27 October 2026

Marvel's The Transformers Year Four, Part I: Enemy Action! (US #37-39 / UK #130-31, 142-45, & 151-59)

Here, we come to the end of the Headmasters miniseries. Even though #4 came out before #37 of the regular series, I place it afterwards because that's where it goes chronologically.

My other big change in this sequence is the placement of Worlds Apart!, a UK story from issues #130-31. In the UK, this was run to hype up the Headmasters (I think because the Headmasters miniseries wasn't ready yet); it's a standalone story about the Headmasters on Nebulos. Chronologically, though, it probably goes during Headmasters #4 (though it's not a perfect fit), so I read it after finishing that issue, around 25 issues out of sequence in UK terms!

The Legacy of Unicron!, Part 6 / Enemy Action! / "Toy Soldiers!" / "Brothers in Armor!!" / Worlds Apart!, from The Transformers US #37 (Feb. 1988) and Headmasters #4 (Jan. 1988) / The Transformers UK #130-31 (12-19 Sept. 1987), 142-45 (5-26 Dec. 1987), & 150-55 (6 Feb.–5 Mar. 1988); reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)
scripts by Simon Furman and Bob Budiansky; pencils by Bryan Hitch, Jeff Anderson, José Delbo, Frank Springer, and Will Simpson; inking by Bryan Hitch (with Geoff Senior), Baskerville, Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, and Tim Perkins; letters by Starkings, Glib, Bill Oakley, Jack Morelli, Annie H; colour by Steve White, Nel Yomtov
 
from The Transformers UK #151
The Legacy of Unicron has an okay finish; like I said in my comments on parts 1-5, it feels like kind of a mistake if Death's Head is functionally the protagonist of your Transformers story. Rodimus does some stuff here... but mostly because Death's Head tells him to! But that problem will never happen again, because the story ends with Death's Head, Cyclonus, and Scourge falling through a time portal. Death's Head will never appear in a Transformers story again, because the portal takes him to the Doctor Who universe, where he meets the Doctor in the DWM story The Crossroads of Time.
 
Cyclonus and Scourge travel to Cybertron in the past, neatly explaining how in the US Headmasters stories they are part of the Decepticon contingent under Scorponok's command in 19680s while in the UK stories (which followed the lead of the movie) they weren't even created until 2006. It's kind of a bummer, though, because I enjoyed their characters in the future-set stories, and now they're just two among many Targetmasters.
 
from The Transformers UK #152
This is followed by Enemy Action!, a UK story about Galvatron attacking the Decepticons' underwater base in an effort to seize command. The best part of the story is the tension between Galvatron and the current leader of the Decepticons' Earth forces, Shockwave; the worst part of it is it's clearly one of those stories designed to incorporate a bunch of new toys into the comics at once, and so it features like a dozen new characters all at the same time, most of whom I suspect we'll never hear from again.
 
Then we get a set of stories all about the Headmasters. It begins with a prologue where I.I.I., the US intelligence organization, tries to execute a group of captured Autobots. This is stymied when Walter Barnett is capable of removing their brain modules and installing them in remote control toy cars! It beggars belief even for Trasformers, but what's worse, is that it means the Autobots are pretty much bystanders in their own story. The story ends with Goldbug sending a distress signal, which is picked up by the Autobots on Nebulos, allowing us to transition into Headmasters #4. This is a very rushed story that both has to feature the debut of the Targetmasters (Transformers where Nebulans transform into their weapons) and both the Autobots and Decepticons leaving Nebulos for Earth. The former part is dumb, like every other aspect of the Head/Targetmasters concept, but the latter is decent. Galen and Lord Zarak essentially agree to throw Earth under the bus to let Nebulos live in peace!
 
from The Transformers UK #131
Like I noted above, I read Worlds Apart! here because that's where it goes chronologically. It's not a perfect fit. Even though it, like all Headmasters stories, inherently has too many characters, you can see Furman trying to make something of the premise in a way that I think Bob Budiansky never quite managed: he really focuses on how the "binary bonding" process in some cases pairs Nebulans and Transformers with very different philosophies.
 
"The Final Conflict", from The Transformers Annual [1987], reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)
[written by Ian Rimmer]

This is the last text story retelling the events of the Headmasters miniseries for a UK annual. The first two of these (see post #13 in the list below) were clearly written by someone who had an outline of the events of issues #1-2; the details weren't always right, but the broad strokes were. This story is completely different than Headmasters #4: while the comic ends with the Nebulan Decepticons following the Autobots to Earth, this has the Nebulan Autobots following the Decepticons to Earth! Also, instead of actual Nebulans transforming into the weapons of the Targetmasters, here we have Nebulan engrams being copied into robots that transform into weapons. (I actually find this more plausible, to be honest.) Perhaps because the anonymous writer (probably Ian Rimmer) had to come up with his own plot here, it's less character-focused than the first two parts were, and thus less enjoyable.
 
