Transformation 165: Flying Wheels.

10/7/2015

It's time for the second greatest Duocon of them all to take centre stage. Does he fly or does he have wheels? No, he's Flywheels (he doesn't have wheels but so what? You'll be moaning about Camshaft next).

Plus zombies! All in the last entry in the series where I'll have more in front of me than I do behind me. It's City of Fear! Part 2.

In book news, Andrew Turnbull has been a true Bomber Bill and the tome is done up till the end of 1986. Groovy stuff!

11 Comments

John D. link

10/7/2015 04:39:36 pm

Oo Eck! I seem to recall irrationally living in fear of the comic having a rude word (for example "damn") on the cover and my mum deciding it wasn't appropriate to buy me it. I doubt my mum would have cared unless it was the f-word. Was there a cover that was a bit potty mouthed? For some reason I am thinking of Frenzy. Or the cover with Shockwave pointing at a GB black rock oil tanker saying FETCH! FETCH is not a rude word, but I imagined the rude word might be similarly legible.

Stuart

10/7/2015 04:52:27 pm

Nothing springs to mind, though there's Decepticon Dam-Busters. ;)

I'm still amazed the comic got away with a shag pile carpet joke on the letters page towards the end.

Alex

11/7/2015 04:31:31 pm

Like a lot of people in the other thread, I first came to this story via the 1992 collected comics. However, for some strange reason, I didn't actually come across it in Smith's until 1994 (it was definitely 1994, because I was about to start Big School). Maybe it had been sitting on the shelf for two years? I was just tremendously excited to see something Transformers related on the shelves!

In any case, the cliffhanger at the end of Legion of the Lost part 1 was rather frustrating to say the least - I never found the next special, so the storyline wasn't resolved for me until I managed to find the remaining issues at Botcon Europe in 1999. But that's for next week, I suppose!

Like you, Stu, I really enjoyed the attention given to Flywheels here, as well as his characterisation. Flywheels was one of the few of my G1 toys that survived relatively intact so he's always been close to my heart (BTW, thanks James Roberts...). Mind you, it always bugged me that Furman ignored the Duocons main gimmick - a bit of air AND ground support would have been nice.

Stuart

16/7/2015 01:42:00 am

Oh, thinking on it, there's a good reason for Furman ignoring how the actual gimmick works-- A lot of tension at the end of the story depends on whether Magnus does the right thing in letting Flywheels go for help. If he could send half of Flywheels off for assistance and keep the other half hostage it would rather undermine that!

Alex

16/7/2015 07:51:24 am

I might understand, but that doesn't mean I have to like it...

(Budiansky did a similar thing with the mighty Sky Lynx, the ras clart.)

Benway

16/7/2015 10:53:09 pm

A bit late but I loved this story though I was also annoyed that they had failed to print my well thought out letter that I spent ages on while printing obviously inferior letters and giving them free toys! Clearly constructive criticism was not welcome and gushing adoration which didn't slag off Action Force was in. So although I genuinely did love City of Fear I cynically sat down and spent about three minutes writing a really silly letter. I knew that my friends had all stopped reading anyway after the Afterdeath Prime is dead again (but not really) thing and so even if it was published I would be proven right and get a free toy and no-one would ever see the damn thing anyway! Rant over I just enjoyed the ride.

Legacy of Unicron on was really a second (well third really) wind for the comic and even though the toys had gone off and I was growing older (11! practically dead!) This was.... good.

Benway

17/7/2015 01:37:25 am

Edit: So I spent three minutes and 20p to waste fifteen seconds of someone's day at Marvel out of spite. Job done! (I was a petty and vindictive child...)

Ralph Burns

17/7/2015 06:14:15 am

BOMBER BILL COULD HAVE TAKEN THOSE ZOMBIES!

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Stuart

17/7/2015 06:17:14 am

@Benaway: Well at least now you've had a "Letter" published.

No, I'm not sending you a toy.

@Ralph: What comic wouldn't be over within three pages with Bomber Bill in it?

Felicity link

8/11/2019 06:25:44 pm

Was Flywheels one of the Decepticons eaten by those skinny monster things while having a conversation about how the truce just isn’t in the Decepticons’ nature, in the Furman-written American issues after the coming of Unicron?

Stuart

8/11/2019 06:36:48 pm

That was fellow Duocon Battletrap.

Transformation 165: Flying Wheels.

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives

Categories