Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: series: transformers

Showing posts with label series: transformers. Show all posts

19 June 2023

Transformers UK #255–89: ...Perchance to Dream and Other Stories (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 49)

And here, my journey through Marvel UK's Transformers strip comes to an end—as does my journey through the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and adjacent material. This won't be all I have to say on either topic, however. Eventually I plan to reread the 1980s Marvel Transformers comic integrating US and UK material in chronological order, and I also plan to do a couple posts summing up my thoughts on the DWM strip as a whole.

A wise man once said, "It's over... finished!" but he was even wiser when he uttered these words: "It never ends!"

from Transformers #258

...Perchance to Dream, from Transformers #255-60 (3 Feb.–10 Mar. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Perchance to Dream (Titan, 2006)

script by Simon Furman; art by Andy Wildman, Staz, and John Stokes; letters by Glib and Stuart Bartlett

The last (by titling convention, anyway) multi-part story of the UK comic strip begins the transition into what would be known as Earthforce. Many pixels have been spilled on this topic, but basically Simon Furman decided to stop having the UK strip tie into the US one at all, not even the sense of the UK one having small side stories to the bigger US stories like he'd been doing since issue #240 or so. Instead, he would split the characters up: since the US strip was focused on Optimus Prime and company in space, the UK strip would follow a set of different characters back on Earth.

This story sets that up by reviving five classic off-line characters so that they can star in the new strip. Galvatron is infesting their dreams, so we get five parts of flashback adventures, and then in part six they all wake up and defeat him. It's a fine enough set of vignettes, but Galvatron is defeated absurdly easily for someone who had once been a powerhouse of the strip.

from Transformers #261

"Starting Over!" / "Two Steps Back!" / "Break-Away!" / "Desert Island Risks!" / "Once upon a Time..." / "Life in the Slow Lane" / "Snow Fun!", from Transformers #261-67 (17 Mar.–28 Apr. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Earthforce (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Staz, Andy Wildman, Pete Knifton & Pete Venters, and Jeff Anderson; letters by Stuart Bartlett, Peri Godbold, and Glib

This is a fun set of strips that moves us into the Earthforce format, but also demonstrates its power. First we get a fun adventure where the characters revived in ...Perchance to Dream have to stop Megatron from destroying Earth's atmosphere. Why? I don't know, but it doesn't bother me, nor does the fact that according to the US strip at this time, Megatron can't even be here doing this. It's all worth it for the bits where the characters themselves complain about how gimmicky Transformers has gotten. "Probably some Microheadtargetmaster with a Pretender shell!" And then a fun ending where everyone just charges Megatron. Then we get a fun story about Grimlock versus Shockwave and his minions and then the whole premise is put into place: Optimus delegates Grimlock to run things on Earth.

I know some people love Grimlock, but for me a little bit of Grimlock goes a long way... there's only so much I can read about how he's "different" from the other Autobots. But Earthforce, it turns out, is the exact right amount of Grimlock. Like many loose cannon characters, he's best with a straight man, and here he's essentially got a whole team of them. Some of the stories here are bad silly (e.g., "Desert Island Risks" is improbably contrived) but many of them are good silly; any Transformers story where Grimlock's own Dinobots trick him by building a snowman of Shockwave is my kind of Transformers story. I like the serious, epic, angsty Transformers all right, but I also like the silly stuff that leavens it, and here we get a deliciously concentrated dose of it.

from Transformers #268

"Flashkcab!", from Transformers #268 (5 May 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, pencils by John Marshall, inks by Stephen Baskerville, letters by Glib

What's that, Megatron has a time machine and is attempting to rewrite the events of the Underbase saga? Okay, sure. With five pages per story, Furman can't waste time on setting things up... or ever using these concepts ever again! This one is maybe overdoing the exciting standalone adventure thing, but it's fine.

