Transformation 188: Hot Stuff.

18/12/2015

Simon Furman takes a holiday and future best-selling author Dan Abnett takes over for two weeks, the first of which hardly hints at best selling tendencies.

It's Autobots Vs. Kremzeek... Err... the Firebug as wacky hi-jinks ensue. You'll definately need a Tango after reading my look at:

Firebug!

Plus, the obligatory plug for the QUIZ.

9 Comments

snowkatt link

18/12/2015 05:40:15 pm

I am not very familiar with Dan Abnett, beyond this issue and the next, a few Real Ghostbusters comics and the excruciatingly bad Heart Of Darkness mini series. ( I only have half of that and it's still awful. )
But this issue and 198 are the first and for a long time only issues of the UK series, I was ever aware off.
Having said that, this is still an inconsequential piece of fluff.
However I don't think the comparison with Budiansky's most inane and insane stories is fair to this story.
Because Firebug generally doesn't go for the humor jugular with a blunt axe like budiansky's stories do. Nor is there an overly annoying focus on annoying unlikable humans.
There is humor, but it's not as painfully forced as most of Budiansky's stories.
The fact that Yomtov doesn't rub his crayons all over the art, also helps a lot.
And thankfully the issue is mercifully short, there is only so much you can do in 11 pages. and the "hilarious" circumstances don't drag on and on and like they do in Budiansky's stories.
And Firebug has some dark under currents.
The implied death by fire of hundreds, maybe thousands of humans during the fire and the almost complete extermination of a sentient race.
The Firebug's appearance on the first page is suitably terrifying and demonic.
These touches make the shift in issue 189 a lot less abrupt and jarring in my opinion.

I will not be entering the quiz btw.
It hinges too much on the Transformation and letters pages and extraneous pages and as a reader of the tpb's I just don't have any access to any of such material.
I have also had ( another ) hiatus for Focused Totality, but I have picked up the thread for that again and I am rapidly making progress to make up for lost time
Even so, this will still take 2 to 3 years.

Ralph Burns

18/12/2015 09:55:20 pm

I enjoyed the can of Tango! And it was orange so a bit like what the Firebug looked like. A PERECT TIE-IN.
*gurns*

SPECIAL TEAMS!

snowkatt link

18/12/2015 11:01:08 pm

Wouldn't minded a free can of Tango myself.
Free is free after all and it's better then Sprite

Benway

19/12/2015 02:10:56 am

Also, a can of Tango cost nearly as much as the comic, so if you drunk Tango anyway (and who didn't then?) then you were getting that weeks issue for almost nothing! Great free gift and much better than the Action Force Sticker Album. If only they'd carried on with free tomato Snaps and free Trio then I could have got my mum to include Transformers in the weekly shopping and had extra pocket money!

Tetsuro

19/12/2015 01:47:08 am

Fun fact: This was one of the two UK stories (the other being Cold Comfort and Joy) published in the Finnish edition of the Marvel comic.

Interestingly, the frame used in the article that refers to the events of Wreaking Havoc! actually made me dig up my copy to see how the Finnish translation handles it; unlike the US stories which explicitly refer to the US issue number if that story wasn't published here, the reference box here simply says "not seen here".

I would also say that I find it strange I had no recollection of the Galvatron reference at all, but it might have something to do with the particular issue not finding it's way into my collection until years after all the other ones - probably the last Finnish comic I actually ever got. Besides the first issue. Which was the movie adaptation. I am glad that wasn't the first Marvel issue I ever got.

Simon hall

20/12/2015 11:54:42 am

I rather like this issue,its a nice bit of fluff and one of Abnett's better TF efforts.

He's a writer I've never really enjoyed on his own merits - a lot of his work is highly derivative of other media (Death's Head II's initial limited series is basically T2 and Robin Hood : Prince Of Thieves, Sinister Dexter is Pulp Fiction), moreso than Furman who uses those tropes to flavour his work, rather than outright copying them. That said, paired with another writer - John Tomlinson on Knights Of Pendragon and Andy Lanning on Marvel's cosmic stuff, he has turned out some stonking stuff.

Free Tango, huh? This'll be from the days when the cans were covered in oranges and before they started an advertising campaign that made children deaf.

I always liked Fanta Limon (as it was in Spain and not available in the UK at the time), which was really nice. That and Cherry Coke.

John D. link

21/12/2015 04:58:13 pm

I don't recall absorbing the Galvatron info at the time, I just remember thinking this was one of those dud filler kind of stories. As a kid I had a soft spot for Inferno as he was one of my first Transformers, my mum brought him back for me after she had been away somewhere for a few days (leaving me with my scary aunt). Anyway, a dud story, but little did I know there would soon be black and white strips galore churning out this sort of stuff! Did Bob just run out of time to write Inferno and chums into the US stories a few years back, leaving Marvel UK free to place them in "the future"? Shoud they really have been introduced by Bob around the time Hoist and Grapple and co. showed up? Seems strange that Hasbro didn't want them featured. I know Inferno and Broadside crop up in the background of the present day big moon battle. Probably just Jose using up every character model he could get his hands on?

AS A KID!
SPECIAL TEAMS!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

24/12/2015 07:43:54 pm

I'm not sure why Bob ignored Inferno & Red Alert, unless someone pointed out the UK had already featured them in the regular comic but I didn't think it had that kind of clout so early.

"Totalled" is a fairly typical example of the horror job that can come on some Marvels, especially a big "event". An artist gets given instructions to throw in loads and loads of existing characters but often doesn't get a detailed list explaining of which characters are and aren't available to show up at any precise moment or what the current costumes are. As a result the big events often leave fans who assemble chronologies scratching their heads, especially if a regular book didn't do its own tie-in issues.

snowkatt link

24/12/2015 10:13:22 pm

I don't think its that complicated.
Budiansky had a humongous workload, he saw Red Alert and Inferno whom were pretty much clones of other characters and figured, bugger this for a lark and dropped them.

Transformation 188: Hot Stuff.

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