
All this, and the return of Peter Pez, in my look at:
Totalled! Part 2.
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![]() It's the final, epic, conclusion to the story Uncle Bob has been running for over a year. With this massive fight between all the Autobots (bar those with toys still on shelves) and Ratbat's Decepticons provide a worthy final? Will Optimus Prime return? Will this post get as many comments as last week's did? All this, and the return of Peter Pez, in my look at: Totalled! Part 2.
38 Comments
18/9/2015 06:23:04 pm
Ah the great epic battle. It's been how long since we last saw one in the present day? I like this one a lot more tha you do - it's got a strong point of how the Autobots go to pot because leaders are too busy squabbling whilst the Decepticons are almost surgical in their strike.
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Harry
18/9/2015 06:54:22 pm
I remember the Marvel Bumper Comic vividly, a mix of strips I was way too old for by then and stuff I enjoyed, like the Doctor Who/Death's Head crossover. No disrespect intended to Sylvester McCoy, but, at the time, and given the ability of the Doctor to travel through time, I was disappointed to read the strip and see his Doctor emerge, rather than one of the older ones! But it made much more sense to feature the then present incumbent of the TARDIS, of course.
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Ryan F
18/9/2015 07:01:21 pm
The other robots in the boxes were probably just Reflector and the other generics that either died in the initial Ark battle in #1, or were otherwise gutted by Sparkplug's corrosive fuel in #4... I think.
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Ralph Burns
18/9/2015 09:45:47 pm
The Death's Head content in that Marvel Bumper Comic Special was a reprint of the story 'The Crossroads of Time' by Furman and Senior from Doctor Who Magazine. Rather excitingly, however, this was now in colour as the DWM strips ran in black and white! It's a great story too.
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Ralph Burns
18/9/2015 09:54:49 pm
The Delbo and Yomtov bashing must stop! The former's art is perfectly servicable. I can always tell what is going on in a Delbo page, unlike many other flashier artists. That Grimlock v Blitzwing panel is fine. I'll always rate an artist who can tell a story clearly over one who may draw nicer individual pictures but can't tell a story for toffee.
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snowkatt
19/9/2015 03:25:58 am
I will defend Delbo as much as I can, his art might be a bit static. But he really comes, in to his own later in the US run, especially with the massive crowd shots and crowd battles in the Underbase saga.
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Simon Hall
18/9/2015 11:18:54 pm
I agree with Ralph! On most things! The Bumper comic was a mad confection of reprints from Marvel UK's various licensed titles, and is a right old mess as a result. So its staggering that it lasted some 30 issues!
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snowkatt
19/9/2015 04:16:21 am
i would disagree about the coloring
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Ryan F
19/9/2015 01:59:50 am
To continue the Yomtov love-in, I'd also like to point out that, by carefully choosing which objects to colour fully and which to just block colour in a single hue, he draws the eye to the important things on the page, making the fully-coloured characters stand out even more. Some of the US panels are exteremely busy, and Yomtov's colours often add some much-needed focus.
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Benway
19/9/2015 02:20:01 am
It's worth repeating the link Tim Roll-Pickering posted in last weeks comments:
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snowkatt
19/9/2015 03:46:09 am
But what about Star Wars ?
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19/9/2015 11:18:36 am
There were other multi-million sellers in past decades but they tended to be licenced books from now defunct companies and also before the Statement of Ownership required figures - Dell reportedly had some 2 million + hits with various Disney titles in the 1950s.
snowkatt
19/9/2015 08:15:48 pm
Exactly a year ago.
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21/9/2015 02:29:41 pm
Secret Wars was a big success *but* part of the huge sales (and an alleged lure for Shooter) was down to all issues being included in the comic bags then sold in toy shops. There are also reports that it was one of the earliest releases to expose the problem in the industry structure with retailers overordering it at the expense of smaller publishers and creating a chain reaction of unpaid bills that mainly hit shops, distributors and small publishers.
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Ryan F
21/9/2015 10:10:05 pm
With regards to advertising, would I be right in saying that every Marvel title (in any given month) had identical ads?
snowkatt
23/9/2015 03:34:48 am
I rather forgot that Secret Wars was a part of a toy promotion and that part of the humongous numbers it shifted, was due to the toys or being packed with the toys. 3/6/2022 02:05:15 pm
"Maybe Mattel thought girls didnt want conflict in their lines ?" Jose Delbo is pretty workmanlike here. There is no great sense of scale (where are the SPECIAL TEAMS and the big gestalts?), and infamously omega supreme is tiny. Story-wise, the TF Wiki notes that the crews of the Ark and Steelhaven should outnumber Ratbat's force approximately 2 to 1. Was this a general problem of the toy line? Are there essentially many more G1 Autobots than Decepticons? I remember getting Pretender Starscream rather than Grimlock because I knew I had too many Autobots already!
