Transformation 224: Galvatron Cuts You Off.

26/8/2016

It's back to the future for Rodimus as Galvatron puts him to the ultimate test of EVIL. But can a man who likes to shoot people in the face really be turned EVIL by being encouraged to slap someone about a bit?

Plus, full page Combat Colin, a cut off to the reprint of Galvatron and the volcano story and an increasing depressed Dreadwind has no energy left to deal with angry letters.

It's all in my look at Aspects of Evil 2!

29 Comments

Ryan F

26/8/2016 04:42:40 pm

Not that Dreadwind is to be trusted, but there's a future letters page that specifically states that the New Galvatron seen here is the same as the Perchance one. (Presumably at some point after this adventure, Galvy goes back in time and tries again!)

My personal theory is that Furman wanted to bring back the character in some form, and had an arc all planned out... But then he decided to use Galvatron in the US comics and so unceremoniously wrote this new UK Galvatron out of the story at the end of Perchance. After all, having two parallel Galvatrons running around would have been even more confusing than Earthforce...

Paul Moseley

26/8/2016 06:29:13 pm

I've been meaning to say, the book was a great read. Nice work.

bouncelot

26/8/2016 10:02:18 pm

I've always thought that this Galvatron is the same one as in Perchance to Dream. The Perchance Galvatron seems to be aware of Time Wars Galvatron, but clearly isn't him. The simplest explanation is that Earthforce was an alternative timeline which diverged from the main UK continuity when Unicron snatched this Galvatron from the future to be his agent, rather than the Rhythms of Darkness one.

Ryan F

27/8/2016 01:21:52 am

Bouncelot, it seems great minds think alike! Yeah, the whole of Earthforce could be a giant "What If?" moment. Like, what if Unicron used the Aspects Galvatron to be his herald, instead of the Rhythms Galvatron? Yep, could work!

Simon Hall

27/8/2016 11:26:43 am

I've never worried about the continuity. I just like that these are little tales pootling along doing their own thing.

And I call myself a fan. Pfft.

As for this installment of Aspects, yeah, some good ideas but and a great setting (very She-Ra. with the villains firmly in control), but not really enough space to do much with it. I think the idea of corrupting the Matrix is to give Galvatron control over it to do...things with it. Eeevil things. Or maybe he just needs a new light bulb, its so dark on Cybertron now its all ruined from shooting and oppression.

I've found it really hard to enjoy Art Wetherall's work on Transformers. Its perfectly fine, but it was quite 'empty' looking. I think its because he doesn't use so much shade, so you end up with a lot of line drawings. Pefectly fine, but they don't grab me so much. I did really like that fill-in issue of Death's Head II he drew though. That's brilliant that is.

Tetsuro

27/8/2016 03:17:02 pm

I suspected they wouldn't reprint the entire Volcano arc, but at the same time, it strikes me a little odd they would drop it at such an obvious cliffhanger too. They probably would've been better off reprinting one of the more self-contained US stories, but considering their rather vitriolic attitude towards the Budiansky material, that was obviously never going to happen.

snowkatt link

28/8/2016 05:46:36 am

A rather justified attitude at this point in time, Budiansky was past the burnout event horizon as far as Transformers were concerned yet Marvel and Hasbro kept him producing comics for another 6 months.
The results were neither pretty nor high quality.

Course Budiansky did some great work, but the second half of his tenure had more low points, then high points.

Felicity

20/11/2019 09:19:39 pm

I liked “King Con!” and “The Interplanetary Wrestling Championship!”

Charles RB

29/8/2016 12:19:10 pm

" The EVIL Rodimus storyline would work just as well if they’d been fleeing a Soundwave controlled Cybertron "

That would probably work better, impact-wise - Soundwave was the Decepticon leader on a divided Cybertron at the time and he'd left early in Time Wars, so that'd be telling us (shades of Beast Machines) Soundwave being there without a Rodimus or Ultra Magnus means he wins. It'd be a nice payoff.

OTOH, to set up the final story, <i>a</i> story in Aspects needs to show Rodimus's has a dirty Matrix and I can't see Soundwave wanting to poke the Big U.

Cradok

30/8/2016 12:58:19 pm

This Galvatron being PtD Galvatron doesn't sit well with me. Nor does PtD being the same as RoD as was suggested in one of the Titan reprints. PtD always felt like a totally different guy to any of the others. Smart like T2k6, but without the rage, sneaky like RoD but smarter. There's not really enough leeway in timelines for this Galvatron to go back in time either, seeing as - spoiler - he's going to die to Unicron in 2010. The rest of the timeline seems to have played out more or less as the original did, with no sign of anyone who's been displaced or killed, and mention later of the third coming of Unicron, following The Movie and Legacy.

