The Transformers (Marvel comic)

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The heroic Autobots fight to crush Earth's highways. Doctor McCoy is very happy.

The Transformers, the monthly comic book published in the U.S. by Marvel Comics, was the very first original fiction to feature the famous robots in disguise, as well as the longest-running. It started life as a four-issue, bimonthly limited series in 1984, but proved so popular that it continued publication as an ongoing monthly until spring of 1991. The series ultimately reached 80 issues and spun off several miniseries.

The series established the Marvel Comics continuity, which would form the basis for several successor stories over the years. Marvel would publish the Generation 2 series only two years later, and IDW Publishing would later reunite several Marvel creatives for both Regeneration One, a continuation of the original Marvel comic, and the Transformers '84 prequel miniseries.

Nearly all of the U.S. stories were later published by Marvel UK, along with new stories that fit between the gaps of the U.S. tales. See Marvel UK below.

Marvel U.S.

Related mini-series

• G.I. Joe and the Transformers
• The Transformers: Headmasters
• The Transformers Universe
• Transformers: The Movie (Though published by Marvel in the US and UK, is only related in the UK canon)

Successor comics

The different publishers' series are all mutually exclusive, effectively representing different branched timelines. The Collectors' Club and IDW efforts explicitly ignore the events of Marvel UK stories, although the latter takes copious characters and concepts from both the UK and Generation 2 material.

• Transformers: Generation 2
• Transformers: Classics (Transformers Collectors' Club)
• The Transformers: Regeneration One, Transformers '84 #0, and Secrets & Lies (IDW Publishing)

Overview

After watching traffic reports for an hour, they finally decided to just stay home.

The story begins with a brief history of Cybertron and its civil war, which eventually causes the planet to become lost in space. Battling aboard the Ark, the original 28 characters crash-land on Earth four million years ago and awaken in the (then-) present day of 1984. The quest for fuel becomes their initial goal, driving the first several issues.

As the first fiction in the entire franchise, the initial issues of Transformers were breaking completely new ground. Early issues contain a variety of plot points and conventions, some of which would go on to shape the very mythos... and others that would fall by the wayside, forgotten and hilariously quaint. The concept of the life-giving Creation Matrix is a good example of the former group; "naturally occurring gears, levers and pulleys" comes to mind for the latter.

With a single wave of Starscream's hand, Hound, Bluestreak, Mirage, Hoist, Brawn, and Gears cease to occupy valuable page space!

The book soon built its own elaborate and wide-reaching universe, including hundreds of characters—Transformers, humans, aliens—on Earth, Cybertron, and beyond. Late in the series, a long-running plot brought in the sinister menace of Unicron, giving him a backstory and build-up that for many fans surpassed his original appearance in The Transformers: The Movie for storytelling and gravitas. This backstory would eventually go on to eclipse the origin given in the cartoon.

Because it was a book intended to sell toys, Transformers featured an ever-rotating cast. New Transformers were often hastily brought in to meet the demands of Hasbro, and older "product" was often swept aside or killed off en masse in epic, climactic battles.

After some troubled times and steadily declining readership, the series was finally canceled at issue #80. A combination of factors was likely responsible: the Transformers toyline had become yesterday's fad, the core readership had grown older and moved on, and Hasbro seems to have pulled the plug.

Several subsequent series would build upon the series; see Marvel Comics continuity for more information.

Creative team

He's authorized to devour anyone not in the current product line.

The book featured two primary writers: Bob Budiansky edited the original 4-part limited series and wrote the book from issue #5 to issue #55. After that, Simon Furman, already heavily experienced from his work on the UK book, took up the reins until the book was cancelled at issue #80. Other writers balked at having to keep track of this massive, unfamiliar cast, which is the reason the original miniseries has three writers and is an admitted mess.^[1]

Transformers is a bit notorious for wild swings in writing quality, as serious plots alternated with such strange concepts as Micromaster wrestling and ridiculous bounty hunters. Some of this may be attributed to Bob Budiansky's eventual burn-out; after years of having to wrap his stories around to meet the latest toy-appearance demands from Hasbro, his later writing on the book showed a decline in quality. He is sometimes remembered unfavourably because of this period, perhaps unfairly so considering his fundamental role in shaping the Transformers universe and most of its characters, as well as some of the book's most gripping early stories. Still, even such oddball stories as "Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom" and "Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?" have both their merits and their fans.

