Transformation 249: I Am the Walrus.

17/2/2017

This week, Starscream just about strikes!

Plus Bumblebee returns and Ratchet gets lined up for a serious malpractice suite.

Also, the début of what may be the single most hated Transformer of all time. Read all about it in my look at ISSUE 249!

Plus my BERNIE INN piece from last week now has an extra picture in it.

21 Comments

Tetsuryu

17/2/2017 02:41:22 pm

I find it funny that Longtooth is so reviled, when I find him having a non-human Pretender shell easily makes him more of a stand-out than "generic caucasian guy in space armour #11". A possible swap also probably helped Stranglehold since he got to be one of the two Decepticon Pretenders with a human shell.

Granted, as a gigantic Transformers nerd I can now actually identify every single one of them, but apart from Longtooth, the only Autobot Pretender I can think of who people tend to actually remember is Metalhawk, for obvious reasons.

Stuart

18/2/2017 09:52:49 am

The Autobot Pretenders tend to get very short strife don't they? A handful have token focus issues but the Decepticons do much better. Even outside of his big moment, Skullgrin has a few little moments that, say, Cloudburst doesn't after he's had his toy promo.

Harry

17/2/2017 02:59:12 pm

The Pretenders came just that bit too late for me personally, given that I would have turned 13 in 1988 and was starting to leave childish things aside. I suppose if I had been younger then, I may have fond memories of them, but, even at the time, they just never impressed me as toys or within the fiction (I was certainly still reading the Marvel UK Transformers comic when the first wave of Pretenders were introduced, and a little beyond that). Skinny nondescript robots with no obvious alternate mode features that turned into much of a muchness and could fit inside in big lumps of plastic with less articulation than many G1 Transformers (and that's saying something), and, in fiction, apparently dressing up as a giant human is enough to fool your average Decepticon, and dressing up as humanoid monsters is somehow less conspicuous than how Decepticons used to transform into Earth planes/mini-cassette recorders/guns/cars/construction vehicles etc...
At least Furman gives some sort of rationalisation where the 'Classic Pretenders' are concerned, and, going forward, Thunderwing will seem rather reluctant to leave his shell (well, seeing as how it could transform, there seemed little point), but most of these characters just leave me cold to this day. And I can't remember what most of them transform into, even the ones whose names I can remember!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

17/2/2017 04:19:09 pm

I wonder if character models for the Pretender Classics were ever given out by editorial? Keeping them in the original versions not only reinforces the whole "They're BACK!" but also makes it much easier to transition to the various rereleases of the next few years.

I never realised Longtooth was such a hated character. I just thought he was dismissed as one of endless characters from an era when many fans were drifting and didn't like the later gimmicks.

Marvel UK certainly had an advert for their annuals which appeared elsewhere and shows the broad range they had at the time (including their first Spider-Man product in a few years):

http://starlogged.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/1989-marvel-uk-annuals-house-ad.html

Stuart

18/2/2017 09:56:35 am

That is interesting, I wonder why the weekly made no mention of it?

It must have been around this time the 70's Spider-Man show got repeated (our TV famously exploded during one episode), assuming it wasn't just a Central thing I wonder if that renewed interest enough for an Annual?

Tim Roll-Pickering link

19/2/2017 02:36:31 pm

It's possible that some titles were deemed to have particular pitches and so didn't get the full range advert - here's the 1987 one but from memory Transformers (and also Action Force) instead advertised just TF, AF and ThunderCats: http://starlogged.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/1987-marvel-uk-annuals-house-ad.html

I don't think the 1988 advert showed up either did it? http://starlogged.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/1988-marvel-uk-annuals-house-ad.html

SII

17/2/2017 05:50:16 pm

Urgh, Longtooth. He was a rubbish looking, cowardly non-entity with a gimmick that was loooooooooong past its sell by date. I remember feeling dismay that we had to tolerate yet more dull Pretenders who I would never give two Shanix about. It seemed to be an everlasting Pretender-fest. Zzzzzzzzz. The Classic Pretenders got a pass for being well loved old characters (Jazz! Woohoo!), and for ditching the shell gimmick almost immediately. A shame really, as the Marrix Quest itself is an interesting story idea.

SII

17/2/2017 05:51:45 pm

* Matrix. Obviously.

Alex Smith link

17/2/2017 07:34:46 pm

As a character model whore it would have tickled me to see the new Classic Pretender models show up in Delbo-vision - alas it was not to be, and ends up with oddities in later issues like Grimlock holding his tail-gun, even though he's in his original body where the tail ends up on his legs.

The wonderful Guido Guidi provided a set of illustrations of the classic Pretenders as if they had shown up in the Japanese series at the time, and they are magnificent.

Victory Starscream: http://guidoguidi.deviantart.com/art/Victory-Starscream-282494510

Masterforce Starscream: http://guidoguidi.deviantart.com/art/Masterforce-Starscream-Pretender-283713312

Victory Grimlock: http://guidoguidi.deviantart.com/art/TF-Victory-GRIMLOCK-282821129

Victory Bumblebee: http://guidoguidi.deviantart.com/art/TF-Victory-Bumblebee-283121058

Stuart

18/2/2017 10:00:20 am

Blimey, Masterforce Starscream seems to be packing a big null ray in his crotch!

