Happy 30th Birthday to Transformers UK
Sept 5, 2024 21:47:54 GMT
The Doctor, Fortmax2020, and 4 more like this
Post by skillex on Sept 5, 2024 21:47:54 GMT
I’ve always intended to do a re-read of the entire run of Transformers, #1 to #332, and this year for the 40th anniversary I did it. I don’t actually have a full run of the individual issues, so instead used a mixture of the collected editions – including the superb UK Classics volume (would love Vols 6, 7 and 8 to somehow see the light of day) and I paid over the odds for the Hatchett editions from eBay so I could have full colour goodness to replace those odd wee A5 black-and-white reprint volumes from the 2000s.
Like a well-organised geek, I put together a spreadsheet to settle on a reading order and where I had each story. In addition to the main issues, I included all of the annuals (and yeah, I really see how little of it fits into continuity). After US #1 (or UK #2), I did a flashback run of State Games, And There Shall Come a Leader and the IDW Secrets and Lies miniseries. I took liberties in the black-and-white era to do some re-ordering, like removing Megatron-2 from power before Thunderwing’s tests to become Decepticon leader, for instance. For my own purposes, I cobbled together a fan-fiction-style set of bullet points as a “lost story” to explain how the Earthforce run could fit between Matrix Quest and Rhythms of Darkness. It didn’t work will but I didn’t want to miss these stories out. What worked much better as fan fiction was reading “Time Warns” by Graham Thompson to account for Magnus’ disappearance.
Some stuff surprised me.
• I was much more invested in Impactor than I expected.
• I’d expected Ultra Magnus’ abrupt vanishing from the plot but his lack of a final confrontation with Galvatron really stood out.
• The craziness of characters being front and centre and then just vanishing (Blaster, for instance) was really noticeable. It was interesting to consider what this would be like reading the US-only material… Megatron really stands out as appearing little in the comic if you only go by the US run. I suppose I knew this but reading it in one go made it stand out.
• I’d never had much interest in the Witwickys but I think they worked well – albeit like so many characters they get really abruptly written out. Buster gets a random cameo in his last appearance (and I noted that they have a comics character version of ageing – Buster is 17 for around 3 or 4 years, for instance).
• Optimus Prime’s death in Showdown is absolutely awful. Dreadfully done and illogical. The US version’s ends (not really though!) for Megatron and Shockwave are almost equally poor and luckily they never stuck with that in the UK run.
• That line about the future holding only conflict and mayhem right at the very end in Another Time and Place is absolutely grim AF and I don’t think it works very well.
Anyway. This is already a very long post so I’m making it longer with 10 standout scenes in the run. I’m very aware the quotes I’ve included are probably inaccurate – I’m not digging each story out again for the exact quote. I’m sure my paraphrasing will let most of you get the gist…
10. “Rest assured that as soon as I get the chance… I’ll avenge both of us, yes?” (Death’s Head kills Shockwave, #147, The Legacy of Unicron)
An absolutely brutal death of a leading character – and one of my all-time favourite characters. No way out of this death… or is there? I first read this in the “reprint era” in the 290s and I was acutely aware that Shockwave learned of his future death (although in a timeline that, as it turned out, never happened) and planned to avert it in Time Wars.
9. Optimus Prime tends Outback’s wounds and relates a tale of limbo, #100, Distant Thunder!
I read the whole “Prime and Megatron go back to Cybertron” story in Collected Comics back in the 80s. I think it’s a great, and underrated, set of tales. I absolutely love various scenes in it, notably when Megatron/Straxus links to a black hole and a panicked Ratbat throws the chain of command to the floor and orders the space bridge to scoop them all out of there. This is the best though. Optimus Prime, tending to a wounded and much weaker soldier, remembering why he is an Autobot while hunted by his own people on the twisted totalitarian ruin of a planet that is providing a grim homecoming.
8. Buster and Ratchet despair as Shockwave stands supreme, #25, The Worse of Two Evils
With the Autobots fallen and Shockwave triumphant, it’s left to the Autobot medic and a high school student to save the world. And neither think this is likely. A bleak cliffhanger. In 2007 I 100% assumed that the sequel to the live action movie would be broadly based on this, albeit substituting Bumblebee for Ratchet. Ummm, how wrong I was.
7. “No, too much has happened between our races.” (Soundwave falters and then rejects Ultra Magnus’ overtures to peace, #187, Space Pirates)
It’s only recently I learned this was a tribute to Killing Joke. Two of my all-time favourite characters see peace dangled in front of them, before one side reluctantly (reluctantly? Yes) rejects it.
