Marvel's The Transformers Year One, Part II: Raiders of the Last Ark (US #4-8 / UK #7-8 & 18-30)

Here, we have the last of the UK stories that supposedly take place during the original four-issue US miniseries, letting us finally wrap up that sequence of stories and then move onto a four-issue run of US stories that is pretty continuous. We then segue into the first UK story that was actually written to fit smoothly into the US continuity. Unlike the kind of jumbled storytelling I covered in the first post in this series, this very much feels like it all goes together; everything is starting to pull in the same direction.

Raiders of the Last Ark / "The Last Stand" / "The New Order" / "The Worse of Two Evils!" / "Warrior School!" / "Repeat Performance!" / Decepticon Dam-Busters!, from The Transformers US #4-8 (Mar.-Sept. 1985) / The Transformers UK #7-8 & 18-30 (15-28 Dec. 1984 & 18 May–12 Oct. 1985); reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium One (2025)

scripts by Simon Furman, Jim Salicrup, and Bob Budiansky; pencils by Mike Collins, Frank Springer, Alan Kupperberg, William Johnson, and John Stokes; inks by Jeff Anderson, Akin & Garvey, Alan Kupperberg, Kyle Baker, and John Stokes; letters by Starkings, Aldrich, John Workman, and Rick Parker; colour by Gina Hart, John-Paul Bove, Nel Yomtov, and Steve Whitaker

from The Transformers UK #21

Raiders of the Last Ark is the last of the UK stories that supposedly takes place during the original four-issue run; in this one, the Decepticons invade the Ark, but a malfunction in the Ark's computer, "Auntie" (mentioned but not seen in the US stories), means she turn on the Autobots, forcing Optimus and Megatron to team up to take her down. This one has some good moments, but is very jumpy, like Simon Furman thought he was going to get twice as many pages as he did. The best part is when Megatron accesses his inner black hole, a totally badass power I think was on his tech specs but never used in the US stories... though UK writers who later worked on the IDW comics remembered it, presumably because they read this story. I did think it was clever that at the end the Autobots discovered that the Decepticons scrawled "WE'LL BE BACK" into the walls of the Ark, setting up the fact that the very next story chronologically would also feature the Decepticons invading the Ark.

That story is the last issue of the US miniseries, where it seems like the Decepticons have triumphed... but then they all fall over, because Sparkplug Witwicky put a poison in the fuel he created for him. (It's impossible to imagine that all those UK stories somehow take place between issues #3 and 4 of the US series because of this.) My favorite part was the flashbacks to Sparkplug's time in Korea, a surprisingly dark direction for a kid's comic! You can tell that even from the scripting stage it was known this comic was going to become an ongoing, because even though the Autobots kind of win, the whole issue is spent setting up new threads: it ends on a cliffhanger with Shockwave arriving to defeat the Autobots, but also sets up the key to Shockwave's eventual defeat with the Dinobots.

The next four issues see Bob Budiansky debut as writer, and I very much enjoyed this stuff. My eternal bugaboo with Transformers stories is that there's just too many characters a lot of the time, so anything that strips down the cast a bit is always a good move in my book. Here, every Autobot bar Ratchet is offline, so the Autobots' gentle doctor must find a way to overcome the Decepticons and their new leader Shockwave on his own... which means a trip to the Savage Land to find the Dinobots and striking a deal with Megatron, his only ally being a human boy, Buster Witwicky. I like seeing this emphasis on clever thinking and character dilemmas as opposed to Giant Robot Battles, though I did find the way Ratchet ultimately defeats Megatron a little underwhelming—more due to art than writing, though, I expect.

from The Transformers UK #30

This leads into a final story where, as Ratchet and the Dinobots make their way back to the Ark, Ratchet tells them a story about the Decepticons trying to destroy a dam, yet another story somehow crammed into the timespan of the original US miniseries (apparently the same gap as Man of Iron, in the middle of issue #3). It is a very boring action-focused story, but I enjoyed the frame. 

This is the second in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #9-12 and UK issues #31-41. Previous installments are listed below:

1. US #1-3 & 33-34 / UK #1-6 & 9-17 (1984-85)