"Trial by Fire!" / "The Desert Island of Space!", from The Transformers US #38-39 (Mar.-Apr 1988) / The Transformers UK #156-59 (12 Mar.–2 Apr. 1988), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)
written by Bob Budiansky, penciled by José Delbo, inked by Dave Hunt, lettered by Bill Oakley, colored by Nel Yomtov
 
from The Transformers US #38
US issue #38 begins with the Headmasters making it to Earth. The story introduces changes clearly designed to bring the comics in closer alignment to the broader Transformers brand. First, in the Headmasters miniseries, Galen transformed into the head of Fortress Maximus. But I guess the toy worked differently, so now Galen transforms into the head of an Autobot named Cerebros, who then transforms into the head of Fortress Maximus. This is one of those ideas that I'm sure makes for a cool toy, but saddles the comics with unneeded extra characters. I don't think Cerebros even ever says anything. Where did he come from? Why would anyone design this?
 
The other consistency problem was that in the comics, we had Buster Witwicky... but the cartoon, it was Spike Witwicky, and Spike became the head of Cerebros. So here, three years into this comic, we suddenly learn Buster has a previously unmentioned older brother named Spike, who's been away at college! And Buster and his father Sparkplug have apparently neither seen nor talked to him for three years! In short order, Galen (who we spent four whole issues getting to know) is killed off and Spike replaces him as the head of Cerebros.
 
from The Transformers US #39
Obviously, the downside of the narrative consistency of any Transformers story is that it always exists to sell toys and nothing else, but this is a pretty egregious example.
 
Still, there's some fun bits here, mostly in the second part, where Shockwave and Ratbat need to keep Buster alive as a hostage, and the Decepticons' island base turns out to be a rocket ship. But overall, it feels like what Bob Budiansky made work for the first couple years of the comic is slowing being drained out of it.
 
This is the fifteenth in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issue #40 and UK issues #160-73. Previous installments are listed below:
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

26 October 2026

Young Avengers Omnibus by Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, et al., Part Three

Young Avengers by Heinberg & Cheung

stories from Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #1-3, Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1-5, Siege: Young Avengers #1, Uncanny X-Men vol. 1 #526, Avengers: The Children's Crusade #1-9, and Avengers: The Children's Crusade: Young Avengers #1
Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2008-12
Acquired: June 2025
Read: August 2026
Writers: Christopher Yost, Paul Cornell, Sean McKeever, Allan Heinberg
Pencilers: Takeshi Miyazawa, Mark Brooks, Mahmud Asrar, Olivier Coipel, Jim Cheung, Alan Davis
Inkers: Takeshi Miyazawa, Mark Brooks, Walden Wong, Scott Hanna & Victor Olazaba, Mark Morales, Mark Farmer, with Dexter Vines, Jim Cheung, Dave Meikis, Livesay
Colorists: Christina Strain, L. Molinar with Emily Warren & A. Street, Matt Milla & Jorge Maese, Justin Ponsor with Paul Mounts, Javier Rodríguez
Letterers: Joe Caramagna, Cory Petit, Chris Eliopoulos, Joe Sabino, Dave Sharpe

Last year, I read the first half of this omnibus in two parts (see other installments in the list below). Now, I am finally wrapping it up. 

At first, we continue to have a number of short stories that show what the Young Avengers are up to during various Marvel events: a three-issue Secret Invasion crossover with Runaways, then a five-issue Dark Reign tie-in, and finally a one-issue Siege tie-in.

There's very much a sense across all of these stories that the Young Avengers are treading water, being held in stasis until Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung can return for their next big story. Young Avengers Presents in the previous volume set up a number of possible character threads, but we don't really see any of them here. The Secret Invasion tie-in, despite that fact that the Young Avengers contain a Skrull hybrid during a Skrull invasion, comes across much more as a Runaways story that the Young Avengers happen to be guest starring in. I did, of course, appreciate getting to see some Takeshi Miyazawa artwork (a favorite of mine since his Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane days), but drawing a bunch of Skrulls actually is a bad mix for his manga-influenced art style, because his simple designs mean you can't tell them apart!

I had actually previously read Dark Reign: Young Avengers because it's by one of my favorite writers, Paul Cornell... but long before reading any actual Young Avengers. (Amused to note my old review calls Young Avengers "a series I've never had a desire to read." I was such a grump when I was a young comics fan.) I think I liked it both more and less than my old review indicates; obviously, I was better able to track all the characters this time around. On the other hand, its occasional moment of incredibly gruesome death feels very mid-2000s comics, and not in a good way. I think Cornell is up to something interesting here, but is it interesting enough.... that's a different question. The story feels like it goes in circles a bit, and again, the actual Young Avengers feel like guest stars.

I did like the new Enchantress; she's the only one of these characters I'd've liked to see more of. She's funny. I wonder if she was ever used again? I bet she was brutally killed off in some awful crossover to prove the situation was serious.
from Dark Reign: Young Avengers #2 (script by Paul Cornell, art by Mark Brooks and Walden Wong with Dexter Vines & Mark Morales)

The Siege tie-in comes across as particularly pointless, despite writer Sean McKeever (the other half of the Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane creative team, actually) doing his best to give us some character insight as the team works to take care of an Asgard that crashed in Oklahoma.

I guess this happens.
from Siege: Young Avengers #1 (script by Sean McKeever, art by Mahmud Asrar and Scott Hanna & Victor Olazaba)

Finally, though, we get the return of Heinberg and Cheung in The Children's Crusade—clearly all of the treading water was to keep the Young Avengers in their status quo so that their original creators could return for this. It's a big story: the Young Avengers decide to hunt down Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, who they suspect of spiritually (though not physically) being the mother of Wiccan and Speed—they are the souls of the children magically born to Wanda and Vision. But Wanda also caused a mutant genocide and disappeared, so neither the Avengers nor the X-Men are excited about the idea of her coming back. Who is excited? Magneto, who is Wanda's father, and during this era, reformed and a member of the X-Men.

