BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02822 Today while I was at the comic book store I noticed that they had a collected set of the comic D'orc. I'd been thinking about picking up the comic for me and for Andy. It was an interesting comic. The main character is a half orc/half dwarf. The story is interesting and weird and I think Andy will love it.

Photo-A-Day #02819 I've had this Blokees figure in a box since Christmas and have had every intention of building it for some time. Tonight I finally built it. This is Bumblebee from the Transformers movie. It was fun to build. Can't decide is I'd like to get any more of this kind. Maybe the Soundwave one.

Photo-A-Day #02814 I went to the new Phoenix theaters at Patriot Place this morning to see Avengers: Endgame: Encore. With avengers Doomsday coming to theaters in a couple of months Marvel re-released Avengers: Endgame because apparently it sets up Avengers: Doomsday and the encore of Endgame even has additional footage that leads directly to the new movie. It was great to see this movie on the big screen again. The phoenix theaters are great, too. Less expensive all around but a way better seating experience. You can feel the movie as you watch it. Each seat is hooked into the bass sound so that explosions and stuff can be felt as you watch the movie. It was really cool.

Photo-A-Day #02811 This past Wednesday I bought the second Dungeon Crawler Carl graphic novel. This is the second part of the first book. I recently restarted a listen to the series. After being at Granite State Comicon last weekend I've been thinking about Dungeon Crawler Carl a lot and wanting to relisten. So I'll do that and then give a relisten to all of the Nate Temple books because Shayne silvers is back writing. I can't wait for him to release his next book.

Photo-A-Day #02806 While at Granite State Comicon I visited one of my favorite artists, Bun Leung. I have bought a ton of his art over the years in the form of stickers and a couple of mini prints. This year he has a whole bunch of new stickers including some Transformers ones. I didn't get them all just a couple of Transformers like Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Grimlock and Soundwave. I like the new designs that he put out this year. Tonight I went to see Transformers The Movie at the movie theater. It is still a great movie and it still holds up as far as story and animation. The soundtrack is pretty great, too. There was a 12 minute short at the end which was Peter Cullen's last work as Prime. It was okay, I don't think it was that great but it was interesting. I enjoyed the tribute to him at the beginning of the movie more.

Photo-A-Day #02805 Today was the last day of the convention. Eva went as Pony Boy from The Outsiders. They even made the shirt that Ponyboy wears in the movie. I was again Bobby Singer from Supernatural. I got a new verst and flannel for this year. Was as recognized as I was in past years but that is okay. I had kept my glasses on. We started our morning by going to The Bookery for breakfast. They have a small cafe inside. In the alley before the bookstore there is a bunch of cat themed murals. This is the cat alley. We could have gone over here yesterday and gotten hot dogs from a small place in this alley. Our first stop was the convention center. There are always a few vendors there and I was hoping at an author that I had met last year would be there again this year but they were not. I did get to play the new Transformers pin ball machine. That is a really nice machine. When we were done in the arena we went back to the hotel and went to the main vendor floor. There I saw a person...

Photo-A-Day #02804 Today was the first day for us to experience the Granite State Comicon 2026. This is an event that Eva and I do every year and it has become our tradition. This year was extra special because it was the first time I had been able to see Eva since they headed to college. We started our morning 0out be going to Mokapot for some breakfast sandwiches and beverages. When we got back to the hotel it was time to get into our costumes. I was a character from the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, Big Tina. Big Tina is a t-rex that wants to put on a recital because Big Tina is actually a bear cub child that was turned into a dinosaur. I put my costume together from a mishmash of stuff from Amazon. Eva sewed the tiara on for me. This year Eva has been excited about The Lost Boys (both movie and musical). Eva's character is Star from the Lost boys movie. That is the version that Eva based the costume on. Star is also in the musical and maybe Eva will do that character int he futur...

Photo-A-Day #02803 Today after work I took a big bag of mini pretzels (minis) with me to pick up Eva from school. I drove into Boston found a parking spot and walked to the Treehouse. Eva came down and I gave them the pretzels to bring up to their roommates. Then we got on the road to New Hampshire. On the way up we stopped at The Common Man in Windham, NH. It was a very nice meal. Eva and I got to talk all about the first couple of weeks that they have been in school. School is going great for Eva. They like their roommates, are making friends and classes are going great. We continued on to the hotel where we would be staying for the weekend. We got up just a bit too late to get our badges. We did run into a couple of my friends who organize the convention and got a good night's sleep.

