crossing the cues on these two books and uploaded the final image files to IDW over the weekend. Obviously, the vast bulk of the work was done months and months ago, but last week I got the copy edits back and had to go in and make sure that all my quotation marks faced the right way and that I never used a dash when I meant to use a hyphen. I have to say, I'm really impressed with how IDW's stepped up its editorial process. They've always been good, now they're hitting excellence. At BotCon, we shared some pages that will be appearing in the book - I figured I'd post a few of them here, along with some impressions of each book.

Transformers: The Complete Ark (preorder it today!) is a fun book. Character models remain one of my strong loves, and this book is chock-a-block with them. If you have either volume, you've got a pretty good idea what this will be like. If you have both volumes, well, I like to think that the more compact size and the extra material I managed to cram in makes it worth your while. This is probably old news by now, but by removing material that was duplicated across both volumes, I had enough space to expand on the Masterforce section of the book. Now the Godmasters get just as much love as the Headmasters and Pretenders before them, something that always bothered me about The Ark II. I also added in a few other pages here and there, like the Decepticon's underwater headquarters as shown off at BotCon this year. Finally, there were quite a lot of pages where I had some extra model appropriate to a character, like say Motormaster's heads, so I added those in when I could. I even got the chance to speak to a few of the original series designers and get their input. But extras aside, I think that a combined volume is the ideal way to consume this material. This book puts models together from every Generation One Transformers season and show, and is as comprehensive as I could make it. I hope you enjoy it.

As fun as The Ark is, my magnum opus (that sounds vaguely like a Transformers name, doesn't it?) is definitely  The Allspark Almanac (preorder it today!). So many things made that book fun to put together. Just getting the chance to work with people like Derrick Wyatt and Marty Isenberg was an amazing experience. We were also fortunate enough that other stakeholders in the Animated universe, like Hasbro, Takara-Tomy, Titan Magazines, even the writers of Bee in the City, were willing to lend us their time to make sure that every aspect of this amazing universe got its due.

But the big difference was the availability of material. With The Ark, I had to hunt down old models, most of which required restoration. Even today, many models from G1 have eluded me, like the episode-specific fembots or the main characters from 1989 and 1990. With the Almanac, I had access to the entire Cartoon Network archives. Color or black&white, characters or props, background paintings, scripts and storyboards .... having this much material to work with was a sheer delight. It shifted the focus of the book from the acquisition of material to the disposition of material. As much as I love the b&w designs, getting to lay out color models and write up bios and character histories is much more creatively satisfying. Some of the pages we got quite experimental with, but given the whimsy that is Animated I think it all works. The decision to do the whole book from an in-universe perspective, while challenging in some spots (I'm looking at you, episode guides!), helped make this an absolute joy to write. I hope you find it as entertaining to read.

Big couple of weeks for Transformers in general and me in particular. Next week, once it's calmed down a bit, the blog will most likely return to its regularly scheduled program of Ark Addendums on Tuesdays. See you there!