I read IDW's five Transformers Classics UK volumes alongside Panini's Doctor Who Magazine collections because they lead into Death's Head's appearance in A Cold Day in Hell! I then followed Death's Head out of A Cold Day in Hell! into his own series, and I even picked up The Sleeze Brothers based on its connection. But it was always my intention to eventually go back to The Transformers UK and find out what happened after volume five.
This, however, was made more complicated by the fact that IDW's reprint series stopped with volume five. The UK-original stories from #180 to #289* are available in three different ways:
- Titan did a series of reprints of almost all of the Marvel UK material, but organized thematically, rather than by publication order
- IDW reprinted some key UK storylines under the Best of UK branding, though mostly early stuff later collected in the Classics UK series
- Hachette reprinted every G1 comic in a 100-volume partwork, The Definitive G1 Collection
The Hachette reprints appealed, especially as they integrated the UK and US strips, but they are expensive... if you can find them for sale at all! So I ended up going with the Titan ones, even though their reprints of the black-and-white strips (#215 onwards) are in the manga-sized "digest" format, about half the height of the UK originals! Except I couldn't find a copy of the Titan Time Wars collection anywhere, but thankfully IDW had a Best of UK: Time Wars I could use instead. The digest-sized ones have a cover price of $9... for some I have paid over $30 on the secondary market!
(There are two UK stories I will never read, because Titan reprinted both in collections that otherwise entirely contained stuff I already read, so it's hard to justify paying so much for single stories. These are "Cold Comfort and Joy!" from #198, reprinted in Second Generation, and The Fall and Rise of the Decepticon Empire from #213-14, reprinted in City of Fear.)
I worked out a somewhat idiosyncratic order for them: I didn't want to be jumping from volume to volume too much, so I tried to balance original publication sequence with fewer transitions between volumes. If Classics UK had continued, it would have run three more volumes, so I've divided the run into three roughly equal chunks to review here on my blog. Today I'm covering the first of those chunks, thirteen stories from twenty-eight original issues (plus one annual) distributed across five collections.
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from The Transformers #180
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The Big Broadcast of 2006 / Space Pirates!, from The Transformers #180-87 (20 Aug.–15 Oct. 1988), reprinted in Transformers: Space Pirates (Titan, 2003)scripts by Simon Furman; pencils by Lee Sullivan, Dan Reed, and Dougie Braithwaite; inks by Dave Elliott, Dan Reed, Dave Harwood, and Lee Sullivan; colours by Steve White and Euan Peters; letters by Glib
"The Big Broadcast of 2006" was actually a US story (reprinted in Classics, Vol. 4), set in the future era of The Transformers: The Movie. But while the US comic never did anything with the future era other than this story and the movie adaptation, the UK comic had by this point depicted a robust and detailed future history—which was completely contradicted by this tale. UK writer Simon Furman solved this problem by writing a two-page frame to "Big Broadcast" that established it was a story being told by Wreck-Gar, full of lies to mislead his Quintesson interrogators: "Wreck-Gar's whole account is full of absurdities and contradictions." As the Quintessons point out, by this point in the UK continuity, Galvatron, Cyclonus, and Scourge were all in the 1980s, not the future. And besides, the UK continuity was up to 2008, not 2006. It's a clever conceit, though I imagine it will have more impact if I ever read it where it "goes"; this just reprints the two UK pages.
It leads into the next UK future epic, Space Pirates!, one of those future stories that actually doesn't intersect with the present-day timeline. I wasn't really convinced this one held together, to be honest; the maguffin that everyone is chasing after didn't make a ton of sense to me, and the story requires seasoned warriors to make dumb decisions for everything to hang together. I do like a bit of Rodimus angst, but I feel like such angst was done much better in IDW's original continuity two decades later. Now, arguably a lot of Simon Furman epics probably wouldn't make sense if you delved into them, but this one didn't grab me the way some of those others did, so I'm less apt to forgive it its mistakes.
