Transformation 130: Talking Head.

7/11/2014

Behold a miracle.

No, not the miracle of binary bonding. The miracle of me getting through this entire issue about the introduction of Headmasters without a single blow job joke.

I don't even make an innuendo about having a ring of hate.

This new found maturity can be seen in my look at Issue 130!

8 Comments

Alex

7/11/2014 08:57:37 am

It's interesting how, thanks to this story, All in the Minds, and Time Wars, I've always basically seen Highbrow as Scorponok's 'rival', as opposed to Fort Max. It's been a while since I've read Worlds Apart - does Max even make an appearance?

The upcoming annual story retelling the origin of the Headmasters seems to imply that that the war on Nebulos takes place over a slightly longer time-frame than the strip does, as I recall, so there may well be plenty of opportunity to slot this story in. Also, later stories reveal that all the Pretenders and, presumably, the small Headmasters and Double-Targetmasters are also onboard the Steelhaven so a long time-frame including lots of 'unseen' stories seems to make sense.

Curious as well how Furman leaves out Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr but includes Cyclonus and Scourge, given that their origins are explicitly tied to Unicron in 2006, unlike the three Autobots who's present-day presence could be explained away much more easily. I wonder if he was already planning the ending of Legacy of Unicron?

(Mark Stevenson of TMUK wrote a lovely fanfic set immediately after the Legacy of Unicron, where a distraught Rodimus Prime recalls a battle he had on Cybertron five hundred years ago with two new, never-before-seen, extremely powerful Decepticons who strangely let him live...)

STuart

7/11/2014 09:01:10 am

Fort Max is entirely absent (indeed, of the top my head I think Time Wars is the only UK story in which he appears), the wiki suggests because he wasn't available in the UK which makes a degree of sense.

It might also be because, based on the different name in the Annual, that Max's original partner hadn't been completely solidified by the Budiansky at the time Furman wrote this.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

7/11/2014 02:56:18 pm

Normally not having the toy on British shelves didn't stop Furman but here he was probably working to a list provided by Hasbro UK. And given the minimal use of Cyclonus and Scourge - and indeed their shadowy, almost added on presence here - I wonder if they were originally left out but got throw in to make next issue's fight more even?

The annual is interesting - it basically retells the first two issues of the limited series but then goes in a different direction, establishing plenty of time for an ongoing war before a showdown that gets them to Earth in a rather different way. Still it's quite likely this is the framework Furman was working to, probably from an early Budiansky outline - the limited series only completed publication the same month as this issue.

But frankly the comic's approach to the whole Headmaster concept just shows why great toy ideas don't always translate into cool characters. Either you have split personality syndrome or you have one utterly subordinate to the other. Both approaches were tried but ultimately once the intros are over then other than Spike all the Headmasters seem to get treated as a single being with the Nebulan able to go solo for small scale work, with "Scorponok"'s final moments showing how Zarak's personality has completely overwritten the Decepticon's.

The US cartoon's approach of "secondary operators" who sit inside the heads offering guidance and a back-up control system is conceptually easier to understand even if the reasons for adopting it aren't the best. But I prefer the Japanese cartoon's take of small sentient robots combining with large, non-sentient constructs - there's no risk of identity confusion at all.

Stuart

7/11/2014 03:11:42 pm

I agree with Japanese cartoon executed the idea the best even if their take was the least ambitious. It's actually surprising Bob didn't go for something similar rather than effectively doubling the amount of characters he was having to introduce (though the Nebulons might have been a Hasbro mandate, I think if he'd have decided on organics himself he'd have just made them all humans rather than aliens).

Scorponok's character development is going to be, to put it mildly, rather odd over the course of the series with Furman actually winding up picking up on the end of Headmasters better than Budiansky will manage.

[My pet theory has always been that being very briefly bathed in the Underbase light had an affect on Scorponok explaining why Zarek becomes much more dominant after that. It could also explain why Prime merges with HiQ when none of the other Power Masters seem to be affected, or at least why he's affected first].

Felicity link

3/11/2019 07:18:50 pm

In the comic, most of the time the impression I had was that when the Nebulan is in head mode and sitting atop the body of the Transformer, the two minds combine into one mind that is a blend of both personalities. However, sometimes it sounds like the comic is saying that the Autobots who removed their heads are *dead* and the reason that, say, Fortress Maximus thinks of himself as Fortress Maximus and not Spike is that Spike’s mind is “suffused with the latent engrams” of the dead Autobot.

My pet theory is becoming a Powermaster ramps up your metabolism and is a great way to get in shape. We see that Hi-Test and Throttle eat 10 times as much as before because they are the engines for Dreadwind and Darkwing. Also we see that Hi-Q starts out fat and becomes thin by the time of the Micromasters’ arrival.

I’m not sure how Springer is going to feel about having Daniel living in Arcee’s head once Springer and Arcee have a chance to date each other again.

Simon Hall

7/11/2014 02:16:22 pm

A bright and breezy strip, toy plugging 'World's Apart' doesn't quite do it for me. It's fine, but I liked the nightmarish madness of 'Second Generation'. I do find Simpson's art a bit 'that'll do' for this 2 parter too, not helped by an awful lot of white backgrounds...

Blackjack

8/11/2014 08:20:17 pm

It's always interesting to know just what happens in the background while all these stories are made like how this could've potentially be the main strip with Man of Iron in the US an everything like that. It's a point of view that most of us wouldn't have the luxury of knowing. Good show, Mr Dalek!

Felicity link

3/11/2019 07:24:00 pm

I liked the first issue of the “Headmasters” mini-series. Frank Springer’s pencils are good during the part set on Cybertron. His work has always been uneven, as we saw in the original four-part mini-series. He seemed hit his stride around the last issue. His cover for the issue with the fight between Defensor and Bruticus at the railway yard was great.

The “Headmasters” series is also frustrating because of all the misunderstandings that lead to so much trouble. It is, however, one of our few chances to see the Technobots in the comic, IIRC.

A very belated happy birthday!

Transformation 130: Talking Head.

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives

Categories