Incoherent Auto Assembly 2010 Ramblings

Well, wow.  That was... intense.

A few months ago, Billy Edwards from Auto Assembly contacted me and asked me if I'd be interested in donating anything to their charity auction.  Since I'm a big fan of a: charity and b: small conventions, I said sure, and Bill and I scrounged up some of the original artwork that he had drawn up for the AllSpark Almanac II.  In the end we wound up donating three pieces, headshots of Overlord, Impactor, and Sunstreaker & Sideswipe.  I thought that was the end of it.

A few weeks later, they wrote back to us and asked us if we'd be interested in making some sort of flier for the convention book / CD-ROM, so we said sure.  Bill drew up this piece, and they seemed very taken with it, and we thought THAT was the end of it.

Not too long after that, Billy starts asking me what my availability is for the weekend of Auto Assembly.  As it turns out, I was free, but I couldn't quite believe that they'd seriously consider flying me out.  I mean, sure, the books I write are pretty awesome, but even still, it's a long and expensive way from Los Angeles, California to Birmingham, England.  Nevertheless, a few days later, I get an email from Steve Mapes from the Transformers at the Moon website.  He asks me if I'd like to come over.  I replied that I'd be thrilled, but added the caveat that all the stuff donated so far had really been more Bill's doing than mine.  After all, he's the artist, I'm the writer.  (Though, as has been frequently noted, there IS some crossover both ways.)  Steve asks if we'd BOTH like to come over, and in pretty short order, we gave him a definite yes. It seems that he and his brother really want us to come out, and are sponsoring us above and apart from the regular convention.  I can't think of a nicer compliment anyone could give to us than that. 

We wanted to scare up some books to bring with us, but our stock is sadly depleted and it didn't look like we'd have much luck getting them before the convention.   Instead, we decided to make a few prints of various pages from and inspired by the Almanacs.  We brought 10 each of 7 different prints, including Venus, Garbage-O's, the map of the milky way, and four wanted posters based on our work on alt2day.com. 

There was also a little communication flub about what we should be doing.  I misinterpret something Billy (or maybe Steve and Dave) wrote to me as them asking for a presentation, rather than a traditional Q&A.  When I mention that I have quite a lot of rare artwork that might be interesting, they practically began salivating and in short order it was determined that I'd be giving a brief show before the Q&A began.  Unfortunately, I was super busy, so I only had time to scan in the pieces I was considering and not put it all together in context.

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Cut to Wednesday morning, 5:00 AM.  We've got an 8:30 flight, and it's actually pretty brutal to get to the airport in LA from the valley.  The alarm blares and I wearily get out of bed.  This will be a recurring theme over the course of the next few days.  I stagger into the shower, get my last minute toiletries stowed away and stumble down to the curb to wait for Bill.  The plan is this: Bill will swing by in his motorcycle, load his stuff into my suitcase, then use my car to drop me off at the bus station.  He'll then return to my place, drop off the car, pick up his bike, and ride to the airport where he can park for free because it's a motorcycle.  It sounds overly complicated but it's actually a LOT cheaper than taking a cab or a shuttle bus would be, and doesn't add all that much time to our trip.  Thankfully, everything works out fine and the security lines are pretty minor, what with it being 6:30 AM when we get there.  (I beat Bill to the airport by about 20 minutes, find a place to charge up my laptop, and get to work on that presentation.)

The first leg: Los Angeles, CA to Philadelphia, PA.  Bill and I are seated across the aisle from each other, which works out well for us.  We can talk, but we each get legroom too.  There's no movie on this flight... lame!  Although I have a 12 volt adapter, this plane doesn't support it and I've soon killed my battery watching Mad Men.  I also read some essays by Arthur C. Clark about the future.  Since it was published in the early 70s, it's interesting to see what he got right (men will access their newspapers via computer screen, only printing out hardcopies of stories that they are interested in, and personalizing the news to their individual tastes) and what he got wrong (by the year 2000, there will have been a child born on the moon.)  Five and a half hours later, we land.

The second leg: Philadelpha, PA to Zurich, Switzerland.  This is a seven and a half hour flight, and it turns out there are three movies, two of which star Queen Latifah.  Ugh.  The middle movie is Date Night, so at least I get that out of the way.  I get very little sleep on the plane.  Fortunately, I charged up my battery a bit in Philadelphia so I watch some more of my own programs.  In Zurich, we exit the secure area, going through immigration in about 2 minutes, and enjoy some brief shopping.  I get some Swiss cheese, Bill gets some Swiss chocolate.  Ultimately, he eats at a Starbucks and they're amazed when he orders two rolls for himself.

