Quick Project: Reorganizing My Drawers (Again)

I’ve already done this as part of a previous project so this is more of a re-project. However, my underwear and sock drawer somehow became a mess. I finally realized it when I went looking for a handkerchief (I keep one to clean my glasses or if I need to blow my nose and have no place to dispose of a tissue) and I couldn’t find it. I’ve also had trouble getting my slipper socks out. So this week I pulled everything out and reorganized it so I could find everything.

No, I don’t have pictures. I’m not posting my underwear on the internet.

And it didn’t stop there as I fixed up two other drawers, the one with my shirts and the one with my shorts. Now I can find those clothes as well. The other dresser drawers are fine so I didn’t have to do anything with them. It’s not one of the remaining big projects but it needed to be done.

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Transformers Report: Alternators Wheeljack

Wheeljack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s time for the third and last of the Alternators. Wheeljack is the Autobots’ inventor. And he’s good at his job if the machine doesn’t blow up or something. Basically he’s a mad scientist for the forces of good. His original vehicle mode in the G1 days was based on the Lancia Stratos Turbo‘s “Group 5 Statos” race car. No, I don’t know what that means outside of knowing what a race car is.

It won’t be obvious why until the very end of the review but this was the last Alternator I ever picked up. This was the figure where I decided that this line just wasn’t making me happy, which is odd considering this is not the one I’ll be taking out of my collection. That part will be immediately obvious.

Mini-Comic Report: Transformers Armada vol. 4

I know I was going to review my last Alternator this week but I haven’t had a chance to go over it. Next week is going to be hectic but I’m going to try and get it done then. In the meantime I’m crossposting the next Armada minicomic from my other website that hasn’t been posted here yet.

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Previously we’ve looked at the first three Transformers Armada minicomics Dreamwave produced for Hasbro, but there’s one more to go. So it’s time to finish this series. Dreamwave also produced minicomics for Energon so we aren’t done yet but we’ll put this series to bed.

At this point the toyline introduced the subline “The Unicron Battles”. This featured the first ever Unicron toy, long desired by those who grew up with the original toyline and Transformers: The Movie. While the toy had been planned twice in the past, once when the movie came out and once by Takara for the Japanese-exclusive line Beast Wars Neo, neither were ever produced. Finally for this line we got our Unicron and it was worth the wait seeing as the other two designs didn’t really capture the essence of the big villain Simon Furman re-imagined into a god of chaos nearly as well. (When it comes to Unicron I’m actually neutral as to which origin is better, cartoon or comic, but I still prefer the Quintesson origin over Primus.)

It was decided to make Unicron the big threat of the subline and tie the version of him in this continuity to the Mini-Cons, and so the “Unicron Battles” began. And this was the comic that introduced the idea to toy buyers who didn’t see the show or read the regular Dreamwave comics. So how does it do? The first two comics were not that great since they had to force three translations of the same dialog into the panel. The third issue was better for only needing one language but still not that great, so what does this series end on?

“Hey Galactus, the rest of us want to see, too. Wanna move to the back seats?”

Transformers Armada volume 4

CREATED BY: Dreamwave for Hasbro

PUBLISH DATE:  2003

WRITER: Chris Sarracini

PENCILER: James Riaz

COLORISTS: Felipe Smith & David Cheung

Only TWO colorists, Dreamwave? Are you finally realizing you don’t need five colorists on one book, especially a minicomic? Since none of the Energon minicomics have credits we’ll never know.

LETTERING: Dreamer Design

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Matt Moylan

Book Report: Fantastic Voyage novelization

Previous book reports have looked at novelization, novel adaptations of movies. This practice doesn’t get much love nowadays because of home video, television, and streaming services but before all of those they were the only way to relive a favorite movie unless it showed up in theaters again. Novelizations still interest me though because they’re often based on the latest possible draft of a script. There are often changes between the final script and what the author had available and it’s neat to spot those changes and wonder what came from the early draft and what the author put in to pad the book out or just personal choice.

When I saw the Fantastic Voyage novel on a bookshelf at my grandparents I was curious to read it. While at that point I never saw the movie I grew with the cartoon, the intro of which I’ve posted above. Granted the cartoon bares little resemblance to the movie but I didn’t know that at the time. Additionally the concepts of the movie have been homage and parody fodder in so many sci-fi and kids shows that I was kind of required to see the original story. However, it wasn’t my book and these grandparents lived two towns away. After they passed away and we were going through their stuff and I managed to procure the novel and saw the name on it: Isaac Asimov, one of the masters of science fiction. Not thinking he would “stoop” to a novelization I planned to read the book, but never got the chance until sometime into my adulthood…where I noticed it was in fact a novelization. So I decided to wait until I saw the movie.

Recently I was finally able to see the movie (if you want my thoughts on it that review was the first installment of my Finally Watched article series over on my other site), which meant I could finally read the book and do my usual “Chapter By Chapter” review. Now that this is complete I can finally do a review of the book as a whole rather than focus on each individual chapter.