Legacy, by the way, is what you've forgotten about when considering the corrupt Matrix. At the end of that, Unicron's essence was sealed inside it, and it's that that's the corrupting force in these future stories.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

30/8/2016 01:27:24 pm

I suppose they could be even more temporal variants. The "Galvatron II" numbering is really confusing here - is a Galvatron who seems to be drawn from the RoD timeline but goes in his own direction (as suggested by the Titan books) Galvatron II or just another variant of Galvatron?

And it's not entirely clear what happens to this Galvatron - Rodimus may have assumed him dead but there's no definite confirmation and so he could just as easily have been wounded and fled back in time like his temporal counterpart.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

30/8/2016 01:21:24 pm

The full Volcano story, as well as being rather repetitive & dull, is also very long and an eighteen week reprint would have been exceptionally tedious. It would also have made it harder to have the US arrival of the Micromasters in time for the annual big boost issue.

I'd never realised how this is so obviously a prototype for multiple things in the upcoming US stories but then I guess this is the advantage of rereading everything in the original printed order - by the time the Titan trades got around to Aspects they'd long since covered Furman's US run.

This issue was actually just a few months ahead of Back to the Future Part II in showing our hero returning to a bleak altered universe. I wonder if the intention was that a combination of the shock of finding himself in such a transformed environment, the death of one the few friends from the original timeline and the presence of Unicron in the Matrix would all combine to weaken Rodimus to the point that his reaction would have such a consequence? But a single scene told over just five pages isn't really enough to delve into a lot of this. However I suspect this is partially why the villain has to be Galvatron - there's simply no other Decepticon with both the Unicron connection and any connection to the Matrix who would know how to trigger this. Indeed perhaps in some way Galvatron was called by Unicron to do this?

Which Galvatron is which will be a recurring theme for the rest of the comic's run, with the Megatron revelation complicating it even further. At one stage I wasn't entirely sure if the Galvatron and Unicron AoE segments were even set in the same timeline (I'd read the Unicron segment first where there's no direct reference to things having changed and indeed it references pre Time Wars events as though they're part of the same future history). Back then I generally assumed the Perchance to Dream Galvatron is this one (or yet another temporal divergence?), albeit from further down the timeline, and that somehow the different Galvatrons was the keystone for the difference between Earthforce and the later US stuff. The fact that it took forever to get through the US stories to make it clear Unicron was going to show up earlier than before didn't help.

I *think* the Cobra Commander storyline is also about to get messy because of more external influences - ISTR Hama writing somewhere that he was told to replace the character around the time of the animated movie and there's speculation about whether the new figure with the battle armour was meant to be a different character. Certainly what you can see of his body doesn't look like a disfigured multi-eyed blue-skinned nobleman from Cobra-La and a new leader would be a way to get past a lot of the problems introduced there.

Ryan F

30/8/2016 09:06:28 pm

By my recknoning, there are three Galvatrons...

Galvatron I: Created in the Movie, goes back in time to the present day (T2K6, Fallen Angel), dies in the time rift (Time Wars). Basically, the main Galvatron of the UK Colour Era

Galvatron II: From the Rhythms of Darkness, Unicron-is-successful timeline. Abducted by Hook Line and Sinker, arrives in the present day, crash lands on Earth (Savage Circle), gets duffed up by Fort Max (Last Autobot). Turns up years later in Regeneration One. (Side note: "Galvatron II" is actually a canonical name for this guy, it was used on some Japanese exclusive toy or something). Basically, this is the Galvatron of the US comics.

Galvatron III (my own personal terminology!): This is the guy from the post-Time Wars 'reset future', as seen in Aspects and also mentioned in the 'Shadow of Evil' saga. Not stated outright within the strips, but it seems he later time-travels back to the present day and is the Galvatron from Perchance to Dream. This is the Galvatron of the UK b/w stories.

The Titan trade of (I think) Dinobot Hunt got Galvatrons II and III confused, thinking it was the same guy. However, contemporary letters pages confirm they are not:

The letters page in UK#279 stated that the Galvatron from ‘Aspects of Evil’ and ‘Perchance to Dream’ were one and the same (i.e. Galvatron III).

This was also confirmed in the letters page of UK#309, where a correspondent wrote: ‘the Galvatron involved in the ‘Perchance to Dream’ saga is, I take it, the Galvatron from ‘Aspects of Evil’ (i.e. Galvatron III)?’ Blaster confirms that ‘the current Galvatron (i.e. Galvatron II) is a separate entity.’

