The Solar Pool
Follow Me For Updates On:
  • Blog
  • Revisitation
  • Transformation
  • Book Shop
    • Heart of the Pool
    • Disclaimer
    • Links

Decepticon Prime.

22/8/2014

8 Comments

 
Picture
It's the issue that very nearly didn't happen... but would we have missed it?

It's Galvatron Vs. Magnus, Cindy Vs. Reader Apathy and Rodimus's Autobot logo Vs. an artistic mistake, all in my look at:

Fire on High! Part 1.

8 Comments
Tim Roll-Pickering link
22/8/2014 11:52:06 am

Maybe because I first saw this out of sequence and so didn't spot how reptitive it is but I enjoyed this issue a lot. It's got Galvatron losing to Goldbug! Maybe if the other Autobots had just stayed back and not provided a distraction then the newest toy could have pressed home victory in all his glory.

(Of course this totally mucks up the impact of next week's clifhanger.)

And that exchange between Wreck-Garr and Ultra Magnus is priceless.

Changing the billing on the back-up strip is natural given that some of the 1980s Spider-Man annuals had a tendency to forget who is actually the star of the book - #16 is even worse being the debut & origin of new Avenger & trademark protector Captain Marvel with such a lengthy flashback the character named in the title is absent for nearly half the issue - and Spidey won't appear for a few weeks. However it means that in just a few months Marvel's biggest hero has gone from headlining his own UK title to being the guest star in a back-up strip. Watch out for the various changes made for its printing here. The story was originally set in 2015 despite the original cover and later tradepaperbacks billing the character as the Iron Man of 2020. (In the Iron Man 2020 trade it's placed prior to the previous published Machine Man limited series.) It was originally published in 1986 and but stated "the present day" was 35 years earlier - I suspect the original plan was to run this in 1985, maybe as a Marvel Team-Up annual before that series was replaced, and have the Iron Man of 2020 actually come from, erm, 2020. The Spider-Man editorial politics of this era were chaotic to say the least and this may well have been a fill-in lifted from file.

And they were only expecting a further single issue to wrap up Inhumanoids - an emergency cutdown of the six parter or would there have been another gap until after Headmasters? We may never know.

Reply
Ryan f
22/8/2014 02:27:35 pm

Great Spidey info there, Tim, cheers for sharing!

I remember reading these issues as a kid and thinking it was a really good overall story... in those days for me it was all about the cool characters, rather than the plots.

I had no idea about the Throttlebots at the time (maybe they weren't released yet?), so this new version of Bumblebee came straight out of left field, and was just about the coolest thing ever. Shame the Goldbug toy was actually rubbish!

Reply
Stuart
23/8/2014 07:43:22 am

I can certainly see this issue working better as a standalone (and as rushed as the art is elsewhere, the actual fight between Magnus and Galvatron is nice and brutal. I suspect those are original rather than redrawn pages).

That Spider-Man/Iron Man 2020 stuff is interesting (including the bit about there being a trade, I might well invest in that), and suggests a real tangled web (ha!) going on behind the scenes.

The dating tickles me as well, a problem with putting the year in the title is sooner or later time is going to move on in fiction (I don't know how the various 2099 titles handled that), but actually deliberately setting the story five years before the year that's in the character's name is just deliciously bonkers.

Reply
Tim Roll-Pickering link
23/8/2014 10:10:53 am

If you can get the trade then do - it's also got the Machine Man limited series in one place, an encounter with a certain freelance peacekeeping agent, a later oneshot and limited series and a short What If? based on this story that was written by Furman between generations.

The Spidey office politics of the mid 1980s were certainly a mess and it threw up a lot of problems in the books themselves - the thing articles and interviews now mainly focus on is the revelation of the original Hobgoblin's identity but there were some other disasters with the third book, Web of Spider-Man, never managing to get a creative team to last more than five issues for the first forty or so. Then there was Spider-Man marrying a woman who he hadn't been in a relationship with for nine years. Or there was a storyline involving Northern Ireland that resulted in the Marvel US office getting bomb threats. (And 25 years later Marvel blundered again, albeit with fewer noticing, by releasing a collection that reprinted that story in the week of July 12th!)