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from The Transformers Annual 1989
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"Firebug!" / "Dry Run!" / "Altered Image!" / "All in the Minds!" / Time Wars, from Transformers #188-89, 199-205 (22-29 Oct. 1988, 7 Jan.–18 Feb. 1989) and The Transformers Annual 1989, reprinted in The Transformers: Best of UK: Time Wars (IDW, 2009)plot by Simon Furman; scripts by Dan Abnett, Ian Rimmer, and Simon Furman; pencils by Jeff Anderson, Lee Sullivan, Dan Reed, Andrew Wildman, and Robin Smith; inks by Jeff Anderson, Cam Smith, Lee Sullivan, Dan Reed, Stephen Baskerville, and Robin Smith; colours by Euan Peters and Steve White; letters by Tom Frame, Glib, Annie Halfacree, Glop, and Peter Knight
This is a couple smaller stories, and then another big Transformers epic. Most of the small stories lead into the epic Time Wars, aside from one about the Wreckers battling a fire creature. There's Shockwave using the resurrected Megatron as a weapon against his future self, Galvatron, with the aid of Cyclonus and Scourge, also from the future, and then a Galvatron/Megatron showdown... which turns into an alliance, truly a delightful thing. I guess the one about Scorponok also leads into Time Wars, but it feel disposable.
Anyway, it all leads into the cross-time epic of Time Wars, which honestly I don't think makes sense even by Transformers time travel standards. A bit too much noise and fury, and not enough for someone to actually grab onto, once again, though it has its moments.
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from Transformers #222
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Survivors! / "The Hunting Party", from Transformers #219-22, 229 (27 May–17 June, 5 Aug. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)
scripts by Simon Furman; art by Dan Reed, John Stokes, and Simon Coleby; letters by Glib
After Time Wars, the UK Transformers comic changed gears, going small scale—and black and white! Survivors! picks up from the end of Time Wars, chronicling the Wreckers, who haven't been given new orders since those events. They end up teaming up with some former members of the Decepticon Mayhem Attack Squad, Carnivac and Catilla, to take down the deranged Skids. All the characters, all feeling like abandoned warriors, join up together at the end. I'm curious to see where this goes, as "The Hunting Party!" indicates that the new Mayhem Attack Squad has orders to hunt down Carnivac and Catilla for going AWOL. Bad Transformers who become good Transformers is probably one of my favorite tropes (see Dinobot, Blackarachnia,
MtMtE Megatron), so this has some real potential if it gets follow up on.
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from Transformers #230
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The Big Shutdown! / A Small War!, from Transformers #230-33 (12 Aug.–2 Sept. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Perchance to Dream (Titan, 2006)
scripts by Simon Furman; art by Lee Sullivan, Jeff Anderson, and Geoff Senior; letters by Helen Stone, Stuart Bartlett, and Glib
These two stories are united in being about Thunderwing, who is rising to power as Decepticon leader on Cybertron. (I think there is a power vacuum because of the events of Two Megatrons!, which was actually published later!) The Big Shutdown! is a delightful hardboiled pastiche, as the Autobot detective Nightbeat must stop Thunderwing from committing a series of murders on Earth as part of a test being administered by the Decepticon leadership back on Cybertron. The end confused me, but I greatly enjoyed the rest of it, and I hope we get more Nightbeat in this series.
A Small War! jumps ahead to when Thunderwing does lead the Cybertronian Decepticon forces, and it introduces the Micromasters, a group of Autobots who are tiny (i.e., human-sized). The Micromasters get captured, but escape anyhow—only the Decepticons, led by Thunderwing, now also have the secret of their construction. This is fine; it mostly seems to exist to set up the Micromasters' first US appearance in a story I haven't read yet. (It appears in Classics, Vol. 5, but I've only read up through vol. 4.)
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from Transformers #234
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"[Double] Deal of the Century!" / "Prime's Rib!", from Transformers #228, 234 (29 July & 9 Sept. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Earthforce (Titan, 2005)
scripts by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Stuart Bartlett and Helen Stone
Finally, we have two small standalone tales. "[Double] Deal of the Century!" introduces Double-Dealer, the Transformer who plays both sides; to be honest, I was thoroughly confused by it because I'm often bad at recognizing Transformers, and that's even harder when they're in black-and-white. "Prime's Rib!" is a random future story, set in 1995 (so about halfway between the 1980s "present" and the 2005+ "future") explaining how there can be a girl Transformer in Arcee if Transformers don't have gender. Optimus Prime had her built to appease angry feminists on Earth! Hilarious if you can take it ironically, I guess. But also pretty stupid.
* The UK comic continued to #332, but from #290 on it was all reprints of US content.