6. “All in the national interest, of course!” (Shady US agency Triple I continues to successfully cover up the truth about the Transformers and stop the free press, #77, In the National Interest)
An absolute gem of an overlooked tale, that I’ll have first read when it was reprinted in the 300s. A pity we didn’t get more of this.
5. “Megatron! Megatron! Megatron!” (Megatron founds the Decepticon movement in the ashes of nuclear war, annual 1986, State Games)
This annual is lodged in my memory as a very dense book from my childhood – certainly compared to many childhood annuals. This story remains as an ur-text of Transformers across multiple continuities and for good reason. Not bad for a UK annual story! Evocative setting, worldbuilding (nuclear war between Vos and Tarn!) and artwork too.
4. “Wily old buzzard” (Impactor dies to save Emirate Xaaron, #88, Target: 2006)
Surprised myself here. My strongest memory as a child was of the single issue of this story I had at the time, which ended with Ironhide digging up Megatron and Soundwave (“That’s why I’m digging… Digging my own grave.”). However, I was quite surprised on my re-read that I was actually quite moved by Impactor’s sacrifice. No wonder he so swiftly became a fan-favourite character.
3. “Fight somebody, fi-“ (The Ark smashes into Unicron’s face during the Unicron War, #319-322, On the Edge of Extinction!)
The shocking bloodbath (oilbath?) that marks the culmination of the Unicron War is absolutely rammed full of iconic moments, from Kup pointing out Unicron has arrived, to Circuit Breaker’s breakdown, to Emirate Xaaron’s demise to the death of Scorponok. Somehow, for me, the arrival of the Ark and its original – now revived – crew just summed up to me as an 11-year old the relentless determination of the Transformers to fight for their survival.
2. “May Primus have mercy on me for what I have done.” (Powermaster Optimus Prime returns to Earth from limbo to face Galvatron, #204, Time Wars)
Optimus Prime enters the fray against Galvatron. Time Wars remains my first and my favourite of the epics. The anticipation of a colossal battle is balanced against Optimus Prime’s deeply felt guilt that his arrival might simply hasten the end. This cliffhanger really is etched on my brain, and it manages to edge out other iconic Time Wars moments, like the arrival of the 21st century Autobots in #200 or Galvatron being stripped to his exoskeleton by the time rift in #205.
1. “Help me, please. I’m dying.” (Bumblebee beseeches the Witwickys for help, #2, The Transformers)
A boy and his father look on in amazement one night in their workshop in 1980s middle America, as it turns out that the car in their garage is an impossibly ancient robot from an alien world. The sheer strangeness and alien-ness of this, mixed with the utterly familiar world of the first of the Transformers story (which I had as a child in The Complete Works Vol 1), is a heady mix of imagination and nostalgia.
Like a well-organised geek, I put together a spreadsheet to settle on a reading order and where I had each story. In addition to the main issues, I included all of the annuals (and yeah, I really see how little of it fits into continuity). After US #1 (or UK #2), I did a flashback run of State Games, And There Shall Come a Leader and the IDW Secrets and Lies miniseries. I took liberties in the black-and-white era to do some re-ordering, like removing Megatron-2 from power before Thunderwing’s tests to become Decepticon leader, for instance. For my own purposes, I cobbled together a fan-fiction-style set of bullet points as a “lost story” to explain how the Earthforce run could fit between Matrix Quest and Rhythms of Darkness. It didn’t work will but I didn’t want to miss these stories out. What worked much better as fan fiction was reading “Time Warns” by Graham Thompson to account for Magnus’ disappearance.
Some stuff surprised me.
• I was much more invested in Impactor than I expected.
• I’d expected Ultra Magnus’ abrupt vanishing from the plot but his lack of a final confrontation with Galvatron really stood out.
• The craziness of characters being front and centre and then just vanishing (Blaster, for instance) was really noticeable. It was interesting to consider what this would be like reading the US-only material… Megatron really stands out as appearing little in the comic if you only go by the US run. I suppose I knew this but reading it in one go made it stand out.
• I’d never had much interest in the Witwickys but I think they worked well – albeit like so many characters they get really abruptly written out. Buster gets a random cameo in his last appearance (and I noted that they have a comics character version of ageing – Buster is 17 for around 3 or 4 years, for instance).
• Optimus Prime’s death in Showdown is absolutely awful. Dreadfully done and illogical. The US version’s ends (not really though!) for Megatron and Shockwave are almost equally poor and luckily they never stuck with that in the UK run.
• That line about the future holding only conflict and mayhem right at the very end in Another Time and Place is absolutely grim AF and I don’t think it works very well.