Budiansky himself proposed that Simon Furman take over as the U.S. series writer.^[2] With the changeover, the stories took on a more serious tone, relying on character conflict more than outlandish plot devices. Many fans regard Furman's run on the original book as one of the high points of all Transformers fiction.

The comic was written in "Marvel Style", where the writer gives the artist a plot outline instead of a full script. The artist then lays out the pages himself; afterward the writer comes back in and scripts the dialog based on the artist's work. This approach gives the artist a larger role in telling the story than simply drawing what the writer tells them to.^[2]

A number of artists worked on Transformers, but the most frequent pencilers included Frank Springer, Don Perlin, José Delbo, Geoff Senior, and Andrew Wildman. Also of particular note is colorist Nelson "Nel" Yomtov, who colored every single issue of the book, as well as all of the related mini-series.

Publication and format

As The Transformers title began life as a limited series, it was subject to the conventions Marvel had established for limited series at the time of its publication. "Standard" Marvel comics released concurrently in 1984 cost 60 cents and were printed on newsprint; in contrast, The Transformers sold for 75 cents and was printed on a whiter, higher-quality stock (for the time) known as "Mando paper".

Evidently considered a "deluxe format" book by Marvel, Transformers continued to be printed on Mando paper even after it became an ongoing series.^[3] It also remained at 75 cents—at least until issue 28, when the price of the book rose to 1 dollar. With the exception of the double-sized issue 50 and issue 75, which were both priced at $1.50, The Transformers would remain at 1 dollar for the remainder of its original run.

Cover dates

There is some confusion over when issues first appeared, due to changing practices regarding the cover dates. When the comic began in 1984, Marvel issues were normally cover dated four months ahead of their going on sale. This was partially a hangover from the days of fierce newsstand competition when each company tried to make its comics look newer than its rivals and partially a mechanism to compensate for slower distribution on newsstands and overseas sales.

As a result of this, although issue #1 is cover dated September, it went on sale in May. This is supported by the first Usenet post about Transformers which was posted by Ted Nolan to net.comics on May 22, 1984.^[4]

In 1989, Marvel decided to rationalize things by moving to a system where the cover date was only two months in advance. In order to achieve this, issues released in August 1989 have the cover date "Mid November", those in September 1989 have "December" and those in October "Mid December". The relevant Transformers issues were #59, #60 and #61.

Comics Magazine

Main article: The Transformers Comics Magazine

Marvel US released a bimonthly digest-sized magazine, which reprinted the first twenty issues of the main series - two issues per magazine - until cancelled with #10.

Marvel UK

Marvel UK produced a G1 comic which ran for 332 issues, reprinting the American stories and adding in many new stories built around them.

Overview

This is the best Cracker Jack prize ever!

Though not without contradiction, the Marvel UK book managed to weave a number of highly complex stories "behind the scenes" of the Marvel U.S. tales. Topics included expanded stories and battles in the early days of the war (before Shockwave's arrival), more intrigue among the Decepticon commanders on Earth, the Autobot resistance on Cybertron, and the time-travelling exploits of Galvatron, who arrives directly from the future world of The Transformers: The Movie.

The UK book's weekly schedule and shorter format meant splitting stories into parts, often right in the middle of the action. Like the U.S. book, Marvel UK featured a regular column of letters from readers; however, these were supposedly answered by various Transformers, including Grimlock, Dreadwind, and others.

Exactly how many copies it sold is vaguely estimated at 200,000 at its height, though Ian Rimmer remembers 128,000 in 1986. Either way, it was the company's biggest hit and would establish a 'house style' that Marvel UK would use on their subsequent toy-and-cartoon licensed comics. ^[5] (None would reach Transformers height until The Real Ghostbusters.) We know the comic began to drop about roughly 10,000 readers every sixth months from the summer of 1988 and by the time of #319, the comic's average weekly circulation was 19,839; but at this point, the sales had mostly stabilised due to the long-term fans sticking around. The older age of the readers can be noticed in the covers Harry Papadopoulos commissioned at the time: brighter covers with word balloons and puns were dropped for moodier painted covers and things like Expressionist screaming heads and a reference to a King Crimson song.^[6]

Creative team

Change of artists? Eh, who'll notice?

