Transformation 183: How It All Began.

13/11/2015

It's back to where I started as I've now reached the very first issue I ever read!

This, coupled with the fact it's an issue with issues means this is going to be a very long piece (and expect more self indulgence as every issue from now on will have amusing wacky stories associated with it), but I do occasionally mention the actual subject. All in my look at:

Space Pirates! Part 2.

11 Comments

snowkatt link

13/11/2015 05:25:04 pm

I would have to agree with you mother about the sexism, but only to a degree.
...Robo thong, not withstanding its not this issue where the sexism comes to the fore but the next, where Arcee becomes nothing more then the token damsel in distress that needs the gallant Sir Rod to save her.

She holds her own later on in the six parter, but still needs to be dragged along by the gallant Sir Rod.
Her characterization is faulty, but it can be argued that Hot Rod would have behaved exactly the same. But on closer inspection there is a meanspirited undercurrent to it.

The cartoon for all its merits and faults, mostly faults, it gave no fucks about the supposed gender of Arcee.
Nobody cared much that was she was female or not and she fought along with everybody else.

If it only weren't for that hideous pink color scheme.

But Arcee in the first half of Space Pirates ?
...uurgh.

I agree with your mother on the first and fourth Bay movies. The first one is okay by dint of it being the first and the fourth is good, because it removes all the annoying human characters from the previous three.
Has more "likable" human characters and kills off the odious comedic relief and does it fast too.
But being best in a series of four, by being the least worst is not much of a badge of honor.

The least said about Acree's role in Headmasters the better.
And mMnerva's portrayal in Masterforce still enrages me, it boils down to" you are an icky girl so you cant fight along."
...urgh !

I will rant about IDW Arcee when the time comes, on Focused Totality. ( Not for a while then, cause i'm barely getting started with Infiltration. )

And if you had become a Ghostbusters fan we would now be reading Busted pool instead.
Good thing then that i also like Ghostbsuters.
...Haven't seen the cartoon in years though, damn it its not on netflix.

snowkatt link

13/11/2015 05:37:20 pm

Damn, before I forget again

The first TF UK comic I read was 219, Survivors part 1 in 2001.
Yes, right after Time Wars and the Underbase Saga, I decided to check out this TF UK thing.

I really do know how to pick em.

Ryan F

13/11/2015 05:44:30 pm

I remember really hating this issue when it came out. The Transformation page, the departure of Grimlock... at the time it seemed to be a bit of shark-jumping. As a kid I hated Dan Reed's art as well (I appreciate it a bit more now, though), so that didn't help none, either.

Totally agree with your mother about the sexism (wonder what she made of 'Prime's Rib'?), I'm so glad Maighread Scott publically called Furman out on his treatment of Arcee many years later - it was a long time coming!

Regarding Visionaries, Galadria and Virulina never had action figures (so, basically, the equivalent of Arcee). So why they never got power staffs/shields in the cartoon is a mystery (actually, no it isn't - they didn't get extra powers because they were the girl ones).

Yeah, 'Four Talismans' is very Key To Time-y, but hey, so was Matrix Quest (and Matrix Quest had good and evil gods from the dawn of time to boot). My guess is that Marvel UK signed some sort of contract committing to reprinting the entire run of Visionaries, so put the fag-end of it in Transformers because they had nowhere else to dump it!

Ryan F

13/11/2015 06:02:00 pm

Oh, interesting fact time: this isn't the last time that Furman would use the Carry On Screaming 'Frying tonight!' line - Slag also said it in US#76, 'Still Life'. I make it my duty to keep a record of such things.

My first TFUK ish was #44 and I collected until the end (by which time I was considered a saddo to still be buying the comic in secondary school). Sadly, I completely ruined them all (cut out the A to Zs, unsuccessfully entered all the competitions, ruined the covers when trying to remove the free gifts etc.), so binned the lot in the late 90s! Thankfully eBay gives you Nectar points, so re-buying the lot helped pay for my shopping.

John

13/11/2015 08:14:13 pm

I did the exact same thing to all my issues, cut out the A to Z pages, guess it was just too tempting eh?