"Mystery!", from Transformers #269 (12 May 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Earthforce (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, pencils by Pete Knifton, inks by Pete Venters, letters by Glib

An Autobot arrives at the Earthforce base and discovers something terrible has happened to Wheeljack... only to realize it's all an incredibly complicated misunderstanding. Goofy fun.

from Transformers #270

"The Bad Guy's Ball!", from Transformers #270 (19 May 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, pencils by Pete Knifton, inks by Michael Eve, letters by Glib

There's been a Decepticon Civil War brewing, Shockwave versus Megatron, so the Decpticons call an "enclave" (should be "conclave," surely?) to settle who should be in charge. One of my favorite stories in this run: the whole idea of a Decepticon cease-fire social meet is a delight, and then the Autobots show up to cause problems in secret, preventing the two sides from reaching an accord. The only thing I don't like is I feel like this could be a premise for a whole twenty-page issue! Imagine this in the hands of James Roberts.

"The Living Nightlights!", from Transformers #271 (26 May 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Earthforce (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, pencils by John Marshall, inks by Stephen Baskerville, letters by Helen Stone

Dumb, contrived story about Decepticon-made evil toys. Okay, not every "goofy fun" story is a winner... but you know, it's only five pages long at worst!

from Transformers #274

"Cry Wolf!" / "Wolf in the Fold!" / "Where Wolf?", from Transformers #272-74 (2-16 June 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; pencils by Pete Knifton, Staz, and Jeff Anderson; inks by Michael Eve, Staz, and Stephen Baskerville; letters by Glib and Stuart Bartlett

This three-part tale returns attention to the "Survivors," the group of Autobots and Decepticons who struck out on their own. In this one, ex-Decepticon Carnivac decides to revenge himself on the Mayhem Attack Squad; it's a fun story about Carnivac doing his own thing while working alongside the Autobots, and how he humiliates Bludgeon by not killing him. All of the Survivors tales have been good, and this one is no exception; the story also links up the Survivors with Earthforce.

"Secrets" / "Bugged!" / "Internal Affairs!", from Transformers #275-77 (23 June–7 July 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; pencils by Pete Knifton, Jeff Anderson, and Simon Coleby; inks by Pete Venters and Michael Eve; letters by Glib and Stuart Bartlett

These three stories shift the focus to the Decepticons, and they are all pretty fun. First, it turns out Soundwave is spying on Megatron for Shockwave, but he plays on a fellow Decepticon's paranoia to throw suspicion off himself in a masterful move. Then Starscream makes his own play, uniting with Soundwave to depose both Megatron and Shockwave. It's so complicated you've got to love it.

from Transformers #280

"The House That Wheeljack Built!" / "Divide and Conquer!" / "The 4,000,000 Year Itch!" / "Makin' Tracks!", from Transformers #278-81 (14 July–4 Aug. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Earthforce (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; pencils by Pete Knifton, Staz, and Jeff Anderson; inks by Michael Eve and Jeff Anderson; letters by Glib, Stuart Bartlett, and Sophie Heath

More goofy fun in "The House That Wheeljack Built": Wheeljack shows off the new Earthbase's automated defense systems... only everyone is outside the base, and you can only deactivate them from the inside, meaning everyone has to battle their way in! I also enjoyed "The 4,000,000 Year Itch!", where Optimus comes on an inspection tour at the same time Slag develops one of his periodic compulsions to murder everyone he knows(!), so Grimlock has to distract Optimus in the foreground while the other Dinobots keep subduing Slag in the background. Low farce, surely.

On the other hand, "Makin' Tracks" is similar but didn't work for me. In this case, the dead Tracks is being revived... but Grimlock hates Tracks so much he tries to kill him off again. I feel like this one went a bit too far... also, who the hell is Tracks? I don't even remember this guy or his beef with Grimlock. Plus the small art of these Titan digests made it hard to understand what was going on at the climax.

from Transformers #282

"Shut Up!"/ "Manoeuvres!", from Transformers #282-83 (11-18 Aug. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Staz and Pete Knifton & Pete Venters, letters by Gary Gilbert and Sophie Heath

"Shut Up!" is another great story, one that could pretty much only work as a five-pager: the Mayhem Attack Squad intimidate Red Alert into letting them out of the cell on Earthbase by not talking! "Manouvres!" is one that made little impression, on the other hand.