The final leg: Zurich, Switzerland to Birmingham, England.  This is a short little flight, uneventful except for the tasty chocolate they give us on disembarkation.  We stand on the line for immigration, which is fairly short and also fairly slow, but within half an hour we're through.  The train station is easy to find, and some 20 minutes later we're walking onto the streets of Birmingham at about 2:00 PM, Thursday.  Yes, with the 8 hour time zone difference we've lost more than a day from when we started.  Ah, well. 

We check into our shared room, shower off the road, relax in the hotel room for a bit and then Bill takes a nap and I head down to the hotel bar with my book.  No time for reading, though, there's a pod of nerds in the bar which I quickly attach myself to. Rather than making a big deal about who I am, I just casually join in the conversation with David Wallace aka Kal-El Prime, Andy Millman aka CobraCommanderTFW, and some other folks that I didn't yet know but would soon come to do so.   They twigged to my presence soon enough when Andy gave me his (AWESOME) business card and I gave him mine.  Then there was some sheepishness.

I called up to the room around 6 and collected Bill for dinner.  We bumped into the incomprable Mr. Wyatt and the three of us had a nice Indian dinner.  Well... the service was pretty slow, actually, but the food was tasty.  Great conversation was had, though sadly Derrick forgot his camera and so couldn't document our splendid feast.  After that, not too much more.  A few more bar shenanigans, but by midnight or so I was asleep.

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Friday comes, and Bill and I enjoy a very nice English style breakfast buffet.  I enjoy the thick English bacon, a banger, some packaged cheese, some peeled grapefruit, some orange juice, tea, hash browns, toasted whole-wheat bread, beans, and fried eggs.  It's all very nice.  There's fried bread, but it's a bit too much for me.

We've got several hours before the convention starts, so we spend about 4 hours walking around Birmingham.  We see a nice statue of Lord Nelson, an architecturally interesting building that turns out to be an electronics store, we meet a nice policeman who's driven from San Francisco to San Diego with a stop in LA on the way, we walk though a park / tiny graveyard, find an outdoor market, and enjoy one of the malls.  It's not a lot, but at least we got out of the convention hall for a bit.

My friend Bish arrives at around 2:00 or so, so we collect him and enjoy some lunch.  We then rest up for a bit in the bar, which is getting more and more crowded as things progress, before finally it's 5:00 and we make our way to the convention hall.  Apparently most of the dealers are still setting up, so the dealers and the guest area is roped off.  Really, not too much going on Friday night.  At least, nothing official.  We wind up going out to dinner with HdE and Sprite from the IDW boards and her sister Janna after the fire alarm drives us out.  Sadly, we miss out on Bish, who's nowhere to be seen.   Dinner is at Wetherspoons, and is decently tasty English cuisine.

We come back, link up with Bish and head back to the bar as the convention closes for the evening.  NOW things are starting to happen.  There's a gentleman dressed as Matt Smith's Doctor, complete with fez.  If you don't know, you should: fezzes are cool!  It turns out that his name is Phil Scott, and Phil Scott is cool!  (Also in the picture is the lovely and talented Isa Shizzle-Abulizzle, who would rock the house the next day with her Megatron... but I'm getting ahead of myself.)  The fez got passed around a bit, and it wound up on my head where it stayed for quite a while before I passed it off to Janna.

As the evening wore on, I got to spend some time talking to folks like Nick Roche, who I'd met a few times before.  It never gets old, though, he's one of the sharpest guys I know.  He was kind enough to introduce me to James Roberts, who I'd corresponded with a bit but had yet to meet in person.  He, too, is a lovely fellow.  But the highlight of my evening was getting the chance to spend three or four hours chatting with Simon Furman, one of my heroes, first at the bar, then over by Bill and Bish in the fairly comfortable chairs they had set out for us.  I first met Simon at BotCon 1997, though I was just a young kid then and didn't have too much to say to him beyond 'could you sign my books, please?'  Since then I've been fortunate enough to have a few dinners with him at various BotCons where we were both guests of IDW, but this was by far the longest we'd conversed.  There's no feeling quite like sitting down for a beer (or three) with one of the people whose work has helped shape your life, especially when that person has as much class as Mr. Furman does.  I get to bed at around 3:00 maybe.

