Transformation 155: Shop Hard.

1/5/2015

This week, the Predacons go shopping and Buster plays a sick beat on his boombox.

All in my look at:

Toy Soldiers! Part 2.

Make sure to check the dedications for The Book at the end.

11 Comments

chris chapman

2/5/2015 12:19:16 am

How lovely to be thanked! Good luck with the book - I'll certainly grab a copy and spread the word. :-)

I may have to go back and reread Toy Stories too! I had thought it was bollocks, but maybe it's worth another go...

On the flipside, I remember Bob's run stepping up a gear for a couple of issues now as the headmasters arrive on earth.

chris chapman

2/5/2015 02:54:43 am

Reread it! As you say, the writing is better than you'd expect from the premise.

Isn't it odd that - in a story with such a daft, cute premise - that Goldbug gets translanted into a red car rather than a yellow one? if you're going to be this silly, you might as well go all the way so we can tell them apart!

Philip Ayres link

2/5/2015 03:31:17 am

I'd somehow managed to miss the US story partially presented in this issue in the US Floppy run so it was the first time I read it!

Nathan

2/5/2015 06:42:28 am

I was aware at a young age that some stories were english and some were american. But to be honest I assumed the naff ones that involved mind control car washes and transformers becoming radio control cars were British. I owe Furman an appology.

snowkatt

3/5/2015 04:19:46 pm

how the transformers saved christmas
http://brandedinthe80s.com/6641/how-the-transformers-saved-christmas-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-fighting-decepticons-and-love-energon

a 4 page insert from womans day magazine of all things to find a transformers comic from 1985
so very very early in G1 and transformers in general
i should have shown this comic 2 months ago ( ahem ) when it was still late 1987 in transformers country
but i only found it just now

no credits so there is no way to either give credit ( or blame ) those who made it
the art looks very toy orientated though which is a bit odd for a late 1985 american publication

( unless this was found in the uk edition of womans day magazine the article doesnt say but the art is very john stokes
but even then its odd to be toy focused
the december issue of the american comic was issue 15 with robot master
and this inserts british contemporary was issue 41 which was a full christmas issue ...albeit it a rather creepy one
so what is this thing ? )

Stuart

4/5/2015 01:00:50 am

Ah, you've discovered one of the things I'll be covering in the book.

Though my answers are mainly "I don't know".

The wiki claims Herb Trimp for the art, though he had no memory of doing it in one of his last interviews on a podcast a few weeks ago. It was for America though, and so therefore was likely done by Marvel US.

Ralph Burns

15/5/2015 02:12:58 pm

I still think it was a missed opportunity not to have Throttlebots in the RPM toy line as a wee throwback to this tale!

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Felicity link

7/11/2019 07:33:41 am

I remember the issue with Roadblock’s rant about “yuppies driving cars built by former Axis powers to the detriment of American auto workers,” but I don’t think we can assume from this that Larry Hama’s politics are to the right. I remember stories where the Joes have to intervene in other countries and the Joes comment on how America has propped up right-wing dictators and amoral corporations and that this is why things have gotten so bad that the rebels have to work with Cobra. When I read that issue I also happened to be in the middle of a Noam Chomsky pocket digest and I was impressed at the overlap between the two. And you’ll notice that in Roadblock’s rant he specifically objects to over-privileged yuppies and their indifference to the plight of the American working class who were suffering during the recession of the late eighties/early nineties.

That recession is a subject Hama would revisit in a few months when Cobra takes over the town of Millville which is rapidly dying from a lack of employment after the steel mill closed. In a bleak bit of black comedy Cobra enslaves the whole town with mind control but does, ironically, deliver on its promise to turn the town’s economy around and offer full employment.

Meanwhile, Cobra Commander, in his “how I survived” speech (after he was believed to be dead), agrees that America is the land of opportunity as he walks us through his pyramid schemes, political bribery, and other corrupt business practices that made him rich.

IIRC there’s a scene at the end of that Pit inflitration story with Sgt. Slaughter where Hama pokes fun at himself on these issues: Zandar (another relative of Zartan) pretends to be a redneck gas station owner who wants to know if the vehicles the Joes are driving are made in America before he gives them wrong directions to which way Cobra went. The Dreadnoks have a good laugh at how shameless that was.

Ultimately I don’t know what Larry Hama’s politics are but I think it would be a mistake to assume that “GI Joe” is automatically jingoistic propaganda, just as it would be a mistake to assume that all “Superman” comics are right-wing because the classic intro contains the phrase “…and the American way.”

Felicity link

7/11/2019 07:34:40 am

Felicity

7/11/2019 07:37:45 am

Sorry about the double post. It *said* there was an error and that it didn’t post the first time. :-)

LiamKav

23/9/2020 01:58:05 am

To be fair, I think Hama's right-wing leanings are fairly well known. And, like Chuck Dixon, he never allowed his politics to dominate his work in the way that, say, Frank Miller or Steve Dikto did.

Transformation 155: Shop Hard.

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