"Assassins" / "External Forces!" / "The Lesser Evil!", from Transformers #284-86 (25 Aug.–8 Sept. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; pencils by Jeff Anderson, Pete Knifton, and John Marshall; inks by Michael Eve, Pete Venters, and Jeff Anderson; letters by Stuart Bartlett, Julie Hughes, and Peri Godbold

More on the complicated shenanigans of the Decepticon civil war. Shockwave and Megatron team up to assassinate Starscream, making it look like Soundwave is responsible; the Mayhem Attack Squad attempts to kill Starscream and Soundwave; the Autobats have to save Starscream because they need a transfusion from him to defeat an illness Snarl has (we saw this illness in a flash-forward story in the 1990 annual). Enjoyable, but alas this is end of this plotline as the book itself is almost over. Shame, because I think there was a lot of mileage in it.

from Transformers #287

"Inside Story!" / "Front Line!" / "End of the Road!", from Transformers #287-89 (15-29 Sept. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Perchance to Dream (Titan, 2006)

script by Simon Furman, pencils by Pete Knifton and Staz, inks by Pete Venters and Staz letters by Stuart Bartlett and Gary Gilbert

And here it all comes to an end, with honestly a pretty mediocre set of stories about a journalist trying to write a story about the Transformers. You'd think the giant robots tearing up the Earth would be bigger news than this story implies.

It's a shame this was it, because 1) these stories were boring, and 2) the Earthforce premise could clearly have gone on forever. I enjoyed it a lot on the whole. Sure, no big epics any more, but lots of character stuff and lots of jokes. I think this run was just as influential on James Roberts in its own way as the earlier, more epic, UK storylines.

from Transformers Annual 1991

"The Magnificent Six!", from Transformers Annual [1991]

script by Simon Furman, art by Staz, art by Louise Cassell

The 1991 annual only contained one original story, so it wasn't worth buying (as I did the 1990 edition), but I realized you could get the story on the Internet Archive. This text story has six Autobots sent on a mission to Cybertron, only for five of them it's a return to the site of their greatest failure. This is an above-average text story about the traumas of war; it also felt to me like there was a straight line from this to Last Stand of the Wreckers; Megadeath is surely a proto-Overlord.

(This mostly features the set of characters resurrected in ...Perchance to Dream; I would suggest it goes after that story, before they are deployed to Earth in "Starting Over!")

"Another Time & Place", from Transformers Annual [1992], reprinted in Transformers: Best of the Rarities #1 (IDW, Aug. 2022)

script by Simon Furman, pencils by Staz, inks by Lesley Dalton, colour by Caroline Steeden

The last UK-original story is another text piece, this one set years after the end of the US strip. It's certainly the best text story the UK annuals ever did, with a mournful Optimus and a Grimlock keen to recapture old glories. So many have died, so many have changed. How can you make peace work? Again, it's hard to not see IDW's run foreshadowed here; this is the kind of think we saw explored a lot in Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye. I liked this a surprising amount; I look forward to reading it someday with the full context of the US stories it follows up on.

This post is the forty-ninth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Cybermen: The Ultimate Comic Strip Collection. Previous installments are listed below:

07 June 2023

Transformers UK #215–18, 223–27, 235–54: Aspects of Evil! and Other Stories (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 48)

I had thought that I would intersperse my Titan reprints of Marvel UK's Transformers comics among my Doctor Who Magazine graphic novels. I knew I wouldn't read them at quite the same rate... but I did not anticipate just how long it would take me to read them all, because I did not realize how difficult they would be to track down!

It took me almost six months to my hands on a copy of Aspects of Evil! First, I almost ordered the wrong book, because the Transformers wiki gives the wrong ISBN for Aspects of Evil!; I actually bought and paid for a copy of Fallen Star, but (thankfully, I guess) the Amazon seller was a scammer who didn't actually have the book (and did refund me when confronted). But then when I put the correct ISBN into Bookfinder... I couldn't find it anywhere! It wasn't that the book was going for insanely high prices, it was that it just wasn't being sold anywhere at all on the whole Internet.