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Saturday, the REAL fun begins!  Most of the guests, excepting voice actors, get down by about 10:00.  (Bill and I are a few minutes late, thanks to breakfast with colorist Kris Carter, but we quickly get set up and begin to sign our share of the autographs.)  Opening ceremonies are set to begin at around 10:30 or so, but don't kick off till maybe 11:30.  Once they do, though, they're a lot of fun.  Each of us walks into the room with some appropriate theme music, culled from both Transformers (such as the BW theme song for Garry Chalk or the Animated theme for Derrick) and popular culture (What's New, Pussycat for Kat Nicholson... see what they did there?) Bill and I walk in to the strains of Lion's The Transformers theme music, which is pretty flattering.  You can't quite see it on the video, but I stumble over the 'E' in TRANSFORMERS, which Bill then attempts to pick up only to cause more damage.  Ah, well.

After a very warm welcome from Birmingham, we go back to our table and proceed to sign a good number of books.  We also get quite a lot of interest in our prints, which is gratifying.  They were a good idea; they gave something for people to look at and converse about, as well as providing an opportunity for something unique to get our signatures on.  We even brought free black & white Burger Bot placemats for folks on a budget.  Billy had sat me next to Simon when he found out how much I admired him, so I got to chat off and on with him throughout the con.

Plenty of people came up to us and introduced themselves, which was really nice.  I know that people like the books, I hear that often enough online, but it's different to shake someone's hand and hear it in person.  Around 2:00, we were all getting pretty hungry, so the con staff came around and took some orders for us.  We got some pretty dinky ham sandwiches.  The shame of it was, there were some lovely burgers on the menu that looked terrific! Ah, well, maybe next year.

The cosplay was terrific.  Megatron, Optimus, Hot Rod (x2), Perceptor, Smokescreen, Grimlock and the Dinobots, Verity... we had some real winner costumes.

5:30 rolls around too soon and we head upstairs to rest for a bit.  I finish up the last of the presentation (thanks to David Mapes, who lends me a power adapter for my laptop) and then Bill, Bish and I head out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner.  The veal was terrific!

We get back in time for the script reading, which is of course hilarious.  Given the presence of Scott and Garry, Simon went with a Beast Wars plotline.  Some highlights included Andrea Tang's Blackarachnia, Simon William's Wheelie, and Nick Roche's Beast Wars Megatron... yeeeeeeeeees!  I duck out to give the Mapes bros a sneak preview of the presentation and go through some TV Magazines with them, looking for some specific lucky draw material.  Alas, I don't have the material in question.  Still, I get back in time to see Garry Chalk on the guitar, which is great.

Following this is the karaoke night.  Foolishly, I'd agreed to sing backup vocals on Transformers: Evo, the Japanese version of the Animated theme song. Chris Evans, who's the real talent here, put our names in, though it seemed to take forever for them to come up.  I went to the bar to wait it out, chatting with Chris McFeely and Simon Furman, when the call came.  I bolted out of my seat and ran down the hall, apparently knocking someone over. (Whoops, sorry!  Excited, is all.)  Fortuantely, Chris Evans, the bloke I'm singing with, is very talented and carries the song.  I, however, contribute by getting the crowd good and riled up with my enthusiasm. 



BTW, you'll notice that the fez has found its way back to me.  No matter how many times I gave it away, it always seemed to find its way back to my head.  Ah, well, fezzes are cool!

The evening goes on and on, and by about 3:00 AM we head back upstairs... only to wind up talking for a couple of hours as one tends to do when one gets riled up.  Bill, Bish and I covered a wide range of subjects, from BSG to philosophy to religion to, perhaps unsurprisingly, Transformers.  We go to bed as the sun starts to rise.

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Three hours later, we awaken and somehow manage to get to breakfast.  It's Sunday now, and we're all tired but still excited.  Our presentation is a hit, and is covered in detail over at TFW2005.  As a footnote, I got an email from Hasbro asking me if I could provide them this material for their archives, which made me feel pretty proud.  We get asked some great questions, including how we feel about our work getting dissected by the wiki (we love it) and what our thoughts are on Alignment (we declined to comment, on the basis that authorial intent shouldn't play much of a part in the debate on these things.)   I think we wound up running just a little bit long, which is far preferable to running out of questions and going short. 