Clear as mud.

Alex Smith link

31/8/2016 01:11:13 pm

The 'Galvatron II' moniker actually comes from Furman himself in the Transforce story 'Alignment' - decried as 'pseudocanon' on the wiki but later, as you say, referenced by an e-hobby repaint of Galvatron.

Back in TMUK, we had it that the Galvatron of 'Aspects...' is an earlier version of the 'Rhythms...' Galvatron - both being set in the same 'Dark Universe' at different points (Cybertron is eaten by Unicron shortly after Aspects...), and he later goes on to be in Perchance to Dream.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

31/8/2016 02:32:42 pm

The wiki largely dances around Alignment, generally only accepting its contributions when they've been "ratified" by a Hasbro produced or officially licensed source. The eHobby release was also used to clear up a Japanese story page that featured Galvatron and Megatron together before the writers knew they were meant to be the same character - the retcon now makes this Galvatron II dimension hopping and the toy has stickers for the minor variations from his regular look.

In theory one could make the Galvatron from three weeks later, the one in Perchance to Dream and even the one in the US version of Big Broadcast of 2006 (where there wasn't a retcon to handwave it out) all into separate Galvatrons from the three enumerated above though it could be a slight overkill. But certainly which if at all of the main two Galvatrons the other appearances should be assigned to is just going to run and run.

However I find it very hard to reconcile the Aspects Galvatrons with Rhythms of Darkness - leaving aside the dates given, the indication always was that in the RoD timeline Unicron's attack in 2005 was successful with Galvatron loyally serving him and taking the Earth as a prize (though how Hot Rod became Rodimus Prime is left unclear). By contrast Aspects seems to have come from Galvatron staying in his own time after the events of the Movie and mobilising his forces to reconquer & consolidate the position on Cybertron in a far more effective way than Shockwave, Cyclonus & Scourge and Soundwave in the original timeline. (And the cause of the change would appear to be intended to be Megatron's character development in recent issues though a certain upcoming story is going to add to the confusion.)

I know that TMUK was very keen on trying to keep as much as possible in a single timeline but when it comes to Galvatron that horse has already bolted.

Alex Smith link

1/9/2016 05:25:28 pm

Just by chance I was looking over some old TMUK story listings, and most of what I described occurs in Parallel Lives by Andy Dornan. He justifies it thusly:

http://www.theunderbase.co.uk/wiki.asp?o=Parallel%20Lives

I'm not sure if the dates line up in the actual issues, but Andy's assertion seems to be that Unicron's 2005/6 attack occurs pretty much as in the movie/original timeline, ending with his destruction. Galvatron then takes Cybertron, as seen in Aspects, and meets the time-travelling Prime from Time Wars.

Meanwhile, Unicron is being rebuilt on Junkion, as per Legacy... in the original timeline, except this time no one finds out and, in the course of the fanfic, arrives and eats Cybertron, thus leading in to the black-and-white stories "The Void" etc., before culminating in Rhythms of Darkness.

It's a good story and worth a read. Like all of the continuity fudges we made in TMUK (Earthforce? Egads!) it was all to facilitate story-telling, and will always look dafter written shorthand instead of being experienced within a story (or stories).

On the subject of Alignment; I gave it a read again recently and I have to say I'm rather fond of it. There's some nice stuff with Warworlds and female Transformers and 'dark science' and Furman seems to be enjoying himself. It's a much better send-off to the Marvel continuity than Regeneration One and, unlike that, doesn't see the need to exclude things like G2 or the UK stuff - on the contrary, it's very continuity-inclusive and even leads merrily into the Beast-era.

Cradok

31/8/2016 02:57:34 pm

Eeh, I tend not to like after-the-fact clarifications by people other than the author that 'confirm' things. Or decade after-the-fact fuzzy recollections by the actual author either. Maybe whomever was writing the letter pages a year after the issues were published knew what the real answer was, maybe not. I'm not quite 'text is the text', author intent is important, but only the author.

With that said, I count between six and infinite Galvatrons.

Galvatron, the first, the main. Target 2006, Fallen Angel, Time Wars. Only not quite, we'll come back to him.

Rhythms of Darkness Galvatron. Galvatron who helped Unicron destroy Cybertron and Earth, plucked out of time by a different Unicron, finally beaten by Fort Max. This is 'Galvatron II', probably. Named in Alignment, the non-canon continuation to G2 that Furman wrote for Transforce, and then used officially as the name of Takara's toy-coloured Galvatron reissue. Note that Alignment itself never says anything about where Galvatron II came from, it's mostly just been assumed that it's RoD Galvatron, which makes sense, if you consider all the appearances of Galvatron in the UK strips as one Galvatron, and the one from RoD as the second.