Anyway. This is already a very long post so I’m making it longer with 10 standout scenes in the run. I’m very aware the quotes I’ve included are probably inaccurate – I’m not digging each story out again for the exact quote. I’m sure my paraphrasing will let most of you get the gist…
10. “Rest assured that as soon as I get the chance… I’ll avenge both of us, yes?” (Death’s Head kills Shockwave, #147, The Legacy of Unicron)
An absolutely brutal death of a leading character – and one of my all-time favourite characters. No way out of this death… or is there? I first read this in the “reprint era” in the 290s and I was acutely aware that Shockwave learned of his future death (although in a timeline that, as it turned out, never happened) and planned to avert it in Time Wars.
9. Optimus Prime tends Outback’s wounds and relates a tale of limbo, #100, Distant Thunder!
I read the whole “Prime and Megatron go back to Cybertron” story in Collected Comics back in the 80s. I think it’s a great, and underrated, set of tales. I absolutely love various scenes in it, notably when Megatron/Straxus links to a black hole and a panicked Ratbat throws the chain of command to the floor and orders the space bridge to scoop them all out of there. This is the best though. Optimus Prime, tending to a wounded and much weaker soldier, remembering why he is an Autobot while hunted by his own people on the twisted totalitarian ruin of a planet that is providing a grim homecoming.
8. Buster and Ratchet despair as Shockwave stands supreme, #25, The Worse of Two Evils
With the Autobots fallen and Shockwave triumphant, it’s left to the Autobot medic and a high school student to save the world. And neither think this is likely. A bleak cliffhanger. In 2007 I 100% assumed that the sequel to the live action movie would be broadly based on this, albeit substituting Bumblebee for Ratchet. Ummm, how wrong I was.
7. “No, too much has happened between our races.” (Soundwave falters and then rejects Ultra Magnus’ overtures to peace, #187, Space Pirates)
It’s only recently I learned this was a tribute to Killing Joke. Two of my all-time favourite characters see peace dangled in front of them, before one side reluctantly (reluctantly? Yes) rejects it.
6. “All in the national interest, of course!” (Shady US agency Triple I continues to successfully cover up the truth about the Transformers and stop the free press, #77, In the National Interest)
An absolute gem of an overlooked tale, that I’ll have first read when it was reprinted in the 300s. A pity we didn’t get more of this.
5. “Megatron! Megatron! Megatron!” (Megatron founds the Decepticon movement in the ashes of nuclear war, annual 1986, State Games)
This annual is lodged in my memory as a very dense book from my childhood – certainly compared to many childhood annuals. This story remains as an ur-text of Transformers across multiple continuities and for good reason. Not bad for a UK annual story! Evocative setting, worldbuilding (nuclear war between Vos and Tarn!) and artwork too.
4. “Wily old buzzard” (Impactor dies to save Emirate Xaaron, #88, Target: 2006)
Surprised myself here. My strongest memory as a child was of the single issue of this story I had at the time, which ended with Ironhide digging up Megatron and Soundwave (“That’s why I’m digging… Digging my own grave.”). However, I was quite surprised on my re-read that I was actually quite moved by Impactor’s sacrifice. No wonder he so swiftly became a fan-favourite character.
3. “Fight somebody, fi-“ (The Ark smashes into Unicron’s face during the Unicron War, #319-322, On the Edge of Extinction!)
The shocking bloodbath (oilbath?) that marks the culmination of the Unicron War is absolutely rammed full of iconic moments, from Kup pointing out Unicron has arrived, to Circuit Breaker’s breakdown, to Emirate Xaaron’s demise to the death of Scorponok. Somehow, for me, the arrival of the Ark and its original – now revived – crew just summed up to me as an 11-year old the relentless determination of the Transformers to fight for their survival.
2. “May Primus have mercy on me for what I have done.” (Powermaster Optimus Prime returns to Earth from limbo to face Galvatron, #204, Time Wars)
Optimus Prime enters the fray against Galvatron. Time Wars remains my first and my favourite of the epics. The anticipation of a colossal battle is balanced against Optimus Prime’s deeply felt guilt that his arrival might simply hasten the end. This cliffhanger really is etched on my brain, and it manages to edge out other iconic Time Wars moments, like the arrival of the 21st century Autobots in #200 or Galvatron being stripped to his exoskeleton by the time rift in #205.
1. “Help me, please. I’m dying.” (Bumblebee beseeches the Witwickys for help, #2, The Transformers)
A boy and his father look on in amazement one night in their workshop in 1980s middle America, as it turns out that the car in their garage is an impossibly ancient robot from an alien world. The sheer strangeness and alien-ness of this, mixed with the utterly familiar world of the first of the Transformers story (which I had as a child in The Complete Works Vol 1), is a heady mix of imagination and nostalgia.