Obviously one wears one's sexy bustier to market day.
from Avengers: The Children's Crusade #2 (script by Allan Heinberg, art by Jim Cheung & Mark Morales)

It's a big story... and the problem is is that it's not really a Young Avengers story. (Probably why it was originally released as Avengers: The Children's Crusade.) Oh, they instigate things, and Heinberg clearly works really hard to give them key moments throughout, but it's a Wanda Maximoff story, and to a lesser extent, an Avengers and X-Men story. While the Young Avengers kick things off, after that, all the key decisions come down to ones made by Wanda and the Avengers and the X-Men. Was Wanda wrong? Can Wanda reform? Can she be forgiven? These are the questions the story turns around... and they are questions that have little to do with Wiccan and Hulkling and Speed and especially with Stature and Hawkeye and Patriot and Iron Lad and Vision.

Moreover, when the Young Avengers do contribute to the story, it's usually by doing something stupid.
from Avengers: The Children's Crusade #7 (script by Allan Heinberg, art by Jim Cheung and Mark Morales with Livesay & Dexter Vines)

from Avengers: The Children's Crusade #3 (script by Allan Heinberg, art by Jim Cheung & Mark Morales)
There's a kind of superhero tendency that annoys me, when superhero stories become entirely about the lore of the superhero themselves. A long, long time ago I wrote a review of Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu's Superman: Birthright, and while the tone of the review is probably undeservedly harsh (I was a callow youth, about half of my present age), I think one point from it is very important—superhero stories have to be about something beyond the heroes themselves. If Superman stories are only about Superman lore, then there's no point to Superman. Superheroes need to do heroic things. Unfortunately, Young Avengers has a great cast of characters, but aside from the clearly water-treading crossover stories, has mostly been about the lore of the Young Avengers. Do they do other things than explore their convoluted backstories or solve problems they themselves were responsible for? Well, alas, not really! I think they totally could; I think Heinberg and Cheung came up with some great characters here. But The Children's Crusade is far more about lore relating to a story I have never and will probably never read (House of M) than it is about the Young Avengers themselves.

This is probably why the character deaths here gall so much. If Stature or Vision died in a story about Stature or Vision, it would tell us something about them. Unfortunately, my second-favorite Young Avenger dies to prove that Doctor Doom is a bad person. And Vision dies for even less reason than that. I just feel like this story really did most of its supposed main characters dirty so we could see Cyclops snarl at Magneto, which is totally not what drew me toward this series to begin with.

I miss these guys.
from Avengers: The Children's Crusade: Young Avengers #1 (script by Allan Heinberg, art by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer)

I did sort of feel like Allan Heinberg wrote the whole story around giving Jim Cheung reasons to draw the Scarlet Witch's cleavage. (See also above.)
from Avengers: The Children's Crusade #4 (script by Allan Heinberg, art by Jim Cheung & Mark Morales)

It has its moments. The surprise return of Iron Lad is very good. I liked the flashback to the original four Young Avengers' first mission. All of the kid characters are always a pleasure to spend time with. Jim Cheung is overall a great artist. (Though he kind of draws all adult women with the same face.) 

I'm sure everyone who died here will be back eventually anyway. But I think I'm glad I could read all seven years' worth of the original Young Avengers run in quick succession; I think it would have been quite a disappointment to wait for The Children's Crusade in real time.

This is the third in a series of posts about the Young Avengers, Loki, and Hawkeye. The next installment covers Thor by Kieron Gillen. Previous installments are listed below:
  1. Young Avengers by Heinberg & Cheung, part 1 (2005-06) 
  2. Young Avengers Presents (2008) 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

23 October 2026

What Are the Longest Gaps Between Appearances for an Actor Playing a Doctor Who Character for Big Finish?

Big Finish started producing Doctor Who audio dramas in 1999. That was twenty-seven years ago—meaning BF have now been producing Doctor Who content longer than the original television programme actually ran! (I got into it in 2001 myself, so twenty-five years ago... which seems quite bizarre. Twenty-five years prior to that would have been 1976, when Tom Baker and Lis Sladen were in full throttle, and that material felt quite old-fashioned to  me at the time. Now you're telling me Storm Warning is as old to me now as The Masque of Mandragora was to me then!?)

Josiah W. Dogbolter
Big Finish has been running long enough that there can be some very long intervals between appearances by Big Finish characters. My attention was first drawn to this when Toby Longworth appeared in Oct. 2018's The Quantum Possibility Engine as crimelord Josiah W. Dogbolter: he had previously appeared as the character in Nov. 2002's The Maltese Penguin, meaning he had a gap of almost sixteen years between his two appearances as the character. That's a long time... especially when you keep in mind that Maltese Penguin was probably a one-day job! So you perform a character for a single day, and almost six thousand days later, you are asked to come back!

A poster on the Doctor Who BBS GallifreyBase drew my attention back to these kind of intervals when they pointed out Samuel West last appeared as Morbius in Aug. 2008's The Vengeance of Morbius, and then finally reprised the character in Apr. 2024's Dark Gallifrey: Morbius, Part One. That's fifteen years and eight months. So not quite as long as the gap between Longworth's appearances as Dogbolter, but pretty close. So with the help of the fine folks of GallifreyBase, I set out to calculate the longest gaps between Big Finish appearances for Doctor Who characters.