Aspects of Evil Galvatron. This one, the one who never went back in time, and who dies to Unicron in 2010. Exactly what differences there were between this timeline and the original is never brought up, but it appears to have gone mostly the same as the original. Given that the native Rodimus and crew appear to have travelled back in time too, there is the question of 'why?'. This Galvatron also seems to know about the Time Wars.

Perchance to Dream Galvatron. Wakes up the Earthforce Autobots, gets put in a box for his troubles. This one doesn't know about Time Wars. It's possible he's one of the above, but as I said before, he acts quite differently to any Galvatron we've seen before. Sneaky and smart aren't usually terms you associate with Galvatron.

I'm also leaving out Big Broadcast Galvatron for obvious reasons.

Now, that's only four, so where does five to infinity come from? Well, one of the annual stories had a boy travelling through time, viewing important events in Transformers history. Time Wars is one of these, but it happens slightly differently to what we see in either version in the comic; Megatron doesn't walk off before Prime steps in, but it doesn't end in victory for Galvatron. With this, and with what we see in the comic, and the case can even be made that the Galvatron we wasn't the same Galvatron he remembers from when he was Megatron, and you have three different versions of Time Wars, and three different Galvatrons.

Beyond this, the case can even be made that the Galvatron that *that* Megatron would become isn't what he himself remembered, and so forth. Infinite Megatrons becoming Infinite Galvatrons, travelling back in time to fight, and every time dying to the rift, into infinity.

Or I'm overthinking, UK Galvatron is all just Galvatron I, RoD is Galvatron II, and the annual story is someone not reading what they're referring to.

(None of this is even touching on Straxus Megatron, which is a whole other barrel of complicated.)

bouncelot

31/8/2016 10:25:45 pm

The Galvatron in Perchance to Dream doesn't seem thrown when the Autobots mention Time Wars, but simply states that it was a different Galvatron. Whilst you could read it as him not knowing anything about said storyline, that's certainly not the way I read it.

Cradok

1/9/2016 09:18:44 am

It's the 'I think' at the end of the sentence that makes it feel like he knows nothing about Time Wars in particular, but does know about time travel confusion in general.

Simon Tilley link

27/11/2020 11:04:07 pm

Having re-read a lot of the time travel stuff and trying to work out which Galvatron is which I came to the same questions about Rodimus and Co travelling back to the future.

They appear to be themselves (in so much as they do not meet duplicates of their real selves having come from a past to a future that no longer exists) so it raises the question that if they were not present in this new timeline they must have gone back in time in order to jump back, so the question is raised why?

I suspect that Furman was either:

A) not thinking this deep into a 5 page story and people just assuming like Back to The Future things have changed how awful

B) thinking this could be followed up with a story where the future Autobots go back in time ala Back to The Future and fix things again

Either way it just doesn't fit, the only way I can see this working is with a totally new future where they DON'T go back in time and when they jump to the future, they meet their doubles and realise they have erased their own timeline.

This could in theory fit in with the Regeneration One future with the doubles, Galvatron kills Rodimus on Junk and everyone else, sees some other Hot Rod timehop in and steal the Matrix (something Unicron would love) and as a reward Unicron tells Galvatron or shows him various timelines with his destiny, presumably how going back in time ends badly for him and is aware of the soon to be appearing Time Wars Autobots and is tasked to deal with him.

This could also give scope for him to travel back and be the PtD Galvatron as we never actually see him die in Aspects of Evil 2010, just damaged gripping stuff crawling along the floor.

Anyone an interesting concept to rewrite the death of 6 months earlier but a few plot holes of the Autobots are keeping me awake still

Tim Roll-Pickering link

19/12/2023 01:29:58 pm

I think Furman was just following the general convention in time travel fiction where returning to an altered present one generally doesn't meet one's own alternative self who never travelled back in time. It's become such a standard convention (and is particularly convenient for film & television by cutting down on the number of scenes that need two of the same actor) that few ever stop to think about it let alone write in lines explaining it away.

In part this is because what's actually being presented isn't technically a parallel universe but rather an altered future where events have worked out differently and duplication isn't part of that future.

(I'd point to the quote in Austin Powers II, "I suggest you don't worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself. That goes for you all too!" But that film does wind up with an extra Austin running around. Then it already has lots of roles for Mike Myers...)

