Transformation 200: Blast From the Past.

11/3/2016

Happy double century! Honestly, today's Transformers comics, looking all pleased with their 50 issues, they just don't have the right stamina (though I do put in a subtle nod to More Than Meets the Eye meeting that milestone right at the end).

I should apologies upfront and say what follows is easily the most self indulgent thing I've ever written, and also the longest Transformation to date as a result. Take it in stages my friends, as someone I deeply admire and love helps me examine:

Time Wars Part 2!

And if you survive that, there's also a new Adendum to celebrate the big issue number, looking at James Roberts' great big fanfic novel, Eugenesis!

14 Comments

John D. link

11/3/2016 09:24:09 pm

Hi Stuart, great stuff. I had forgotten all about the booklet til now. I remember Geoff senior gave himself magnificent cheekbones. Was there a price hike to cover all this largesse. As mentioned last week the overwhelming impression is of loads of cast members missing. Were the "future autobot" target masters just saying "oops this I'd a bit awkward".

Stuart

11/3/2016 10:24:03 pm

Kup Blurr and Hot Rod were on holiday.

It'll be interesting to see if the letters page covers that discrepancy...

Ralph Burns

11/3/2016 10:40:30 pm

The exciting new fact about Xarron in THE FACTS booklet quite frankly made #200 the greatest publication of all time back in the day!

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Alex Smith link

13/3/2016 09:03:48 pm

Xaaron

Xaaroff.

Alex Smith link

11/3/2016 10:55:59 pm

Absolutely lovely write-up of Eugenesis there. Now to be a tedious prick and go through a few things. Obviously most of the things I mention will be a reference to an obscure fanfic continuity that not many people have read, so please don't take this as a criticism of anything Stu has put here, which as I said is a great review, and more as background matter.

"Just before things kick off on Cybertron, a mysterious space time portal has been found beneath a temple that allows the traveller to go to any point in history they’re thinking of (it’s flimsy and as a concept makes no real sense, but it works in the context of a handy McGuffin"

Said time-portal is actually a reference to J'nwan from the contemporary Botcon stories, as well as The Last Days of Optimus Prime, as the Shockaract era was also incorporated into TMUK continuity. The events of the Shockaract era occurred on the true Cybertron, as opposed to Beast Wars and Beast Machines, which occurred on 'Seibertron', the false Cybertron established by Star Saber in the future after the Software Wars (32nd Century, I think, but I can't recall...)

"It’s also hard to see why anyone would be so down on the post-87 Prime, for all his introspection and worrying his track record is still impressive, arguably more so than anything we saw the original Prime do. He stopped the Underbase. He stopped Unicron. He rehabilitated the Swarm. This is the Prime who carried out the iconic Optimus moment with his charge in the film."

Regarding the copy nature of the Powermaster - I agree that is a matter of taste, really and I admit, reading the original comic, I never saw him as an inferior copy but that's how the continuity went. For what it's worth, I think it's in A Rage in Hell, after the defeat of the Liege Maximo, that Optimus's 'true' spirit is returned (and Spike Witwicky is resurrected) meaning that the version who participated in the Movie events at least had a 'spark' of the original Optimus. That said, it is said that his original body lies on VsQs and that is where he is eventually resurrected.

There's more info here:

http://theunderbase.co.uk/wiki.asp?db=tfdb2000&o=Optimus%20Prime

"He’s also used to make a commentary on what the war has done to his troops. This is a Prime who is four million years behind the times and he is horrified by just how bloodthirsty and numbed to violence the Autobots of 2013 are, culminating in an amazing sequence where he uses his big “Now we go kill the Quintessons” speech to openly criticise what they are now and can’t quite believe how enthusiastically they’re still cheering him on."

I just have to mention that this speech by Optimus, and its accompanying prose, is some of my favourite James Roberts-written material. The dissonance between what Prime is saying, and thinking, and what his troops are doing, is just magnificently handled.

"Though it’s unfortunate and amusing that—having made such a fuss of the need to prevent future knowledge—when Thundercracker is also grabbed from the past so that his sonic boom can be used (TMUK regard him as having become Scourge, who is unconscious with an injury before the book starts) he winds up going back with his memory intact and, when Scourge wakes up at the end, it turns out he just had enough sense not to talk about it for three decades."

There's a bit of follow-up with Cyclonus and Scourge in Mark Stevenson's Persistence of Loss (AKA The Importance of Being Emyrissus), which can be read here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/tmuk/conversations/messages/19498

"Primus and Unicron are actually mad super computers built by the Quintessons and everything we’ve been told up to now is a lie. "

One small point: They were actually stolen by the Quintessons from a superior race, the Masters. The crystalline matrix that would eventually become Unicron would be tampered with, hence it's inversion from a creator of life to a destroyer.

"It doesn’t help that—as Roberts didn’t definitively want to change to origin story as TMUK wasn’t his sole preserve—there’s nothing to suggest any of this is true. What aims to be a franchise shattering revelation just winds up being a mad man ranting about something even the characters listening don’t put any stock in."

