The Grass is Greener on the Other Broadside.

18/9/2015

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

Tim Roll-Pickering link

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.

But it's a pain of the UK schedule that the Decepticons seem to have spent four months tracking the Steelhaven.

The identity of who is now in the boxes was a big discussion point amongst fans back in the late 1990s. I seem to recall we concluded one of them does contain the remains of Skywarp after all and another contains Blast Off, whatever the cover may imply.

I'd forgotten about the Marvel Bumper Comic. This post http://starlogged.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/1988-89-marvel-bumper-comic.html notes that the Hasbro characters were conspicuously absent, presumably for licence reasons. Otherwise it started out as a sampler series for Marvel UK's own strips but evolved into a bizarre anthology where William Tell shared space with Tom & Jerry.

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.

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.

I actually like this story. These big old dust-ups were surprisingly rare, so it's nice to finally see an epic battle break out. I absolutely loved this as a kid, and still have affection for it.

Say what you like about Delbo, but this story sees a rare moment of magic from him - I just love the way he hid the 'Shingo'.

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.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

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.

As for Yomtov, he holds the record for having worked on more issues of Marvel Transformers than anyone else so deserves respect at least for that. After Transformers he worked as an editor for Marvel so he was hardly not valued. Block colouring was perfectly acceptable at the time and we also forget that Transformers was just one of several disposeable toy tie-in titles. It was never intended to be read and analysed to death years after the fact with regards to the colouring. In the context of the time Transformers looked fine colour-wise amongst comparable titles from the same publisher. It could never look as detailed colour-wise as later Transformers books from publishers such as Dreamwave or IDW.

May Purple Soundwave lean backwards and salute you all with a big smile.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

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.
The Megatron returns 4 parter. ( Those zombies...brrr )
And his issues in the Matrix quest.
Delbo also did a terrific New York in ruins.

But Yomtov ?
No, not on your life. ( or mine for that matter )
I also kind of take umbrage with Transformers being a disposable toy tie in title.
If that is the case, why exactly is Yomtov's color work, so much better in his Star Wars work ?
The panel I dug up last week showing Yomtov's color work on Star Wars was a world of difference.

Yet by that point Star Wars was either dying on its arse or at the tail end of its popularity.
Lets not forget that after Jedi, Star Wars was mostly relegated to the past.
And the only hold out was the Marvel comic which ran until 1987, by then most kids who were Star Wars fans moved on.
After that it took till 1991 and Zahn's Thrawn trilogy to kick start interest again.
And even then it took another 6 years to build interest up to a frenzy with Episode 1.
So what makes Star Wars, a dead end dying title, a hasbeen series, so much more different then Transformers ?
A disposable toy tie in.

Or even better, why is Yomtov's coloring so much better with Wildman's and Baskerville's art ?
And even later on with Delbo in the Matrix Quest stories he delivered some stellar coloring work. But with Senior, Yomtov faltered.
And he faltered badly.
All we got was flat colors and block coloring.
and the majority of Yomtov's Tf run was exceedingly poor even
judged by the normal US comics standards from 1987.
Let's not forget that Batman Year One was a 1987 title and on the news stands.
Daredevil Born Again was a 1986 title.
And the 1987 Spiderman titles were in terms of color also a lot better then Yomtov's TF output.
As far back as US 5 where the series has been running for 8 months and Yomtov should have been a old hand at this.
He still continued to make embarrasing mistake after mistake, and it just continued to get worse
right now between issues 5 and 41 ( this one ) Yomtov's color work is exceedingly poor with miscoloring block coloring and just plain lazy coloring.
Yomtov occasionally spikes but even judged by contemporary comics such as X-men, Batman Spiderman, Star wars, New Mutants, his Transformers out put isn't anything more then passable.

And transformers ran until 1991.
G2 came 2 years later and Sara Mossof's colors were with out a doubt superior.
Computer coloring wasn't a thing with Marvel until they bought Malibu Comics for their fancy color seperations in 1995.

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!