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snowkatt
20/9/2015 02:09:19 am
Generally speaking, yes.
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snowkatt
20/9/2015 08:03:26 am
I think i waffled on enough about sales figures the changing comics market. How the comic market nearly imploded and that the comic market today is stable, but in very poor condition compared to the 80's and 90's.
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Ryan F
20/9/2015 12:03:26 pm
Hi Snowkatt, interesting you mention the cover of US #35, as Yomtov wasn't responsible for that one - apparently all the US TF covers were coloured by George Roussos, who was Marvel's in-house cover colourist at the time.
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snowkatt
20/9/2015 08:08:17 pm
Yhat so huh ?
Simon Hall
20/9/2015 12:05:44 pm
I really like Monstercon! Its daft fun and what's not to love about Skullgrin being a movie star and getting his nails done? That story also allows Delbo to play to his strenghts and probably has Yomtov's best colour work for Transformers.
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snowkatt
20/9/2015 08:20:49 pm
I generally like my Transformers fiction to be serious, well as serious as possible given the material.
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21/9/2015 03:01:26 pm
Masters of the Universe was balanced (as was the New Adventures of He-Man) but the spin-off Princess of Power line was so heavily weighted towards the goodies to the point there were only two different bad characters - Catra and Entrapta plus a few animals (and variant versions including the no-comment-is-needed "Shower Power Catra"). Hence the She-Ra cartoon wound up taking the Evil Horde and even some of the Snake-Men from MOTU for villains.
Stuart
20/9/2015 02:09:18 pm
I'm currently hanging around with Sir Roger Moore at Pinewood studios. I'd forgive Yomtov anything at this moment.
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snowkatt
23/9/2015 03:05:39 am
Jammy git ;p
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Charles RB
20/9/2015 10:55:40 pm
"if any editors of tfwiki are reading this, it'd be great if you could rework the Bryan Hitch page"
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Stuart
20/9/2015 11:43:40 pm
Thanks Mr CB, for all I occasionally poke fun at it (from a ludicrous position of only being right 1 time out of 10 usually) the wiki is a hugely useful resource so the odd page that doesn't work does stand out. I salute your ability to fix things!
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Charles RB
20/9/2015 11:54:39 pm
Wait until you see the awful pun I did for Hitch's photo's caption. You won't be thanking me then.
Cradok
22/9/2015 11:39:35 am
Not much to add regarding the issue itself; the King Grimlock stuff went on far too long, and for no real payoff, and the issue itself was pretty weak.
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snowkatt
23/9/2015 03:39:09 am
Not a fan of the whole King Grimlock thing either.
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Benway
23/9/2015 03:46:29 am
Yep, Grimlock being kicked out was too quick after all that time. Perhaps they could have held off and then had Powermaster Prime arive to take him down only for Grimlock to instantly chop him in half causing him to explode again in the first two pages of the next issue.
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snowkatt
26/9/2015 01:26:22 am
A Powermaster Prime vs Grimlock showdown would have been much, much better then what we eventually got. ( Even though I like Totalled on its own, in the larger scheme of things is a bit of a limp fish. )
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Stuart
24/9/2015 08:26:36 pm
Interesting stuff about the Marvel Bumper Book, if Hasbro material was absent that must have fallen through after Transformation went to press. Though based on the cover issue 9 must have at least referenced Transformers turning 200 somewhere within.
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Ralph Burns
25/9/2015 01:03:32 pm
Issues of the Marvel Bumper Comic are a pain to track down. I could only find the odd isue back in the day. THE INCREDIBLE HULK PRESENTS was better though (one of the other homes for Action Force).
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Ralph Burns
25/9/2015 01:01:40 pm
When will Peter Pez return?
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I don’t mind Blitzwing dividing cleanly into two halves. Actually, it reminds me of a discussion I had on Usenet 25 years ago about the vehicles exploding in the first season of DIC’s “GI Joe” (1990). They would explode by separating into neat blocks. I liked that, although I agreed with the other person that it was odd.
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