It had to be the same actor playing the same character. Additionally, I was only interested in Big Finish appearances; there's probably a whole different post to be made about classic series actors making returns as their characters for Big Finish. (For example, Ralph Watson last appeared on tv as Captain Knight in Mar. 1968's The Web of Fear, a role he would not reprise until Aug. 2019's The Diary of River Song: The Web of Time, a gap of over fifty years!)

Deeva Jansen
Here's what I believe to be the top fifteen contenders:

  • 1. Michelle Livingstone as Deeva Jansen: 20 yrs., 11 mos. from Sword of Orion (Feb. 2001) to The Further Adventuress (Jan. 2022)
  • 2. Nicholas Briggs as the Temperon: 20 yrs., 0 mos. from The Sirens of Time (July 1999) to The Legacy of Time (July 2019)
  • 3= Toby Longworth as Josiah W. Dogbolter: 16 yrs., 3 mos. from The Maltese Penguin (July 2002) to The Quantum Possibility Engine (Oct. 2018)
  • 3= Conrad Westmaas as C’rizz: 16 yrs., 3 mos. from Absolution (Oct. 2007) to The Battle of Giant’s Causeway (Jan. 2024)
  • 5. Samuel West as Morbius: 15 yrs., 8 mos. from Vengeance of Morbius (Aug. 2008) to Dark Gallifrey: Morbius, Part One (Apr. 2024)
  • 6. Sam Kisgart as the Unbound Master: 13 yrs., 2 mos. from Sympathy for the Devil (June 2003) to The Unbound Universe (Aug. 2016)
  • 7. Sonny McGann as Alex Campbell: 11 yrs., 10 mos. from To the Death (Mar. 2011) to Cass (Jan. 2023)
  • 8. Maggie O’Neill as Lysandra Aristedes: 11 yrs., 3 mos. from Gods and Monsters (Sept. 2012) to The Last Day, Part One (Dec. 2023)
  • 9. Angela Bruce as Brigadier Winifred Bambera: 10 yrs., 9 mos. from Animal (June 2011) to Agents of the Vulpreen (Mar. 2022)
  • 10. Siobhán Redmond as the Rani: 10 yrs., 7 mos. from Planet of the Rani (Oct. 2015) to Fear of the Light (May 2026)
  • 11. Michael Jayston as the Valeyard: 10 yrs., 4 mos. from He Jests at Scars… (Aug. 2003) to Trial of the Valeyard (Dec. 2013)
  • 12. Amy Pemberton as Sally Morgan: 9 yrs., 3 mos. from Signs and Wonders (Sept. 2014) to The Last Day, Part One (Dec. 2023)
  • 13. Charlie Hayes as Death: 9 yrs., 0 mos. from Master (Oct. 2003) to Love and War (Oct. 2012)
  • 14. Geoffrey Beevers as the Master: 8 yrs., 7 mos. from Master (Oct. 2003) to Trail of the White Worm (May 2012)
  • 15. Anna Hope as DI Patricia Menzies: 8 yrs., 6 mos. from The Crimes of Thomas Brewster (Jan. 2011) to The Legacy of Time (July 2019)

Michelle Livingstone as Deeva is the most impressive in more ways than one. Many of these actors continued to appear at Big Finish, just in different roles—while Nick Briggs went twenty years between his two appearances as the Temperon, he's probably never even gone a single month without appearing in a Big Finish audio! But Livingstone made zero appearances for Big Finish in any capacity between Sword of Orion and Heart of Orion. Did she even remember she had done two days recording for Big Finish over two decades prior?

What's craziest to me is that we've entered a time when people can be nostalgic for C'rizz. I'm nostalgic for C'rizz!

Will Deeva be dethroned? Maybe someday they'll bring back Colin McIntyre as Sancroff from The Sirens of Time... as of now, that would be twenty-seven years at a minimum!

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

21 October 2026

Star Trek: Return to the Taurus Reach: Vanguard: Declassfied

After the side-step of Harm's Way, my journey through Star Trek: Vanguard finally reaches the last three volumes of the series which I (kind of) bought as they came out, but never got around to reading—and thus, my whole rationale for this reread.

Declassified is intended, I think, as a prelude to the two-part finale. It's a new format for the series, an anthology made up of four novellas, each by one of the series's main creative forces: three are by regular authors Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, and David Mack, while the fourth is by series co-creator Marco Palmieri, who was the editor of the earlier books. (I think Open Secrets was the last one he edited, going by the books' Acknowledgements pages.) The novellas span the Vanguard saga, going from before book one to after book five.

Star Trek: Vanguard: Delassified
by Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, Marco Palmieri, and David Mack

Published: 2011
Acquired: February 2013
Read: August 2026

The first is "Almost Tomorrow" by Dayton Ward, which is set shortly before the first book, Harbinger. Harbinger and book two, Summon the Thunder, start with a lot of the world of Vanguard already in place: Commodore Reyes and Captain Desai are dating, T'Prynn is carrying out with Anna Sandjeso, the Klingon double agent, and so on. This book does the prequel thing of telling us how a lot of that came about. Unfortunately, it also falls victim to the prequel thing of revealing that "how that came about" is not interesting and book one made the right call of beginning with it already having been done. How did Reyes and Desai end up in a relationship? Well, the shocking answer to that question is that they met, he thought she was attractive, and they went on some dates. "Almost Tomorrow" doesn't answer any of its prequel questions interestingly, or give any insight into the personalities of its main characters.

