Transformation 123: Low Cost Energon Freighter.

19/9/2014

Hello to all my Scottish readers who decided they couldn't separate from the UK, and quite right too. Why break up the team that gave us Simon Furman and Geoff Senior?

This week's comic sees a Decepticon freighter pilot looking as rough as Alex Salmond this morning and Blaster being as much of a git as David Cameron (that's enough topical humour) all in my look at:

Crater Critters Part 1!

19 Comments

chris chapman

19/9/2014 02:56:20 pm

As you say, this is one of Bob's more readable bonkers stories.

But a run of Bob like this always makes me think: how on earth did the comic keep going for so long in the States? I mean, if we'd only had Bob stories and not the UK originals, would we be TF comic fans now?

Do we know anything about US sales and whether they dipped as the years went on (aside from at the death)? Any fans on here who only read the US stories at the time? What was the appeal??

snowkatt

21/9/2014 12:05:06 am

where im from ( in europe ) we only had reprints of the US comics
and even though the quality was all over the place that didnt preclude me from being a transformers fan

i only found out about the UK stories in the 2000's

i suppose the appeal for me was that it was transformers and that there were still good stories in and between the nonsense
the first 12 issues are still great
the smelting pool two parter was a tour de bob

carter critters and the cure are remarkably strong

and later stories like the headmasters and trial by fire are also good its stories like that that keep you going between the tripe

all though if i am honest back in the day i didnt care much i was jut happy to have tf comics to find tf comics and ignore the bad stories and read the good ones

Simon Hall

19/9/2014 11:46:41 pm

I suppose the Americans also had the cartoon more readily available too them and Budiansky's writing fits into the same sort of goofy SF cops and robbers nonsense the cartoon delivered.

Its interesting to see just how different Transformers was on each side of the Atlantic.

As for sales figures, Transformers was axed at the point it was selling 'just' 100,000 copies (editorial changes notwithstanding, this may also be a licensing thing) so it must have been selling above this level for a good while. I'll be betting the US comic matched the toyline's fortunes... phenomenal early sales followed by a steady decline from 1986.

The Underbase Saga from 1989s # 47 - 50 does feel like almost like a conclusion to the comic and IIRC Furman mentioned in one of the Titan write ups that the book wasn't expected to last much longer when he took over.

Part of this will no doubt be due to a large part of the target audience growing up and moving on from toys and childish pursuits. Unlike me.

Simon Hall

19/9/2014 11:49:42 pm

The comic! I like the Scraplet two-parter. One of Bob's better efforts in this period and Don Perlin's art is great over the course of this story (mainly because there seems to be much more space given over to the art and the whole thing isn't cluttered with narrative boxes and massive exposition-y speech bubbles). I'm surprised Transformation doesn't do more to big this up, perhaps Furman just thought the Scraplets were goofy looking cute things.

snowkatt

21/9/2014 09:11:35 pm

The Scraplet two parter is one of Bob's stronger later efforts, but it does run in to the rather so so Car Wash Of Doom. It might be a "fun"piece of fluff, like Showdown, ( another one I never liked ) but I never really cared much for it.

And its a show case for all that was bad about the US comics.
( Overreliance on toy shilling, far too many human characters. Meandering pace, silly plots, too much silly humor.)

Even worse, it served as the conclusion of 3 months worth of stories. And after all the build up in Crater Critters and The Cure, it just doesnt live up to it's predecessors.

Stuart

20/9/2014 03:04:39 am

What's interesting is the American book at it's peak would almost certainly have been selling better than the British book at it's pomp (around 200 000 copies IIRC), but the the UK did it amidst a smaller population and weekly, meaning greater saturation.

The US book is basically a very typical American kids title, whilst the British one takes advantage of the fact UK action comics were generally darker, more violent and (since 2000 AD) full of satire and more mature humour.

Stuart

20/9/2014 03:07:15 am

...And today, 20th of September, is the 30th anniversary of the book's launch. You'd think I'd do something special for this on the site but... I didn't realise it was this week until it was mentioned on twitter at midnight.

But, for the Action Force crossover Transformation will be going bi-weekly and there's at least one Very Very Special Addendum coming before Christmas, so there will be no shortage of special stuff to celebrate with in the next month or so.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

20/9/2014 04:15:31 pm

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.

Simon Hall

21/9/2014 12:50:08 am

Just look at those numbers! Halcyon days for comics... when you could buy them from newsstands and not just through specialist shops like some grubby pervert.

And er, Happy Birthday The Comic! Still love you and your sexy four colour fun!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

21/9/2014 08:45:43 am

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

Chris Chapman

21/9/2014 11:07:56 am

Great data, guys!

I'd be interested to hear from someone who'd grown up purely reading the US Comic, and only discovered the UK comic much later - their reading experience must be very different.

Though presumably an enjoyment of Furman's US run might have motivated them looking into the UK archive in the first place...

snowkatt

21/9/2014 09:35:13 pm

If you scroll up to read my awnser to Simon, you will find that I am just that person.

