Transformation 223: EVIL.

18/8/2016

It's a brave new world as the five page story actually written as a five page story arrives!

What happened in 1991 that you'd want to tell kids about as an old man? For Rodimus it's the time Scorponok was a bit of a dick.

Plus, Micromasters! Double Targetmasters! And the chance to colour in your own comic!

It's all in my look at Aspects of Evil! 1!

7 Comments

Simon Hall

18/8/2016 07:36:34 pm

um...didn't Furman already write Scorponok in 'All In The Minds' and 'Time Wars' as well ... ?

Hope you have a jolly weekend of vomiting. That sounds more like a bulemic convention than anything to do with robots though :O

Stuart

18/8/2016 07:41:13 pm

ARRGHHH!

Good point. But no one will ever know now.

How...EVIL.

Ralph Burns

18/8/2016 10:38:57 pm

At the end of the day, the course corrections put into the title at this point must have worked as it would still be published for a further 2 and a half years! Which in and of itself would be a decent length run for any comic, especially a licensed one.

It also helps that Aspects of Evil is great.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Stuart

19/8/2016 08:27:58 am

I think we're going to be disagreeing quite rigerously on the merits of AoE!

For me it's got one great story in Megs, one solid in Scorpy, one not so bad but the ending destroys any threat Shockwave has and two awful ones (Galvatron especially suffers from timing, coming the week after the reprint of Rodimus shooting an unarmed prisoner in the face the attempt to corrupt the Matrix there seems underwhelming).

Ralph Burns

19/8/2016 09:25:23 pm

I prepare to do battle with you...in the name of EVIL.

In context AOE is a welcome shot in the arm after the title has lurched from problem to another in previous months. At last the UK strip settles into a new format and gets back to that Furmian sense of Bitter Doom which is its natural home.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

bouncelot

21/8/2016 10:50:53 pm

On the Decepticon civil war from the US strips not meshing with the one we see here, the US one was cut short by Galvatron awakening Primus. Which clearly didn't happen in Rodimus' personal history, so the Decepticon civil war he remembers is not the same one we read about in colour.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

22/8/2016 10:29:45 pm

Aspects of Evil is an awkard title but a good solid concept. Writing for a serial format is a trick that eludes a lot of writers but Furman's got a strong grasp here and this can work either as a standalone or part of the overal saga. It's a pity that the main thing most fans talking about this one focus on is the awkward continuity with what eventually comes along (especially as next week has a clear get-out clause built in). And yes, the reprints are starting to hurt in subtle ways - in the normal scheme of things this would probably have run alongside the later parts of King 'Con and so that US story would have handled the introduction of the Micromasters. Instead we get a half-arsed "they're there" debut a couple of months too early rather than waiting for the annual new school year boost. (Still this post can compensate a little as it's come out the week Scottish schools go back.)

But what's really odd is the way Furman casually gives away who the Air Strike Patrol's master is when there is at least an attempt at a mystery in the upcoming US story - and the multipart reprint means it can actually be speculated about over multiple weeks. Unless the schedule was really shaken up after he was given an outline, he just can't blame this one on reprints pushing the US stories further back than expected.

And without the issue to hand, I'm guessing this part of the Action Force story is the adaptation of the advert scene? An example of how what can make a fun toy just doesn't always translate to comics well, especially if the writer didn't actually come up with this scene.

As I've said before here, Dread Tidings in this era often feels like the 1989 version of How Not To Run The Company Twitter Account.

Transformation 223: EVIL.

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