The second story, Kevin Dilmore's "Hard News," is set between books three and four and brings the focus onto Vanguard's resident journalist, Tim Pennington. I was grateful for this, because I saw a lot of potential in Pennington in the first few Vanguard novels, but weirdly, after his big journalistic coup at the end of book three, the books totally move away from him doing any actual journalism: in book four, he helps M'Benga find medical assistance for T'Prynn, while in book five, he just tags along with her as she goes on special ops missions. (And our previously ferociously-devoted-to-the-truth journalist is just like, nah, I'm not gonna tell anyone about this.) So it was good to see Pennington doing some actual journalism again. This one has a bit of a noir-ish vibe, too, which I appreciated. I did wish Pennington was a bit less... grumpy; there are a few too many Vanguard characters whose shtick seems to be thinking about how much they don't want to be talking to the person they're talking to, and he also doesn't seem very active at times, but overall, I enjoyed this story.

I also enjoyed Marco Palmieri's "The Ruins of Noble Men." This one has two parallel tracks: in the present, it's shortly after book five, and Desai and Doctor Ezekiel Fisher are sent to figure out what's up with a separatist colony. In the past, it's the time of the Federation's conflicts with the Klingons, and Fisher is serving alongside then-captain Reyes and Hallie Gannon (who would later become captain of the USS Bombay, destroyed in the first book). There's a lot here about our connections to people and how they change over time; Fisher mourns the actual death of Gannon, which this mission reminds him of, but Desai mourns her loss of Reyes, who has seemingly betrayed the Federation. There are some neat twists and turns in both plotlines and solid character work. (I would definitely rip off the present-day storyline for a Star Trek Adventures scenario!)

The last story, David Mack's "The Stars Look Down," alas, leans into some of the stuff I don't care for in both Vanguard in specific and Mack's writing in general. Cervantes Quinn and Bridy Mac are romantically involved... but I don't really know why. What does she see in him? What does he contribute to her emotionally? Clearly they have hot sex... but is that a basis for settling down with someone? Bridy Mac comes off as Quinn's prize for figuring himself out. Former drunk makes good: what other role would a woman have in his story other than to bunk with him to demonstrate his growth? It seems indicative we never really get any writing about the relationship from her perspective; this is a bit Mack would pull again with Okona in Collateral Damage.

But it turns out she does have another role in the story: she's the woman who gets killed off to show how bad things are for our male hero. This tired trope? In a David Mack story?? Surely not??? Sigh.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

20 October 2026

Marvel's The Transformers Year Three, Part V: The Legacy of Unicron! (US #32 & 35-36 / UK #138-50)

Year three of Marvel's Transformers comes to an end here. We skip over US issues #33 and 34 because those of course reprinted the UK story Man of Iron, which I did way back in my very first post of the series. I mostly follow the compendium order here; my one switch was to read Headmasters #3 between US issues #35 and 36. It actually came out between #34 and 35, but I wanted to distribute Headmasters a bit more evenly.

"Used Autobots" / "Child's Play" / "Love and Steel!" / "Spacehikers!" / "Stargazing" / The Legacy of Unicron!, Parts 1–5, from The Transformers US #32 & 35-36 (Sept. & Dec. 1987–Jan. 1988) and Headmasters #3 (Nov. 1987) / The Transformers UK #138-50 (7 Nov. 1987–30 Jan. 1988), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)
written by Bob Budiansky and Simon Furman (with Ian Rimmer); pencil breakdowns by Don Perlin, Frank Springer, Jose Delbo, Jeff Anderson, Geoff Senior, and Dan Reed; finishes/inks by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, Baskerville, Geoff Senior, and Dan Reed; lettered by Pat Brosseau, Jack Morelli, Diana Albers, and Annie Halfacree; colors by Nel Yomtov, Euan Peters, and Steve White
 
from The Transformers US #32
This span of stories gives us both approaches to Transformers stories, both Budianskian and Furmanist. Interestingly, we kind of get both Budiansky and Furman doing both Budianskian and Furmanist. The three regular US tales, "Used Autobots," "Child's Play," and "Spacehikers!", are very much Budiansky doing his usual thing: the Autobots get entangled in a used car lot in the first story, and then Blaster befriends a bunch of kids in the second. The used car story is kind of like Budiansky's "Mechanic" stories; the Autobots come across as dopey chumps when their enemy is of this stature.
 
from The Transformers US #36
My guess is that "Child's Play" and "Spacehikers" are derided. In these, Blaster befriends a group of kids while he tries to elude Decepticons hunting him as well as Autobots who believe he's gone rogue. I actually like Blaster's relationship with the kids a lot; this is Uncle Bob at his best. However, it does work a lot better in the first part, where he happens to bump into them, than in the second, where he takes them into a joyride inside a mode-locked Decepticon in a space for no readily apparent reason. What ruins the story is the Transformers-focused elements: the idea of Grimlock as Autobot leader has potential, but Grimlock is telling the Autobots to murder human children in cold blood, and everyone's like, "well i guess we have to do it because he's the leader" even though he's only the leader because they made him the leader! Stand up for your principles, dorks! Every time Optimus Prime has died or seemed to have died, the Autobots become stupid, it's an embarrassment and doesn't really make any sense. I don't remember how long this goes on, but I hope it ends soon.
 