It seems clear there's a general problem with the time travel stories that Furman didn't explicitly set down the rules and didn't always think things through as much as fans have. Hence the ongoing debates over which aspects are most important, especially in regards the Straxus duplicate. A lot of people seem to take the events of Target 2006 as a sign that the parallel universe rules generally operate but in that story itself it's explicitly stated by Unicron that this is Galvatron's assumption after being tricked into thinking he's killed Starscream (and the 1989 annual repeats the line that he was convinced of this), not that it actually is how it all works.

John D. link

30/8/2016 11:27:46 pm

Sensational work Ryan F and this may indeed be the same or very similar to what Furman had pinned on his own wall. (Could you maybe do the same for the Megatrons please? I really struggle with that too.) If Simon F (no relation?) knew he was taking over the US comics I don't know how he managed to make things so mixed up. You'd think he would also be nervous of having Unicron visit early. Did he not expect the US/UK comics to last long enough for Unicron to even turn up? I didn't really understand the galvatron fascination and didn't know why he had to be all over the black and white strips like the finale of Time Wars was irrelevant. I also never took earth mforce seriously (I seem to recall there is an episode called "the bad guys ball" involving megatron, shockwave (?) and the constructions which just seems completely ludicrous and wildly at odds with all other continuity). If Furman had to have the classic toys in the comic to satisfy Hasbro (because they were reissuing "classics") then he should have written them as flashbacks to "crisis of command" era, or possibly even "reception dam busters"

Alex Smith link

31/8/2016 01:13:18 pm

""reception dam busters""

:)

Wasn't that the remake of Dam Busters with toddlers in the lead roles? I wonder what they called the dog...

John D. link

2/9/2016 02:16:49 pm

Ha ha! Hopefully they called the dog "Budiansky's last 3 issues"!

Ralph Burns

31/8/2016 09:13:10 pm

I agree with Alex Smith in that my recollection from TMUK was that Evil and Perchance Galvatron were the same guy ie the black and white era Galvatron.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Stuart

1/9/2016 09:54:21 am

Considering he's clearly had some prep time to get his plan together, I wouldn't be surprised if PTD Galvatron had heard of some of the more notable recent events, wherever he came from.

I do think that, regardless of letters page answers, the intent with PTD was it would be RoD Galvatron (or depending how scheduling, the Galvatron he was planning to bring into the American book but hadn't properly planned out yet).

Though it's often presented as a weird out of continuity sideshow, there's actually more-albeit vague-effort to treat the Earthforce (which PTD basically starts) stories as slightly ahead of the contemporary American reprints. I think the Galvatron thing is meant to be like the "See future American stories to find out how we bring guys back without the Matrix!" moment, cock teasing the audience by making them wonder "How will that happen?".

Of course, nothing fits (presumably Furman just vaguely planned to keep RoD Galvy about and didn't decide to crash the Ark until he knew the book was done so Galvatron could have wound up doing a plot on the ship sometime later), so you can pretty much make him any Galvatron you want.

Cradok

1/9/2016 10:25:09 am

Oh, I always assumed that the UK B&W was definitely supposed to tie into the US comics as well as all the rest of the UK material - if nothing else, the footnote in 'Two Steps Back' confirms that - it's just that Furman wasn't able to make that happen for whatever reason.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

1/9/2016 01:01:03 pm

Furman has since said he initially tried to tie the two together but the schedule kept getting thrown by reprints with the result that things got seriously off kilter and the narrative came in the wrong order. A few examples:

* The Double-Dealer story was clearly intended to follow the US Race Car Patrol saga (possibly literally so, without reprints it would have come in the same issue as the last part of the wrestling) but instead appears first so the RCP is shown working as part of the regular Autobots before their initial break-away upon arriving on Earth.

* The return of Meccanibals (sp?) was clearly meant to come after the end of the Classic Pretender saga and so the events in the tavern could have happened just pages after Dreadwind & Darkwing lose their employer. Instead it came eleven issues early and what was meant to be a foreshadowing cameo instead winds up as a blunt reminder that things were out of order.

* The Matrix Quest is announced to Longtooth & other Pretenders before the need for it is even realised.

* Grimlock's determination to revive the Dinobots is first shown after they're shown up and functioning again.

By about the mid #260s Furman seems to have shrugged his shoulders and assumed the last handful of stories won't matter in the long run.

John D. link

3/9/2016 09:28:02 am

Great stuff thanks Tim, I wasn't sophisticated enough to spot this when I was reading the first time, though I did note there were cross references. Must actually have been very frustrating for Furman. I have just realised you have a blog!! I will visit.

Transformation 224: Galvatron Cuts You Off.

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