Photo-A-Day #02794 After work I went over to The Laughing Shield Comic Book Store to get my weekly comics. That is what I end up doing with my cash tip money each week, getting my comics. Luckily I either collect very few comics or my tips have been good because I can usually cover it. I also bring the owner a few pretzels when I go there after work.  At work today we had a new guy training. He is a former funeral director who is on disability and can only work 20 hours. We are hoping that he can help do the baking on the weekends.We also had our student from the high school who is part of an outreach program. He's an interesting one. He's autistic and the program is so that the student can work someplace and get evaluated on their readiness to be working on their own. Our last kid was super quiet and took forever to do anything. This new one is not quiet and has some issues with regulating their voice and activity. It has been an adventure. The major thing in the comics today ...

Photo-A-Day #02754 Today was Andy's last day of Culinary Camp. This year each of the kids in the teen camp got their own knife. They got to keep it, too. Andy is pretty excited to have their own cooking knife. They had the usual dessert showcase this ear with a lot of great items to enjoy. The teens did not decorate cakes this year but rather some cupcakes. They also had a monster cupcake competition where they decorated their cupcakes with monster themes. Andy did Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. This is funny because Andy often Mike Wazowski's themselves in photos meaning covers their face accidentally. After the dessert showcase I went over to Warwick to pick up a comic book from a fellow reader of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. They had left it on their porch for me to pick up.  In addition to the comic they also gave me two stickers. I put one on each of my water bottles. I should have swapped where I put them because the one with the straw is one I take to the office an...

Photo-A-Day #02725 To celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Skybound's Energon Universe a series of interconnecting covers were commissioned to be done by the artist Tom Reilly. I couldn't get them at my store so I turned to eBay and got them for a great deal. The whole set was $14 plus shipping. Each book is between $5 & $6 so that worked out well in my favor. There is also a black and white variant of these books but I stuck with the color one. The art is really well done.

Photo-A-Day #02681 I have been going through all of the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks. They are very entertaining. Before I even started in on those I pre-ordered the graphic novel. That arrived today and it goes through the first 20 or so chapters of the first book. It was a good adaptation of the novel. On the surface Dungeon Crawler Carl is a silly set of books but they are way deeper than just some unlikely hero and his ex-girlfriend's cat trying to survive a world dungeon. There will be 10 books in total and eight have already been released. I am on Book 7 now.

Photo-A-Day #02668 I went and picked up my comic books today and it included this Graded comic that I won fromt he raffle on Free Comic Book Day. 9.8 is crazy high too. I'll never read this comic or take it out of the package. I'll probably look to sell it since I don't collect this series.

Photo-A-Day #02664 Today was Free comic Book Day. I made sure that I got over to The Laughing Shield comics to pick up my subscriptions but also some of the free comics. I had intended only o get two free comics, the Energon Universe special and the Dungeon Crawler Carl comic. However, a few other ones caught my eye and I grabbed those, too. We had a limit of 10 comics per person and so I got 8 total. There was a Supernatural one as well as The Greatest American Hero which actually looks very interesting and a fun one to continue with. I have been watching the old episodes on Amazon Prime from time to time. I also picked up a set of comic books because they had special covers. I had been eyeing them for months and today they were 20% off so I pulled the trigger on those. They were special covers of G.I. JOE featuring 5 of the Dreadnoks. I thought that they would be nice additions to my collection.

Photo-A-Day #02626 I have been enjoying the warmer weather lately. Today I went and picked up my comic books from The Laughing Shield Comic Book Store. Today I picked up the latest Thundercats book and also Void Rivals. Thundercats has been really fun to read and the next couple months will be even better since they will be crossing over with the Silverhawks, another 80's cartoon. It makes a lot of sense because these two cartoon series featured many of the same voice actors. Void Rivals is part of the Energon universe and so there is crossover between the characters in this and those in Transformers and G.I. JOE. Soon we will be getting M.A.S.K. added to the mix so that is exciting for me. Another cartoon and toy brand that I really enjoyed as a kid.

Photo-A-Day #02585 I had heard that there were going to be some Marvel themed Oreos being released. There are four different packages and 32 different designs on the Oreos themselves. I picked up a package for the family today.

Photo-A-Day #02582 I finished reading my first Comic Book box. This second box includes the next iteration of Transformers comics. These are the ones that were done by Dreamwave. The problem with these was that Dreamwave went bankrupt during the middle of the runs of many of their books. That means that a set of Transformers vs. G.I. Joe comics did not get completed. They only produced book #1. And a bunch more books were never done. The comics were good and the designs were great to see. 

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...