Transformation 113: Big Hitter, Yes?

11/7/2014

This week sees the first ever apperance of that most iconic of Furman's non Transformer creations, a legend in his own lifetime, a titan of Marvel comics...

Yes, it's the robot barkeeper.

Also: Death's Head. Plus exciting news of a visit to the UK by Bob Budiansky!

All in Wanted Galvatron Dead or Alive- 10, 000 Shanix Reward- Contact Rodimus Prime Autobot Commander, Cybertron.

A very cumbersome title that.

One thing I've just noticed is I've passed the third anniversary of this site's existence, mainly because it's easy for me to forget that this place was around for a year before I started the Transformation plan. So thanks to everyone who has read something on here.

17 Comments

snowkatt

11/7/2014 11:34:30 am

First things first,
At the risk of stating avery unpopular opinion, Roberts might have been the best Transformers writer currently.

But Dark Cybertron was poor plodding and flaccid. And went no where untill around part 9.
The finale was equally poor and rushed. ( Maybe they should have used the preceeding 11 issues, to do more then just tread water. )

And Season 2 is back on schedule, or is it ?
Cause it just doesn't feel right.

As in Megatron the Autobot.
Megatron the Autobot, captain on the lost light.
Megatron the Autobot ,captain on the lost light, cracking jokes.

Yeaaah ,that doesnt really feel right, to me.
It just doesnt gel with me.
And the jocular tone of MTME also doesnt really gel with me at the moment.

For the moment season 2 , it feels like a misfire to me.
But we are only 3 issues in, so things may change.
and having said that MTME 30 is the best so far of Season 2, but the humor still feels a bit off. A bit too forced and out of place currently.

Anyway, on to UK issue 113, yes ?

A breath of fresh air is what this issue is.
Even though I will defend "Gone But Not Forgotten, Farewell To A Friend and King Of The Hill", up to the uh, hill. the upswing in quality with 113 can not be denied.
And this whole arc is rather strong ( and BETTER then Target 2006, it's immediate thematical predecessor, by virtue of it being more coherent, with less loose ends and a better if slightly truncated ending. )

The only things that hold it back slightly, are the shifting art styles.
( Dan Reed, absolutley does not mesh with Senior or Anderson or Simpson at all. )
And a batshit insane unvincible Galvatron.
Having an nigh unstoppable antagonist is fine.
Having him be actually unstoppable, will reduce him to a plot device.

And Galvatron soon becomes nigh on unstoppable.
Glad Death's Head is still able to take him on, but thats for issue 120 yes ?

Speaking of death's Head, considering what Marvel did with him and also not did with him. ( Yurned him in to an abomination and then left him to rot, respectivley. )
I am wondering if Furman isnt wishing that Hasbro would own the character afterall, at least he could have still used him now.

But hindsight and all that.

And Daeth's Head migth then have been used in a Bayformers movie ...brrr.
(Not a Fan, mostly because of the unfunny crude humor and the overload of unlikable human characters.)

I never read a 2000AD comic so I cant comment on the style of "Wanted," Part 1
Nor am I up to scratch with the UK comic book market of 1987 ( or that of 2014 for that matter )

113 is Furman and Senior at the top of their game, turning 7 pages of what could be dull exposittory, in to not only an exciting introduction to a character, that even back then even from the very start of this issue you alreayd knew was going places.
But also a glimpse in to a far bigger universe, beyond mere Cybertronians and fleshlings.

And apparantly, sentient robots are not that unusual after all.

Death's Head is also unusual because he is almost fully formed here.
No unusual ideosynchrasies that will be removed.
No stilted speech.
No rough edges.
The Death's Head you see here, is what you get 7 issues later as well yes ?

Even the gag is already fully formed.
Death's Heads feels like he stepped out of his own running series, to co star in The Transformers.
Which is why its so easy to latch on to him.
he is already complete.

This is also one of the few issues where "Bunny Ears" and "The Beard", ( not the beard ! ahem ) are still actually a credible threat.

Issues 133 and 134 start the slippery slide to comedic relief, and a certain six parter later completes their ineffectualness.

here however, they are still in Target 2006 mode.
And this sells just how good the Freelanche Peacekeeping Agent, must be if he can hold off the two Decepticons, who nearly took out all the earth based Autobots on their own.

The time travel conceit is as usual, a conceit and quickly glossed over before we start questioning it.
Just as well I suppose.

Marvel was right to be a bit giddy at the time though.
113 feels suitabley epic, like the start of the next big thing.
If this was a modern comic, this would be the reboot, the jumping on point.

And if you do get to see Budiansky get himto sign a comic or two if he wants too.
Without him we wouldnt even have Transformers, and he really doesnt deserve all the scorn he gets at times.

