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Collection published: 2013 Contents originally published: 1987 Read: February 2021 |
Letters by Annie Halfacree, Richard Starkings, and Mike Scott
So far, Marvel UK's The Transformers has been on a nice upward trajectory: that comes to an end with this volume. It does get off to a nice start with the sequence of stories about Rodimus Prime of 2007 hiring a bounty hunter to kill Galvatron, who ends up tracking him to Earth of 1987 ("Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive!"/"Burning Sky!"/"Hunters!"/"Fire on High!"/"Vicious Circle!"). The bounty hunter is Death's Head, who will be the character who connects Transformers to Doctor Who Magazine in the long run. You can see why Death's Head went on to get his own spin-off: he's a fun, expressive, dynamic character, and the four-way collision we get here between Death's Head, Galvatron, the Autobots of 1987, and the Autobots of 2007 is kind of explosive stuff Furman excels at. Big, fast-paced action, with enjoyable characters. I liked the IDW Ultra Magnus, and I am quickly coming to appreciate the Marvel UK Ultra Magnus as well, even though he's a very different character. (I am not sure why it is taking him months to locate the Ark, though!)
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| Kind of awkward to have your hand shot off, yes? from The Transformers #120 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior) |
After that, though, it's a bit of a mix. There's "Ancient Relics!", a crossover with Action Force (the UK equivalent of G. I. Joe) that is mostly just tedious, uninteresting action sequences, with none of Furman's character flare. There's "Worlds Apart!", a really uninteresting tale of some Headmasters on Nebulos, apparently slotting in during an issue of the US Headmasters miniseries that hadn't even been reprinted in the UK mag yet at the time it came out.* And there's the UK retelling of the Headmasters series, and what can I say about the Headmaster concept except that I just really really hate it, because it overloads an already overloaded series with uninteresting characters.
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| Apparently the UK version of "The Headmaster Saga" presents a whole different reason the Headmasters traveled to Earth than the one the US stories gave, yes? from The Transformers Annual 1987 (art by unknown) |
But there is some decent stuff here, even if it doesn't rise to the high points of volume three. "Kup's Story" (a flashback of how Kup met Rodimus) is fun, as is "Ark Duty" (a flashback of Kup and Rodimus in the period leading up to Transformers: The Movie). The return of the Dinobots in "Grudge Match" was kind of silly (I liked the Dinobots throwing down the Predacons, but I didn't buy that they would let them off so easy), though I did like the "What's in a Name?" lead-in story that revealed Swoop's secret shame over "losing" his name. The "Ladies' Night" story, uniting three female characters from across the UK run, might have been more successful if the artists here were more skilled at drawing humans, not robots, but it was fine.
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| So that's what Rodimus Prime's alt mode looks like, yes? from The Transformers #118 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville) |
I did have to love "Stargazing," where a human boy teaches Starscream-- Starscream!-- the true meaning of Christmas. He thinks he's succeeded, but Starscream just wants to get one up on an Autobot.
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| This kid is Starscream's most compelling nemesis, yes? from The Transformers #145 (plot by Simon Furman, script by Ian Rimmer, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville) |
And Death's Head reappears in "Headhunt," which gives us our first glimpse of a 21st-century storyline not tied to the 20th-century one. I am curious to see how that is going forward, and how Furman pulls all the strands-- of which there are a lot at this point-- together. But this volume itself felt more like a chore than any previous one.
* The chronology gets a bit complicated here. The UK stories collected here (#113-45) overlap with the US stories collected in The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3, but those stories also overlap with the Headmasters miniseries, which wasn't collected until the US Classics, Vol. 7. And some of these UK stories fit in during Headmasters, and others are set purely in the future, and one ongoing plot from the UK strip is only tied up in the annual. And then also some of the US issues during this time reprinted UK strips! I suggest something like this, but your mileage may vary, and this also means you need to save some of the UK strips from this volume until you get to UK volume five: US #26-27; UK #113-20; "Vicious Circle!" (from UK Annual 1987); US #28; UK #125; US #29-30; UK #132; "Ark Duty" (from UK Annual 1987); UK #133-34; Headmasters #1; US #31; "What's in a Name?" (from UK Annual 1987); UK #135-38; US #32; Headmasters #2; "Doomsday for Nebulos"/"Stylor's Story" (from UK Annual 1987); Headmasters #3; US #35-36; UK #145-53; US #37; Headmasters #4; UK #130-31; "The Final Conflict" (from UK Annual 1987); US #38. This does rather stretch out Headmasters, so it functions as a sort of "meanwhile... in space" in advance of their appearance in #38. Okay wow that is messy... I should just do a Transformers reading order post at some point.
This post is the ninth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Age of Chaos. Previous installments are listed below:
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