Transformation 220: Giving Head.

29/7/2016

It's the conclusion of the seemingly endless Mechannibals arc, and it's a weight off Cloudburst's shoulers I can tell you.

Also, Skids has some friends round for tea.

All in my look at ISSUE 220!

And if you haven't bought the book yet, the code SHIPSAVE16 will get you 15% off and free shipping on Lulu till Sunday.

7 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

29/7/2016 08:20:39 pm

Regarding Landmine enjoying the attention of women, Budiansky seems to have been caught in the classic confusion of the terms "gender" and "sex" (and just to add to the confusion, "sex" in this context is short for "sexuality" but no, that's not what is meant, so "biological sex" is an easier term to use), which to be fair until recently wasn't often explained outside university anthropology classes. The Transformers reproduce asexually and thus do not have biological sex distinctions but in theory could have a range of gender identities only in practice they seem to have all fallen into the gender roles associated with males in other species and thus not noticed the difference. (That letter seems to have a good grasp of the basics as to how Arcee could fit in.) Thus it's entirely possible for some of them to fall into seemingly masculine roles in an alien society but be utterly unable to comprehend the concept of mating. It's surprisingly sophisticated stuff and really not something dropped into a sub-plot that's trying to pad out an adventure. It would have been fun to take the Transformers out into space more often, especially for the Pretenders who can finally get their disguises to work.

Furman and Reed have done some good horror stories over the years and Survivors is definitely one - and I disagree, I think the black and white really enhances the effects, especially with Skids's nightmares. It's also a surprisingly mature look at the aftermath of battle. This would have made a much better introduction to the black and white format.

The Action Force story is one of a number that had animated adverts created without Larry Hama's input, to his annoyance as he then had to write around the scenes shown. The advert itself is on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZGBZboLPNY Raptor's fairly prominent in it so you can understand Hama's especial annoyance at being forced to use him. (I think that it was also around this time that the G.I. Joe movie came out - certainly the next story reprinted introduces a lot of the new Joe characters from it - and Hama really had to put his foot down against using Cobra-La-La-La-La-La-La-La.) Imagine if Transformers had regularly had such adverts, forcing the writers to use random action scenes, perhaps even featuring characters the continuity made unavailable...

And the letters page... Traditionally this is an assistant's job, though sometimes when promoted they retain it (e.g. Furman) and one effect is they're not always very well acquainted with the title's history and continuity. It's possible this is Euan Peters who maybe didn't know the detail of stories from before his time, but the poor responses coming up about black & white and reprints may well indicate a frustrated assistant who hasn't been at the meetings with senior staff getting annoyed at having to be the one to explain it all.

Ryan F

30/7/2016 10:50:30 am

I always assumed it was Peters himself doing the answering; the writing style in the letters page seems similar to that of editorial Transformation page at the front - especially when the editorial also starts getting defensive about the black-and-white stories and reprints in a few weeks' time.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

10/5/2020 12:12:13 pm

Years later but I've remembered somewhere seeing that the Furman/Peters changeover was about issue #219. This would match up the problem exactly that the decision on the switch predated Peters and so he probably hadn't been in a position to fight it or even receive support on how to sell it to the readers but then had to face the fallout head on.

Ralph Burns

2/8/2016 06:42:48 pm

I can't think of anything to say about this issue. I just had a cookie dough Chunky Kit Kat.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Felicity link

20/11/2019 05:22:13 am

Lately I’ve been enjoying Cookies & Cream Crunchers!

Snowkatt link

14/4/2017 03:10:16 pm

Oddly enough the character calendar lines up with May 2017,
so its not totally useless.
Eh, eh ?

Okay fine, I'll get my coat.

Felicity link

20/11/2019 05:34:06 am

I never knew the US cover was altered at the last minute to add Cloudburst’s body! That explains why it’s sort of awkward. At least the Femaxian is well-drawn.

Landmine could have been enjoying the attention without planning to do anything physical about it, and the Femaxians could have been attracted to him without knowing he was asexual, but it works either way.

It’s a bit of a messy ending with the Mecannibals. We’ve certainly seen that the Autobots are prone to angst about trading one life for another. Optimus Prime will even tire of the utilitarian argument that many lives for one life is a good bargain, in an upcoming issue. So it makes sense that the Autobot Pretenders wouldn’t take the microchips knowing where they came from.

OTOH, will the Mecannibals really reassamble all the robots they ever ate? What do the Mecannibals actually eat for food if 100% of the robots they digest can be reassembled again? If the Mecannibals hadn’t been so angry at their robot spotters that they abandoned Grand Central Space Station and took off after them, but had instead decided to continue using the robot spotters, wouldn’t that just lead to more robots being eaten? And so on. This is one of those things it probably doesn’t pay to think about.

I never knew Larry Hama had to write around whatever weird thing the toy company put into its animated commercials. I must say he did a good job. Everyone praised “GI Joe” for feeling realistic even when it was doing crazy things to sell the toys.

It will turn out that Billy is indeed a ninja, which is no doubt something Larry Hama didn’t have to be told to do.

Transformation 220: Giving Head.

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