Transformation 260: Galvatron and on and on.

5/5/2017

Galvatron is back!

Again.

I think we now have enough different Galvatron's for a multi-Galvatron story.

Plus, it's the Grimlock Vs Octopunch fight you've been gagging for, and Scorponok tries to stop a coalition of chaos.

All in my look at ISSUE 260!

15 Comments

Ryan F

5/5/2017 06:34:43 pm

I always assume that the Perchance Galvatron is the same one as the weird Post-Time Wars future one (the Aspects of Evil / Shadow of Evil timeline).

In the letters page of issue 309, someone writes in and asks,"The Galvatron involved in the ‘Perchance to Dream’ saga is, I take it, the Galvatron from ‘Aspects of Evil’?" Blaster replies that the "current Galvatron" (i.e. the one running about in the US strips post Rhythms of Darkness) is a "separate entity."

Blaster said it, so therefore it's CANON!!!

...that's my line and I'm sticking to it! :)

Tigerbread

5/5/2017 07:58:56 pm

Actually Silverbolt WAS a chess piece on the board...I have a full life.

Ryan F

5/5/2017 08:12:36 pm

Yeah, in-fiction, Jazz was still a classic Pretender and Inferno was out and about with the Survivors, hence those two being the only two Classic Hero cars who were exempt from this story. (Tracks was part of the second wave, I think?)

Stuart

5/5/2017 09:07:49 pm

Oh there's Silverbolt...

Bugger.

Richard

5/5/2017 09:58:37 pm

Blaster may have stated otherwise, and the dates within issues may contradict me, but in my head cannon (and I have a feeling in Furman's intentions), there are only two Galvatrons: the one from the animated movie who first comes back in Target: 2006 and gets destroyed in Time Wars; and the second who first appears in Aspects of Evil, takes over the earth in Rhythms of Darkness, and tries to round up a crew on the Ark here in Perchance... You have to squint a hell of a lot to make it work (as with all of Earthforce) but it just seems simpler and neater to me.

Ryan F

5/5/2017 11:56:20 pm

If we ignore 'Perchance' for a second, then we have at least three Galvatrons that we know of...

1) The guy introduced in Target 2006 and the 'main' Galvatron of the UK comics. Was killed by getting sucked into the rift in Time Wars.

2) The parallel Rhythms of Darkness Galvatron who was the main Galvatron of the Furman-written US comics. He was last seen getting his ass whooped by Fort Max. (And then turned up later in Regeneration One.)

3) The Aspects of Evil Galvatron, hailing from yet another future timeline, this one created in the aftermath of Time Wars.

The setting of 'Perchance' is definitely hazy (thanks, Earthforce), but my view is that the Galvatron here is number 3 from the above line-up, having time-travelled to the present-day.

But it's very ambiguous, and there are lots of contesting views on this. The Titan reprint of 'Dinobot Hunt' claimed in its editorial that the Perchance Galvatron is the US 'Rhythms' Galvatron (#2 on the list of three above), but didn't elaborate on how it came to that conclusion.

Ryan F

6/5/2017 12:03:26 am

Sorry, forgot to mention...

Galvatrons #2 and #3 on my list above cannot be the same entity from the same timeline... in Galvatron #2's timeline, Cybertron had already been destroyed prior to 2009, according to Rhythms of Darkness.

In Galvatron #3's timeline, Cybertron is still around in 2010 (as per Aspects of Evil).

Tim Roll-Pickering link

6/5/2017 11:51:44 pm

To add to the problem, if Perchance is in an alternate timeline to Eye of the Storm onwards then can this be the same Galvatron even if they are both from the Rhythms of Darkness era? Or are they two temporal variants? Or could this even be an example of "Galvatron II" dimension hopping?

Oh why couldn't a different villain have been used to save us all from this?

bouncelot

7/5/2017 07:53:50 pm

I've always taken the view that Earthforce is another alternate timeline. The divergence point is that, when post-Primal-Scream Unicron plucks Galvatron from the future, he picks the one you've labelled Galvatron 3 instead of Galvatron 2. Also, he then takes a bit longer to get to Cybertron. In this timeline, the events of the US stories continue almost unaltered until the US story Surrender.

If you, instead, want to squeeze Earthforce between gaps in the US stories, they fit most neatly just before Surrender, though you have to assume that Shockwave's faction changes up its membership between the final Earthforce story and their attack on Scorponok in Surrender.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

7/5/2017 12:05:40 am

From memory the poster primarily reproduced the six AtoZ images.

I'd forgotten about the Candy subplot. Ultimately Billy was the only one who could have known but it's almost Claremontian how long it took to tie that one up.

Ralph Burns

7/5/2017 03:17:52 pm

Young Ralph was also deeply unimpressed that the mighty Galvatron was now reduced to a conedy character easily dispatched in 5 pages. This was when I started to really lose patience with the black and white era, sadly.

