Transformation 132: Stranger Danger.

21/11/2014

This week, we have a special message from Spider-Man about how you should never go off with people you don't know.

Meanwhile, Kup goes off with someone he doesn't know and has an exciting adventure that helps him regain his sanity.

All this, and references to the Planet of the Apes TV series in my look at issue 132!

8 Comments

Rack 'n Ruin

21/11/2014 05:08:18 am

I don't know about Max Clifford. In the panel you reproduced in your blog, Zarak looks looks remarkably like Mick McCarthy, the manager of my footbvall team, Ipswich Town. Uncanny.

In a twist of fate, the owner of our club, and McCarthy's boss, is extremely publicity shy and never shows his face. Scorponok lives?

Stuart

21/11/2014 05:10:49 am

Nick Roche also pointed out on twitter than Zarak makes a good John Le Mesurier as well. He is literally all things to all people as long as that thing is literally a middle aged man with white hair.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

22/11/2014 01:02:16 pm

My best guess is that this one parter was aiming to get things in sync not just for Christmas but also so the lead and back-up stories wouldn't end in the same issue until then. But could the lead have been prepared as a fill-in that could be dropped in without much work in case of another postal cock-up? (Though it's odd to use the artist most likely to cause the problem.

And once again we get the mess of how you can have aged veterans and youthful new warriors around when the opportunities to create new Transformers are severely limited. If nothing else the Headmasters offer a way to get that dynamic in without a mass outbreak of the missing Matrix.

The PSA mini-comic was also run in Action Force. I wonder what other Marvel UK comics it popped up in. And the use of American Football may have been with an eye to selling the story to Marvel US. (The reverse was attempted with the Spider-Man/Power Pack sexual abuse one-shot where Marvel US donated its services for free domestically but was banking on making a lot in international markets. However the report back from the international trade meetings with reprint licensees was that culturally in those countries this wasn't considered a job for comics but rather for sex education classes.)

Transformers seems to have been lucky in dodging the PSAs that were all the rage in other cartoons - some of them are good but some are almost hilarious (the He-Man & the MOTU one where Ram-Man tells us not to headbutt the walls springs to mind!) and a good number don't translate well to countries where the warning signs and emergency numbers are different. And even the homegrown ones could completely fail to work by making assumptions about equipment that isn't always there. For example road safety ones are annoying because they always said "don't run across a busy road; find a pedestrian crossing and use it" but when I was growing up it was physically impossible to get to either my first school or the local park (which was the route to at least two other schools) without having to cross busy roads with no crossing facilities at all & where cars had a tendency to speed up on the straighter flatter sections. There was never any advice on how to judge when to cross safely or what to do to force the cars to let you pass - or for that matter how to use crossroad traffic lights that don't have a pedestrian phase.

Simon Hall

23/11/2014 12:51:13 am

And on a similar PSA theme, Dave Prowse has reprised his role as the Green Cross Code Man in a new series of road safety ads - now that everyone is killing themselves doing mundane tasks because they're glued to their mobiles and not looking where they're going.

In terms of the comic, yeah this is a great little story. I first read this in a Collected Comics issue and remember being non-plussed by it at first, but re-reading it over the years its now one of my favourite Transformers stories. And Dan Reed's super creepy artwork really helps sell the psychological problems Kup is facing. A really great piece of work.

As is Headmasters - I really like the political manoueverings of the Nebulon government, and how Zarak talks Galen into some courses of action he may not otherwise have taken by preying on his idealism. Great stuff. Although it gets a bit silly with the bubble machine later on, this is definitely one of Bob's best bits of work for Transformers.

Mark Stevenson

23/11/2014 10:56:18 am

A very effective little one-shot, this. I remember it having quite an impact when I was a kid, due I suspect to the frankly terrifying renderings of Kup's psychological traumas. It was certainly a very different presentation of an already fairly-well established character. Up to this point we'd always been told that Kup was a battle-scarred veteran but this was the first time we were actually showed what that really meant. As you rightly point out I think this story is a lot more influential on the way Transformers are written today than many would give it credit for.

Alex link

23/11/2014 11:19:19 am

Hi Mark!

I didn't get to read this story until my teens, but I've always loved it since then for basically the reasons outlined in Stu's article - it gives a nice bit of background to the three 'movie' Autobots and creates a greater sense of unity between the American and British strips.

You're right about Blurr - ever the red-headed step-child. That's the trouble when your gimmick is basically 'talk fast'. A shame, as I always had a fondness for his car mode.

One pointless exercise I like to engage in is to imagine that Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr are re-built Autobots, much like Cyclonus and Scourge are rebuilt Decepticons, and ponder who they'd be. Kup would pretty much have to be Ironhide, or possibly even Gears, and Blurr has to be Bluestreak. Hot Rod I'm torn on - either Sideswipe, for the transformation, or possibly Tracks for the flames.

Well, it passes the time.

Stuart

23/11/2014 11:23:45 am

The cartoon did actually make some PSA's (using basically the same script as the G.I.Joe ones, as it involves second season Autobots they were probably made at the same time as the first Joe ones) that were never used but eventually made it onto extras on the DVD's.

As for why they weren't used, it's hard to say. They are odd though, Red Alert nearly kills some children on the road and then blames them, whilst girlfriend beating Powerglide gets to do the "Women should be treated as if they were equal" one.

Felicity link

4/11/2019 10:51:13 am

The name Galen pre-dates “Planet of the Apes.” It was the name of an ancient Greek healer and philosopher. Hopefully this is the Galen that Bob Budiansky was referencing!

Zarak also looks like the Man from Glad and the Indigestible Man from “The Tick.” In a live-action adaptation made at the same time as the comic’s publication, he could have been played by David Gale, Richard Lynch, or maybe Jon Pertwee?

Transformation 132: Stranger Danger.

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