And it is indeed, the first occurance of Crossroads Of Time being printed in colour (later also reprinted in The Incomplete Death's Head #1 from 1992), which makes a forgivable nonsense of Furman's assertions in the Panini trades that it was in the first of those volumes the story appears in colour for the first time (if that was the case, its good that a 20 year old colouring technique was maintained :P )

As I said last week, Nel's colouring really isn't that bad compared to any contemporary US comic book of the time. It's more that its unrefined. Its easy to dislike, especially when compared to the superior UK colour format. I do prefer this more simpler style of comic book colouring. I found the later computer colouring of the mid - late '90s conspired to make everything a syrupy mess (and it looked awful when things like real flame images were crudely slapped in). I like today's comic colouring where there are some folk doing some very clever computer washes and things that look very painterly (for want of a better word) - a lot of the Avenger's stuff over the last 10 years has looked incredible. I particularly like Rain Beredo's work on Mike Deodato's glorious artwork :)

I think the worst thing about Delbo's art is that its a little bit static and lacks a bit of dynamism. Dick Giordano's work is the same - which tells you something, that these guys were very much working in a clean prescriptive style of the time, with fellas like Neal Adams and Jack Kirby being the more obvious standouts with their various quirks (whisper it; but Kirby's work isn't actually that good when you look at the proportions he gives people, what sells it is the energy and simplicity of his designs).

snowkatt

19/9/2015 04:16:21 am

i would disagree about the coloring
because even by this point ( 1987) the likes of Steve Oliff, Christie Scheele, Richmond Lewis, Bob Sharen, Janet Jackson ( seriously ) Glynis Oliver, were either doing marvelous things with their limited color palette or started to break away from it.

And I do actually have a lot of these comics, not in reprints but actual 80's and 90's comics. So I can see them with my own eyes, on the news paper grade paper of the time. ( The paper is bad the colors are good. )
But Yomtov's transformers coloring is just poor

And I don't buy the deadline excuse. Glynis Oliver\Wein colored The New Mutants for it's almost complete run and a slew of other titles and her color work has always been aces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glynis_Wein

As far as mid 90's coloring goes, it mostly depends on which comics you read.
Some have very distracting coloring, others are very gloopy looking. But I mostly find the lensflares and that everything is shiny very distracting.

Blame Image Comics, for those "higher quality" colors, But then Image Comics these days is not the image comics of 1993.
These days the only Image founder still working on the title he started out with, is Erik Larsen with The Savage Dragon. ( 212 issues i believe. )
And only a few people can claim to have worked for so long in an uninterrupted run on a comics title.
( Fred Perry, with Gold Digger. 226 titles to date, the first 199 issues are free to download legally on Antarctic press archive if interested http://antarcticpresslibrary.com/

Dave Sim and Gerhard with 300 issues of Cerebus.

Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard with 146 issues of The Walking Dead. 140 of those pencilled by Adlard.

Stan and Jack, 102 issues on the Fantastic Four.

and Brian Micheal Bendis and Mark Bagley on 111 issues of Ultimate spiderman.

Stan Lee wrote 110 issues of ASM. before giving the reigns over to Gerry Conway but there were at least 3 artists on the title during Stan's run.
Steve Ditko.
John Romita.
and Gil Kane.

..but I once again digress. )

Suffice to say, Image Comics, these days is very very very different from what it started out as in 1992.

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.

When film directors block complicated shots in such a way that some characters are in focus and some are out of focus, we think, 'ooh, good composition'. When Yomtov focuses your eye on certain characters by mixing full-colour art with block colours, he gets lambasted for it...

Benway

19/9/2015 02:20:01 am

It's worth repeating the link Tim Roll-Pickering posted in last weeks comments:
http://www.dcindexes.com/features/creator.php?creatorid=4444

Looking at Nel Yomtov's credits I see a load of other comics I have and can immediately see two things. First, he is indeed a perfectly good colourist, and second, his work on Transformers is worse than anything else I've seen by him! It's true that he does usually limit block colouring to background characters, but then you'd hope he would, really. His work in TF still looks pretty poor in places though and compare it to his work in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-man from the same time frame and there's no contest. I think it may be a case that one of these titles was something of a higher priority for Marvel US and it was not the same one as in the UK. If one job was going to get a rush job in a given month, it would be the lower selling toy tie-in. Then add in that trying to figure out what colours seventy different robots who individually have barely been in anything are supposed to be is harder than remembering what colour Spider-man's two costumes are and it becomes understandable. Still not actually good though.

snowkatt

19/9/2015 03:46:09 am

But what about Star Wars ?
His Star Wars work ( issues 37 and 35 ) were leaps and bounds above his Transformers work.
And those comics had a very exotic cast as well ( and were done in 1980 during the height of Star awrs mania, not at the tail end )

But his Transformers coloring work was piss spoor from the word go, when it turned in to a on going series.
Issues 5 and 6 are just plain poor. ( Alan kupperberg's art is also very cartoony and blocky )
It perked up again with 7 and 8 ( William Johnson ) and then became middeling with Don Perlin's art.

Yomtov might be a good colorist, he sure didn't like to show that on Transformers, which even as the toy line was flagging and the cartoon was dropping was by 1987 popular enough to keep going.

I cant name any numbers because I cant bloody find any but I believe that even by the tail end transformers sold around 120,000.
And I know for sure that G2 sold around that much as well, before the series were axed.

Keep in mind that the market was a lot healthier at that point, this was before and during the speculator boom and before the implosion.
During the 80's series regularly sold double that, some even 300 too 400,000 .
ASM was a hot seller with art by Todd McFarlane and then Erik Larsen
And it really exploded in the 90's with certain comics selling millions a month.
These days 120,000 a month would be seen as a huge success.
( The best selling title in 2003 across the industry was 50,000. )
And nowadays the industry is stable but wont ever reach those heady days of 5 million comics anymore.

( spider-man 1 x-men 1 young blood 1 spawn 1 and superman 75 if wondering are the multi million sellers )

but i digress
other then some stand out issues Yomtov's coloring on the title was middeling at best.
His best coloring work was when coupled with Johnson, Wildman, Baskerville and later on Delbo.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

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.

It's pretty much exactly a year since I posted these, rescued from another poster on Usenet back in the day, so here goes:

"
Some sales data on the US book is available from the Statement of Ownership that ran each year. It's best to ignore the most recent issue entries as the data was never completely in for them (Comichron refuses to list these entries at all) but the reported average sales for the year to date were as follows:

Oct-86 300,982
Oct-87 217,275
Oct-88 149,975
Nov-89 96,380
Oct-90 69,833

The month is the date of filing rather than the publication or cover month for when the form actually appeared.

Subscriptions were as follows:

Oct-86 13,542 4.50%
Oct-87 16,850 7.76%
Oct-88 11,900 7.93%
Nov-89 6,650 6.90%
Oct-90 4,383 6.28%

These %s are historically high for US comics as a whole - for various reasons most comic readers have stuck to store/stand purchases instead of by mail and subscriptions tend to be gifts for the young or a way for fans without easy access to comic shops to get their comics regularly and again such fans are often young. A lot of the licenced books tended to attract audiences outside the standard comic fandom and had high subscription rates.
"

"
The mid-80s sales are even more impressive compared to some other titles. Courtesy of Comichron:

http://www.comichron.com/titlespotlights.html

Adventures of Superman
Oct-86 98,443
Oct-87 161,859
1988 NO DATA REPORTED
1989 NO DATA REPORTED
1990 NO DATA REPORTED

DC switched from second class to first class mailing in 1988 and so no longer had to publish the statements. The figures shown cover the John Byrne relaunch and a major upswing for the title.

Amazing Spider-Man
Oct-86 276,064
Oct-87 284,692
Oct-88 271,100
Nov-89 266,100
Oct-90 334,893

Archie
Oct-86 67,059
Oct-87 66,176
Oct-88 74,223
Oct-89 67,423
Oct-90 56,855

Avengers
Oct-86 237,241
Oct-87 216,841
1988 NO DATA REPORTED
Nov-89 201,600
Oct-90 207,516

A lot of titles have accidentally skipped statements over the years.

Batman
Oct-86 89,747
Oct-87 193,000
1988 NO DATA REPORTED
1989 NO DATA REPORTED
1990 NO DATA REPORTED

Again DC stopped the Statements in 1988 and these figures cover a major relaunch for the character.

Iron Man
Oct-86 190,516
Undated 1987 179,567
Oct-88 196,095
Nov-89 199,100
Oct-90 198,100

Uncle Scrooge
1986 NO DATA REPORTED - The title had just restarted
Oct-87 78,935
Oct-88 74,092
Oct-89 74,055
1990 NO DATA AVAILABLE
"

snowkatt

19/9/2015 08:15:48 pm

Exactly a year ago.
Great timing.

If I recall correctly, Secret Wars was a massive success. A huge huge seller with sales numbers of 500,000 each issue.
Secret Wars, was one of the major sellers of the 1980's.
( And off course, the rumors go that its that reason that Shooter wrote the gig him self, for the royalties. But lets not get in to that.
)
Nov 89 to Oct 90 are the effects of McFarlane's and Larsen's art duties on Amazing Spiderman. ( asm )
The title skyrocketed.

Apparently Spiderman 1990 ( or non adjective ) started to ship 2.5 million comics each month during McFarlanes run.
But the wording is a bit vauge.
One source implies issue 1 sold 2.5 million, another source implies each issue eventually sold 2.5 million.
Considering this was McFarlane at his peak popularity and the speculator boom was revving up, it seems somewhat plausible
but still dubious.
Speculators tend to go for issue 1 and key issues.

Spawn 1 sold 1.7 million issues http://www.techtimes.com/articles/72259/20150731/reexamining-todd-mcfarlanes-spider-man-1-25-years-later.htm

X-men v2 issue 1 had a staggering 8 million preordered,
and it sold around 4 million, making it the best selling comic book ever.
http://marvel.com/news/comics/13598/sdcc_2010_marvel_breaks_world_record
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/05/09/my-monthly-curse-by-phill-hall-9-%E2%80%93-taking-apart-a-guinness-world-record/

Superman 75 apparently sold between 3 and 6 million. http://www.supermanhomepage.com/comics/comics.php?topic=articles/doomsday-10-years-later
But lets keep it at 3 million ( The number I heard the most often is 5 million however, so how exactly does that jive with Marvel's record ? )

all of this is actually part of the insane comic speculator boom
which drove the comic industry to breaking point and it sure as hell broke down in 1996, when Marvel tried to buy Heroes World Distribution, couldn't muster it and went kablooey, taking a good chunk of the industry with it.

This was off course after Perelman stripmined the company and left an empty shell.
Leaving Toybiz, to actually prop Marvel up and prevent it from liquidation.

And during that clustercuss, a comic selling 120,000 or so a month was nothing.
These days it would be a bonafide blockbuster

funny how things work in hindsight.
But for those interested in the comic book boom
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg36.html

http://www.fanboynewsnetwork.com/comic-book-speculation/

http://www.totalcomicmayhem.com/2014/11/the-90s-comic-crash-and-future-of.html

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/crash-1993_573252.html

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/business/2012/10/run-your-business-ground-marvel-comics-way

http://classiccomics.boards.net/thread/775/90s-speculation-boom

Tim Roll-Pickering link

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.

Part of the problem with all these comparisons is the no sale no return policy in the direct market (and to a lesser extent other outlets) isn't comparable to traditional circulation figures. Also, as some of your links point out, the speculator problem seems to have been less the private buyer stockpiling multiple copies and more the poorly managed shop overordering. A lot of comic shops are independently run and there wasn't much data actually tracking retail sales taken at the time (let alone still available today) but it's clear a lot were piling up unsolds by the ton, made worse by certain companies shipping so late that interest evaporated between the order and eventual arrival. The newstand was not completely out of the equation - and indeed sometimes experienced its own surges due to it being a bit behind on hot titles - but there at least the figures should have some relationship to actual take home sales (depending on what filters were in place to prevent "return" fraud). As a result all the actual sales figures are guesses and it's the wholesale figures that predominate.

(One factor rarely mentioned in all this is advertising. I wonder when the penny dropped for the advert industry that a particular comic was read by rather fewer people than the figures implied and the advert income began drying up?)

Most of the big numbers are for issue #1s with variant covers (or trading cards) plus the various enhanced covers or midterm relaunches - both Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor had big overhauls at pretty much the same time as X-Men (volume 2) #1. One could quite legitimately question whether variant covers should be treated as separate issues or not (and both practices have been followed at different times) - indeed IIUC there are comics in other countries with huge readerships but the print and distribution model works very differently such that they can't contend so well.

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?

My only experience is with the various Transformers titles but if you compare, say, the Headmasters issues with the concurrently-released 'main' TF comic, the ads are indentical.

So presumably advertisers only got hit when sales fell across the board. Generally, 'Chips Ahoy' didn't necessarily care how many readers 'Spitfire and the Troubleshooters' got, because their ad was also running in Spider-Man, X-Men and all the other big-hitters in the same month.

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.

But having said that, it was still an unmitigated success despite the quality of the story it self. ( In short I don't like Secret Wars and the story is stretched beyond breaking point. )

I generally count variation comics as part of the same issues and sales numbers as long as the variations were released at the same time.
If not, its a new print run.
Such as the X-men v2 1 variants.
Or the Superman 75 variants.
Or the quite frankly ridiculous amount of variant covers Dreamwave and IDW put out.

Personally, I dont care about variant covers. Ill get what I can get and generally dont care about the covers. ( There are exceptions but those are few and far in between.
I wanted the B cover of ReGeneration 100 for example because its a recreation of issue 1's cover and I liked the symmetry and symbolism of closing the series with that cover. )

Anyway, there is no doubt that the stores eager to cash in on this ridiculous boom didnt help matters much either.
And both Marvel and DC put out a lot of slush. It didn't matter as long as there was product on the shelves, quality be damned.

I couldnt find the actual story I was looking for, but it was an inside look of a beginning trader who told a story about a Valiant comic being as rare as hens teeth and come a convention EVERY dealer had long boxes of the same issue.

One dealer actually rented space and only had long boxes and boxes of the same issue expecting to clean up.
That issue was worth 25 dollars before that convention after that convention it dropped down to below cover price.

The speculator boom was that crazy.

Toy lines: ( since weebly wont allow me to respond directly to that comment )

Maybe Mattel thought girls didnt want conflict in their lines ?
These days there are both male and female Transformers fans in equal measure, but this was not the case in the 80's.

Boys toys were for boys and girls toys for girls, no overlap.
Did the My Little Pony lines came with antagonists for that matter ?
I saw a few of the older cartoons and those did include antagonists for obvious reasons, but there are none in the toyline in so far I know.

Words fail me in regards to Shower Power Catra:
http://www.he-man.org/collecting/toy.php?id=1313
And the wheel line up: http://www.he-man.org/collecting/toycollection.php?id=6

I always thought Hordak was a homegrown She-ra villain though, that overlapped with He-man.
But apparently not http://www.he-man.org/collecting/toy.php?id=344

And im also the only one, it seems that thinks Hordak and TF Prime, Optimus Prime look a like.
What with the pale face, lack of facial features, no nose.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

3/6/2022 02:05:15 pm

"Maybe Mattel thought girls didnt want conflict in their lines ?"

That would be a curious assumption for Mattel as a whole as Masters of the Universe reportedly had a 20-40% (reports vary) female consumption base which at the time was huge for what was considered a boys' line.

However that Mattel's girls' division managed to take control of developing She-Ra and may well have had a different perspective that explains the heavy imbalance in the line and the need to take Motu villains in the cartoon. (Even today there seems to be a divide between the 1980s managers of the boys' and girls' divisions over what role She-Ra played in the initial demise of Motu.)

John D. link

20/9/2015 01:02:12 am

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!

snowkatt

20/9/2015 02:09:19 am

Generally speaking, yes.
The hero characters, are always more popular then the evil characters.

The 1993 Action Man line, generally only had Dr X as the antagonist. Later on in the line he got henchmen, but they were few and far in between.

And even right from the start G1's Decepticons were in the minority, with 11 Decepticons against 15 to 18 or so Autobots.
some times it was evened out.

It was especially egregious in the Japanese line up, where in 1990 there were all of 2 Decepticon releases.
1 of whom were micromaster repaints
the other was a repainted Metroplex with entourage and a micromaster.
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Metrotitan

The whole American G1 line http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Transformers_%28toyline%29
and the European line http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Transformers_%28European_toyline%29

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.

So what about the issue it self then ?
The cover :
I'm not a fan of Lee Sullivan's art.
I tend to find it ungainly and unappealing and everybody seems to have walked out of Spitting Image, with teeth bigger then their heads.
Having said that, it's not often that Marvel UK depicts Blaster the way he is supposed to be.
IE, with visor and not looking like the cartoon prat.
So it has that going for it.

I will maintain that Delbo does a perfectly serviceable job. His art might be a bit static here, but he redeems himself later on with the Underbase saga and Rythems Of Darkness.

Yomtov on the other hand.....
..Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Everything I said last week about his coloring has come to the forefront here and worse.

Let's take the panel you used to introduce the issue.
Grimlock, Blaster and ( shrunk ) Omega Supreme, in a crater surrounded by silhouettes of the Autobots.
That's all fine and dandy.
The silhouettes would have been filled in at the inking stage.
( That would be Danny Bulanadi's work. )
So all Yomtov had to do was color in 3 characters, he had been coloring for years now.
In Grimlocks case since 1985 and Blaster for almost 2 years.
And what does Yomtov do ?
He breaks out his crayons and block colors everybody !!
This is even worse then the cover of US 35
At least there Yomtov had the excuse, of having to color two gestalts comprised of 10 new characters.
Here we just have 3 characters, and they are all old characters to boot.

Words fail me just to convey how poor this is.
This has nothing to do with the coloring of the times, this is just bad coloring.
Block coloring is used to fill in a background and lead the eye to the colored characters, either in the front of in the semi distance.
The characters in color are either leads or have speaking parts they are important.
Block color characters are background filler.
We have three characters in the foreground here, with speaking parts and they bloody red and blue !
And it just gets worse from here on in.
Maybe I should just leave a flipping table emoticon here:
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

..Okay, with that out of the way its hard to believe that nothing has been done with Skywarp at all since Target 2006, and since we almost never see him back even after this, I still consider him dead.
Deader the Optimus Prime at least.

As for the story, as a conclusion to a running story, it's a bit limp.
This thing should have been over and done with in 6 months or less with out being protracted, along as it did.

Grimlock is a tit and its almost insultingly easy how easy he was defeated and dethroned
And in the UK comics this is at least the third time that the earth Autobots are shown to be utter prats with out a leader.
No wonder they turned to Grimlock was willing to lead them I doubt they can find their skidplates with out a GPS, a map and guide posts.

In the US series this is only the first time that the Autobots are shown to be utter utter incompetent imbeciles without a leader.
Which is odd, when you consider that the first story arc centered about prime being in Decepticon custody.

It's also infuriating how this is the pay off of a year long story arc, with almost nothing to show for it. Because there are no lasting consequences, after Prime is brought back to life. We don't get to see how the stranded Autbots are rescued. Instead we get a cartoon adaption, go gallivanting around the universe and get to see either "hilarious" joke scenario's or insipid Decepticon schemes.

Now i like the Cosmic Carnival truth be told, but it's not exactly essential. ...Then again its still better then what came just before or directly after it.

This story is really a sign of Budiansky running on fumes and getting frustrated by the amount of new toys he had to deal with on a monthly basis.
He has a few decent stories left but the writing is absolutely on the wall.
At least Budianksy had the foresight to remember that sound doesn't carry in the vacuum of space.
And it even plays in the resolution of the story, what with Grimlock and Blaster not being able to hear the attack.
Blaster was one of Budkiansky's signature characters, but even with him Budiansky finally ran out of steam in issue 50 and that really should have been the end of Budiansky's run.

And its also clear that Yomtov generally doesn't care much either
But that much has been obvious for ages.
Not exactly top form for the US comics sadly it would get much, much, much worse.

I'm reserving my venom for Monstercon From

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.

Which just goes to show that Yomtov was far from unique in his use of block colouring!

snowkatt

20/9/2015 08:08:17 pm

Yhat so huh ?
hmm.
Even then if Roussos was responsible for coloring all the US covers, he also should have known better by now. He would have colored 35 covers by now.

And it still doesnt excuse Yomtov's poor interior color work
Block coloring is mostly used for back ground characters
not foreground characters.
And Yomtov likes to block color a bit too much.

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.

@ John D yes, the original TF toyline was heavily weighted in favour of the Autobots. 1988s toyline was much more balanced, with generally a much more even split between the Autobots and Decepticons.

I've recently got into Micromasters, and roughly two-thirds of that entire sub-set is Autobots.

Beast Wars was perhaps the only time the good guys and bad guys were evenly matched, but even that line blows it come 1999 and the Transmetal 2 toys, with only six Predacons (seven if you include store exclusive Tripredacus Agent) to 12 Maximals.

The current toylines are even worse, with the current RID line managing a paltry 3 Decepticons and the Generations line similarly unfavourable to the Decepticon contingent, with the Autobots outnumbering the Deceps by about 5:1 since the line and its various permutations were introduced in 2006.

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.
For me its scifi.
Monstercon from mars is fluff at best, and it just doesn't appeal to me in anyway.
I dont think its funny, I mostly think its a wasted opportunity to deal with the consequences of Totalled.
The only good thing about it is that Circuitbreaker finally targets a Decepticon for once.
It's generally a story I skip without missing anything, in the same way I skip Showdown.

Hero toys generally sell better then villain toys.
The tmnt toy line was also heavily in favor of the hero characters, with dozens of variations of the turtles.
The first line had 2 villain toys, Shredder and a foot soldier.

The only two toys lines I can think of where there heroes and villains toys were balanced out, were: Masters of the Universe.
( Skeletor had a whole host of henchmen. )
And Teal Ghostbusters.
Mostly new ghosts to pit the ghostbusters against.

Mostly the TF fiction depicts the Decepticons to be extremely overpowered, such as Transformers Animated, where five autobots can scarcely take on a single Decepticon.
Which is a handy excuse to have only a few Decepticons in the toyline, because they are uber powerfull anyway.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

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.

Maybe it was just the European release pattern but at one point Beast Wars had so many Predacons in a release wave that Spittor was put out as a Maximal to balance things out better.

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.

snowkatt

23/9/2015 03:05:39 am

Jammy git ;p
I am not really a big James Bond, fan but i do have the 50 years of Bond blu ray box with all 24 discs.
23 movies and 1 disc of "extra's " ( which is the premiere of skyfall a 10 minute panel and all theme songs ...some extra's )

And in early November I plan to go to see Spectre, the first Bond movie I will see in the theater.
But not before a Back To The Future marathon on 21 october.

( This wil be the third marathon I will attended. The previous two were Pirates Of The Carribean 1-4 and The Dark Knight Trilogy )

And with some luck, I will also go to Jaws in December assuming it will be released in theaters again. ( things are a bit unclear at the moment )

So when everybody is flocking to Star Wars 7, ill be going to a 40 year old movie.

And if wondering about the whole Hobgoblin\ Jack o' Lantern situation, here is a pretty good place to start to untangle the whole sad mess.
http://www.spideykicksbutt.com/SquanderedLegacy/SquanderedLegacyPart1.html

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"

Done!

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!

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.

But one thing thing I do want to comment on is the Pez ad. Thanks to it, and related ads, I had always thought that Pez dispensers actually fired the sweets out. I was relatively disappointed when I finally got one - a Boba Fett - and discovered that it gently pushed the sweet about half-way out, and you had to pull it the rest of the way out.

snowkatt

23/9/2015 03:39:09 am

Not a fan of the whole King Grimlock thing either.
And it was insultingly easy how he was dethroned.

The whole thing went on for too long and there were no repercussions, because we absolutely had to get cruft like "Monstercon From Mars" or "Cash And Carnage".

At least "The Underbase Saga", is decent.

so going to Star Wars 7 then ?

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.
I love running jokes. :)

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. )
And the complete wastes of time space and effort we got in between Totalled, People Power, and the Underbase Saga.
It was clear Budiansky didn't want to do this gig anymore by this point.

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.

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).

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Ralph Burns

25/9/2015 01:01:40 pm

When will Peter Pez return?

I MUST KNOW.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Felicity link

10/11/2019 03:04:03 am

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.

Has Bob Budiansky said if he used the Marvel method of plot to art to script? There’s also the John Byrne rule of never assuming you know what was in the mind of the writer or artist unless they tell you: we can make guesses and say “This issue felt like…” but issues that “feel rushed” may have actually been laboured over, and stories where “it felt like everyone involved was having a lot of fun” may have been a miserable experience.

So I hope that Budiansky wasn’t having a bad time. I enjoyed his work and I would like to think he at least had a reasonably pleasant job.

The Grass is Greener on the Other Broadside.

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