KDog

This is all great, but I have to give a special cheer for that awesome gumball machine. Ingenious!

Yup, lol, you're ahead of me. I have to sleep sometime. :) Today's comic is just a bit of silliness. Which will be in contrast to next week's story. Breaking Down the Fourth Wall: http://www.drunkduck.com/Lego_Space/index.php?p=391901 Lord of Pies, the DACTA newsroom is simply a desk I whipped up and a background using the DACTA logo I created and displayed on a computer monitor. It was very hard to get it looking right in photos.

I went into my local Lego Store yesterday (April 15) to see if Star Justice and Space Skulls were out, and the guy working there looked in a magazine (Brickmaster, something like that) where there was a little article on the sets. The release date stated in the magazine was April 16. He said in that case, the store wouldn't have the sets until Monday, but if I wanted, as soon as the sets were available on Lego.com, I could come into the store and pay for them and the sets would be shipped to my house FREE OF CHARGE! I didn't know that was a possibility; I wonder if that's true for any set on the Lego Shop @ Home site that the Lego Store does not have in stock. I've pretty much decided to wait until Monday to see if I can just buy them in the store and, if not, I'll order them there. But I went to the Lego site today and there's no sign of these sets being available. I wonder if they got pushed back? That wouldn't make sense, as some Lego Stores got them in weeks ago. Of course, mine didn't. :-/

OOooohhhh, lol. Silly me, although that would have been amusing.

Wait, so you actually still pay for the shipping; you just get reimbursed in actual postage stamps? That's strange.

Yeah, and they regularly leave it, so...

I like to pretend that the bases usually have a manufactured breathable atmosphere around them. It makes it a lot easier to get better pictures of characters' faces.

My mistake. I forgot for a second that you were from down under. :)

$130? I thought they were $99 each. And cool animated site! The picture of Chris is funny. :D He's like, "Yeah, I'm the mac daddy."

DACTA (Part 7) is up: http://www.drunkduck.com/Lego_Space/?p=391877 That wraps up the DACTA storyline, which was the most challenging yet to do since it involved taking pictures of a lot of different characters, ships and places. But I needed to do this storyline in order to tie all the plot threads together and indicate where things are going.

The speech bubbles are the one bane of my existence. Well, at least as it relates to the comic, anyway. Paint Shop Pro X does have a shape tool in the form of a speech bubble you can use. The problem is, I prefer to use speech boxes. And the program seems unable to draw a diagonal line (for the "arrows" that point to each speaker) without it being really jaggedly pixelated. I'm not sure if Photoshop can manage straight lines that look better, but I imagine so. If anyone has any suggestions about this issue, please let me know!

Thanks, Inertia. Don't get into too much trouble with those bar brawls. You might get abducted by aliens afterwards. ;-) I love that the comic seems to be drumming up a little Space-based business for Lego and second-hand sellers. Just yesterday, an old friend of mine revealed he had been religiously following my comic and had been inspired to not only dig out his old containers of Legos, but to go out and buy the Spongebob rocket ship set, which he thought had a great Buck Rogers feel to it. This conversation occurred during a phone call in which he told me his wife had given birth to their first child, so I said now he can go buy Legos for himself and just say they're for his daughter. :) Anyway, I'm really anxious to complete and post the next comic, but work has been knock-down-drag-out-non-stop busy and I don't expect to have any free time (aside from posting this, lol) until Wednesday. Hang in there (and on to your helmets)!

Look at the very top of the page. :)

Wellll... suspension of disbelief when it comes to the design of the Lego ships. Most ships don't have an interior that isn't open to space, mainly so kids can play with the things. While things can appear open to space, they're really not, at least in my imagination. I've done that before with photographing flying ships with the cockpits open (in order to get better shots of the characters). I was thinking that that scene wasn't necessarily taking place on the outside of the ship in reality, but the limits of the ship's design require I show that. The Interstellar Starfighter seems too me like it would be bigger on the inside, with hallways and labs. But if that's too off the wall, let's just say the ship had atmospheric forcefields in place. :) In retrospect, I should have used the Alien Avenger, since it has an interior that would have been suitable. But I let my desire to build and photograph the Intersetllar Starfighter (which I acquired recently) win out. Or, I just could have closed Scouse's visor, lol.

You just might be the first.. maybe the only thus far. BTW, I'm lost; what is the deal with the Space Trolls?