( Norwould we have a good run on Ghostrider either. I recently picked up Git Corporations complete Ghostrider collection. Everything Marvel did Ghostrider related from 1967 till 2006 on one dvd in PDF format.. And Budiansky's work just shines in the last 20 or so issues of ghostrider V1 )

Postscript :
Look editing and formatting !
Speaking of tha

snowkatt

11/7/2014 11:35:35 am

Postscript :
Look editing and formatting !
Speaking of that, you wrotened serpent as serpant.
I'm sure your just trying to see if we actually pay attention ; )

edit :apparantly 3 MS word pages is too much for weebly.

Stuart

11/7/2014 03:39:43 pm

I agree about the first half of Dark Cybertron, but thought the second was a lot more fun. The first three issues of season 2 of MTMTE were average (by the very high standards set by season 1) for me, but the most recent bottle show issue really kicked into high gear.

I do think there's an irony in Furman losing control of his character to those he worked so hard to give the copyright to, but equally, I think Death's Head has had a better career than any British Marvel character bar Captain Britain, so it's hard to say Dreamwave or IDW would have done better for him.

I can't now spot where I wrote serpent/ant :0

snowkatt

11/7/2014 04:09:42 pm

I havent read MTME 31 yet so noi spolers thanks.
Yes noi.

And season 1 hit very very high, marks so it cant be helped that season 2 so far looks a bit poorly.

Hopefully things will pick up a bit in 31 and on.

The first half of Dark Cybertron was as dull as dishwater and they mostly wasted the 12 part format on treading water and repeating the same nonsense over and over again.

The story picked up around part 7, but deflated in part 12 again.

Well at least Death's Head would have had a nifty toy or two by now

And the serpant is here in this sentence:

"Who then use said leaning to go on the internet years later and moan about all his current Transformers writing. How sharper than a serpant's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

Simon Hall

12/7/2014 12:00:09 am

Well Snokatt, you'll be pleased to hear Death's Head does indeed now have his own action figure. Its a 3.75" scaled toy and is part of the Marvel Infinite toyline. Unfortunately, the designers have missed that Death's Head has interchangeable weaponry and just given him an axe, spiked mace and shield. Still, better than nothing, right?

As for this issue, yep its spot on. It's a simple story but very well done. The 2000AD trappings are there (in the 'Life & Times Of Death's Head' 1990 Trade Paperback outro by Furman, he mentions that the creative teams of Transformers and 2000AD would meet up for friendly games of pool and all the freelancers would be hitting up the 2000AD editors for work...!Mayhaps he tried the same..?) in the alien setting and the slightly tougher story - helped immeasurably by the mighty Geoff Senior's stunning story-board type visuals (the scene of him battling Cyclonus and swatting away that girder has some superb angles on it and is one of my favourite bits of comic art ever, its so fluid and kinetic) and really help expand the Transformers Universe. Its nice to there's other life out there apart from giant robots.

Always thought it a bit of a shame that this story isn't immediately followed up on after #114 and we have a two week gap until #117. The big teases.

These DH issues are the only original TF comics I have now. So its good they have some of the very best UK stories. And I will also agreed with Snowcatt that these new future stories are better than Target : 2006 by dint of being less sprawling and more sharply focused.

It is a shame that Death's Head never quite made it to the big leagues. It wasn't for want of trying though. His own comic book series is rather fun, the anthology nature of the stories mean it isn't quite as focused as Dragon's Claws and its a shame that bouncing him through time means we never get any pay off to the Undertaker plot thread. Although one wonders if that wasn't a deliberate attempt to try and mainstream the character - he says, answering his own question knowing that issues 9 & 10 feature The Fantastic Four and the Iron Man of 2020.

snowkatt

14/7/2014 02:37:00 pm

That is indeed most pleasing yes ?
But I still feel it should have been Hasbro, Death's Head works best when he is on his own level.
Transformers that is.

Marvel never seemed to know what they were supposed to do with him.

I don't mind the gap in between 114 and 117. It shows us what Magnus was up to and where he ended up after 104.

Stuart

12/7/2014 08:41:45 am

Furman did end up doing some 2000AD work, I don't have the books to hand to check but there's at least a couple of Judge Dredd stories by him in the Declassified collection books with all the Annual/specials stories in, Geoff Senior has at least one (though not with Furman as well) with a giant robot cat in it that looks very Ravage-ish IIRC.