from Headmasters #3
"Love and Steel!", the third part of Headmasters, is more of a Furmanist story, which competing factions of Transformers on an alien world—though I guess Nebulos is kind of an Earth stand-in in a way. And in fact, I think this is the best issue of Headmasters yet, because it's mostly focused in Lord Zarak, who finds himself in a bit over his head, as he tries to ally himself with the Decepticons but not be overwhelmed by them, while still trying to keep his daughter safe. He's by far the most interesting of the Nebulan characters.
 
from The Transformers UK #145
From this, we go back into a run of UK-only stories. First is Furman (with Ian Rimmer) doing the Budianskian mode in "Stargazing," where Starscream wakes up (in a field? no explanatory footnotes reminded me why) and encounters a random human kid on Christmas Day; the kid tries to teach Starscream the true meaning of Christmas. It's hilarious and I loved it. 
 
Then we go into pure Furmanist spectacle with the first five parts of The Legacy of Unicron!, a 2008-set story about Unicron's giant head reviving itself on the planet of Junk; Unicron seizes mental control of the Junkions and attempts to instigate an Autobot/Decepticon war to distract from his plans. I don't think it's one of the great Furmanist epics, but it is a solid one, with some good twists and turns. I like the story as a whole, but I find it a bit too Death's Head–focused. I do like Death's Head a lot, but I think it's kind of a mistake if he becomes the protagonist of a Transformers story, which is what happens here. Give me more Rodimus and Kup! There is some good Wreck-Gar stuff; I particularly liked the end of part 5. I also liked the sacrifice of Inferno, though I wish he'd been in more stuff earlier on!
 
from The Transformers UK #150
The exposition about the origin of Unicron and Primus is fine on its own; it's not his fault later writers got too wrapped up in this kind of stuff. 
 
This is the fourteenth in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #37-39 and UK issues #130-31, 142-45, & 151-59. Previous installments are listed below:
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

19 October 2026

Victoria's Secret: A Novel of Cincinnati by Lida Bell Lunt

I collect books set in my hometown of Cincinnati; my brother got me this one for Christmas, which I think he found in a used bookstore downtown. The novel is from 1992 and self-published, probably done on an early word processor, judging by the use of straight quotation marks. Also, like a lot of self-published books, it has weird book design, such as a cover blurb that actually gives away the entire plot of the book! 

I am the only person on LibraryThing to own a copy, and though I am not a Goodreads person, it doesn't seem to me that anyone there has catalogued a copy either. The author, Lida Bell Lunt, was born in Cincinnati in 1908, and moved in the kind of social circles where you went to elite girls' boarding schools in Connecticut and had your engagement announced in the New York Times. She died in Rochester because that's where her husband was from, but seems to have maintained a life-long interest in the city of her birth. She died in 2004.

Victoria's Secret: Her Life by Lida Bell Lunt

Published: 1992
Acquired: December 2025
Read: August 2026

The book's main character is Victoria "Vicky" Miller, who seems to have been based upon a real person who was an ancestor of Lunt's, going by some comments she makes in her Acknowledgements. Vicky is an Irish girl who comes to Cincinnati in 1850 at the age of fifteen to live with some distant cousins; the book chronicles her life there up through the 1890s.

It is, alas, not very good. The central concept of the book is that her cousins are two brothers, Keith and Forrest. Keith is a dour, serious doctor; Forrest is a lively cad. Forrest flirts outrageously with Vicky when she arrives in the U.S., and though they don't actually have sex, they do everything but. Only once she makes it to the brothers' home does Vicky discover that Forrest is in fact married. She settles into their household, helping Keith with his medical practice while trying to stay out of the way of Forrest's jealous wife. Eventually the Civil War breaks out; before Forrest leaves for battle, he and Vicky finally have sex. She ends up pregnant, of course, and Keith marries her to preserve the family honor, especially once Forrest deserts. She and Keith have a fraught relationship: she gradually falls in love with him, but he doesn't want to have sex with her. They eventually do, though then there's some marital rape later on as well. Finally they reconcile, and live together until Keith dies. Once Forrest's wife dies (who is revealed to have engineered the death of Keith and Forrest's mother in a failed attempt to be with Keith), Vicky and Keith can finally get married.

Whew! It's quite a soap opera, as you can see. The problem is that it's not very clear what Vicky sees in either Forrest or Keith. I get that people like this exist, but Lunt lacks the skill of a writer to pull this off; Vicky just seems swept along in her body's need for hot sex. Her attempt to portray Vicky's love for both Keith and Forrest as great romantic stuff just does not succeed. And the making of of Forrest's wife into a villain very much grates, as this is a woman who has been legitimately wrong time and again! Sometimes it seems like the editing is off, like Vicky suddenly realizes Keith and Forrest's wife have a thing for each other... several chapters after she saw them canoodling and got so mad she temporarily left Keith, like Lunt totally forgot about the previous incident.

My main reason for reading this book, though, is not literary merit per se, but interest in seeing how my beloved hometown is depicted. Lunt clearly is very into Cincinnati; unfortunately, this manifests in periodic bits where something happens to show She Did Her Research, like totally irrelevant exposition about how Ohioans came to be known as "buckeyes" or a bit where people tell the story about how one of the first c-sections was performed in the area or lots of information about Harriet Beecher Stowe and her family. That said, as a Miami University alumnus, I was appreciative of the mention of the Western Female Seminary!

