BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02573 I've been playing a solo D&D RPG this year with a daily calendar. I learned about this Transformers deck building card game and I picked it up. It has a solo mode and a multiplayer mode as well. There are many expansion packs. I'll see how the game is before I look into expanding.  Speaking of Transformers I finished reading my first box of comics today. I finished with Regeneration One Issue #100. I'll go put that box back on the rack and bring up Box #2 tomorrow. More Transformers. I think I have 6 or 7 that are just Transformers  related. The kids finished watching The Lord of the Rings tonight. I came down when they were making popcorn and about to start disc #2. I could hear them from downstairs and they both exclaimed "2 Hours!" These were long movies.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02570 I've been making great progress in rereading my comics and also reading some I've collected and yet never read before. One series I had never read was Regeneration One which continued the original Transformers run of comics from the 80's some 20 years later. But, since I had never actually read the whole original run I didn't want to read these until I had completed that. So, now I am there and ready to read these books.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #025689 With a major snow day yesterday and a second snow day for Andy today plus a 2 hour delay for both Allison and Eva we had more time at home. Yesterday Andy made some chocolate/coconut cookies and Eva made chocolate chip cookies. Today Andy made everything but the kitchen sink cookies with M&Ms, pretzels and potato chips. Needless to say It has been a challenge to stick to the Virta diet that I am on. I had a few of these cookies. Each was good but my favorite are the coconut ones. Andy did a great job on them. Although next time we figure that they leave out the chocolate chips and dip the cookies into melted chocolate instead. I continue to work on reading my comic book collection.Today I completed the 12 issue series of Transformers Generation 2. Good story, not the best but I was so excited in 1993 when Transformers came back to comic books. I don't think I'll ever tire of reading these stories.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02564 I purchased these 8 comic books from 616 comics. They are special covered done by two different artists. The ones on the left are by Tiago Da Silva. I have all of his other Transformers split view comics where one side is of a pristine robot and the other is battle scarred. I did not know that he had done Soundwave and Jazz until recently. So when I got some Christmas money I decided to get these comics. The ones on the right side are by Bjorn Barends. They depict Optimus Prime facing off against Megatron. The Megatron one is the perfect comic book for him because in it Megatron returns in a huge way.  I recently reread and read for the first time all 80 comics from the original Transformers comic book run from Marvel. I never had all of them until last year. Now I have them and also a compendium of all of them plus the UK versions of the comic and some short stories and more. There is a lot in the compendium. I've been trying to reread my entire Transformers...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02563 Today I received a new Transformers figure called Road Rage. He is an Autobot that is the same style as Tracks. Tracks is the blue Corvette and that was the original one that I've had since the 80's. Road rage is a great looking figure, too. It arrived in robot mode and I was able to transform it down to a car so that he could slip in with the rest of the Autobot cars.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02556 Today was a good comic book day because I had two of my favorites ready to pick up. The ongoing G.I. JOE and Transformers comics were great. I also get G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero which continues the story from the 80's, it is good but not my favorite. The great thing about the other two was some major reveals. Both had jaw dropping final panels. I did not see one of the twists coming at all and the other was insane. I'm loving these series and I also continue my reread of the Classic Transformers comics including many of the UK ones I have never read before.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02545 I had forgotten that I had ordered this Masterpiece Tracks figure from Temu before Christmas. It arrived today. I picked it up because Tracks was another of my favorite characters. I loved the look of his corvette form with the flaming firebird on the hood. The masterpiece version came with a little figure and a miniature Blaster in his boombox mode. This was from an episode of the cartoon where Tracks connected with a kid name Raoul. I thought it was really cool that they added this piece to the set. Tracks was also one of the only Autobots who could fly in his vehicle mode.  The transformation was a bit strange but I figured it out. The instructions were all in Japanese because it is a Takara figure. Speaking of Japan, I just finished reading George Takei's book, They Called Us Enemy. It is a book presented in comic form telling about George and his families lives while in a Japanese internment camp in the 40's. It is a very powerful book and has direct...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02544 I now have 3 compendiums for comics of properties that were a huge part of my childhood. Transformers was my go to comic and cartoon followed by G.I. JOE and Thundercats. They were all great cartoons and even better comics. It wasn't until recently that I learned that there was a Thundercats comic from the 80's. I never knew that. The day I learned about it and the day that I purchased the first 14 comics I learned that Dynamite, the company that is publishing current Thundercats comics was making a compendium of the original 24 issue series. I recently received this in the mail and it is a very cool compendium. It even has a forward from Larry Kenny, the original voice of Lion-o. I'm going to have to find a better place to display these.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02530 A while back skybound put together a Kickstarter for a Transformers Compendium. This collects the 80 issues from the 80's - 90's. That is the collection of comics I just completed in their original form. The compendium is 4 giant embossed cover books. Then they reprinted 3 key issues from the comic book series. They were issues 2,5 and 67. They even made some tech specs, lenticular images and portraits of characters. I did buy an extra Decepticon sticker because I bought the Autobot version of the compendium and so the sticker for Decepticons only was part of the Decepticon version. There was also an Autobot pin and a challenge coin. It is a beautiful set.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02527 It is very fitting that I received this note along with the final two Transformers Generation 1 comics for my collection. Issues 72 and 77 are now in my possession. I had many conversations with this seller. We even shared photos of our Transformers toy collections. He was really excited by my love for the franchise and was glad to sell the books to me. This note shows a great deal of care that he took with his books and also with making my purchase special. He couldn't have known that this would be my last comics for my completed collection or rather that they would arrive last. Just very cool to see that he cared. 