Also: the ad for the Punisher fortnightly is a tissue of lies! The weekly merely vanished and the fortnightly version never appeared. It was Zoids monthly all over again! I am still bitter 27 years later argh rargh aaarggh kill kill kill -

*aaaiiieeeeee*

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Simon Hall

9/5/2017 10:10:10 pm

I pick #4 ...none of the above.

Like bouncelot, I see the Earthforce stuff as its own thing. One of the 57 flavours of alternate future Galvatron turning up here doesn't matter much to me.

The continuity/ placement of the b&w tales within the larger TF continuity is wibbly anyway, so I just take or leave it on its own merits.

Its easy enough to have the 'present day' Marvel US / UK continuities as divergent timelines with the future UK (2006 et al) and the follow on b&w stuff as all divergent paths and cul-de-sacs from whatever's going on.

..besides, this is a pretty rubbish Galvatron to be beaten and boxed up so quickly :P

Richard link

10/5/2017 10:48:16 pm

I take the Grant Morrison on Batman view that all Marvel TF continuity is true, and any inconsistencies are just mistakes the dumb stubbies made in transcribing these 'true tales'. So I squint at Earthforce and the US run and imagine the Decepticon civil war lasted longer, or that the Rhythms Galvatron arrived a little earlier than Eye of the Storm, and woke everyone up in Perchance on his way to Cybertron.

The other bit of personal canon I like to run with is the idea that Ryan F's Galvatron 2 and 3 are the same: imagine the dating on Rhythms of 2009 is a mistake (like they made in The Void) and there's a missing story set in 2010 between Aspects Unicron and Rhythms where Aspects Galvatron helps Unicron switch places with Rodimus, releasing the planet eater to destroy Cybertron and trapping Rod's mind within Unicron. Rod's body is left to be smashed up on earth in Rhythms, while his mind thinks he's growing old and being pestered by a student... Yeah, it's fan fiction, but it plugs the gap.

Felicity link

6/12/2019 09:39:58 pm

Those of us who imprinted primarily on the cartoon version of “Transformers” had mixed feelings about the Primus origin. On the one hand it was a bit more dignified than the wormy little guy with the Napoleon complex building Unicron to conquer the universe in “Call of the Primitives,” and it gave us an actual explanation of where the Matrix came from and why it would have any effect on Unicron. On the other hand, escalating the origins of the Transformers from something tangible like the Quintessons to a lofty, almost Norse-god-like mythology seemed like a cheap cop-out, a trite and obvious way of adding scope and grandeur. That’s at the time, though. Today I don’t feel as strongly about it. Both origins are fine, as long as they stay in the pre-July-1991 world where they belong and nobody tries to elaborate on them in subsequent “Transformers” media. ;-)

JeremiahEcks

24/2/2025 06:29:50 am

I don't want to be contrary but Jazz and Silverbolt aren't the only 'Classics Heroes' to die on panel (Sunstreaker famously got further totalled in US #5, and Prowl in Plague of the Insecticons - if that's even continuity, though it is for me, and is also is brought back online just after Prime's Funeral.

But what I think you're meaning is 'killed during Underbase / Time Wars' in which case yes, you're right (save the slight retcon that Flashback puts Prowl to death during Underbase). So I should shut up now and stop trying to be pedantic.

But as an aside it's why I generally have a stronger belief that more TFs survive Underbase than most fans do. If they're seen again, even much later (I.e. Smokescreen in G2) and weren't formally reactivated during another story, then they probably were alive after Underbase and survived to be hiding 'off panel' for the rest of the stories. That's why Seaspray being in Man and the Machine is no glitch! (Don't ask me how he gets deactivated though although my head cannon is he's one of the ones blasted by Deathbringer as we never see who gets deactivated in that story beyond Cloudburst and a generic that Hachette coloured like Slapdash).

In terms of Galvatron... it's clearly Furman's intent that this is Galvatron II from Rhythms of Darkness as he was vaguely referencing US stories at this point. But no it doesn't work. The only way for it to work is that after Rhythms Galvatron is brought to the main universe, he makes a run for it to 'buy' a corrupted army on the Ark to give him cannon fodder to shield himself from Hook, Line and Sinker and play for time. And instead he gets imprisoned. Why it takes all powerful diety Unicron so long to track him down and spring him from prison I have no idea but Unicron being a diety and needing to take so long to travel to Cybertron has never made sense to me...

Also I totally agree with Stuart. Galvatron is NOT the right character to do this story with. Maybe Soundwave or Shockwave would have worked and certainly the former would have avoided any continuity glitches, but Galvatron... no. I know in Target: 2006 Galvatron I experiments in mind control with Jazz so I'm not saying it's out of character but it's that taking him down in five panels with five average Autobots makes a mockery of four years of storytelling that insisted that this guy was the Most Dangerous Transformer Ever and nobody could beat him.

Yeah, nobody except Sunstreaker. If only Sunstreaker had been active during Target:2006. Now we know why Shockwave picked him out to deactivate him. All along he was super dangerous.

Transformation 260: Galvatron and on and on.

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