After a few months, my saved search on eBay finally paid off, but I was outbid at the last moment. I began considering other options, like posting a desperate plea on the Transformers trading subreddit or actually paying the insane prices to import the Hachette collections of the relevant issues, when finally Aspects of Evil! was posted on eBay again, this time as a pair with Fallen Star, which I actually did need. I think this helped me win, as I was willing to pay a decent price with the knowledge that I would end up with two different books; someone tried to snipe me at the last minute, but didn't beat the maximum bid I had set.

from Transformers #216

So, after a huge delay, I was finally able to finish off Marvel UK's original Transformers comics. These all come from the era when the strip had moved into shorter, black-and-white strips, but I was able to supplement a bit with some recent collections from IDW that took a couple of these strips and colorize them. This post covers the first half of that black-and-white run, though it jumps around a bit and overlaps with my previous post on it (see #28 in the long list at the bottom of this post).

Race with the Devil, from Transformers #215-18 (29 Apr.–20 May 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Glib and Hel

This story is okay. A group of Autobots called the Triggerbots is assigned to shadow some Decepticon mercenaries, Darwking and Dreadwind; it turns out that the mercenaries are trying to recover Starscream's corpse, since it contains the Underbase, the collected knowledge of the Transformer race. (This is all due to the Underbase saga, from the US book.) Starscream kind of becomes a zombie and the Triggerbots stop him and save some humans. I guess if I ever could remember who the Triggerbots were, I might have cared about this more.

from Transformers #223

Aspects of Evil!, from Transformers #223-27 (24 June–22 July 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; pencils by Jeff Anderson, Art Wetherell, Andy Wildman, Lee Sullivan, and Simon Coleby; inks by Jeff Anderson, Simon Coleby, Andy Wildman, Lee Sullivan, and Cam Smith; letters by Helen Stone and Glib

We're back in the future timeline of Transformers, but in a different way. This five-part story is a set of five vignettes, framed by a dying Rodimus Prime in the year 2356 telling stories of various evils he has encountered to a student eager to learn of Unicron, but on the way, Rodimus tells him of Scorponok in 1991, Galvatron in 2009, Shockwave in 2004, and Megatron in 1990. Thus, we get glimpses all up an down the future timeline (which itself has been rewritten, thanks to the Time Wars) with tales set both before and after the 1986 film (set in 2006).

I found this fairly effective. Up until this point, the short black-and-white stories had clearly been scripted for the original longer format and then had their installments cut in half. Here, writer Simon Furman is figuring out the format that drive the book from here on out, telling small but sharp stories. I liked how Scorponock manipulated Rodimus's morality to his advantage during a Decepticon civil war; I liked the brutality of Megatron dealing with a traitor. The only one that didn't work was the last one... you can't cram Unicron into a five-page tale and convince me that he is the ultimate evil!

from Transformers #235

Deathbringer, from Transformers #235-36 (16-23 Sept. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Best of the Rarities #1 (IDW, Aug. 2022)

script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior and Staz, letters by Glib, colors by John-Paul Bove

Another okay story, one that doesn't use the format as well as Aspects of Evil! Basically, the Autobots encounter a mechanoid animated by a fragment of the Matrix (which was lost in space back when Optimus died), and Optimus angsts about it. I never care much for angsty Optimus, and this story is no exception.

from Transformers #238

"Way of the Warrior" / "Survival Run" / "A Savage Place!", from Transformers #237-39 (30 Sept.–15 Oct. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Simon Coleby, Lee Sullivan, and Geoff Senior; letters by Glib and Helen Stone

This follows up on the Survivors, the group of Autobots, along with the Decepticons Catilla and Carnivac, who struck out on their own when cut off from Autobot High Command. The Mayhem Attack Squad is trying to hunt down and punish the two Deception traitors; the story mostly focuses on Carnivac, who refuses to recognize Autobot authority but also begrudgingly finds himself doing the right thing and in a desperate stand for his own survival. Decepticon-turned-"good" is one of my favorite Transformers tropes, and this is a good example of it. The middle installment illustrated by Lee Sullivan, with Carnivac crawling through the desert, is particularly effective.

from Transformers #240

"Out to Lunch!", from Transformers #240 (21 Oct. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Annie Halfacree

This is a good example of the vignette-focused approach of this era of the UK strip. Back in Race with the Devil, Dreadwind and Darkwing were working for Megatron, but he had (kind of) died, so this follows up on what they get up to next now that Thunderwing is in charge of the Decepticons. Here, they're hanging out in a bar on Cybertron, but it's attacked by Mecannibals... only they're too drunk and self-pitying to notice! So the story cuts between them and the desperate attempts of an Autobot agent to stop the Mecannibals from eating everyone. Fun stuff, exactly what you should do in a five-page Transformers comic, I reckon.

