In the US comic, Bumblebee was killed off and reborn as Goldbug in the four-issue crossover, G.I.Joe and the Tranformers, which ran concurrently with issues #24-27. However, this story was not used in the UK comic, I believe because the reprinting of G.I.Joe in the UK was not far along enough for this story to make sense. In the UK, Bumblebee's death and rebirth was instead told in a totally different fashion in the stories Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive (#113-5) and Hunters (#117-8). (That said, three years later, when the ailing UK Transformers comic was desperate for content, they reprinted the G.I.Joe crossover anyway, just with a note saying it wasn't in continuity!)
The Til All Are One compendia include the UK version in their reading order in volume two, and relegate G.I.Joe and the Transformers to volume four, with the out-of-continuity tales. I assume they made this call because the UK stories were a vital part of its ongoing saga, whereas I don't think G.I.Joe/Transformers was ever referred to again in the US, aside from the Bumblebee/Goldbug thing. (For some reason, IDW's The Transformers Classics reprinted the story in their final volume, instead of where it goes chronologically, meaning Bumblebee was suddenly Goldbug, and also meaning that I never read it, as I only read the first four volumes.)
But I am doing my best to read all the US and UK stories in an integrated reading order, and so I'm reading it concurrently with the US issues it overlaps with, even though that means I'll go through two totally different origins for Goldbug in quick succession. I'm also continuing to read the profiles from Transformers Universe, placed by release date relative to the US stories. Note that in early 1987 there were four comics featuring the Transformers being published concurrently by Marvel US: the main ongoing, the G.I.Joe crossover, Universe, and the adaptation of the movie. The Transformers was at its height!
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| from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #1 |
G.I.Joe and the Transformers was written by Michael Higgins, who was neither regular writer on G.I.Joe nor The Transformers. Even by the standards of 1980s toy tie-in comics, I found this awkwardly written. Not that Bob Budiansky or any of the other Transformers writers have ever been kings of dialogue, but the Transformers here felt awkward and overly expositional and slightly out of character.
Once again, reading the Transformers Universe profiles left me with a feeling of lost opportunity. Especially for the Decepticons: there are a lot of them with interesting character hooks and backstories, but most of the times in the actual comics, they are all just interchangeable subordinates for Megatron or whoever happens to be leader at the time. The other lost opportunity highlighted here is that this issue contains a lot of profiles of Autobots who were important early in the comics, but who were superseded over time through the eternal influx of new characters. I miss these guys, I wish more had been done with them.
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| from The Transformers US #24 |
This, infamously, is the story where Optimus Prime willingly kills himself because he lets a videogame NPC die. It doesn't really make very much sense as a premise, and poor Don Perlin struggles to communicate the very-important-to-the-story videogame realm. What a way to go! Still, I appreciate that Bob Budiansky was never content to stop innovating. Two years in: kill off the beloved leader of one of your factions, why not? (Although, I guess this was right around the same time as The Transformers: The Movie, which killed off Optimus Prime. Was it just a Hasbro mandate?)
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| from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #2 |
To be honest, I just find G.I.Joe inherently uninteresting. I don't know if I could articulate why this 1980s toy advertisement is less interesting than the ones I do enjoy, but nothing I have ever read of it has ever made me want to read more of it. Which, admittedly, is entirely Transformers crossovers... but not even the utter genius of Tom Scioli had me thinking "Give me some G.I.Joe!" Unfortunately, this crossover seems to have a lot more G.I.Joe in it than Transformers. What Transformers there is, is pretty inconsistent: in this story, Shockwave says he no longer desires to take power from Megatron, while in the main book storyline that occurs simultaneous to this, he is doing exactly that!
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| from The Transformers US #25 |
If the death of Optimus Prime is contrived, then the death of Megatron is Bob Budiansky at his best, and the strength of this story kind of justifies the weakness of its predecessor. Megatron is upset because Optimus Prime is dead... and it was not he who killed him. He grows increasingly paranoid and obsessed across the course of this issue, culminating in his final decision to kill himself rather than let Optimus get the better of him by dying! Great stuff, though the contrivance that Predacons were sent to assasinate Megatron two times is kind of hard to swallow... on the other hand, Megatron vs. Predaking is great, so why not?
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| from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #3 |
Two problems I have. One: isn't it weird that we have two simultaneous storylines about the Decepticons acquiring a human energy technology that barely acknowledge each other? Why do they need Power Station Alpha if they have the thermocline (or vice versa)? Two: the whole thing between the G.I.Joe general and the US senator who are in love in six seconds and then she turns out to be working with Cobra is pretty dumb.
- US #1-3 & 33-34 / UK #1-6 & 9-17 (1984-85)
- US #4-8 / UK #7-8 & 18-30 (1984-85)
- US #9-12 / UK #31-41 (1985-86)
- US #13-14 / UK #42-54 (1985-86)
- US #15-16 / UK #54-63 (1985-86)
- US #17-20 / UK #64-74 (1986)
- UK #75-84 (1986-87)
- US #21-22 / UK #85-92 (1986-87)
- US #23 / UK #93-104 (1986-87)
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