I read translated reprints of the US comics and only found out about the UK comic much much later. ( in 2001 or so )

The upswing in quality when Furman got to the US comics was amazing, I remember that much. And I tended to favor Furman's output over Budiankies middle years.

( Budiansky was great up untill the Cybertron two parter, after that he began to falter. He had a few good more stories in him, but The Bridge To Nowhere and Gone But Not Forgotten were his last brilliant ones. )

I could bore you with how the comic I read was a clusterfuck of edits. And how the publisher happily skipped around 20 issues.
And even more infuriating, they were aware of the UK comic but ignored them save for 2 filler jobs.
Nut unless you are interested about hearing all that,I won't

snowkatt

22/9/2014 12:21:24 am

correction : my first awnser to you

John D.

21/9/2014 04:40:07 pm

Disovered this excellent blog a few weeks ago and am loving the reviews as the comments. I lived in Scotland for 33 years, until a year ago! I am sure Salmon(d) would be delighted to be compared to Blaster. I actually never picked up on Blaster being a git - I remember the Smelting Pool really disturbing me and I was all for him after that. I do remember even as a little kid finding a lot of these Bob stories pretty irritating. Though Scraplets freaked me out.

snowkatt

21/9/2014 09:36:07 pm

scraplets still somewhat creep me out

Stuart

23/9/2014 02:23:39 am

Yikes, lots of replies!

Genuinely interesting stuff about the sales figures there Tim, and certainly shows why Marvel would have been so keen to put a decent amount of effort into Transformers (and pretty much all the tie in stuff they did post Star Wars no doubt), not every one is going to be a hit, but those that did hit, hit big.

Welcome aboard John D! And also, having left Scotland, welcome to civilisation.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

23/9/2014 06:28:43 am

I'm not sure everyone at Marvel was that keen. Owsley/Priest has said the licenced books were normally the stuff you'd bung to the new kid and certainly the editors assigned to the series were often relatively new - often they were even starting out or had been previously editing John Byrne written titles. (Again an assignment that seemed to go to the new boys & girls - either because Byrne could be trusted to just get on with them making it a good training ground or else they were the only people who couldn't escape working with him.)

This may have been an area where the Finance part of the publisher was keen to snap up licences and do things and even take development commissions to work out back stories, but the Editorial section just regarded them as distractions and rarely sought out the top talent for them. When a licenced title found a keen creator like Larry Hama on G.I. Joe or Bill Mantlo on the Micronauts or ROM then wonders could happen but there were lots of short lived crappy licenced books that sold well then but no-one ever talks about now.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

26/9/2018 02:17:12 pm

Rereading the Iron Man 2020 story again recently, I was struck by just how out of character Spider-Man is written, especially given the later revelation the writer was really the editor at the time. His attempts to sneak past his landlady are so silly that even he comments on them, but most shockingly the way he just snatches the retina scan is astounding. There's no reference whatsoever as to whether he's even seen the dispatch of the Blizzard and he should know better than to just blunder into a delicate situation. This is tale of how two men's arrogance leads to tragedy but the plot relies on him being much sillier than usual even though he admits he doesn't know what's going on, leading to this disaster.

Felicity link

1/11/2019 11:56:22 pm

I don’t know whether people who are not our age or did not live through the 1980s can quite comprehend just how much “Transformers” captured our imaginations. It wasn’t just another toy or cartoon or comic. It occupied a special place in our minds.

This issue is one of the few UK issues I have. I bought it used at a comic shop in the 1990s. Since I already had the meat of the story in its original US form, the new content for me was everything else—the new cover, the letter column, the ads, etc.

So that cover is by Lee Sullivan? Nice! I’m only familiar with his work from US comics like “Robocop” and “TekWar.” When Marvel US brought him over to work on those comics, they touted him as being great at drawing futuristic stories, based on his previous experience. I didn’t find his art exceptional but I wasn’t really looking at it from a design point of view, like whether he could come up with all the futuristic technology and backgrounds that would be needed. I just thought his art was sort of liney and scratchy, so I didn’t know he could smooth clean Senior-esque work like that cover above.

I’m torn about the writing of this issue. On the one hand I feel like defending Bob Budiansky’s style but on the other hand it’s a relief to hear you call out some of the bad behaviour of Goldbug and Blaster in this issue, such as how they treat GB Blackrock and how Blaster treats Goldbug. It’s uncomfortable stuff.

I like Charlie Fong. If they were making a movie of this issue at the time it came out, I would cast Evan Kim as Charlie. I’m tempted to check out “Sleepwalker” if I ever get the chance.

FWIW I don’t think that soldier was meant to sound racist and say that Charlie was surprisingly brave for an Asian. I think he thought Charlie was surprisingly brave for a scientist, a civilian, an intellectual. There he goes, no weapons or anything to protect him, and yet he still risks his life to get that device next to that crater. That’s dedication!—is what the soldier is saying. :-)

Transformation 123: Low Cost Energon Freighter.

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