John D. link

17/2/2017 10:46:17 pm

I thought the classic pretenders were supposed to be the same as usual guys inside. It would be odd for the robots to have looked different. I got pretender stars team as I realised in my big toy battles was short on decepticons. It was a bad toy. Hardly any poseability on the shell. A small puny robot inside. No wonder the toy sales were tanking!

Stuart

18/2/2017 09:57:52 am

Mind, Grimlock and Optimus will get Action Master based bodies, even though the Action Master toys are trying to ape the character models more than the Classic Pretenders are...

Ryan F

17/2/2017 11:34:10 pm

Mario Capaldi was from an Italian family who settled in... Scotland. Given the uncommon surname, I've always wondered whether Mario and Peter were related!

Stuart

18/2/2017 10:01:36 am

A friend from that part of Scotland mentioned he went to school with a lot of Capaldi's, it seems it's not an uncommon surname in the areas Italians settled in.

Ralph Burns

17/2/2017 11:44:35 pm

LONGTOOTH MUST DIE! DIE! THE WORST CHARACTER EVER IN ALL OF HUMAN LITERATURE! AGH! THE WORST COVER IN ALL HISTORY WITH HIS SHITTY LITTLE BEADY EYES AND IDIOT TUSKS OF DESPAIR AND SADNESS AND HE'S JUST A SHIT FUCKING PIRATE, OK? EXCEPT THAT REAL PIRATES STEAL GOLD NOT NUGGETS OF PISS!!!

FUCKING DIE, LONGTOOTH, DIE YOU SNIVELING COWARD OF PUSS THAT WOULDN'T FALL OUT OF A DRUNK ELEPHANT'S ARSE! YOU WRETCHED HARLOT OF PROSTITUTION'S BELL-END! YOU SEEPING MASS OF INSIPID DRIED-UP BALLS!

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Stuart

18/2/2017 10:04:46 am

So how do you feel about Longtooth?

Ralph Burns

18/2/2017 05:48:22 pm

(...)

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Snowkatt

21/2/2017 06:00:40 am

Tell us how you really feel why dont you ?

Ralph Burns

17/2/2017 11:45:42 pm

“It falls to Red Alert to stop you now!"

*THE MIND-GAP STRIKES*

Who?

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Simon Hall

23/2/2017 09:40:34 pm

I don't get why there's Longtooth hate either. I thought his Pretender Shell design was quite striking. His robot mode is a non-descript plastic dribble, as were so many of the smaller Pretenders, but I thought he gets a decent bit of characterization here that gives you enough of a handle on who he is and what he's about.

That his major appearance in Matrix Quest forgets all this is down to the 'fun' idea of turning MQ into a load of wearing literary and film pastiches, and is hardly the character's fault.

Still like this opening US run from Furman, and I thought he did a good job of juggling a couple of different story strands with having to pimp new toys in with only 16 pages an issue to play with (the rest of the US book at this time padded out with Universe profiles with nowhere to go).

Felicity link

29/11/2019 06:00:07 am

Yeah, see, this is the era of Simon Furman that I love! “He doesn’t hear as well as he used to”—lines like that, where it felt really cool and funny and not forced. The kind of thing where you’re telling someone else about the cool thing the character said as though it was the character who should get the credit, and then you realise “Hey…someone wrote that! Kudos to that writer!” And extra kudos to the writer for writing so well that I forgot I was reading someone’s writing!

I never knew Longtooth was hated. Then again I only know him from his chapter of the Matrix Quest and I felt a lot of sympathy for him during that, sometimes even being moved to tears when I re-read that issue. (Once again…someone wrote that! Kudos!)

It does seem like he did a selfish thing in this story, but he’s aware of it and makes it right in the end.

It’s nice to know there’s some reason for Grimlock’s attitude, and it’s better when he takes it out on a deserving target, like Megatron, instead of his fellow Autobots. And that it’s only…SKIN DEEP! (Even the repeated callback to that phrase in this issue seemed cool.)

Dreadwind and Darkwing do get an appearance here IIRC. The Micromasters shove them out of the way as they go after the Autobots only for Megatron to order them to get down there too like they should have thought of that themselves. I feel bit sorry for them in that moment. It’s not all “Why not stay here, work for me?” any more is it? The honeymoon is over.

Personally I’m glad Ratchet turned Goldbug back into Bumblebee, as the only time I’ve liked Goldbug qua Goldbug was in “The Return of Optimus Prime,” where they gave him the wrong mouth (a Soundwave-style faceplate instead of that weird corrugated thing he normally has). It was cool that he was technically a Throttlebot, though.

I could believe that Larry Hama was ranting through the old homeless veteran except that, as I said last comment, he ends up getting no sympathy from the Joes and is only thanked in the end because he does some new good thing. His original (IMHO) legitimate grudge is never validated.

For comparison, around 1989 there was a brief scene in the main “GI Joe” comic where the Joes are on a stake-out, spying on the Cobra consulate building from a secret base underneath a news vendor’s stand, and even though the news vendor has been out of the forces for decades they respectfully call him Sergeant, because to them he has earned that title and that never goes away. So why not be that nice to the homeless guy?

Transformation 249: I Am the Walrus.

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