The next big event (for us) is part two of the charity auction.  The aforementioned original artwork Bill donated was auctioned off by Garry chalk.  The first piece, Overlord, raised an impressive 40 pounds for charity.  The next, Impactor, generated 80 pounds despite being on a lesser grade of paper.  The final one, the pair of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, managed to generated an amazing 150 pounds for charity.  My word, that's 270 pounds.  Bill recorded the last auction, and though you can't see much, you can hear the excitement in the crowd.

As 5:30 rolls around and the convention comes to a close, we head upstairs to an interview with Chris McFeely.  Obviously, we'd been very keen to spend some time with the gentleman who spent 11 days decoding all the hidden messages in The AllSpark Almanac II, and I think the interview went fairly well considering how exhausted we were.  Hopefully you'll see that up soon.

We said goodbye to Bish, who had to head back to his real life, and then went to dinner with Steve and David Mapes.  By this time, we were getting accustomed to the accents and we had a very nice conversation with them, once again fairly far-ranging.  They're great guys, and I hope to see them again in Pasadena this year if they can make it out for BotCon.

Finally, it's back up to (you guessed it) the hotel bar.  The fez has made it back to me, and I am unable to give it back to its original owner.  Phil Scott thanks me for turning his gag into a huge hit, and he has indeed gotten one of the two fezzes autographed by, well, everyone.  This time I spend most of the early evening hanging with the Titan crew, including Kat Nicholson, Jason Cardy, Liam Shalloo, and Kris Carter.  They're all terrific folks, and I'm far richer for my time spent with them.  I also managed to get almost all of their work into one of the two Almanacs, which is pretty cool, so I can collect their autographs in Bill's working copy of the book.

We've got a 6:30 AM flight, so we need to leave for the airport by 4:30 AM.  Since I've never left the bar before 3:00 AM, though, it seems foolish to attempt sleep and so Bill and I decide to tough it out.  As the evening wears on, we get more and more punch drunk.  I come up with the idea of writing a letter to my wife, since when I lived in England I'd send her two or three a week.  (Yes, I'm an incurable romantic.)  I write it out, THEN think that it'd be fun to try to share the spirit of the con.  I get as many people as a I can to sign a napkin for her, then include it in the card which is to be airmailed to the states.  Kat and Jason agree to mail it off for me as they head up to bed.

There are inevitable shenanigans, including much hilarity when a fellow named Colin Paul fell asleep in the mens room.  As the evening gradually became morning, people would leave and there would be heartfelt goodbyes.  When 4:30 came around, it was our turn.  Bill and Nicole Hale and I (we were sharing a cab to the airport) sort of tearfully said goodbye to everyone, hugging and waving and shaking hands and whatnot. 

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We were, of course, exhausted.  3 hours of sleep the day before, none this day, and still 20 hours or so before we land in LA.  The trip to Charles De Gaulle airport was uneventful, landing some 1.5 hours before our connection to Charlotte, NC was to depart.  There was some hiccups at security since we didn't have a boarding pass nor an itinerary showing Charlotte as our destination, but the flight number was enough to convince them to let us through.  One inside, though, we had to wait to get our tickets.  What followed was a beurcratic nightmare of standing on one line to get a piece of paper to fill out, standing on another line to hand them that paper to get a passport stamp, and then standing back on the first line to get our boarding pass.  There were maybe 5 families in front of us on the second line... the first one took 20 minutes.  Oh, and the line didn't even open till 10:00.  I thought Bill's head was going to explode.  We got our boarding pass while the plane was still boarding, but for a while it felt like a pretty close thing.

The plane ride to Charlotte was much nicer than the one to Zurich.  We had our own entertainment systems, so I watched 500 Days of Summer (good movie) and Alice in Wonderland (OK movie.)  I kept trying, and failing, to sleep, and eventually turned to Clash of the Titans, which was pretty mediocre.  I didn't get through it before it was landing time, though.

In Charlotte, we had to clear immigration and then customs.  The agent questioned me about the fez (yes, I was still wearing it and yes, my answer was the same: fezzes are cool.  In fact, I wore the fez all the way to my front door) and let me through after a moment.  I breezed through customs, Bill had his bag searched.  Soon I was plugged into the wall, recharging the old laptop for the final leg home.

Charlotte, NC to Los Angeles, CA was a six hour flight.  I watched True Blood and Futurama on the laptop, though once again no in-flight movie.  Really, US Airway, 6 hours and no movie?  I'm slightly chagrined to realize I've left Report on Planet Three on my previous flight, but then I'd only had one more essay to go anyway, so no great tragedy.