Most UK-specific stories were written by Simon Furman, who was later assigned to write for the U.S. comic as well. Curiously, it was from this point that the divergences between the UK and U.S. stories became more pronounced.

Regular artists included Will Simpson, Robin Smith, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, Lee Sullivan, Geoff Senior, and Andrew Wildman. The large stable of artists resulted in some extreme contrasts of style throughout the book, such as Reed's highly organic art being followed by the clean, mechanical precision of Sullivan or Senior. Sometimes these changes occurred within the context of a single story.

Complexity and contradiction in continuity

In no continuity was his face damaged. Maybe Bumblebee was just really ugly by Transformer standards.

Making the new stories align with the U.S. book occasionally involved some bending over backwards in storytelling terms. Megatron, for example, winds up with partial amnesia at the end of one story, explaining why he doesn't remember the Predacons when he encounters them again in a later U.S. story. U.S. reprints were sometimes physically edited as well; for example, a UK story has Skids being transported to Limbo after the events of U.S. #23, necessitating the removal of his occasional background appearances thereafter.

Another major change was the exclusion of the G.I. Joe and the Transformers crossover, which featured Bumblebee's destruction and subsequent restoration as Goldbug. UK continuity accounted for the reformatting by showing Bumblebee destroyed by Death's Head and rebuilt by Wreck-Gar during "Hunters". Also, the UK comic continued to feature Megatron and Shockwave after their apparent deaths in the U.S. comic. While Megatron's appearance was eventually reconciled (sort of, if you squint) with the U.S. continuity, Shockwave's was not.

The "...Perchance to Dream" story in UK #255-260 began the Earthforce storyline and heralded a nigh-irreconcilable division between U.S. and UK stories. This was in part a deliberate decision to not try to maintain continuity due to past problems.^[7]

Publication and format

The Marvel UK book was published fortnightly from #1 to #26, weekly from #27 to #308, and fortnightly again from #309 to its conclusion in #332. These issues used a larger, magazine-sized format, compared to the traditional size for modern U.S. comic books. They contained 24 pages, numbered inclusive of advertising (unlike the U.S. comic). The color and paper quality was better than that of the U.S. comic, resulting in much whiter whites and, in UK-exclusive stories, no ugly dot artifacts in the colored regions.

Typically, 11 pages would be devoted to a U.S. or UK Transformers story, while the remaining pages were divided between a back-up strip, a letters page, small humorous comic strips (most notably Robo-Capers and Combat Colin), and advertisements. Between issues #213 and #289 the format was changed to accommodate three five-page strips: the US reprint (published in colour), a new UK story (published in black and white) and a back-up strip. Issue #289 was the last to contain new UK Transformers stories.

In issue #290 there was another format change, with the comic returning to full colour throughout and reprints of classic UK stories taking the place of new black and white material. The three-strip structure was then dropped for good with issue #309; issue #310 then returned to the traditional format of an 11-page US reprint and a back-up strip, albeit published fortnightly once more.

UK children's comics typically have a weekly or fortnightly publication schedule, and monthly publication is the preserve of more substantial magazines aimed at older readers. The decision to publish fortnightly necessitated the division of the U.S. storylines between two or more UK comics, otherwise the UK comic would run out of material. The back-up strip then bulked out the issue to an acceptable size. When the comic began to be published weekly, this required still more Transformers material, which led to longer runs of original UK stories.

The Marvel UK series ran for about a year longer than its American counterpart and altogether had about twice as many stories.

Aborted monthly

The last issues of the comic, when readers were aware the US monthly had ended, had 'Blaster' tell the readers that the comic may not be about to end after all. Someone at the Transmaster UK fanletter Trans Talk then just phoned up the offices and asked the editor what was going on, and Papadopoulos told them the comic was going monthly; this was something Action Force, Thundercats, and Real Ghostbusters had all done either before or at the same time.^[8][6] Papadopoulos Blaster then confirmed this in #330:

Colin's hopes were prematurely raised like so many fans'...