"Rage! / "Assault on the Ark!", from Transformers #241-42 (28 Oct.–4 Nov. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Perchance to Dream (Titan, 2006)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Stuart Bartlett

These two tales jump back a bit to explain more of how Thunderwing ascended to power, following up on The Big Shutdown! They're fine but I kind of didn't really care.

"Mind Games", from Transformers #243 (11 Nov. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Staz, letters by Annie Halfacree

It's hard to talk about this story without getting into the weeds on continuity. Basically, when Simon Furman took over the US book, he decided he wanted to recurrect Megatron. But Megatron had already been resurrected in the UK book. He didn't want to alienate US readers by suddenly revealing Megatron had already been resurrected, so he wrote a story for the UK strip explaining that what everyone had thought was a resurrected Megatron was actually a clone of Megatron created by Straxus. (Chronologically, this goes before most of what I've reviewed above; see the note at the end of this post.) Anyway, not much happens here; it's mostly to set up the next story.

from Transformers #244

"Two Megatrons!", from Transformers #244 (18 Nov. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Best of the Rarities #1 (IDW, Aug. 2022)

script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior; letters by Glib, colored by John-Paul Bove

The "real" Megatron and the clone Megatron battle it out. Transformers fans have written whole dissertations on how this causes more problems than it solves, continuity-wise, but if you ignore all that, this is a great story with a perfect climax. Megatron is dead, love live Megatron!

"Underworld!" / "Demons!" / "Dawn of Darkness", from Transformers #245-47 (25 Nov.–9 Dec. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Jeff Anderson and Geoff Senior; letters by Helen Stone, Annie Halfacree, and Glib

To be honest, I completely forgot about this story until I went to write it up right now. I guess some Transformers battle robot zombies in sewers? Not really my thing.

from Transformers #248

"Fallen Star!", from Transformers #248 (16 Dec. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Fallen Star (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Andy Wildman, letters by Helen Stone

Another vignette, this one focused on Starscream who, thanks to events in the US book, has been brought back to life... but is feeling like he's lost his mojo in the process. But then he realizes that maybe after all, he's still got it. Told in the first person, this is a fun story of Starscream at his best. (Well, worst.) Nicely done.

from Transformers #249

"Whose Lifeforce Is It Anway?" / "The Greatest Gift of All!", from Transformers #249-50 (23-30 Dec. 1989), reprinted in Transformers: Way of the Warrior (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman, art by Staz, letters by Stuart Bartlett and Helen Stone

Two linked stories, both pretty okay. Not as forgettable as some of these, but not the best either. In the first, we see an Autobot walrus robot named Longtooth. Long enough, Optimus Prime bequeathed a fragment of the Matrix to him to use to save a dying comrade... but the cowardly Longtooth kept it for himself. Guilt has since made him suicidal in battle, but all his fellow Autobots think he's just very brave. This I think is a good set-up for a story, but really all that happens is he just suddenly decides to send the Matrix fragment (anonymously) back to Earth so Optimus can make use of it. Not much of a story. In the second one, Optimus thinks about using the fragment to bring back some dead Autobots, but ends up using it to revitalize a part of Earth damaged ecologically by the Transformers' war. It's fine, you know. More Optimus angst.

from Transformers Annual 1990

"The Quest!" / "Destiny of the Dinobots!" / "Trigger-Happy!" / "Dreadwing Down!" / "The Chain Gang!", from The Transformers Annual [1990]

stories by Steve Alan (with Steve White), Ian Rimmer, Simon Furman, and Dan Abnett; art by Andy Wildman, Art Wetherell, Stephen Baskerville, and Dan Reed; colour by Steve White and Euan Peters; letters by Glib; dinosaur consultation by Steve White