We land, I take the bus back to the depot near my house, Bill takes the bike back to my place to get my car to pick me up, and before we know it the journey is over.  It's 8:30 PM on Monday; the 8 hour time difference has worked in our favor this time.  I do... something.. for an hour and a half, since I won't go to bed before 10:00.  (That's just asking to get your schedule screwed up for days and days.)  I honestly have no recollection of what I did Sunday night.  Facebooking maybe.  In any event, I'm asleep before my head hits the pillow.

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Overall thoughts: what a fantastic convention!  I met so many fans and pros, made so many friends and business contacts, and had such a good time that this'll be hard to top.  Don't get me wrong, I love BotCon, but the atmosphere here is indescribably different. I can't thank Steve and David Mapes, Simon and Billy and David, and everyone else responsible for the con for both bringing me out and for throwing such an excellent shindig.  My facebook has been distracting me every 5 minutes for the past three days with messages and friend requests and comments and photos I've been tagged in.  It was exhilarating, exhausting, and exciting. Thanks for having me, guys.

The Ark Addendum - Roll For It (part 4)

Well, Auto Assembly is (presumably) behind me, but I have no confidence in my energy level following a 20 hour flight, so I write this a good couple o' weeks in advance.  I figured I'd finish out Roll for It, an episode with quite a lot of background models to it. 

This time, we move to the interior of the science complex, a maze of computers and lab equipment.  The close-up of the key pad was because it was a minor plot point; Reflector observed it from some distance away to allow the Decepticons to gain entry to the complex. 

Hopefully I'll get my Auto Assembly notes organized and into blog form for you pretty soon.  I'm sure I had fun, but exactly what the details are we'll just have to see.

The Ark Addendum - Skull's Transform

I'm less than 24 hours away from the start of my journey to Auto Assembly.  I'm very much looking forward to heading back to the UK. (I spent a semester studying math, ah, mathS, in London) Hopefully, if you're a UK resident and are reading this blog, you'll show up and say hi.

Since I'll be away, this will probably be the last blog post for the next week or so, depending on what the internet situation is.  I figured I'd leave you with a cool Ark Addendum.  This week, it's a transformation sequence from Headmasters, the villainous Skull, the Japanese counterpart to Skullcruncher. 

Actually, Skull isn't that villainous really.  He owes more to the bumbling thug archetype than to anything really nasty.  The transform, though, makes him look pretty bad-ass.  I like that he neither starts nor ends in his traditional character model pose.  The ending, in particular, has a nice feel to it, what with the extended sword and the bend knees.

BTW, one of my favorite D&D characters ever was a half-orc barbarian, very high STR and CON, very low INT and CHA, named Grax Skullcruncher.  I wonder where I got that name from...

Oh, and don't forget, there are still five more days to bid on the LOOSE exclusive from SDCC, Wonder Woman's invisibible jet.  Remember, all proceeds go to charity.  Head on over to ebay to place your bids.  Right now it's a steal at $1.50 or so.

New Deviations + an unusual charity auction

Two updates today.  1: Bill is sponsoring an unusual charity auction: Mattel's Hot Wheels SDCC Invisible Jet, loose!  This item is easy to find MISB, but no one seems to have them loose.  So, go on, take a gander, and bid on this rare and unusual item while you still can.  Look how excited I am to be handling this amazing item.  BID NOW!!!  (All proceeds go to support Mattel's charity of choice, the Children Affected By AIDS Foundation.)

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And while we're on the subject of my intrepid partner, (get it? He used to be the art director of the Intrepid museum?) Bill has updated his Deviant Art Gallery with even more AllSpark Almanac II Goodness!  This time around he's put up more Maccadam's heads (including the jawsome Sky-Byte), ALTernity Today material such as the Astroscope constellations and logo (HINT! The logo is a reference that hasn't been cracked yet.), Rosanna, and Alexis, more planets, and of course more material from Project Omega and the Great War boardgame.  Swing by, check it out, drop a comment, and let him know what you think.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 30

The thirtieth episode of War of the Worlds, the series is titled Loving the Alien.  Debi, tired of living in a sewer underground, rebels and heads to the city alone.  There, she encounters Ceeto, an alien youth who has done the same thing.  They befriend each other, which survives the revelation of his otherness.  However, their friendship puts them on a collision course with an alien mission to retrieve a missing weapon, precipitating a confrontation between the Morthren and the Blackwood project.  The weapon is destroyed, some newly introduced human allies of the Blackwood Project get killed, and the adolescents are returned to their respective societies.