"The BIG NEWS! From the mail, we know that you’ve all been a little glum about where Transformers has been going — into the trashcan seems to be the generally accepted view. Well, surprise, surprise! As of issue 333, Transformers will get a bright, polished new look. You’ll be getting a 36-page monthly containing 10 pages of newly coloured Transformers classic adventures, 11 pages that feature the return of G I Joe… plus five originated new pages of Transformers that will continue the saga of the relentless war between the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons! What better way to kick off 1992?!"

(#330-1 contained recoloured "The Big Shutdown!" pages, a presumed 'dry run' for the recoloured strip. The only other strips from the black-and-white era to be colourised at the time were the Mayhem Attack Squad storyline told across "The Hunting Party", "Way of the Warrior", "Survival Run", "A Savage Place!", "Cry Wolf!", "Wolf in the Fold!", and "Where Wolf?", all in Transformers Annual 1992; the rest would have to wait to be colourised by John-Paul Bove for The Definitive G1 Collection.)

Alas! #332 revealed the planned monthly continuation had been abruptly cancelled, right when Combat Colin was promoting the change and everything!

The exact reason for this change is that doing new strips would've meant spending money, and Marvel UK's then-head Paul Neary didn't want to spend it on what he considered a 'dead end' of relying on licensed material. It's also possible he saw cancelling the comic as a way to shake things up. (He would later tell Comics World #33, regarding Death's Head's original self), "I didn't think there was much future in Transformers-based robots". Interestingly, Furman hadn't been asked to write the planned new tales and we don't know if that was due to timing or someone else would've been tapped.^[6]

Cover dates

Similarly to the U.S. comic, there is also some confusion over when issues of the UK comic were published. The date on a British weekly during Transformers's run was normally the off-sale date when it would be replaced by the next issue. For example issue #283 has a cover date of 18 August 1990 but was released on the 11th August 1990. During at least most of the run, the norm was for weekly comics to come out on a Saturday.

Occasionally, an issue was seen arriving on the Friday before it was "due", with such sightings usually during the Christmas/New Year period when distribution can be unsettled and overcompensated for, but it is hard to verify individual sightings.

Marvel UK Annuals

Main article: Transformers Annual

Marvel UK's Transformers Annuals were published every year, in summer to autumn in time for the Christmas market, for the life of the comic. Each annual was made up of a combination of a comic strip, text stories and editorial content. Some annuals also contained crossover stories with the main weekly comic in an attempt to boost sales. Due to falling sales, later annuals mainly contained reprinted stories from the comic. (Reprinted stories are not listed below.) These reprints are still of interest, as they present formerly black-and-white works in full colour.

Collected Comics

Main article: Transformers Collected Comics

Marvel UK also published a companion series of sorts as a series of "Collected Comics" Specials, reprinting stories from the main series, mostly UK-original material. Of note was that these volumes would sometimes fully-colourise strips that had originally been told partially in black-and-white, along with other minor corrections. This reprint series outlived the ongoing for a couple more years, tapping into the remaining supply of colour UK material.

Notes

• There was almost an entirely new Marvel continuity seperate from the other two, as a toy company in continental Europe had bought the licensing rights for some of the Japanese toys that Hasbro weren't releasing in Europe. Marvel UK were approached to create an extra comic about these toys, and Ian Rimmer got James Hill and Mike Collins to start work on It Wouldn't Be Called Transformers for the UK-and-European market before Hasbro just bought the other company out. ^[9]
• While Marvel US had some more involvement from Hasbro until the later years (when they'd lost interest), Marvel UK didn't even have to show Hasbro UK the scripts! This sort of laissez-faire attitude is very much not how licensed comics are done anymore.^[10]
• The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas was a four-page comic special published in Woman's Day magazine. There were no credits, but it was obviously a Marvel Comics production.
• According to the third issue of All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z's entries on Death's Head, the events of the Marvel UK Generation 1 comics take place on Marvel Earth-120185. The universe is named after the publication date of the first Marvel UK-exclusive story, "Man of Iron".
• According to the Marvel Universe Appendix, the events of the Marvel US comics take place on Marvel Earth-91274.

References

External links

• Guide to TF UK by Crespo99
• May, 1984 net.comics review