(From some quick research, it does seem to technically be possible, but the idea of "Keith" as a nineteenth-century given name just jarred.) 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

16 October 2026

(re)Reading The Road to Oz Aloud to My Kids

Sometimes I wonder if it's really worth the time and effort of writing up blog posts about my rereading of the Oz books aloud. In many of these case, I reread the review I wrote when I read them aloud to Kid One (then three) and realize that everything I'd have to say about reading it aloud to Kids One and Two (now eight and five) is basically the same. But the blog needs content!

The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum
illustrated by John R. Neill

Originally published: 1909
Acquired and previously read: September 2021
Reread aloud: August 2026

The Road to Oz is a good example. It has never been a favorite because it's aimless, but as my previous review notes, "if you're reading one or two chapters aloud a day, that something is episodic isn't a bug... it's a feature! The book becomes a succession of short stories." Both kids were pretty into this, there are lots of fun incidents.

As last time, Button-Bright was a particularly big hit; the kids both loved his constant refrain of "don't know" (Kid Two: "I think he comes from Don't Know Land!") and were delighted by his fearful cry of "Don't want to be soup!" Definitely as an adult you might wonder why so much of Oz books four through six has to be checking in on characters from previous Oz books, but the kids are so happy when Jack Pumpkinhead, Billina, and so on make return appearances, and Baum is actually pretty careful to iterate these characters: we learn about Jack's new residence and Billina's new chicks. (Though my kids already knew about the new chicks from Nome King's Shadow... though that book seems to have a continuity error, as Billina in this book has no chicks named "Daniel" yet, just "Dorothy.") 

Similarly, the kids had good fun with the parade of characters from Baum's non-Oz fantasies who attend Ozma's birthday party at the end. Kid One did vaguely remember Para Bruin from John Dough and the Cherub, but it's been so long since we read all the others, these were long forgotten. We might reread The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus around Christmas, since Kid Two was very into the appearance of Santa Claus in this one—he reported it as his favorite part of the book. (His least favorite part: he called the cities of foxes and donkeys "scary"; I don't know why them and not the Scoodlers!)

It remains a disappointment to me that this one has no color plates, though Kid Two was very into the changing color pages. (Kid One criticized the choice of colors.) I also feel that the linework of the black-and-white illustrations was pretty muddy, making it hard to discern details. I don't know if this is an issue with the original illustrations or their reproduction in my Books of Wonder facsimile.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

14 October 2026

Star Trek, Volume 1 by Mike Johnson, Stephen Molnar, and Joe Phillips

Star Trek, Volume 1

Collection published: 2012
Acquired: November 2012
Read: November 2025

Where No Man Has Gone Before / The Galileo Seven, from Star Trek vol. 1 #1-4 (Sept.-Dec. 2011) 
written by Mike Johnson, art by Stephen Molnar and Joe Phillips, colors by John Rauch, letters by Neil Uyetake, creative consultant: Roberto Orci

Following its shakedown cruise (covered The Unsettling Stars and Legacy of Spock; reviews of those to come) and other short missions (More Beautiful than Death; see item #2 in the list below), the Enterprise has embarked on a long-term mission of exploration. Scotty and Keenser are still repairing the damage from the battle with Nero; in the meantime, two friends of Kirk's from the Academy, Gary Mitchell and Lee Kelso, have joined the crew.

What follows is pretty much a blow-by-blow remake of "Where No Man Has Gone Before," albeit with some streamlining; there's no Doctor Dehner for example. (She doesn't join the Enterprise crew because McCoy is there, and they're exes.) The two biggest changes are that the story explicitly takes the stance that some kind of entity is controlling Mitchell, as opposed to Mitchell becoming awful once he comes into his power, and that Spock pops up in the final battle to help Kirk, which I found to be a pretty nice moment.

I like the idea of getting some insight into the Kelvin Kirk's Academy days via Mitchell and Kelso; I found myself wishing the story had gone further with his, maybe by putting them on the Enterprise several issues before killing them off. On screen, there's enough small bits of business and good camaraderie between Shatner and Gary Lockwood to convince you these two men are old friends; it doesn't work as well on the comics page.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #2 (art by Stephen Molnar)
Similarly, The Galileo Seven is a pretty streamlined retelling with a twist at the end that loses some of the interesting dynamism of the original; here, Spock's struggle in command is less pronounced. I think this is fine, in the sense that it honestly doesn't make a ton of sense in the original episode (why does Spock keep expecting the natives to act "logically"?) but isn't replaced by much. I did end up liking that Spock sacrifices himself to save the rest of the shuttle crew; I found the bit where Uhura swoops in, on the other hand, a bit too cheeseball.

In the original episode, the yeoman on the Galileo is Mears, but here it's the debut of the Kelvin timeline Janice Rand. She has a weird hairdo.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #4 (art by Joe Phillips)
The first stardate given in Where No Man follows the (stupid) Kelvin timeline system, but all subsequent ones in these stories are regular original series–style ones. In fact, they're the ones from the original episodes... even though these stories take place eight years earlier!

You know how many crew members I've lost since I took command? Three, I think, across the two stories. Gary and Lee, plus a guy on the Galileo.