It did affect things to a degree; in future-set stories there were references to Reductionists - people who believed in a Quintesson-origin for Transformers, a religion supposedly started by Magnus's revelations. This sort of religious plurality we've seen again in MTMTE, with the many different theories on the Cybertronians' origins.

There were a few fanfics that followed up on Eugenesis. Indeed, between that and Telefunken suddenly a lot of new story ideas were opened up, particularly with regard to Star Saber's takeover of Cybertron. In addition to the above-mentioned story by Mark I'd also recommend Martin McVay's E

Stuart

12/3/2016 06:29:37 am

I've already been taken to task for over simplifying the P.R.I.M.U.S. idea, but it's nice to see there was fallout outside the book.

If there had been time I'd have fully delved into the key associated TMUK stories, but I thought in the end approaching as most readers would now was the more sensible approach (though I don't really make that clear).

Alex Smith link

12/3/2016 09:01:22 am

That's what your loyal band of commenters is for! Nah, I thought it was fine review - you pick up on the book's weaknesses (which, in fairness, are because of trying to slot it into a pre-existing continuity) and trying to reference all the other stories it links up to would be madness - I certainly couldn't do it!

Bloody comment got cut off, above, as well - the last fic I was recommending there was called "Eugenfic".

Charles RB

14/3/2016 02:16:13 pm

How much of the grim future of the 23rd/4th century and Staer Saber the mega-fascist is from Roberts? I always had the impression that was something he'd developed that was made up for Prime Sacrifice but if he did it all himself, then holy crap.

(He also made _Springer_, of all 'bots, a thug and a tyrant by that future, which was always unsettling. It's one thing to see Sideswipe post-G2 as a jackboot but Springer was a drug-addled Chief Judge Silver really emphasises that things have gone wrong)

Alex Smith link

22/3/2016 11:39:23 pm

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Star Saber's tyrannical, Big-Brother-esque nature came from James - particularly from Telefunken which, as you said, was written as and intended to be the prelude to The Prime Sacrifice. It basically set the scene for the grim, meat-hook future of Cybertron that people like yourself and myself mined with cheerful abandon.

Star Saber had appeared in prior stories - CG2, etc - but I'm not sure how much he matched up with the post-Telefunken version. And then, of course, there would be stories set pre-Telefunken but written after the fact, confusing my poor brain entirely.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

11/3/2016 11:07:40 pm

One thing that I hadn't realised before now is just how much this booklet seems to be using material from the 1989 sorry 1990 sorry fifth annual - I think the Dan Reed PM Prime is from Dreadwing Down! and other images would turn up on the book. Were annuals really being prepared that far ahead now or did that one use a lot of material from inventory?

(If it's inventory that might explain some of the continuity in Dreadwing Down! but also suggests an Optimus Prime/Megatron fight in the regular comic that never really happened - maybe this was going to be the cover for a chapter of a longer Time Wars?)

And this issue is a bit light for longer readers - often the anniversary issue left out Action Force which doesn't help advance their story but also there isn't a decent substitute (though a full page Combat Colin is nice). But here we have a regular issue that serves little more purpose than to get several groups of characters into the story and not much more. Not exactly worthy of the big number,

Stuart

12/3/2016 06:34:20 am

It's not that much earlier than this time last year they started talking about things like Robin Smith having drawn his first strip work, so it's plausible it's normally done like this. It does however feel like they're not entirely sure how long the comic is going to last, so if they're going to do an Annual with the regular team they'd better get it ready plenty of time in advance...

Chris Chapman

13/3/2016 06:50:41 am

It is super weird that Scourge is buds with Galvatron now. What was Furman thinking? And why even bother - just have Scourge come into the story from the sidelines.

Had he intended for there to be another story to bridge the gap? Had he wanted a different ending for Scourge in dry run? What is going on??

Cradok

15/3/2016 08:37:08 am

I had a lot of the same feelings as Stuart 7 for all of Time Wars. And once I got older, and actually read all the stories I'd missed in correct order, all the holes made themselves incredibly obvious. Furman was reportedly under pressure to wrap things up before the UK strips went B&W in 213, but I don't know why Time Wars ended up being so unfocused and pointless. We get whole issues of nothing actually happening, while interesting plots flitter in and out of the background but only serve to draw time and attention from the main plot.

The reason behind the Autobot v Autobot fight is just dumb. Why does Max not recognise his own crew? Of the six who went back, only Arcee and *maybe* Red are unknown to anyone there (although the Movie Targetmasters all vanished as soon as they had their contractually obligated appearance, I guess Uncle Bob was really anti-Movie). Why doesn't Ironhide, of all guys, not recognise a mass displacement? He was there the first time. If I remember right, he recognised one from just a description in 'Resurrection'.

Thankfully, there are some great moments in there, and the warm fuzziness of nostalgia help cover some of the rest of the problems if I don't think about it too much.

Tetsuro

12/10/2016 03:53:55 am

If you ask me, young Stuart had the right idea.

More than Meets the Eye DOES belong in the bin.

Transformation 200: Blast From the Past.

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