Jatta Pake

They are all so close, yet so far away. Perhaps I will head over to Long Beach and make a few "fall off the truck".

-stroking beard, laughing like a mad man

The irony is these ship through SoCal but always seem to hit stores in Florida and Pennsylvania first, and Los Angeles last.

I think the Nick Turtles are the hot toy for holidays 2012. They've been cleaned out for weeks across stores here. I did manage to score all four turtles, shredder, and foot fodder for my eight year old. He is a TMNT fanatic and loves these figures.

He pointed out to me that the turtles are different heights. Really cool.

Let me check my list:

Alien Invasion. Zzap!

Runaway Greenhouse Effect. Broil!

Gamma Ray Burst. Flash!

Ice Age. Brrrrr!

Kuiper Belt Collision. Whumpf!

La Palma Megatsunami. Flush!

Lucifer's Hammer. Whammo!

Nuclear War. Boom!

Quantum Vacuum Collapse. Oops!

Species Collapse. Meow!

Black Hole Passes Solar System. Shllp!

Pandemic Disease. Aaachew!

Super Volcano. Bada-boom!

World War. Ratatatata!

Game Over (Our hologram universe is unplugged). Click!

Niribu. Incoming!

Moon Destruction. Tilt!

Runaway Smog. Choke!

Global Dimming. Switch!

Sea Rise. Splash!

Oil Collapse. Drip!

Financial Collapse. Crash!

Gray Goo. Splat!

Solar Pole Shift. Whoom!

Runaway Genetic Engineered Grain. Stuff!

Secret Government Conspiracy. HAARP!

My money is on:

The Goblin Apocalypse!

Found the color Koach at Burbank TRU today. They had like 400 of them on the pegs.

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate the diamond ability of Frost. It's portrayed as being tougher than steel but that ignores basic chemistry. Diamonds are harder than steel but not tougher. One hit from a hammer would shatter diamond Emma into a thousand pieces.

Speaking of Beardy McBeardface, he actually has a kick ass face tampo under the beard. I've thought about picking up an extra cuz of it.

Keep us posted! Road trips are awesome! I assume you are taking either I-80 to I-84 or I-90. I've never been up that way and I'm jealous!

Don't worry guys, in 2016 we will get another pass at Street Fighter 2. And we will get yet another Ryu and Chun-Li.

I thought this was a Hobbit thread, not a real cool adventure story. I've been up to Portland and it's a nice city. In fact my four kids are from Oregon. I think you will enjoy it.

If you haven't encountered this yet, it is illegal to pump your own gas. So stay in your car. An attendant will work the "self serve" pump foreyou. I never got a clear answer on why this was a law but someone said the law was put into place to provide jobs for the homeless.

As far as jobs go, Nike is a big employer in the area. A lot of big companies post jobs on their company sites before listing externally so it's worth a shot contacting the HR divisions to inquire about openings at some of the bigger places.

That's about all the advice I can offer but definitely have TBT buy you a beer. Go Ducks!

"Our goal for Ask DC Collectibles is to answer general questions about our products and to make your voices heard while not spoiling any big reveals."

Given that they didn't answer any of the 80+ questions submitted, I wonder what qualifies as a legitimate question?

Thank you NYC! I love visiting the Big Apple.

Midtown comics was great, and I also hit the Empire State Building this trip.

Perfect trip! Thanks to all for the recommendations. And I don't care what anyone says, New Yorkers are nicer than Los Angelenos.

I've only used clear decals but I'm going to try white with my next project. The benefit of white is you can use white in your design without applying the decal to a white base. The drawback is matching decal color to paint color for seamless appearance.

I had a buddy of mine who's also a huge fan of this. He told me once they do start becoming the norm. It's only a matter of time before people start file sharing and want/have lists could become a thing of the past. Or at least more stores like Luke's popping up selling individually pieces and parts.

I think toy companies will evolve with this new technology. It will first seem like a terrible threat (Napster) and evolve into an iTunes like experience for collectors. Need a Kenner style classic Chewbacca? Print!

I believe Nervous and Ivan have used Shapeways.com to 3D print Minimate-sized things. I too am curious if anyone has a 3D printer.

I think the technology will eventually be ubiquitous as we are now entering the "dot-matrix" phase of the technology. But to really utilize the technology, we need fast, cheap, and super accurate 3D scanners. I don't think the current barrier for larger usage by toy customizers is the cost of printing, but rather the challenges in designing 3D items with software. In other words, why spend 20 hours learning to use and designing a cool Minimate cloak in 3D software when you can sculpt one with apoxie in one hour?

To me, the benefit of the 3D technology will be more perfect symmetry in items as I am not an artist. The workflow would look like this: sculpt half of a cool Minimate chest piece in clay, 3D scan, copy and reflect the image in the 3D software, join the two halves in the 3D software, and finally print the piece on a 3D printer. A skilled artist could sculpt the entire item with perfect symmetry but 3D technology has the potential to allow "average joes" to come up a level.

I think we are finally seeing vector illustration software hitting a level where "average joes" can make decals without much effort. (I LOVE YOU BIT MAP TRACE!)

Or Toad.

Or Blob.

Or Pyro.

Or Silver Samurai.

Or Jackal.

Or Hammerhead.

Or Beetle.

Winkerbean - What are you using to print the scenery?

Thanks guys! I haven't been to the Empire State building yet so I may try to hit Jim Hanley's Universe and the Empire State building in one shot. Thank you for the recommendations on the other stores, maybe I can map out a route to hit a few.

My work trip is on and I'll be in midtown Thursday night. Any cool comic shops near South Central Park?

Love all your customs.

You have a tremendous amount of talent. Creating new characters with existing parts is its own art. Bravo sir.

Interesting. This looks like 28 Days Later..It's like the monster is not a zombie but a zombie like herd, a mindless mass mob of people. Part of the horror of zombies is the fact that they are corpses trying to eat you. The trailer didn't really show that.

Mobs are scary I guess. I hope the next trailer ups the ante with zombie gore though. I can live with fast-ish zombies if they are the recently deceased but please don't give them super human speed. And they should shamble, not run like Usain Bolt.

Happy Birthday good sir!

Heard that power is slowly coming back on for Lower Manhattan right now.

Question for those in NYC - Got a business trip planned to go to NYC in two weeks (office is in midtown). The next storm, a Nor'easter, hits next Wed or Thurs. Are conditions such that I should reschedule my trip or has life been returning to normal? I'm probably going to wait to book my flight until the last minute. I'm really just curious if New Yorkers have shrugged Sandy off with typical NYC swagger, or if the idea of traveling to NYC is preposterous given the state of things on the ground?

We got half of this cover but we are still missing the greatest American fighting force ever assembled:

Freedom Force