I think if Death's Head had really worked (and the failure of his own title isn't entirely down to the quality of the series but more outside factors, if Marvel UK had simply published it at a size that could more easily be seen on British newsagent stands would everything have been different?) I think it would have been the breakout role Furman needed to make that full advance into the mainstream, sadly (at least in terms of him fulfilling the career ambitions he had at the time, of course in reality he's had a thirty year career a lot of writers would be envious of so he's by no means a failure) he never quite managed it and a lot of his later attempts to break away from Transformers -The Neo Knights series anyone?- seem increasingly desperate.

@Snowkatt- All my serpents are properly spelt now, ta.

Simon Hall

12/7/2014 01:50:57 pm

Muddling up my information..(having re-read L&TODH on my way to and from work) ..that anecdote from about the pool matches is from one of the Titan trades.

I've often wondered about the 'failure' of Dragon's Claws and Death's Head. If only because Marvel UK gave the format another whirl with Knights Of Pendragon in 1990 ... and that title really had legs, lasting an impressive 18 issues and seemingly only being axed in 1991 along with Marvel UKs other titles in favour of a big push into the US format the following year with the launch of Death's Head II, Hell's Angel and so on.

So what made Knights such a triumph? Was it better supported in by Marvel US in the states? Or was just down to better UK retailer support?

I'd also like to add that Simon Furman and Death's Head are also responsible for my own love of reading and a continued interest in comic books. More importantly, they showed me that comics didn't have to be all about men in tights punching each other. I was so entrenched with Marvel UK that 2000AD wasn't on my radar and Comic Shops seemed these strange far away exotic places. The UK newsstand was where I initially got my comics fix, so I was always grateful for the exposure to different types of stories.

Marvel UK's Havoc - although shortlived- had a big impact on me, being as it was the first time I laid eyes on Ghost Rider, another character that's stayed with me.

Heh, this has reminded me of the other stuff I read...discovering the UK magazine format of Marshal Law : Kingdom Of The Blind, which lead to Toxic! and the UK Terminator comic (that reprinted the awesome Dark Horse series from 1990 - 1992), Total Carnage! ... Good times :)

Tim Roll-Pickering link

13/7/2014 04:28:11 am

Looking at that cover it's odd to think just how long it took Roadimus Prime to make a full appearance, being built up in the adaptation and multiple flashbacks first. But I guess a cover of Cyclonus and Scourge getting roughed up and not by an Autobot was too similar to something that had already been done.

It's also nice to be reminded of just what a serious hard-edged bastard Death's Head was to begin with - some of his post-TF appearances are far too comedic for my liking. And I guess since Galvatron never told his fellow Decepticons his Target 2006 plans then the time machine could have been hidden in any old abandoned mine where no-one would look for it.

"English O Level (which I’m assured by old people are much harder than the mamby pamby exams kids do today)"

I'm always sceptical of these claims. The 100m record keeps getting broken but nobody accuses 100m of getting shorter. Each generation is taught and assessed differently and it's very hard to make claims about just what is and isn't "easier" without indepth study. Just looking at an old paper won't reveal much.

And Furman did eventually make it over to the US superhero books but had the misfortune to get displaced on She-Hulk by the return of John Byrne and later to wind up on the end of Alpha Flight's original run. Otherwise most of his US work tended to be either more licensed titles or else What If?s A lot of too little too late - if perhaps he'd broken through a year or two earlier he might well have picked up more assignments during the early 1990s boom period and then have lasted into the mid 1990s contraction.

Stuart

13/7/2014 01:23:49 pm

@Simon: It could also simply be that Marvel had more realistic expectations when it came to Knights, it would be basic business sense to work on the assumption it'd sell about the same as their previous US style efforts and budget accordingly (though no doubt at the same time they would have tried to fix the problems that undid the first push as well).

@Tim, I remember how at the turn of the century it seemed every fan had read an issue of Furman's Alpha Flight (possibly just out of obligation), but no one could ever remember a thing about it.

The time machine could well have been hidden away I suppose, we never learn anything about its origin bar the vague clue of it using Earth dating. But then, the Autobots seem to have easy access to it later in the storyline (and it eventually turns out even have their own in Autobot City) so presumably it's under their control at this point.

Dave

14/7/2014 09:05:47 am

Just dropping my first comments on here after reading it for a few months and catching up on all the past issues. Might be a bit rambly!

