Transformation 166 and Addendum 13: Tooth and Claw.

17/7/2015

Well here we are! After a vigerous campaign on twitter that has increased the daily visitors to my site by about 6, it's the midpoint of the entire British Transformers comic! Three years and two months down, three years and two months left to go.

As well as the comic and it's cliff-hanger with a deep IMPACT(or), I also look at Furman's first self-created property that was just about to launch at this point in 1988: Dragon's Claws!

Book update: The text is just about done, so when the cover is finished it should be all ready to go. Expect more news on this next week.

Legion of the Lost! Part 1

Dragon's Claws.

14 Comments

Burstingfoam

17/7/2015 07:30:10 am

My favourite Transformers tale and Dragon's Claws in one go!
Claws was tremendous stuff. Having been an impressionable 13 when this first came out, this was about the most exciting thing ever. I spent years and years with only issues 1-4 and 10 (it always seemed to be difficult to find in North-East England; I only got issue 3 because I was on holiday in Wales), and so had to piece together what on Earth had been happening inbetween. Ebay finally provided the rest about a decade ago, and I was a very happy bunny indeed. And then I got an extra story that I hadn’t known about thanks to the Death’s head comic. Happy happy joy joy.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s by far the best thing Simon Furman ever put to paper. It’s only the slightly ridiculous date when it’s set that lets it down. For the record, when I started writing a script based on the first issue (really; I had a lot of time to waste in those days) I reset it in about 2500. I even drew up an entire cast list for the imaginary tv show. I tried redoing that a couple of years ago, but could only get as far as Adam Baldwin as Deller.
And yes, I remember the one-page advert; played up some of the least exciting story elements (Scavenger vs The Vanishing Ladies?) in truly bizarre ways.

Stuart

17/7/2015 07:33:52 am

Yeah, I suspect they picked that Mercy moment because it may have been the only "Showpiece" moment for The Girl One at the time they put it together (if Scourge had happened by then they'd have gone for that surely?).

One one person can play Dragon: Geoff Senior. The square jawed resemblance is suspicious.

Burstingfoam

17/7/2015 08:35:10 am

I thought Mercy's bit was the Scourge story (btw, wasn't that story some sort of meta-reference to some character in the wider Marvel universe rather than a reference to my favourite Decepticon?) but I am old and senile.
By the way, am I the only one who loves Action Force? When I was little, they were my favourite (from the very early days of Battle Action Force). If nothing else, they were rather cheaper than Transformers

Stuart

17/7/2015 08:40:43 am

You're probably right, I've not seen the advert in years (and won't be until I reach the issues reprinting it!).

IIRC Scourge does share a name with another Marvel character, but considering there's a Scavanger as well and that Furman's just spent two years writing about ol'pink nails I'd imagine he was at least on his mind. :)

Like you I only managed a hodgepodge of issues, though much later. I first read the series after finding a good chunk of it- along with most of Death's Head- in a little dive of a comic/toy shop in St Ives when on holiday. I had to wait for the trade to read the rest.

Burstingfoam

17/7/2015 09:14:26 am

Brilliant blog, by the way, gets me through bad Fridays, and it’s inspired me to a complete re-read of the whole run of comics. Although I do tend to disagree with some of your assessment s (I adore Shooting Star), it’s good to see someone giving Bob Budiansky a little more of a pass than he usually gets (The Big Broadcast of 2006 puts just about anything that Bob wrote into enormous context). Funny thing is, now I’m older, I seem to appreciate the unique quirks of Bob’s work far more than I did when I was a youngling. Simon Furman at his best is the best of Transfomers writers, but he does tend to use a lot of the same recurring tropes; I always feel that even when Bob goes wrong (child astronauts?), he’s always having a go at something new.
Going back a bit, you reminded me of Inhumanoids, the cliffhanger to which nearly killed me at the time. I found the tv series a couple of years ago, and it was a hell of a relief to discover that it all ended ok.
None of which has anything to do with this issue!
Looking forward to Time Wars, and I love the b&w UK phase; but let’s not get ahead of ourselves too much.

Alex

17/7/2015 04:30:49 pm

Speaking of cliff-hangers, the special I had that contained Legion of the Lost ended right here with this issue - so for years I never found out who the mystery villain was. Really bugged me when I was eleven. I thought he was like Hot Rod's brother, or something.

simon hall

19/7/2015 09:04:21 am

Seems to be a common theme of Marvel UK's US format books, the only issue of Dragon's Claws I saw on sale anywhere was a lone issue 10 (I think - the one with the painted cover) in a seaside general store in New Romney - the exotic sounding seaside town in Kent. I didn't pick up issue 10, deciding it was too far down the line to bother and bought an Oink! Holiday special instead. Makes you wonder if sales were more likely hampered by piss poor distribution than the usual cries of 'they got lost on the shelves' (oh yeah? then how did Commando manage to keep going?).

Death's Head I fared a little better with, managing to scrape together #1 - 7 from various branches of WH Smith (never the same one though. curious) but never finding any of the other issues at the time. Well, I did see issue 10, but couldn't bring myself to pick it up as I wanted # 8 - 9 first. I had to read things in the proper order in those days.

