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 This week, it's the start of the low point of the entire run as THAT Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover begins.
Luckily the British story gives us one of the cleverest and most fun stories of Earthforce, as Grimlock offers his party manifesto. All this and Weetos in my look at ISSUE 265!
18 Comments
8/6/2017 07:56:40 pm
I seem to be one of the few who didn't mind the G.I. Joe crossover. Thanks to a bunch of back issues I'd got the rough idea of Transformers history at the time so it was interesting to see a somewhat alternate glimpse of it and being an original story was an improvement on reprints. But it was annoying to have a saga that had been built up so much to be so suddenly interrupted. Add in the double blow of the Collected Comics coming up and it was quite a time to be knocked back. I hated this, it seemed to go on for an age and I honestly didn't read it. I was just allergic to any Action Force tripe. As Stu says, the impact is incalculable. Here's a question - why couldn't they run with 11 pages of black and white stuff each week (or are we now fortnightly?) - is original art that expensive?
Dave
10/6/2017 09:36:31 am
Original art is that expensive, even without colour. The comic in Doctor Who Magazine was b&w and only about 7 pages long at this point but still something Marvel were keen to ditch for cost reasons. Only the passion for the strip of the editor kept it going. Back of a fag packet calculations - circulation of 100,000 x 50p a copy = £50k? If orignal colour art costs about £250 a page in 1990 (between artist, inker, colourist, writer - I am really guessing here), then does that mean gettng 10 or 11 pages instead of 5 black and whites was well within the comic's grasp? Am I really underestimating the cost of printing and distribution? Surely they weren't paying a crazy licensing fee to Hasbro?
Charles RB
16/6/2017 01:04:53 pm
Around this point the comic was 45p, of which X amount would be going to the newsagents and distributors. Not sure what the wages were at Marvel UK per page but the problem w/ 11 pages of b&w is as much the 11 pages as the colouring. You cut the colourist out and some ink costs but you still need to pay at least three people (writer, artist, letterer). 16/6/2017 01:22:40 pm
You'd also be paying the editor, the assistant editor (if there was one), the designer and then portions of salaries for various Marvel UK wide posts such as the editor-in-chief and various production staff.
Charles RB
16/6/2017 01:45:48 pm
Aha. That's some harsh profit margins even before the licensing fee comes in
Dave
10/6/2017 09:32:39 am
Oddly I remember really enjoying this first part of the crossover when it first came out. I think it was the first comic crossover I'd seen so even though I didn't like or really read the GO Joe third of the comic, it still felt like a big deal.
Charles RB
15/6/2017 12:08:48 pm
I think that was an 80s Marvel thing, as the company became more organised and more keen on organising its continuity - this is the era when (I had this comic) there's a sudden blackout in Amazing SPider-Man for two pages because X-Factor caused one. And it may have been someone wanted to show the crossover "counted" and therefore you should stump up your cash.
Tetsuryu
10/6/2017 03:15:48 pm
So for the next four months, it's pretty much GI Joe book with a Transformers backup story.
Ralph Burns
12/6/2017 07:10:45 pm
We need to send Lord Buckethead back in time to stop this from happening. Like The Terminator, but British.
Stuart
12/6/2017 07:18:07 pm
For all we know Lord Buckethead is Simon Furman!
Charles RB
15/6/2017 12:12:32 pm
I wonder if there was anything else - anything at all - that Marvel could have run instead? Or would it have been better to just burn through it quicker and run 11 pages of this every week (taking the US _and_ Joe reprint slots) so it could be done by #272? It'd still suck but readers would know they had less time to wait 15/6/2017 12:57:24 pm
Running through it quicker risked the problem of catching up on the US stories recurring again - although the US strip was about to go to 20 pages and thus four weeks instead of three, you'd still be closing in and also risk problems if the stories arrived in bulk. Opening up a 17 week gap gave a real buffer that solved the problem permanently.
Stuart
15/6/2017 01:18:09 pm
Of course, we know the US office had at least one additional In Case of Emergency story in reserve with the Dweller in the Depths adaptation. Pity the UK was unaware of it/the US forgot when they were asked to send anything unused over. 15/6/2017 02:12:59 pm
Dweller in the Depths may have been unavailable though. I don't know just how finished it was but standby fill-in issues are often not in an exact format to simply be taken from the files and sent to the printers - often they need some final work to bring them into line with the current comic. And depending on the various contracts it's possible Marvel UK were restricted to only reprinting already printed US material and couldn't run an otherwise unused issue.
Charles RB
16/6/2017 09:02:06 am
Yeah, Dweller seems unlikely - so the poor suckers were stuck with Joe. On paper getting 16-17 weeks of buffer from it was a good idea but in practice, based on the loathing fans have for it and that Earthforce copped it seven issues after it ended, it seems to have driven sales down. Who'd be an editor, eh?
The stilted writing style of “GI Joe and the Transformers” is its weakest point. Its second-weakest point would be the plot/premise, with Power Station Alpha and Shockwave’s plan to destroy the Earth being kind of boring. Other than that it holds up pretty well, especially compared to comic books today. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorStuart Webb. Who knows everything about nothing and not a lot about that. Archives
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