Transformation 262: Birds of a Feather.

19/5/2017

This week, the Matrix Quest begins!

And Earthforce...well it still doesn't quite begin, but we're shuffling closer.

It's all in my look at ISSUE 262! Read it before Optimus Prime comes along and tells you to stop.

Also, I want you all making the Combat Colin cut outs before next week.

14 Comments

Ralph Burns

19/5/2017 08:29:55 pm

Will we be allowed tranquilisers when we get to 16 weeks of the EXCITIIIING Gi Joe crossover? I of course remember this as a brilliant way of ramping up the tension in MAAAAAAAATRON QUESSSSSST!!!!

I have never watched The Maltese Falcon so to this day the homages in this US strip fall flat. Please do not kill me.

The slow slide to shit that is Earthforce continues. Reducing the best villain the comic ever had (Shockwave) to a comedy stooge made young Ralph see red! Which is a neat trick for a black and white story.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Stuart

19/5/2017 08:36:03 pm

We'll get the tranqs out for you Ralph. And go watch The Maltese Falcon!

Alex Smith link

19/5/2017 08:32:06 pm

Is that 'Next Week' box a composite image of Grimlock at the end of 'Victory' and a Prime from...Time Wars? Yes, from the end when he's facing off with Shockers.

Stuart

19/5/2017 08:34:30 pm

Ha, it was bugging me it looked like either Senior or Sullivan, suggesting old art, but couldn't think of a Grimlock/Prime panel from either of them. So I just figured it must be from next week and whoever draws it just has that feel.

That's some serious effort there.

Jim Kinsey

19/5/2017 10:53:48 pm

Eek, my deeply embarrassing letter to Dreadwind is published in the next issue. Please be kind!

Stuart

19/5/2017 11:31:27 pm

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

bouncelot

20/5/2017 10:46:32 am

It's interesting that, at this stage, Shockwave's troops are largely the same ones he had when he made his move against Scorponok in the US stories (with a couple of extras), but once the Earthforce era gets going some of them are depicted on Megatron's side.

Ryan F

20/5/2017 12:54:30 pm

I've never seen The Matese Falcon either, so like Ralph this story always falls a bit flat for me. I think the main problem with it is that, if you don't know Falcon (which a lot of the readers wouldn't have done), then there's not a lot else here to grip you other than the lovely art. The Big Shutdown was a lot better (IMHO), because it worked as a cool story regardless of whether or not you were familiar with the source material.

Stuart

20/5/2017 12:58:57 pm

I don't know, I'd only seen MF within the last couple of years and I've always loved this. That can't entirely be down to liking The Falcon's Malteser when I was a kid.

Felicity link

7/12/2019 08:37:27 pm

I didn’t like that Siren got punched through the window. It should have been Nightbeat. He was the one insulting the thugs.

I do like that there’s a Transformer named “Hosehead,” as it reminds me of the McKenzie brothers from “SCTV.”

I never quite got the reference of the name “Bhgdad.” It sounds like it’s got something to do with Iraq. Is it just supposed to be a corruption of “Big Dad”?

Those are not real Japanese characters on the billboard, although that’s not a problem, as this is an alien billboard. Former “Transformers” letterer Janice Chiang was great at providing alien fonts in this manner.

I never knew Larry Hama imagined Cobra Commander as sounding like Orson Welles. Try as I might, I can’t hear anything Cobra Commander said in the comics in an Orson Welles voice. Mind you, I also don’t hear comics Cobra Commander in a Chris Latta voice, either. He talks differently, different vocabulary, different rhythms.

All FREDs look the same, but then again, depending on which issues you read, all FREDs may look like Cobra Commander, in which case his looking a FRED does not necessarily disprove that he’s Cobra Commander.

Not having been born in olden times, I’ve never seen “The Maltese Falcon” either, but it’s one of those things that gets parodied and recycled so endlessly that I’ve absorbed the gist of it through cultural osmosis. There are probably some finer details that I would enjoy more if I’d seen the movie (relatedly, I never knew that trivia about Deckard’s nasal voice being a Bogart reference, which would have enhanced my enjoyment)…You can’t avoid getting a reference to Sidney Greenstreet/Gutman/The Fat Man, or to Peter Lorre (every cartoon series ever made seems to have a Peter Lorre impression).

In fact, since I would have read this comic in my teens, and would not have lived long enough back then to encounter as many references to “Falcon” as I have now, this comic might very well have been part of the cultural osmosis that later on allowed me to already know stuff about a movie I’d never seen. For example, I didn’t get in 1988 that Cyrus Redblock = Sidney Greenstreet in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But by the time I saw “Bordello of Blood” I knew why Dennis Miller’s character was named “Gutman.”

Snowkatt

31/8/2020 10:37:05 am

I never quite got the reference of the name “Bhgdad.” It sounds like it’s got something to do with Iraq. Is it just supposed to be a corruption of “Big Dad”?

It's a parody of Peter Lorre's character Joel Cairo, in the Maltese Falcon
And is supposed to read as Bagdad.

Though I always read it has be hagdad

And apparantly other then Stu, I am the only other one here that actually watched the Maltese Falcon.

Felicity link

4/9/2020 03:00:33 am

Thanks!

JeremiahEcks

25/2/2025 05:39:40 pm

I confess Snowkatt that I haven't seen The Maltese Falcon either.

My love for black and white media goes as far as 12 Angry Men and Hartnell Doctor Who to be honest. Not that I'm opposed to black and white, I just haven't seen enough of it .

Oh, and Them! The best B-Movie ever if you ask me. THEM! THEMMMM!!!!

JeremiahEcks

25/2/2025 05:38:04 pm

I always hear Cobra Commander in the comics as David Kaye doing Megatron from Beast Wars - the right balance of straight menace and camp. And the two villains have a lot in common - both verbose, over-dramatic, and given to the most embarrassing setups and situations, also surrounded by traitors and trusts no-one, and yet a surprising win / loss streak and someone who is utterly vindicative and vicious if you underestimate him and turn your back on him.

Which I guess makes Baroness as Blackarachnia, Mindbender or Dr. Venom as Tarantulas, and Storm Shadow as Dinobot or something. Works for me.

Heck throw in Terrorsaur as Raptor... they kind of both meet vicious ends...

Who would be the Waspinator analogue though?

I really like Bird of Prey and Two-Steps Back. Two-Steps because it's a really well drawn fight IMO and, well, any issue with the Dino's munchin' metal, I'm in.

In terms of Spinister being Mayhem Leader... oddly I always thought he was. Snarler seems to have brought them together and he does make a few tactical decisions but I was genuinely always under the impression, from somewhere, that Spinister was the lead. Which is one reason he tells Bludgeon to stuff it when he tries to one-to-one Carnivac. Maybe I got influenced by Dreadwind Answers Badly but I haven't seen that letters page in 25 years so I doubt it. Maybe I also got influenced by Spinister pretty much taking charge of Thunderwing's Cons every time he goes la-la.

Transformation 262: Birds of a Feather.

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