Author's Reflections- Comic #66

#66

This is a strip I threw in for no reason more than to be an attention whore! My birthday isn’t something I normally advertise but since doing the Web Comic was still a novel concept I decided to just do it. The photo shopping is horrible and the inconsistent dialogue about Hot Shot wearing the TMNT costume in the last strip even though it was two strips prior was because it was a last minute idea I had…my birthday fell on a Saturday so I took the pictures in the morning and drove out to my parents’ house to throw it together and post it that afternoon. I had no script and just put it together cold. It was fun and I may do it again at some point, but definitely not in the middle of one of my current long-winded story arcs!

Author's Reflections- Comic #65

#65

This strip, though base and incredibly simplistic is in my top five favorite strips in the series. In fact I daresay it may be #1. I have a great appreciation for visual comedy and this was my outlet to show that appreciation. I was originally going to have the other Decepticons laughing be shown via speech bubbles but I’m SO glad I didn’t take that route. I’m proud of the poses I put them in, and I still defend that they blatantly look like they’re laughing hysterically even without words. The situations I put Sh*twave in made me giggle as I took the pictures and I laugh every time I see the pictures, especially the one where he’s crawling out of the tipped over port-a-potty (which turned out better than I thought it would). In my opinion the strip even outshines Hot Shot and the Peanut Gallery. I promise this is the one and only time I’ll pat myself on the back so hard!

Author's Reflections- Comic #64

#64

The Thundercats joke was something I had been sitting on for quite some time since I introduced the alternate Megatrons into the strip. Nothing too fancy here, though I really enjoyed posing “Evan” in all the silly poses. I was obviously still getting the hang of cutting the backgrounds out of pictures, and still thought it necessary to include the shadows of the characters in doing so. It just doesn’t look good. The real standout of the strip was Hot Shot dressed as the Ninja Turtle. It seemed to go over really well on the website, and I was pleasantly surprised with the way it turned out. I chose Raphael’s colors not only because he’s my favorite Ninja turtle, but because since Hot Shot has red on him already I figured it would look the best from an aesthetic standpoint.

Author's Reflections- Comic #63

#63

It had been awhile since I first introduced the Cybertron Megatron as “Jim”, so I decided it was finally time to give the other Megatrons names as well. I didn’t put any thought into the names at all, I just tacked Scott, Evan and Dewey into the script and assigned who would be who when I took the pictures. The RiD Megatron mold is a little fiddly so I didn’t really want to use it much, so at this point having him leave to ‘go look at the turtles by the pond’ a second time was going to be the start of an ongoing theme that never really came back. It did help me write the biography for Dewey as a Wildlife Biologist. Jut something silly thrown in for the heck of it. For the joke in the Peanut Gallery panel, there was an episode in the original 1908s Transformers cartoon where a group of Autobots were chasing a robot ninja named Nightbird in which all the characters except Cliffjumper made a big leap up to a cliffside. I caught it when watching my DVDs a few years back and whether or not it was an conscious joke by the cartoon writers or not, I thought the irony was hilarious.

Author's Reflections- Comic #62

#62

It hadn’t really occurred to me before this point that with all of the rallying and the name change debacle that the Decepticons really HAD inadvertently taken over the strip. Rather than have them attack the Autobots and assuredly lose in some way I thought I’d just give them the small victory. Using the smaller deluxe-sized tank Megatron was something I threw in at the last minute (after I took the first picture for the original panel if I remember correctly) and changed the Peanut Gallery panel altogether. I don’t remember what I had in the script originally but what I ended up with was much better than it would have been. Plus I was determined to use most of the Classics toys in the strip in one way or another and it was the perfect excuse to throw that toy in there as a one-shot.

Author's Reflections- Comics #60 & 61

#60

#61

This was really the first time I made a big deal out of using two characters with the same name. As I got back into collecting I found myself having a strong distaste for toys that used the same name as a character that came before it. I understand that to keep the copyright on the names, Hasbro has to use them often but that doesn’t mean I have to think of them as having the same name. Growing up, every interest I had found me creating new characters and coming up with a back story for them. Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter Video Games, X-Men, Spider-Man…I just enjoyed thinking up new fiction for chartacters. So although I didn’t “play” with my toys in the literal sense I did have a fun time thinking up new names and fiction. It comes out strong in the comic strip, especially in later editions when more and more characters show up. My first instinct when renaming RiD Scourge was to use ‘Nemesis Prime’, the name that has become standard for Optimus Prime toys painted in black as a Decepticon. But I figured I’d give him a fairly funny name. I know I’ve heard Deathkill or something similar to it somewhere else but for the life of me I can’t think of where it was or what show it was on.