On top of that, I had ring binders but was unaware of poly pockets, you can guess where this is going.... thankfully I only hole punched about fifty issues.

As for my first issue, it was #53, the one with the sticker album, I hold that album and my mad quest to complete it, responsible for delaying me from becoming a regular reader until #85. In that issue when I saw Jazz being used as a weapon against his friends I knew this was a book worth sticking around for.

Stuart

13/11/2015 06:08:45 pm

@Snowkatt: Well at least there's someone who is more of a Johny Come Latey than me!

@Ryan: Oh, I know about that line getting a rereun. And yet no one puts it on the list of Furmanisms!

Lee Gannon

13/11/2015 09:37:14 pm

My first issue was #45 (which was also my first comic book ever).

I'm glad I'm not the only who liked Visionaries (although the only figures I had was Witterquick and Arzon).

Ralph Burns

14/11/2015 09:39:57 am

Fun fact: the cover of this issue is how young Ralph learned of the word 'deceased'. Comics can be educational!

UNH! HOPPER!
SPECIAL TEAMS!

John D. link

16/11/2015 01:17:18 am

I had a purple visionary guy with a staff which I think had a hologram. I have no idea how I got him as I am pretty sure I wasn't impressed with the whole thing. This reminds me I also had skywarp (purple too) but lost his wings almost immediately which made him fairly rubbish.

John D. link

16/11/2015 01:19:30 am

All I can recall about visionaries is that there is an issue where the good guys get covered in horrible boils? Must have had something going for it as I didn't read action force at all. It's funny seeing the review of the transformation page as I can honestly say I don't think I ever read that either. I lved reading the stories over and over but I must have deemed the transformation page as boring. Bizarre.

Felicity link

11/11/2019 08:43:06 pm

Glad to finally know the origin of the phrase “Frying tonight!” It seemed so odd and confusing to a young North American reader. I should have guessed it was a reference. That’s the explanation a lot of the time when a line doesn’t seem to make sense. (And if you don’t know the origin of a figure of speech or a cliché, 90% of the time it’s probably Shakespeare or the Bible.)

It still took me years to figure out “Pull the other one!” though.

Female Transformers: unfortunately we as humans can’t help but mentally assign gender to all living things. Next time you’re outside and you see a spider or a cat you’ll catch yourself thinking of it as a he or a she. Maybe it’s our inherent dualism or maybe it’s a limitation of our language.

If we ever encountered a race of androgynous aliens with no clear gender presentation we would still feel we had to give them some kind of pronouns. In live-action when they need to make androgynous aliens they usually cast women and then make them look more masculine. Often we still find ourselves thinking of them as female, as in the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Outcast.” (I get the feeling that it was intended as a metaphor for homophobia but it also works on a more literal level as being about transphobia.)

This is not to say that because it’s difficult for us to imagine genderless beings, it’s not worth trying; just that I forgive science fiction creators if they don’t quite succeed. It’s a cognitive uphill battle.

And when it’s something like the Transformers, where 90% of them have male-shaped bodies and male-sounding voices, it’s a no-brainer to think of those ones as male. This naturally leads us to wonder “If those are the males, where are the females?” Gender-blind casting would have given 50% of the roles in the cartoon to voice actresses. Shockwave could have been voiced by Susan Blu! (Of course then it wouldn’t make as much sense for Shockwave to say “Female Autobots?! I thought they were extinct!”)

“Visionaries” was cool. I have to thank a friend of mine for causing me to give it a second look back in the late 1980s. Virulina was my favourite character, the female Darkling Lord (although less so her comics depiction and it’s unfortunate that her superpower there turned out to be making people diseased. IIRC that’s the story John D. is talking about above. I guess it makes sense with her name, though: they must have been thinking “Virulina…virulent?”).

I can forgive Arcee being pink. And Elita One, the “Jem” of the series. After all, there are non-pink females. There’s Beta and the other female Autobots from “The Search for Alpha Trion.” I especially love Wreck-Gar’s “Junkion Lady” (as she’s called in the comic book of “The Big Broadcast of 2006”). She’s tough, she’s wacky, and she can explode and put herself back together again! It’s a shame she was never seen again.

Transformation 183: How It All Began.

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