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02526 I continue to find cool things for my Wheeljack collection.The figure is Wheeljack from Transformers One prior to getting back his transformation cog. He's standing on two comic books. They are Transformers #21 of the new Skybound continuity. The covers, however are done by Tiago Da Silva my new favorite Transformers artist. He's done handful of these special covers for Transformers comics. today I received about 7 of them and learned that there are still 2 more that I do not have. What he does is creates one cover of a shiny new robot and the other cover is battle damaged. So the left one is battle damaged and the right is pristine. It is a very cool concept that he's done for many great characters. What turned me on to his covers and artwork was this Wheeljack set. I'm really excited to have it now!

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02512 Walmart had several Transformers on sale this Black Friday. I was able to order one set online and when I went into the store I found another set. The thing is these sets were only $15 each and each set was for 2 figures. These figures had all been for sale at $24.99 each before this sale. So essentially I got four for the price of little more than 2. I picked them up because of the Wheeljack figure. The black one. There was one series where Wheeljack was an Autobot that rejected being one and so he slashed out his symbol. Hence the big slash across his chest.  When I went into the store I saw a two pack of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee and since I do have a small collection of oth of those particular figures I got them, too.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02505 For the past few weeks I have been working on a bunch of comic books and organizing them. I'm so close to completing my collection. Specifically my Transformers collection from my childhood. I am now 4 books away from having a complete collection of all the Transformers comics. A few more searches on eBay and I may even get it completed. When that is done it is time to start reading the entire collection. During one of my recent purchases of Transformers comics I got into a conversation witht he seller and we ended up trading pics of our respective collections of things like Transformers toys so I shot this to show him.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02504 The other day I saw an offer for a Devastator figure for $7 on TEMU. It looked decent enough so I figured, what the heck. I picked it up and when it arrived it was not to bad overall. It is certainly cheap but once it is assembled into the Devastator figure it looks good for display. I put it in with the rest of my Transformers figures and right behind the original Constructicons that form the real Devastator. Not a bad find for $7.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02498 I've been trying to complete my comic book collection recently and with that I have about 14 Transformers issues that I've been missing.Today Issue #61 finally arrived. This is one I have been unable to find for years but I got it on eBay. Most of the Transformers books that I am missing are the much later ones that had a lower run overall. That means that they will be more expensive. Hopefully through searchign comic book shops and comic cons I'll be able to complete the collection some day.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02497 I received a Blokees Optimus Prime figure from the kids at Christmas. It is the one on the left . then I bought myself the G1 version after Christmas and built it tonight. Blokees are fun to assemble non transformable figures of Transformers characters and the ones that I made here are the deluxe versions. they have bigger and smaller versions that you can get including some blind bag options. I bought the first series of blind bag ones but stopped after that. Now I will pretty much only get a character if I am collecting them, like Optimus or Wheeljack. I won't just chance it and get something I'm not interested in getting.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02496 Apparently Funko may be going out of business. I have collected many Funko figures over the years and I recently saw that there was an Optimus Prime Magic the Gathering figure that was going to be released. So I ordered it. I do try and pick up the Transformers Funko figures and I put them on my wall in the office. This one is neat because it has a background of the Optimus Prime Magic card. I never found that or even a pack of Transformers/Magic cards but this looked like fun.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02488 I have finally completed all of the documenting of the comics in my collection. I've also realized that some comic book series that I enjoyed I stopped before they stopped so I've been looking through eBay to complete the collections. I am now missing about 20 or so but still waiting for deliveries. I'm also going to create some better labels that go in the little rectangular spots for each box. I showed this image to my cousin and he said it looked sort of like Optimus Prime. I can see that as well.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02483 For a while now I have been reorganizing and documenting my comic book collection. I moved the comics from the cardboard boxes to some upgraded plastic boxes that provide more protection. I've been taking each comic out and photographing it, documenting the publication date, cover price and more information for each book. The spreadsheet shows about 2670 comics and the album of photographed comic covers is at 2080 so I have close to 600 more to go. Some need boards and bags and some, I am discovering, are missing issues. I discovered that one of my favorite comics, WildC.A.T.S. has 6 volumes of books and for some reason I am missing a large chunk of the 5th volume but have all of the 6th. So it is off to eBay I have been going to fill out and complete the collection. It has proven very helpful to get the collection complete. I figure if I can photograph a box a day I should be done with this by the weekend. Then I can show my new shelf with all the boxes of b...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02478 This year's San Diego Comicon featured a Transformers set that combined the character of Jetfire with two characters from the comic book Void Rivals, Darak and Solla. Void Rivals is part of the Energon Universe of comic books. This would include Transformers, G.I. JOE and Void Rivals. Skybound, which is under Image comic has the license of Transformers and G.I.JOE. They also have M.A.S.K. too because characters from that universe are also running around in this new one.  I have been collecting all the comics from the Energon Universe and they are awesome. I love how they are intertwined. For instance Darak and Solla crash land on a planet in their book and they discover Jetfire. This set is of that meeting. There is even a comic book with a special cover included in this set. It is a cool display but I seem to have run out of viable places for it to be displayed so it is on the back of the futon at this time.