This is the third in a series of posts about the Kelvin timeline Star Trek comics (and novels). The next covers Star Trek, Volume 2. Previous installments are listed below:

  1. The Official Motion Picture Adaptation
  2. More Beautiful than Death
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

13 October 2026

Marvel's The Transformers Year Three, Part IV: Grudge Match! (US #31 / UK #128-29 & 132-38)

As I did in my previous post with Headmasters #1, I've placed issue #2 of the miniseries by release order, so before issue #32 of the regular US series. In the UK, the events of the miniseries were retold in the 1987 annual in a series of a three prose stories; the Til All Are One compendia place them all in volume four with the out-of-continuity annual stories. I'm choosing to read them alongside the stories they retell, so I read the first two after Headmasters #2.

Other than that, my tweaks to the compendium's sequence were small. Like me, the compendium puts "Ark Duty" from the 1987 annual between "Kup's Story" and Headhunt. My quibble is that it puts another 1987 annual story, "What's in a Name?", after Grudge Match!, when it clearly reads better before Grudge Match. Sure, it takes place during part one of Grudge Match, but it provides backstory for it!

"Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom" / "Kup's Story" / "Ark Duty" / Headhunt / "What's in a Name?" / Grudge Match! / Ladies' Night / "Broken Glass!", from The Transformers US #31 (Aug. 1987) & Headmasters #2 (Sept. 1987) / The Transformers UK #128-29 & 132-38 (29 Aug.–5 Sept. & 26 Sept.–7 Nov. 1987) and The Transformers Annual [1987]; reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)
written by Bob Budiansky, Simon Furman[, and Ian Rimmer]; breakdowns/pencils by Don Perlin, Dan Reed, [Will Simpson,] Geoff Senior, Jeff Anderson, and Frank Springer; finishes/inks by Jim Fern, Dan Reed, Geoff Senior, Elliot, Baskerville, and Ian Akin & Brian Garvey; lettered by Rick Parker, Annie Halfacree, Starkings, and Pat Brosseau; colored by Nel Yomtov, Steve White, Euan Peters, and Abadzis

from The Transformers US #31
On the one hand, "Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom" is a terrible story. This is quite obviously the point where Bob Budiansky has run out of ideas and is no longer worried if things make sense or not. The Decepticon plan is to send across the spacebridge from Cybertron machines that look like carwashes but actually mind-control their users into driving their cars to G. B. Blackrock's fuel depot, where their extra gas is unloaded so the Decepticons can convert it into energon. If you can mind-control G. B. Blackrock, owner of an enormous national fuel company, surely there is a better way to obtain fuel than through such a convoluted workaround!

On the other hand, Uncle Bob is always at his best when doing the stuff with the human characters, and this is a great showcase for Buster, Jesse, and Sparkplug; it feels like a while since we've last seen them in action, particularly Jesse. So while the story totally falls apart if you think about it for a second, it's an enjoyable read from moment to moment. And though the series is becoming more overcrowded with new Transformer characters with every issue, Decepticon fuel auditor Ratbat is one of Budianky's most inspired creations.

Next, we have three stories focused on the movie cast, particularly Kup and Rodimus Prime nee Hot Rod: "Kup's Story" shows us how they first met centuries ago, "Ark Duty" shows us the two of them between the present day and the events of the movie (when Autobot City is under construction), and Headhunt has Rodimus battling Death's Head in the post-movie era. I'm very fond of both of these characters, and these stories make a surprisingly effective trilogy about Hot Rod's growing sense of responsibility and Kup's role in encouraging it. (It is kind of weird that in Headhunt, we get an explanation for why Hot Rod's Nebulan partner is no longer around... but we haven't even gotten to the introduction of Hot Rod's Nebulan partner in the Headmasters stories yet!)

from The Transformers UK #137
"What's in a Name?" and Grudge Match make a decent Dinobots story; Ladies' Night is kind of silly (Simon Furman brings together three human women side characters from different stories), but clearly important to the ongoing plot. I do like the idea that both Autobots and Decepticons recognize that Galvatron must be destroyed at all costs.

Lastly, we have the second issue of Headmasters. The whole setup is clearly so ridiculously contrived to make the toys work that I can never believe in it. Look, I know this is part and parcel of The Transformers as a concept, but Headmasters is just a bridge too far for me. (Like a lot of bad Transformers concepts, such as combiners, it overloads the story with characters; in this case, every Headmaster must have both an Autobot and a Nebulan, and neither gets much focus.) 

"Doomsday for Nebulos" / "Stylor's Story", from The Transformers Annual [1987], reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)
[written by Ian Rimmer]

from The Transformers Annual [1987]
To my surprise, these turned out to be pretty good. These two text stories retell the events of Headmasters #2 (with the events of issue #1 briefly recapped), though they read like they were written by someone going from memory or a vague outline, not from the actual published stories. They're uncredited, but Ian Rimmer later claimed credit for the writing in an interview. Rimmer's smart move is to bring out character: the first story is largely told from the third-person perspective of villain Lord Zarak and the second from the first-person perspective of Stylor, one of the first Headmasters. The basic idea of the Headmasters is still dumb (and seems even more obviously contrived in prose than in comics form) but Rimmer does his best to get you to swallow it.

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #32 & 35-36 and UK issues #138-50. Previous installments are listed below:
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)