I managed a complete run of Dragon's Claws sometime in the mid-1990s, from much missed comic shop Odyssey 7 (curse you the IRA!!!) - late Space Odyssey, fact fans - and the same shop had a run of Death's Head issues, which I missed out on (although I did later pick up a replacement #1 from them for 50p as my original was dropping to bits by then. Joy of joys, it turned out to be signed by Furman and Hitch too!).

I would probably agree that DC is superior to Death's Head (much as it annoys me to say that), in terms of story and plot, but mostly for just allowing Geoff Senior to strut his stuff. And I like the logo. I don't think its ghastly at all. But then Wizard is the magazine equivalent of excitable large message boards, so what would they know, with their endless hyberbole and short attention spans?

Benway

19/7/2015 07:11:56 pm

Well if Wizard said it, it's wrong. It's Wizard. I like it, though it does blatently show dragon's teeth and not claws. I guess the name change really was last minute and they went with the whole "take a mistake and pretend it was on purpose" approach.

Stuart

20/7/2015 02:46:32 am

Weirdly the "Dragon's Teeth" cover in the trade doesn't have the tooth/mouth emblem as part of the logo. So presumably it was added after the name change as a "Fuck you!".

Felicity

8/11/2019 08:52:47 pm

I don’t see what’s so terrible about the logo either. There are a few changes I would make if it were up to me, like keeping the D the same size as the RAGONS and making the CLAWS the same size as DRAGONS and getting rid of the oval with the teeth. It’s not perfect but it’s far from the worst.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

25/7/2015 06:02:30 am

The main Scourge in Marvel US is an assassin of lame super-villains - a man in disguise would appear at odd moments, pull out a gun, shoot dead the villain and shout "Justice is served!" Later when the Scourge came close to capture another Scourge poped up and killed him, revealing it to be a organisation. Readers of the UK Secret Wars II comic, and presumably Marvel staffers, would have seen him dispatch Hate Monger whilst the Fantastic Four were being pestered by the Beyonder, but the Transformer is the more obvious namesake.

It's certainly the case the smaller format itself wasn't some one off thing by Marvel UK that was completely rejected by the UK market - Fleetway/Quality did a line of reprints in this format that lasted a while and again they were pitched mainly at the US market. However London Editions Magazines' DC reprints which launched about the same time as Dragon's Claws opted instead for the traditional A4 size (the Batman movie adaptation was printed in the smaller format but the rest of the line never switched to it). And there were direct imports of US books on some UK stands. But a lot of shops had racks that weren't A5 friendly even if there was a digest friendly slot.

Unfortunately I suspect the records that could at least show distribution and if there were patterns towards particular chains or independents is probably long lost.

Ralph Burns

31/7/2015 09:59:39 am

The Dragon's Claws comic was easily to find in my neck of the woods. So far as I can tell it was selling about 2 copies locally (one to me and one to a friend) but I loved it because it was so violent. The Death's Head comic was very hard to find in newsagents though. It took me a year or so back in the day to find #1 and #10! Annoying, yes?

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Felicity link

8/11/2019 08:19:32 pm

Andrew Cartwright from Stoke-on-Trent is right; the first wave of characters were the best, at least visually, and it’s unfortunate that they don’t appear as often once their toys aren’t in active circulation.

As far as I currently understand it, the original wave of Transformers owes more to Shohei Kohara’s model sheets than Floro Dery’s and that’s why they’re proportioned better, making them more humanoid where necessary, lengthening limbs and adding pelvises. Dery did humanise the toy designs somewhat but left them more like the toy than before, which is why for example Trailbreaker looks so much more graceful than Hoist, Grapple, and Inferno, or why the coneheads look so much stiffer than the original Decepticon jets, even though they share the same toy molds.

This trend got even worse with the movie-originating characters, as Dery was allowed to indulge his fancy for curves and ovals and we had the least-Transformer-y-looking Transformers yet.

Thankfully things turned around once the new combiners, plus the other gimmicks such as Headmasters and Targetmasters, started coming in, and the model sheets started looking a lot better again.

Zartan, Zarana, and Zandar are related; there’s also Zanzibar, who as far as I know is not related even though his name starts with “Za.” :-)

Imagine going to a convention and cosplaying as Zarana disguised as Scarlet!

Felicity

8/11/2019 08:59:06 pm

I had the opportunity to buy “Dragon’s Claws” #1 (presumably an American reprint since it was in a normal 8×10-inch comic size rather than the larger British size) when I ran across it in the bargain bin at a local comic convention but decided, at the time, that Senior’s humans were not well-drawn enough. This blog has really given me a new appreciation of Senior, though, and I think if I get another chance to buy it, this time I will!

I might be the one person who is more likely to buy “Dragon’s Claws” than “Death’s Head”!

I love how the dog matches the attitude of the team in the two panels you scanned, one where they’re all running into action, and the other where they’re looking proudly out into the distance. :-)

Transformation 166 and Addendum 13: Tooth and Claw.

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