Transformation 268: A Leap for Snaptrap.

29/6/2017

Ziggy says there's a 89% chance this week's entry is even more self-indulgent than usual as I look at ISSUE 268!

Plus, my second short story for Mad Scientist Journal can now be read for free on the website HERE!

9 Comments

Charles RB

30/6/2017 02:36:07 pm

You fool, Sam! You should've stopped the Evil Leapers at 1986's Marvel offices whispering ideas for a Joe crossover!

I feel really dumb that I never, ever got the link between Quantum Leap and this story. Doh!

Stuart

30/6/2017 02:38:57 pm

It's like when it turned out JFK had to die. Same can't fix everything!

Ralph Burns

30/6/2017 05:42:29 pm

The twist this time is that the Transformation page actualy promotes a comic that came out after many previous tissues of lies! The first run of Knights o Pendragon is fab. Pendragon II...less so.

SPECIAL TEAMS!

Colin H

30/6/2017 05:47:00 pm

Is it sad that I recognised the title quote straight away?

I loved Quantum Leap. It was an essential part of my "Doctor Who" methadone in the early 90s, along with Red Dwarf and TNG.

Simon Hall

2/7/2017 08:09:33 pm

Nice that the TF take on Quantum Leap also featured an 'evil Leaper' - and two years ahead of the TV show too!

I loved Quantum Leap also. I liked that it was time travel, but into recent history. I found it especially good doing stuff around the Watts riots and whatnot. Season 5 wasn't all bad ( although that terrible 12" remix of the theme tune didn't help) - it's got the superb 'Killin' Time' in, for one and the final episode is fantastic. Although I'd love to see it brought back, I kind of don't. It'd probably be some uber-serious grim dark show and that would make me sad.

Oh, Transformers? Yeah, still haven't read the Joe corssover, so no idea about that, so I am learning about that through these critques. I have learnt I was right not to by that '92 or '93 Summer Special that Marvel reprinted just before the G2 comic.

As for Flashback, it's got the Seacons in! And I love the Seacons, so this story is a WIN for me. Even if the 'butcher of the bogs' is possessed by Megs, so its not really full on Seacon funtimes.

JeremiahEcks

26/2/2025 07:02:52 am

I love the Seacons too, Simon! They're probably my favourite Special Team who never got to do anything of note in either the cartoon (as they didn't appear) or the comic (in the US they appear just to get bumped off but they do a little bit more in the UK).

Masterforce doesn't count.

So yeah, always had a soft spot for them. Tentakil and Snaptrap being the best two of course. Who doesn't adore Tentakil?

Tim Roll-Pickering link

4/7/2017 01:53:06 pm

I didn't spot this one either, but I don't think I was aware of Quantum Leap at the time. (A glance at the Radio Times archive shows it was initially up against the Nine O'Clock News so even if I were still up on Tuesday evenings then I wouldn't have been able to see it.) Quite a good little story and I wonder if this was the last of Hasbro UK asking for help to clear out old 1988 stock in toy shops, *if* the Seacons were still hanging around. (The Collected Comics reprint the previous autumn would support this theory)

Interesting to see that whoever's writing Dreadwind just doesn't know about the cartoon. War Dawn was certainly released on VHS (along with the Key to Vector Sigma) but that would have been a few years old by now and probably not the (assistant?) editor's viewing of choice. I can't remember if the letters page will be more relaxed about the cartoon for the rest of the run now that it's no longer a major force and "Dreadwind" isn't the one writing stories that are contradicted by it.

The G.I. Joe crossover is really showing the problems of a writer who doesn't know the developments in Transformers. I'm guessing that Higgins was still working off the whole "Robots in Disguise" hidden war idea that had largely dropped away in the comics by 1986.

Felicity link

14/12/2019 08:39:00 pm

Great “Quantum Leap” pastiche. ☺ I liked that show too. That later, jazzier theme song in the YouTube clip above was fun.

I guess GI Joe doesn’t do a lot of liaising with III or RAAT…not that III or RAAT would necessarily tell them about the difference between Autobots and Decepticons.

It seems like some of the lettering—“My trip to the DAM” in #266, and “Silverbolt is a TRUE leader” here—has been altered clumsily. Joe Rosen isn’t my favourite letterist but they should at least try to make the new lettering match the old.

Aw, cats. Knocking things over. But you can’t stay mad at them. ☻

JeremiahEcks

26/2/2025 07:14:03 am

Flashback is one of my favourite Earthforce tales but if you think about it too hard it falls over.

1) Megatron has the technology to build a Time Machine and only does it this once?

2) His best use of it is to try and save the Seacons rather than, I don't know, possess Starscream before he takes the power of the Underbase and claim it for himself? Or return to Afterdeath and step on Ethan Zachary with the Prime Floppy Disk?

I love the Seacons. A LOT. A lot more than is sane to like them actually. But it makes no sense Megatron chooses them as potential new troops.

I love seeing Prowl die though and more Snaptrap is always more welcome. Not sure why Megatron is scared of Optimus though. Now, Megatron Clone WAS scared of him in Salvage... which is where the Butcher of the Bogs, Snaptrap himself, brought Megatron's Clone back from deactivation...

All comes full circle. This ain't Megatron, I tell you, it was the Clone all along!!!!

Transformation 268: A Leap for Snaptrap.

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