Firstly, you’ve written a couple of times that only Transformers fans would be likely to read this, but actually I’m not one. I used to absolutely love it as a kid, but I’ve long since left it behind so I’ve really enjoyed perusing this blog not as a fandom-exercise, but from a purely nostalgic perspective. It’s brought back a lot of memories! I actually started reading the comic at a later point than you’re at now, also with Part 2 of Space Pirates, but have memories of being bought odd issues like (and my lack of knowledge shows up here as I rely on Friends-style story titles) “The One Where they have a big fight on the moon”, “the one where Galvatron and Springer have a fight in the city”, “the one with Flame and Impactor”. But after the comic ended I went on a mad hunt for back issues (probably around 1991 and 1992), so I still have fond memories of the ones you’ve covered so far, albeit in a later time. I built up a pretty much complete collection, which has since gone the way of all flesh, but reading this blog has prompted me to pick up some of the more recent reprints.

What has surprised me in what you’ve covered so far is how little the comic has a dynamic of “Optimus Prime versus Megatron”. I can remember the excitement of “the new leaders” being released even though I wasn’t reading the comic that early, as I got Ultra Magnus for Christmas and my best friend got Galvatron. It felt at the time that a massive status quo was being shaken up. And yet, following this blog shows up that this status quo was broken pretty much immediately with Shockwave turning up, then Prime’s reduction to a head, then the joint Decepticon leadership and then both leaders being bumped off. I suppose I could be taking the lead from the cartoon but my memories of that are even more sporadic, remembering only the one where they built the Dinobots and one where the Autobots had been shrunk and were kept in a kid’s toybox (and even with that, I’m not sure it wasn’t a Gobots episode).

Not only that, but a lot of the characters I misremembered being very important, like Hound and Starscream’s constant machinations against his leader, pretty much never turn up. I guess it must be the Ladybird books, which I had from a much younger age and spent more books setting up the early line-up, that created this idea. It’s a shame though, as it feels like the comic never lets up putting new dynamics into play (to sell the new toys, I guess), which keeps it interesting but at the same time the changing roster robs the series of a bassline against the big events can be measured.

Especially interesting had been the details of the split between UK and US material. When I first read the comics, I thought it was weird that some stories had square box speech bubbles while others had standard speech bubbles with a lightning bolt in the tail, so that’s a mystery that’s been cleared up. It strikes me as odd, as you’ve said the comic tried to hide the fact that material came from two different sources, that they didn’t just do the same style bubbles to hide the difference. Apart from that, I don’t think I noticed much of a difference between the UK and US styles, which surprises me re-reading the graphic novels I’ve bought as they do seem worlds apart in terms of quality, even when the US versions are on form.

Reading about the failure of Death's Head post-Transformers, and ruminations in the comments as to whether his US-size comic got stuffed by the news-stands, from my perspective I think he and the other Marvel UK efforts suffered from two things; firstly, never mind getting lost on news-stands, I don't remember ever seeing the Marvel UK stuff like Death's Head and Dragon's Claws in a newsagent to begin with. My mum bought me a couple of comics that I got regularly (Transformers, DWM and Ghostbusters, later replaced by the Turtles), but if we went out on daytrips I would sometimes be allowed an extra comic to keep me quiet on journeys, and don't recollect ever seeing the titles that were advertised in TF. This isn't down to size, as I remember getting American comics in British newsagents during this period, including obscure stuff like Spitfire and the Troubleshooters!

(I really liked the Death's Head character and am sure that I would have chosen his comic above any others. Although I only discovered him when the Wanted:Galvatron story was reprinted in Transformers so it might be that his comic had wrapped up by then.)

The second problem, I think (and this is entirely anecdotal and relates only to me and my friends at school) is that by far the most popular comics were the licensed titles. Everyone seemed to ta

snowkatt

14/7/2014 10:09:19 am

Comment got cut of there.

Anyway, I think your idea of the status quo in regards to Megatron and Optimus, were mostly lead by the cartoon and the movie.

In the comic there wasnt much of a statud quo. I the US the status quo was shaken up 4 issues in and Optimus and Megatron met exactly once, which proved to be Prime's last. ( The execrable Afterdeath. )

In the Uk they met in the equally bad Raiders Of The Last Ark, the whole Prey arc, and Afterdeath again.
It was probably the cartoon that upheld that dynamic and if you didnt watch the cartoon much it was probably upheld by schoolyard association.

Stuart

14/7/2014 02:12:08 pm

Welcome aboard Dave! As you can see, the comments section can be more than a bit eccentric, so apologies for your post being cut off. A lot of good points there and, as we started reading the book properly at almost exactly the same time I suspect we'll have a lot in common as this goes along.

snowkatt

14/7/2014 02:19:53 pm

not too mention how weird and eccentric the regulars are ; )

Simon Hall

14/7/2014 04:23:56 pm

Can't speak for all newsagents, but all my Death's Head comics came from WHSmiths - or at least #1 - 7 did. I only saw #10 some months after that but passed on the chance to pick it up as I wanted to read # 8 & 9 first! Madness.

