Transformation 199: Party Like It's 2009.

4/3/2016

It's the beginning of the end! Reality is being ripped apart, the Terrorcons are on the lash and Rodimus Prime is practising his sad face.

Plus, when we will get a spinoff about the Sharkticon scientist? "I suggest the solution to the problem is to eat it".

It's all in my look at Time Wars Part 1!

Also, Podcast Maximus, the Transformers radio show I'm involved in, is now on ITunes! Find the relevant links HERE.

12 Comments

Chris Chapman

4/3/2016 03:43:20 pm

Stuart

4/3/2016 03:46:42 pm

It's The Void!

Chris Chapman

4/3/2016 03:50:11 pm

Now, I bloody love Time Wars. Part 4 was the very first Transformer comic I owned (well apart from the collected comic of Decepticon Dambusters) and I still think that from that point onwards it's a terrific, scary, epic story.

I had no idea that Ultra Magnus gets shortchanged, and for all I knew the Future Cons probably added lots to the plot in parts 1-3.

Reading it as a grown up, I love the doom-laden part 1 and I still love the scale of parts 4-7, but I'd say the story's big problems are in parts 2 and 3 - the Autobot vs Autobot stuff is SUCH a waste of time, the art's sub-par and that's the time that you could be spending sorting out unresolved story threads.

But I'll still defend it here over the next 6 weeks - so many great moments, extreme violence, and without it, I wouldn't be here now.

Stuart

4/3/2016 03:51:29 pm

I think I'd agree with a lot of that. Though we shall see how it pans out!

Chris Chapman

4/3/2016 03:59:13 pm

Can't wait to read James Roberts' write up on this in UK Classics - I'd love to know if Furman's story telling was compromised, or whether he's making his own daft mistakes. Was it always meant to be 7 parts? That should still be plenty of time for a good epic.

Was there ever a version of the story where the future Cons are important? Or where Magnus and Galvatron face off?

Ralph Burns

4/3/2016 09:45:40 pm

I too must defend Time Wars. It was mindblowing stuff back in the day as week by week the insane violence ramped up and it had felt like the Galvatron plot had gone on for as long as I could remember (children feel time moves slower). It's just one of those stories that still makes me feel like a kid when I read it.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Simon Hall

4/3/2016 08:35:16 pm

Like Mr Chirs, I love Time Wars. I've never really noticed that there's dropped plots - but perhaps that's because I never read this in the weekly with all its puff pieces about the showdown between Magnus and Galvatron etc.

To me, these scenes that *should* have happened (the future Deceps, the aforementioned Mgs v Glv) that don't seem precisely because this ends up a very chaotic battle - everyone's on the backfoot and there's no properly co-ordinated response, and by the time everyone's agreed to work together, the whole of space time is collapsing and Galvatron's just totally lost it.

It may very well have been compromised by backroom changes, but it still works as a story for me.

...and this issue is what made me love the Terrorcons! Its the best showing they get and I love how Furman quickly sketches their characters out (and that they seem a close knit team of mates - even with smelly Blot amongst them). I like that Hun-Gurr just riles the humans by saying the Autobots paved the way for them. That read as a throwaway comment to me and I never expected that to amount to anything.

Maybe its from reading the frustratingly incomplete Collected Comics version of Time Wars that I don't see quite the same problems with this that, if you're reading this as it was published, you perhaps otherwise would.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

4/3/2016 09:19:41 pm

Time Wars is a story I have mixed views on. Part of the problem is that I came to the comic even later and so it was often mentioned as one of these great legendery moments but I only had access to the first part (plus the description of the climax in the annuakl) so had to take the legend without anyway to check it. Then the Collected Comics started reprinting it - but the first three parts seem to be all build up rather than the main action. It took six months before the real action began - and then the last two parts were never reprinted so it was left on a cliffhanger.

It was another decade before I got to read the last two parts. That kind of wait creates anticipation that's almost impossible to meet but it can also distort the view of where the story gets into a mess. This piece has highlighted just how early the future Decepticons are built up and even when they arrive in the past they barely contribute a thing. Is that a red herring cliffhanger or a sign of the pacing problems being there from the outset?

That Dragons Claws issue suggests Marvel UK were incredibly optimistic about the title's longevity! (Although maybe it's the trade that was released by then?)

Hush Job is a curious tale. It's trying to advance some plots but without dialogue it isn't always clear just what's going on, whereas Silent Job more readily lends itself to the technique. But watch out for an interesting revelation about the Baroness.

Ralph Burns

4/3/2016 09:43:16 pm

It is now a source of great disappointment to me that Blaster's holiday was not addressed in Regeneration One.
*punches ground*

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Nathan webb

5/3/2016 07:59:50 am

Was ever any explanation as to why this was stuck in the middle of the under base saga? I get why the previous issue was a swapped but it seems odd not to go back to it now. Had they not given enough lead time for the next instalment and had to bring it forward or was it a planned interruption?

John D. link

5/3/2016 09:46:32 am

I assume they wanted issue 200 to include a marvel uk story, and a dramatic one at that. The concept of time wars is pretty good fun but I don't understand why it had to be blown within 7 (6 really) issues. The feeling I get from it is that loads of the cast are missing without explanation. For all that I am unsure about some Budiansky stories, you always felt you had a broad grasp of who the protagonists were. Wildman's art is still "spongey" here, I wonder if he was juggling deadlines and just not putting in the same effort as he did when he was drawing for Marvel US. His art would regress to this spongey/stick-men style during RG1. Fair play to Furman this was ambitious stuff and some of the gore to come still makes me feel queasy (skorponok gets a hole punched right through him I am sure). When you read this kind of imaginative stuff it is kind of surprising Furman didn't kick on to much bigger things.

Felicity link

15/11/2019 07:39:58 pm

“Back to the Future” font!

Looks like Soundwave decided to wear his faceplate today! If you were a reader of the UK issues and you treated the American issues as happening in the same storyline it must have seemed like Soundwave keeps taking it off and putting it back on. :-)

I wasn’t reading “GI Joe” at the time of the silent issue but if I had been I suspect I would have written in to say that I didn’t like it. For one thing, one thing I like about comics is the lettering, and you don’t get that with a silent issue. Also, I enjoy dialogue much more than action.

Hi-Test evidently didn’t read “Cash and Carnage,” or he’d know you can wear a business suit over top of Nebulan armour!

Transformation 199: Party Like It's 2009.

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