Arno's year of origin is small change in this but also I think he's never actually called "Iron Man of 2020" in the story, just on the cover. But just what else could you call him?

Reply
Harry
23/8/2014 10:03:28 am

I always remember being so disappointed with this back-up strip due to me missing the final week's instalment when I was on holiday in England. Ironically, I couldn't find the comic there, despite having been able to get it every week here in Ireland. Must just have sold out or something.

Reply
Stuart
24/8/2014 12:41:06 pm

The trade was, with postage, less than a tenner on Marketplace and that's good value for the Machine Man series alone (I do like how about half the book is co-opted stories from other character's titles rather than Iron Man 2020 proper).

Reply
Tim Roll-Pickering link
26/9/2018 02:00:15 pm

A few further comments on Iron Man 2020 some years later, having recently reread the story in another collection.

"Ken McDonald" is a writing credit that's only otherwise appeared on an issue of Dazzler (the one where the Assistant Editor lets power go to his head and become the dictator of the office, until the Editor phones in from ComicCon). "Ken" was Jim Shooter's father's name and "McDonald" the surname of one of his grandmothers, suggesting the Editor-in-Chief might have written this under a pseudonym http://jimshooter.com/2011/07/its-so-hard-to-get-good-help-these-days.html/ However more recently editor Christopher Priest (then known as Jim Owsley) has said he wrote this annual under a pseudonym but Shooter got the money as part of a scheme to reimburse him for personally buying a computer for the office. https://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/08/19/no-more-black-panther-comics-but-maybe-a-novel-christopher-priests-bleeding-cool-interview/

(The interview has quite a bit about the editing of the Spider-Man books in the period.)

Jumping ahead a little, the references to Aunt May's birthday reinforce the idea that this was originally meant to have come out in 1985. Spidey's purchase of a hat as a gift and then having to get it home past the Vulturions (don't ask!) were a key part of one of the first Web of Spider-Man issues at the start of the year and then Amazing Spider-Man annual #19 features the birthday itself. Louise Simonson was the initial writer on Web but got dropped after just three issues, then wrote the Amazing annual, an early example of the chaos on the books as the new editor immediately started shaking things up a little too bluntly.

(I row back on the possibility of it having been planned as a Marvel Team-Up annual as Simonson was the last writer on that book before it was replaced by Web of Spider-Man and Priest only arrived as editor after all the changes had been implemented.)

And to be blunt, the editor has a very poor grip on Spider-Man as we'll see.

Reply
Tim Roll-Pickering link
24/10/2019 04:21:21 pm

Simon Furman has found his Get Fresh appearance on an old VHS tape and uploaded it to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPkGN5OaGAc

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Stuart Webb. Who knows everything about nothing and not a lot about that.

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011

    Categories

    All
    Action Force/G.I. Joe
    Animated
    Announcement
    Armada
    Audio
    Avengers
    Baker
    Bay
    Beast Wars
    Big Finish
    Brosnan
    Capaldi
    Carpenter
    Carte Blanche
    Cartoon
    Combat Colin
    Comedy
    Comics
    Computer Games
    Costa
    Cullen
    Davison
    Death
    Discworld
    Doctor Who
    Dragon's Claws
    Dreamwave
    Dynamite
    Eccleston
    Ellis
    Fantasy
    Film
    Fleetway
    Frost
    Furman
    Generation 2
    Generation One
    Generation One
    Holmes
    Horror
    IDW
    James Bond
    James Roberts
    Jeffrey Deaver
    Ladybird
    Machine Man
    Marvel
    McCarthy
    Mccoy
    Mcgann
    Mosaic
    Nick Roche
    Nimoy
    Nintendo
    Panini
    Pegg
    Pratchett
    Prime
    Rescue Bots
    Revisitation
    RID
    Rincewind
    Science Fiction
    Science Fiction
    Shatner
    Signature
    Smith
    Sponsored
    Spy
    Star Trek
    Su
    Tennant
    Tipton
    Titan
    Torchwood
    Transformation
    Transformers
    Tv
    Visionaries
    Weatherwax
    Witches
    Wizards
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.