I have a book and other stories I'm writing or have written about a group of motley time and space travelers who get around in a vessel that has mysterious origins. It was only natural that I would try to create the ship and main characters in Lego. I had an earlier version of them all that I sadly neglected to photograph before taking apart. It's no big deal, though, because I made a second version of the ship, based closely on the original design but improved. It's slightly bigger and has a color scheme I really like, thanks to being able to order most of the parts through LDD. The ship in the stories is more purplish in color, but I'm happy with the way this came out. First, here's the ship from a few different angles: Both the original ship and this version had a cockpit area that was too delicate and would sometimes break off. I managed to fix that; it's secure now, but is delicate during assembly until you get all the pieces in place. There's still one slight problem, though. As you can see in the pic below, the cockpit opens in a way that I thought worked nicely, since you get to see most of the inside. However, the black canopy piece will snap off if you apply too much pressure when pulling it up. I secured it the best I knew how, but I still want to improve this. Here's the back of the ship. The rear hatch opens to release a dune buggy that is stored inside. Useful in exploring new environments... or going out for a beer! Finally, here's the minifig crew, along with a shot of the whole set. One drawback I'll admit to is that all the minifigs can't really fit inside the ship. The cockpit is tight, but you can seat a pilot. (There are two levers and a control panel in the cockpit, btw.) The rest of the space in the ship is taken up by the dune buggy, which unfortunately can not seat a minifig while inside the ship because there's not enough height clearance inside the ship. The buggy does fit snugly inside, though. If you leave the buggy outside, you can seat most of the figures on the floor inside. It would be cool to one day make a larger version of the ship. Hope you enjoyed my first real MOC posting! I would appreciate all your comments, good and bad! K. P.S. On a related note, I've been doing this experimental blog where I post the draft chapters of a novel as I write them, read the constructive criticism, and then will use in that in writing the next draft. It's scary for me, since some of the material needs a lot of reworking. However, the book is about how the ship and characters shown above in Lego start their adventure: http://bovinemoon.blogspot.com/

Yeah, LOL, I guess the TARDIS is usually the only game in town on that front. I have seen at least one TARDIS MOC around these parts. And you're right, although it hadn't hit me before; the vessel does resemble the shuttles from DS9, like the Rio Grande.

New Comic: DACTA (Part 6): http://www.drunkduck.com/Lego_Space/index.php?p=388664 Although you can't really see it here, I updated the cantina to have a more genuine Futuron color scheme. ----- Batrbrick, I think the only sets I could compare the price of the new Factory Space sets to are the other Factory sets in other themes that have been released. Some of those are more than $99, though. The command base for Mars Mission retails for about $90, so that price range isn't unheard of. I'm not sure how the piece count of the latter set compares to the Factory Space sets. Don't worry, I haven't revealed too much. And I use Paint Shop Pro X, by the way, which is much, much more affordable than than Photoshop. Not as good, of course, but good enough for the stuff I use it for. Bernd, thanks for the good review! And good catch on the names.

The trans-blue and white are an excellent match and I love the minifig. It's kind of a mix between Star Justice and Space Skulls, like a zombified Star Justice!

I'm divided, too. I think Star Justice is the set that most appeals to me in the way that is really pays homage to Classic Space and looks great. Love the base, the vehicles, the minifigs. It feels like a complete set and worth the money. Space Skulls, on the other hand, feel somehow incomplete and is really odd. Yet, I love the campiness of it all and how different it is from any Space set that's come before. And I have ideas on how to use both of these sets in my comic. So, I might bite the bullet and get both when I see them. (I'm selling some Transformers on eBay this week, so it might work out, anyway.) And they officially come out this week, lol. I look fwd to seeing your MOCs, btw. Galanos and Schwartz are intended for sure to be the central characters, Schwartz even more so, and they will be front and center in most of the action as it goes forth. Valkyrie is the third main character, no doubt. I haven't had Valkyrie and Schwartz encounter each other yet, but they will, and soon...

Thank you for the excellent critique, Batbrick. A couple people have suggested I break up some of the blockiness, especially near the front of the ship, and I am going to try that. I think a few red triangluar sloped bricks might do the trick. I think I have some of those around to spare. And I'd love to see your version of a ship in this style, if you're so inspired. My feeling in creating this ship was a cross between the space shuttle and the old Battlestar Galactica ships. What I like about how this design came out is the thick, long front section of the ship and the stubbier wings in the back.

Thanks, Batbrick. If I helped revive your interest in the awesome Space stuff, my work has been successful. ;-) I'm inclined to purchase the Space Skulls and Star Justice. I've been putting a few bucks aside with the idea that I might. If I can find them at the Lego Store that is fairly close to where I live, at least I won't have to pay the shipping that Shop-At-Home would charge.

Only slowly? lol I enjoyed making the anonymity joke, which I didn't even think of until I was lettering the comic. I'm a reporter in real life, btw. :)

Batbrick, I don't mind the questions. I'm just glad you're interested. As for my collection, it's really big enough as it is, so I've stopped actively seeking out more classic sets. Sure, there's more I would like to have (Galaxy Explorer, the Ice Planet base, ie.) but storage space and $ have prevented it. I'll likely pick up a sampling of whatever new space sets come out in the future. I definitely have my eye on the new Factory sets. Anyway, a new comic is up... DACTA (Part 5): http://www.drunkduck.com/Lego_Space/index.php?p=388539 I think the Captain Dash story has been the most well-received so far, so I wanted to touch on it again. And look closely, for Schwartz and Galanos' robot pals renew their conflict. The Stardefender 200 is probably the most desired set, outside the Monorail, in the Futuron series. It's graceful, has a beautiful color scheme, and the pods can detach and combine to form a second craft. Unfortunately, it is also somewhat fragile, as the landing gear and guns pop off easily. The 200 printed on the canopy is a puzzling choice for Lego, so I decided to play up the duality.

No images show up for you, at least on my computer. What minifig is it?