Monday, June 30, 2014

CARRIED AWAY!

The breaking of the 68th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse unleashes a pre-SuperCon excitement extravaganza! Then my van gets towed! Join the Nostrodomatron as I journey to the monthly comic book show to get my mind off of my family going on an Alaskan adventure without me and get my mind on the big Florida Supercon 2014 adventure awaiting me this upcoming weekend. Which fantastic guests with ties to Micronauts, ROM, and Shogun Warriors comics will be at Supercon? What uncomfortable questions will I probably ask them? Will I find the first appearance of Skippy the Jedi Droid in time for the con to get it signed? AND WHO THE HELL TOWED MY VAN? Find out all this and more in this I'VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS PARKING SPACE edition of the podcastalypse!

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DANG SKIPPY!

Florida Supercon 2014 is this 4th of July weekend and from the guest list it looks like they're going to have a couple comic book celebrities I have yet to embarrass myself in front of. First up is Peter David, who wrote the Dark of the Moon novelization where Megatron wins in the end! And if that isn't mind blowing enough, he is also the creative genius behind Skippy the Jedi Droid! Then there's Danny Fingeroth who didn't actually work on any books I was into but served as the character model for Donny Finkleberg, Robot Master! Joe Rubinstein inked the first seven issues of Micronauts AND the cover to ROM #1! And topping it all off is Al Milgrom, who edited Micronauts and Shogun Warriors from the start of those books, plus ROM starting with issue 18. If I can get to talk to any of these guys then maybe the $75 I paid for the four day admission will be worth it!

LION AROUND

I hit up the BTL Collectibles Show hoping to score a copy of the first comic book appearance of Skippy the Jedi Droid but I struck out. It was fun regardless and I scored some Sleepwalker issues and a couple Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Hams. Not much robotty action except for the Matchbox Lion and Gladiator Team Voltrons on the table with some worn chrome. Undaunted, I left to the comic shop (that I think is the oldest one in Miami) to continue my search for Skippy the Jedi Droid's first comic book appearance. If I had known what expensive misadventures awaited me there I would have gone straight home after BTL!

NAUT THE DROIDS I WAS LOOKING FOR

Well after the BTL Collectibles Show I drove over to A&M Comics in Miami and parked right outside the shop where I always have for the past five years and I went in. They did indeed have a copy of Star Wars Tales #1 featuring Skippy the Jedi Droid. They also had the yellowest AT-AT I have ever seen in my life. What was super crazy about this one is that it wasn't the old Kenner one from 1981, but the recent 2010 Hasbro redesigned version. How did such tremendous yellowing happen to such a new toy? I could only ponder that for a minute because I then spotted boxes and boxes of Micronauts toys up in the topmost shelves of the store! It turns out some guy sold them his childhood collection. The man would get a new Micronaut every time he did good in school and over time the collection grew and grew. I even saw a Terraphant box elsewhere in the store but it was empty. What I didn't know was that while I was inside screwing around looking at Micronauts, the tow truck was taking away my van! Meanwhile I was all excited about the Micronauts and the prices seemed reasonable. They were missing their inserts so each box just had parts inside. They wanted 10 bucks each for the Thorium and Neon Orbiters and 45 for Karza. They also had Microtron (who was missing a rubber tread), Biotron, Andromeda, and the Taurion for 40-75 dollars each if I remember right.

MANY BENJAMINS DIED FOR THIS INFORMATION

Well I'm all ready to go with my three Micronaut boxes and Star Wars Tales #1 when a guy who had been in the store browsing with me bursts back in all upset. They towed his car! And he parked in the same spot I did along the west wall of the comic shop. I listened to him be all mad at the comic shop owner and ask why this has never happened to him before. I had a feeling he parked where I did so I went out to look and sure enough, my van was gone. I left the stuff I was going to buy there in the store and walked 20 minutes to the tow truck place to get my van. I'm glad I didn't blow the 70 dollars I was going to spend at the comic shop on Micronauts toys and Star Wars comics because it ended up costing $104 to get my van back. I don't think the other guy got his car because he just didn't have the money. That gas station near the comic shop is run by a bunch of bastards. If you ever go to A&M I hope you can figure out where to park. Also, fuck Chevron Miami to Unicron's butthole!

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Monday, June 16, 2014

Hula Lamborghinis with Machine Guns!

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful convention trip! Castaway with the Nostrodomatron on a thirty minute tour, a thirty minute tour as I set sail for the second floor of the Bahia Mar hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach to attend Hukilau 2014! It's a robotastic hukilaucalypse as I mingle amongst the hula skirts and tiki shirts on a quest to get a certain masterpiece of mine scribbled upon by the Leonardo of line and luaus, the Michaelangelo of mai tais and marker-the coolest cat this side of Wildsville! And along the way I spend a couple minutes talking to a Transformers fan only slightly less controversial than Michael Bay! What does all this tiki stuff have to do with a certain angry robots comic book series from 1993? Why did I take a toy Lamborghini to a Tiki convention? Find out all this and more in this I DON'T BREAK THE HULA GIRLS, I BEND THEM A LOT edition of the podcastalypse!

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HAKUNA TRANSFOMA!

I tried to blend in as much as possible in this tikified environment but a man is only able to remain so inconspicuous while carrying around a toy robot Lamborghini and a couple issues of Transformers Generation 2. It turns out that I ran into a couple of Transformer fans at the show! One huki dude saw the Masterpiece G2 Sideswipe I brought and recognized it as the same character he had when he was a kid. It was kind of surreal as I was able to have a toy robot conversation surrounded by hula girls and totem poles. It was pretty trippy. I didn't record that one but I did get a couple minutes of audio when I ran into Tom Croom, who is rather well known for his online review of Botcon 2010 that caused its own roboplastic apocalypse in the Transformers fandom. I didn't ask him about Beast Wars or Botcon because we all know where he stands on those by now.

The Harold Golen Gallery booth


GETTIN' BACK TO WILDSVILLE

Then it all came togther when Transformers Generation 2 artist extraordinaire Derek Yaniger showed up and I got him to sign my Masterpiece G2 Sideswipe! Mr. Yaniger made an appearance at the Hukilau as a guest of the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami. Of course he wasn't there promoting his old comic work but he was instead debuting a new print he did of Bunny Yeager who recently passed away. Mr. Yaniger left his comic work behind him in pursuit of retro art and tiki culture illustration so he wasn't aware that Takara Tomy made a figure inspired by his G2 comic art. It was a real blast to show it to him. It was equally awesome to get him to sign my box, making it in effect a "Yaniger Signature Edition MP-12G" (although I'm never quite sure what those words he writes actually mean).



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Image below courtesy of Harold Golen
 

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Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.