As it turned out, I got the LATODH trade which filled out his edited out adventures by way of some 'interviews' with DH himself. Tis just left me without #8...which then got built up in my head as I couldn't work out whom DH would have run into after Big Shot to leave him stuck in 1989. Yeah, I missed the blurb...on the next issue boxes....

Very disappointed when I eventually read #8 as part of The Incomplete Death's Head (1993 Maxi-Series spawned from the runaway success of DHII) that it turned out to be a 'filler' issue with a totally different creative team.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

15/7/2014 03:01:16 am

Regarding the whole question of distribution, it's complicated by there being basically five potential outlets for comics in the UK at the time:

* Chains of newsagents, usually found on the main high streets or at larger railway stations, like John Menzies and W.H. Smith. (A minor complication is the way their railway station outlets seem to have been a different branch for some purposes.)

* Franchises of newsagents like Martin's. I've no idea where decisions got taken for them.

* Independent newsagents, often spread around residential streets or the still surviving newstands and making their own decisions on what to stock. (My local didn't stock comics at all at the time.)

* Supermarkets and other shops who might have a section for periodicals.

* Specialist comic shops but these traditionally focused on importing US titles and IME very few made much of an effort to stock home grown stuff. Part of the problem may have been the sale or return principle in the rest of the market - around a decade earlier the US newsstand distributors were very wary of the comic shops with back issues because they feared the shops would buy back copies once read and return them for extra credit. (Which may seem like paranoia but this was an era when the distribution system was full of return fraud.) There's also the problem that much of the British comics market by this stage was either pitched at an audience rather young to end up in an average comics shop or reprints of old US material or a limited sector that didn't easily overlap the existing product in the shops. (A theme for a much more general discussion of the problems British comics have had and why they've become stigmatised and ghettoised as being for children, unlike in much of the rest of the world.)

Now it's entirely possible a title faced problems in only some of these outlets. According to Mike's Amazing World of Comics http://www.dcindexes.com/ both Dragon's Claws and Death's Head were "published" by Marvel US which I assume means they were available via the standard comics shop distributions. (Action Force Monthly was instead available in a US edition as G.I. Joe European Missions to handle the franchise name.) Later on both Strip and Knights of Pendragon were also available by these channels but notably earlier forays into US distribution by the British weeklies don't appear which suggests Marvel UK had made a more direct assault on this market.

Without indepth distribution data - and I don't know if this would have ever reached the Marvel UK offices let alone be seen by editorial or survive in a filing cabinet to this day - it's hard to know just what the standard outreach and uptake across different outlets was for comics at the time and how the US sized books' performance compared. But I can well believe that there were outlets that found US sized books awkward to stock and display. It seems the publishers kept on trying - Fleetway also had a range of titles at this size in this period.

Perhaps this was a problem of unfamiliar characters being ignored by newsagents and selectors - from vague memory the Fleetway titles included some Judge Dredd stuff so perhaps the others were piggybacking, maybe using a pack distribution method that can get obscure titles to the sheles. The only Marvel UK title with any vague name recognition amongst retailers was Action Force Monthly and that was hardly the best hook.

There's a wiki devoted to the British comics industry as a whole at http://britishcomics.wikia.com/wiki/Albion_British_Comics_Database_Wiki which may have some people who know more about the general industry issues on this.

Felicity link

1/11/2019 05:41:20 am

I did *not* already know the story about Marvel making sure they had the rights to Death’s Head rather than Hasbro, so thank you for telling us. :-)

I’ve ended up avoiding Death’s-Head-related information because my ex-roommate used to rave about Death’s Head so much that it turned me off of the character.

Funnily enough, though, I encountered the character years *before* hearing about his Marvel UK/“Transformers” adventures from my roommate. He (Death’s Head, not my roommate) appeared in an issue of “Fantastic Four” during Walter Simonson’s excellent early-1990s run as writer/artist. He (Death’s Head, not Walter) interrogates villain Kang with the line “Reed Richards is a human and feels a kinship with all living beings. But I am a mechanoid and nothing would please me more than to rip out your eyes with my bright shiny teeth!”

This is the secret to a good evil character: you have to inflict him on an even bigger evil. Having him rip off a bartender does not make me want to spend time in his world.

Nevertheless, Death’s Head does indeed look very cool in that way that only things designed in the 1980s can. I don’t know that he’s a likeable character or that I would want to read too much of his dialogue (those speech patterns could become tiresome, yes?) but I’ll try to enjoy him in the spirit I would have taken him in if I had had the chance to encounter him without all the hype and fan worship that has accumulated over the years. :-)

Transformation 113: Big Hitter, Yes?

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