The Good: Quite a lot, actually.  The episode is very well structured, directed and paced.  Each part flows logically into the next. I like the symmetry between Debi and Ceeto, though there's also an issue with that that I'll get to.

When Debi first realizes what Ceeto is, thanks to a cut on his arm, she immediatly levels a gun at him.  Kincaid has trained her well.

There's a bit of nice continuity with Debi's use of pepper spray.  We saw her armed with this last week when she headed to the market.

I rather like the idea that a cut to the aliens is quite dangerous, due to infection.  It carries on the theme from season one about Earth's bacteria being dangerous to them.  Even with these new, better-adapted bodies, there is still some risk.

Alien teaching tech is fun too; the episode opens with some alien youths learning about both Earth and the wider galaxy.  "In the battle of Meanties in the fourth quadrant of the Lor galaxy, how would you have deployed your troops to defeat the rebels?" is a great question.

It's also cool to see other fighters against the aliens besides the Blackwood project.  It seems like the team would have a hard time going it alone; apparently, they don't have to.  However, I'd have liked to have seen this idea set up earlier with some recruiting.  Marcus and Joe Crane meet bad ends, but now I'm wondering if there are other allies out there we haven't seen yet. 

Good acting.  Ceeto, especially, as played by Keram Malicki-Sánchez, pulls his weight.  He looks great when wandering around the city, very much capturing a kind of tourist feel.  He's got the stoicism of the Morthren down, but brings with it an earnest youthfulness that works well.  Forest's Malzor is also strong this episode.  He has more to do here than he sometimes does. 

The Bad: Coincidence.  Debi runs away from home on the same night that an alien does, and then they just happen to run into each other.  The episode is strong enough that you don't notice, but this is definitely a flaw.

Timing.  Last week, Harrison fell in love with an alien woman.  This week, Debi finds one.  These episodes would have worked better if spaced further apart.

"You are the only species that kills its own kind."  Umm... really?  Do you not remember The Second Wave, when the Morthren executed all of the first season aliens?

The Ugly: Again, it's not as horrific as anything we used during the first season, but after the aliens are done with the original Joe Crane (played by a very young Mia Kirshner) they have no use for her.  She gets cooked on the cloning bed rather painfully as Ceeto looks on. 

Overall, a very strong offering.  If only it wasn't immediately after Seft of Emon, I'd have almost no complaints.  By the way, now we've had two members of the team make peaceful contact with an alien.  This meeting, in particular, will have payoff later in the series.

Review: Marvel G1 #62: Bird of Prey!

Bird of Prey! is the sixty-second issue of the US G1 Marvel Comics run of Transformers.  The creative line-up is unchanged from the last issue, which helps get some nice creative momentum going.  For the record, that puts Simon Furman in the driver's seat as the writer, with Geoff Senior as the artist, Nel Yomtov as the colorist, and Jim Massara as the letterer.  The cover is by newcomer Rodney Ramos, and marks his only contribution to Transformers. 

It's a very clever cover, perfectly suited to the contents within.  Nightbeat, Siren, and Hosehead star in a dimestore detective novel, which lies piled among a bunch of Cybertronian possessions that include keys a microscope, a remote control and more.  It's a clever tonal indicator of what the book's going to be all about.  The Autobot symbol in the logo is also replaced with a new graphical element, proclaiming this to be part 1 of 5 of the Matrix Quest.  The whole thing takes a bit of thought, but it works.  By the way, the book is put out by Timely Publications, a nod to the original name of Marvel Comics, Timely Comics.  

The issue itself is a fun detective romp, borrowing liberally from The Maltese Falcon.  It starts out with Nightbeat searching the planet Pz-Zazz for the Matrix, per the last issue.   He's interrogating some well-armed mobsters much bigger than himself, provoking a fight.  They're saved by some mob violence, which dumps a stone bird into Siren's lap.  Nightbeat has found a mystery! It's an exciting alien-centric story, one where we jump in with both feet.  The various Maltese Falcon nods could easily have gotten too derivative, but obvious visual nods like the Humphrey Bogart billboard Senior placed into the second page help ensure the audience that this is a homage, not outright theft. Senior's artwork is a real treat, with slithering critters and ugly mobsters everywhere.  He does a nice job of portraying a run-down seedy alien world, the perfect setting for a hard-boiled detective story.

A brief two-page interlude sets up the reason for all of this; Prime and Xarron are sending out teams to hunt the Matrix, lost to space when Prime's body was loaded into a funeral barge.  It's short, sweet, and to the point, letting us know what's going on and why.  Furman puts in a bit of ominous foreshadowing, when Optimus muses that finding the Matrix might leave them somehow worse off.

Back on Pz-Zazz, Nightbeat is disappointed that his teammates want to focus on the Matrix, to the exclusion of this new mystery, but the arrival of Miss Fatale (heavy handed much?) changes that.  She offers to take them to a sacred, life-giving place in exchange for the bird.  They agree, and do what every D&D player knows you should never do; they split up the party.  Nightbeat goes to retrieve the bird, Hosehead and Siren go with Fatale to find what they presume is the Matrix.  Shadowy figures wonder if they should take out Nightbeat, but decide to instead follow him to see where he leads them.  Ominous.  He grabs the bird and gets into a fight with one of the three big mobs in this city, B'hgdad's boys.Our intrepid hero nearly gets away, but one of the goons gets the drop on him.  All seems lost, until the goon gets shot in the back by a person or persons unknown...

At the top of the pinacle, where the sacred object should be, Hosehead, Siren, and Fatale meet Gutt and his gang, the second mob in the city.  Nightbeat's arrival helps them overcome this obstacle.  He's figured it out; the bird IS the sacred object that everyone is after, not the Matrix.  Fatale tries to convince him to hold on to it, use it for selfish purposes like reviving his deactivated comrades or fighting Unicron, leaving enough for her to live forever.  As tempting as the offer is, Nightbeat replaces the idol and gives Pz-Zazz a second chance.  It's a good ending, warm and bright, helped along by some great coloring.  Nightbeat's sacrifice rings true to the Autobot way.

Sadly, for him, the issue isn't quite over yet.  The third major power in the city, the robot mob, blasts our heroes into submission.  They inform Miss Fatale that they prefer the name Decepticons.  Thunderwing, looking awesome, has every confidence that the three captured Autobots will soon tell him all he needs to know about the various search parties scouring this sector of the galaxy.

This is an even better ending, well set up (it was they who saved Nightbeat earlier) and making the next issue all the more intriguing.  We now see that this is not just a stand-alone issue, but legitimately part of a greater narrative thread.  Thunderwing made his debut a few issues earlier, but now he really gets to shine.  He'll only get better as the issues progress.  It's also our first introduction to Nightbeat, Autobot detective.  Nightbeat is a hoot to watch, and Furman will continue to feature him prominently for the rest of the run.

The artwork is perfect for this story.  When I first saw Senior's stuff, I didn't care for it that much, but with more mature tastes I can say that he brings much to the table.  His liberal use of inks create stark, dynamic images. His designs are strange and fluid, while still being very angular.  He's clearly a very talented artist.

Another note: the opening text about what the Transformers are all about has shifted dramatically.  Before, it spoke about the civil war.  Now, it reads "They were the dream--mechanical beings able to transform their bodies into vehicles, machienery and weapons; a last line against the chaos bringer, Unicron! They are at war, heroic Autobot pitted against evil Decepticon, both on their homeworld, the metal planet called Cybertron, and here on our Earth.  They are the galaxy's last hope, they are-- TRANSFORMERS."  Good stuff.  It signals how important the narrative changes introduced recently are going to be. 


Next issue: "The matrix quest continues as Backstreet, Override and Dogfight become Kings of the Wild Frontier!"  Sounds like Furman is going to continue to borrow from other genres as this Matrix Quest progresses.  That could be fun, or it could get tiresome.  Looks like we'll have to see which.  This issue kicks off IDW Publishing's  Classic Transformers, Vol. 5, available for purchase at Amazon.com, and is worth perusing if you haven't already.

The Ark Addendum - Dr. Morgan's Lab

It's time for this week's installment of The Ark Addendum.  This week, a triple-sized special: the laboratory of Dr. Mark Morgan, from The Return of Optimus Prime.  These guys must be loaded, because their lab is enormous!  I love how much detail the designer put into this piece.  I did just a bit of digital tweaking to this image to smooth out the discontinuities that come when one piece of paper is literally taped to another.  I also left in all the notes on this piece, since they were easily legible and help put everything in context.  Again, for those of you who print these out and save them, this one is intended to go on three 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper very easily, just like the original drawing did.