The 1990 Transformers Annual (by which I mean the one published in 1989) contains, as they usually do, a mix of comic and prose stories. The UK produced two more after this, but this was the last one with a substantive amount of original content. "The Quest!" is a dull text story designed to recap Transformers history, but most of what's left is decent stuff. "Destiny of the Dinobots!" is a tragic glimpse of the future of the Dinobots (seemingly set after the "Earthforce" run I'll discuss in my next Transformers post); "Dreadwing Down!" and "The Chain Gang!" are two decent action-focused tales. I also enjoyed "Trigger-Happy!", a two-part text story about Backstreet, an Autobot who screws up so much he goes on the run rather than be punished by Optimus... but thankfully it's all a big misunderstanding.

from Transformers #254

"The Void!" / "Edge of Impact" / "Shadow of Evil", from Transformers #251-53 (6-20 Jan. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Aspects of Evil! (Titan, 2005)

script by Simon Furman; art by Staz and Cam S; letters by Glib and Annie Halfacree

These are the first three installments of the last-ever future timeline story, detailing what Rodimus, Arcee, and Kup do after their defeat by Galvatron back in Aspects of Evil! It's all very moody, as some kind of enemy is stalking the Autobots on their escape vessel... but to be honest, I don't particularly care for how downbeat the future stories have become. The future was never cheery per se, but since the Autobots defeated Unicron, it feels like it's just fallback after fallback, and Rodimus Prime deserves better.

"White Fire", from Transformers #254 (27 Jan. 1990), reprinted in Transformers: Best of Hot Road #1 (IDW, May 2022)

script by Simon Furman, art by Cam Smith, letters by Stuart Bartlett, colors by John-Paul Bove

And finally the future timeline comes to an end here, in a story where Rodimus almost defeats Unicron... but Kup screws things up so that the Matrix will be eternally corrupted. Good job, heroes! I don't like the direction the future stories were going in, so I am glad it all got cut off here, to be honest.

A Quick Note on Chronology

from Transformers #241

Suffice it to say that this era of the strip is very confusing chronologically, with the UK stories jumping around a lot relative to the US stories and even themselves. I'll make a post later with more details, but here's how the above stories go chronologically, by my reckoning anyway. I've included US stories and UK stories not covered in this post for context; stories actually discussed here are in bold. I've omitted the future timeline stories from this list.

US #53: "Recipe for Disaster!"
UK #215-18: Race with the Devil
UK #219-22, 229, 232-33: Survivors! / "The Hunting Party!" / A Small War!
UK #243-44: "Mind Games" / "Two Megatrons!"
UK #230-31: The Big Shutdown!
UK #241-42: "Rage!" / "Assault on the Ark!"
US #54: "King Con!"
UK #235-36: Deathbringer!
US #55: "The Interplanetary Wrestling Championship!"
UK #228: "[Double] Deal of the Century!"
UK #237-39: "Way of the Warrior" / "Survival Run" / "A Savage Place!"
US #56-59: "Back from the Dead" / "The Resurrection Gambit!" / "All the Familiar Faces!" / "Skin Deep"
UK #240, 245-48: "Out to Lunch!" / "Underworld!" / "Demons!" / "Dawn of Darkness" / "Fallen Star!"
US #60-61: "Yesterday's Heroes!" / "The Primal Scream"
UK #249-50: "Whose Lifeforce Is It Anyway?" / "The Greatest Gift of All"
Annual 1990: "The Chain Gang!"
US #62-66: Matrix Quest

This post is the forty-eighth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers issues #255–89 of Transformers UK. Previous installments are listed below:

23 November 2022

Transformers UK #180–89, 199–205, 219–22, 228–34: Time Wars and Other Stories (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 28)

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.

from The Transformers #180

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.

from The Transformers Annual 1989

"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.

from Transformers #222

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.

from Transformers #230

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.)

from Transformers #234

"[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.

This post is the twenty-eighth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Flood. Previous installments are listed below: