Transformation 108: Round 2: It's All Froch-ed Up.

6/6/2014

It's the fall of the house of Megatron, and all the slight wobbling of the house of Furman as his attempts to make his nicking of the fight from this issue for Prey! look natural fall slightly apart.

All in my look at Gone But Not Forgotten! Part 2.

6 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

6/6/2014 11:53:21 am

I suspect the consequences of Prey in undermining the ending's impact may well have had an effect on a certain forthcoming crossover...

Otherwise this is Bob on fire (no matter how much Simon may have tried to wield an extinguisher) and a very strong retort to the charge that he should have quit before now. When he's able to get on with developing the ongoing plots and pre-existing characters he's usually quite good but when Hasbro throw requirements at him it can sometimes get a bit messy but here he's managed to reconcile the two and avoid the "new toys always win" rule.

Those three altered panels surprised me a bit. It's odd how the new lettering on the second one seems to fit easily into the existing lettering, even if the actual words are changed, yet the first and third stick out like a sore thumb. Marvel UK used to have a post of reletterer devoted to modifying reprints by anglicising spelling, altering issue numbers and more elaborate changes like dates, cultural references and even changed continuity - I believe Dave Gibbons held this before he began on Doctor Who Weekly. I don't know if they still had the post by 1987 but it feels like some of these changes have been done by a letterer used to mimicking already printed styles and other changes have been done by an editor/assistant with no such experience desperately rushing to get the new continuity in place.

Stuart

6/6/2014 02:45:18 pm

Gloriously, Neil Tennant offa the Pet Shop Boys at one point had the job of adding the u to colour, but IIRC about ten years before Transformers. There can't be many people who have both done that and inspired the stage name of a Doctor Who.

Agreed it's both a thankless job and one it's surprisingly important and difficult to get right, the font suddenly changing to the arrangement of the words not looking right can really take you out of the story. I suspect Mr. Tennant must have become very sick of comics by the end of his time before going to Smash Hits.

I also suspect both the rapid return of Megatron (there'd have been no point in leaving him as blown up with his future self also hanging about. At least Afterdeath sets up how Prime could be back before 2005) and the need to give Action Force a leg up were both in Furman's mind by this point. The comic made a bit of a fuss about Prime's death, if only editorially, Megs gets no such attention as if everyone already knows London awaits.

Chris Chapman

7/6/2014 07:55:00 am

I think the 'next time' in this issue is rather clever! It manages to create a cliffhanger out of nowhere - will Ratchet be able to save Prime?? The answer is very quickly an "er... no" next issue, but god bless em for trying to inject some drama into it.

Did they have 'next time' panels in the US issues? Was this their tactic as well?

Stuart

7/6/2014 08:03:48 am

The couple of US issues I've seen had a small plug for the next issue on (IIRC) the bottom of the letters page, how common that was though I don't know.

The "NEXT" bar at the end of the comic itself seems to be very much a Marvel UK thing, it was strange recently reading the reprints of the Doctor Who comics from The Incredible Hulk Presents, which have the same bar but with little Tardis' instead of the Autobrand. It just looks wrong somehow.

Ralph Burns

8/6/2014 02:48:51 pm

To this day I still expect to see a Marvel UK-esque 'NEXT' box at the end of a comic strip!

Cracking story this week. The sight of Megatron's face being ripped half away scared the life out of young Ralph. I wonder if Furman had it in mind when future Megs (Galvatron) has half his face blasted away in Time Wars. Oooo, ahhhh, reversive occlusions.

Can't wait for Juan the greatest human villain of all and his mate The Mechanic next week.

Felicity

26/10/2019 02:15:36 am

Agreed—great issue. Shockwave’s role in the ending seemed ambiguous to me. Did he expect that the Predacons would kill Megatron, and luckily had a backup plan ready (or improvised one on the spot) when they failed and he was exposed, or did he expect the Predacons to fail and for himself to be exposed so that he could drive Megatron over the edge? And what about Soundwave? He seems like he’s on Shockwave’s side throughout most of the story, but then it looks like he’s the one who finds the disk on Predaking and exposes Shockwave (IIRC it’s not 100% clear—we see the group from some distance away and it could be someone else who finds the disk and Soundwave who is ordered to play it). And if Soundwave did discover the disk and expose Shockwave, Shockwave doesn’t seem to hold a grudge in the last few panels. So maybe it wasn’t Soundwave who exposed him. I hope not. I like Soundwave enough that I don’t enjoy the idea of him switching sides between Shockwave and Megatron back and forth!

Transformation 108: Round 2: It's All Froch-ed Up.

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