Transformation 287: A Spoonful of Sugar.

9/11/2017

This week: Irwin Spoon.

'Nuff said.

All in my look at ISSUE 287!

9/11/2017 10:37:06 am

Liane Eliot, mentioned there, is still knocking around the fandom, I believe - Didn't she run TF Lexicon, the fanfic repository, for a while?

Jon Talpur

11/11/2017 03:48:32 pm

Liane also had a letter published in the penultimate issue of the Marvel US comic, where she mentioned the TransMasters fan club. In fact, unless someone knows otherwise, I'm pretty sure Liane was the only person to ever have letters printed in both the original Marvel US and UK G1 comics. She also had a letter publsihed in the the Marvel US G2 comic too for good measure!

JeremiahEcks

2/3/2025 07:54:04 pm

She did. She was a big name in fandom around that time and LexiCon was utterly amazing. I LOVED that site and I wish it was still A Thing.

I had the privilege of RPing with her on The Lost Years MUSH although I didn't know it was her for some time.

Happy fandom times!

(And if we're going to talk TF MUSHing, there were certain Super fans around then who went on to become actual comic book writers... shows that TF MUSHing, when not seedy, was a breeding ground for young creatives!)

Simon Hall

9/11/2017 12:39:06 pm

IRWIN SPOOOOON. F**k me. Where does Furman get these ridiculous names from? And...why? Why give your human characters such horrible names that folks' backs are up. Jimmy Pink ... Hunter O'Nion... Can't say I get much out of this story, it's just sort of there and it happens and then it ends.

Likewise, Matrix Quest isn't something I enjoyed and all this stuff with Longtooth just doesn't do anything for me. I do like Dan Reed jazzing up Delbo's art on inks though. It works really well.

Liane Eliot..her name pops up in G2 as well. I hope she's well and happy, wherever she is :)

Tim Roll-Pickering link

9/11/2017 07:24:55 pm

The cover's a reminder of just how awkward a toy Superion is, with the character model never really overcoming the problems. Also the perspective with his leg and foot is just weird.

Had the Irwin Spoon story appeared a few weeks earlier then I'd guess Furman was deliberately writing something fairly inconsequential for the summer holidays so any readers missing an issue wouldn't miss much. Oh and in 1990 a lot of people in the UK at least were using Amstrad wordprocessors or similar which had daisy wheel printers that produced something like that typeface.

I don't know where I read it but ISTR that issue #285 or #286 is the one often given as the change of editors, though it often takes a while for the new editor to bed in and clear the pile of already commissioned material.

Charles RB

9/11/2017 07:29:47 pm

For a toy comic, Transformers is really nasty with Superion - outside of the Unmentionable Crossover, the much-vaunted Special Team combiner is constantly going wonky, being compromised by the enemy, or a terrible idea for the Aerialbot's psyches!

JeremiahEcks

2/3/2025 09:19:14 pm

You're not wrong - Marvel continuity really puts him through the wringer.

None so bleakly as the TF Annual story, Return of the Transformers, which Stuart covered a wee while ago. In that one, everybody just has a bad day including a poor little boy who's faith in the Transformers is wrecked.

That story also wrecks my faith in that it is a terrible continuity nightmare if you're worried about such things as I. But as a standalone fiction it's very good but also very depressing and the Aerialbot's splintered nature is a huge part of that story.

Felicity

17/12/2019 09:02:17 pm

I forgot to mention that that preview panel of Superion looming over the suburbs at the end of the last entry reminds me of the toy commercial for Generation 2 Superion. I think that’s also the one with Bruticus being a “big bad battling dudicus.”

People did use typewriters in 1990, plus computer printers at the time were dot matrix impact printers that produced a near-letter-quality typewriter-like font (in highest quality mode). The font used here, however, is American Typewriter, a 1974 typeface by designer Tony Stan, which is proportionally spaced, not mono-spaced, meaning it would be unlikely that it would come from a real typewriter.

However I agree that it’s a nice touch for the lettering to have a typewriter font for the journalist’s narration. Yay lettering! ☺

I wish I’d written to Liane Elliot’s fan club back then. Also, her name reminds me of a depressing moment in early online “Transformers” fandom where someone said she looked retarded and I said she didn’t and they said they hated me. Those were dark times.

JeremiahEcks

2/3/2025 09:15:32 pm

I can 100% honestly say I was using a typewriter for a hobby between 1993 and 1996. You have to have some way to make all those Marvel / Transformers / Doctor Who continuity lists, aye?

But I guess you meant professionally and I have no doubt whatsoever that some institutions and older writers would have stayed loyal to the old typewriter (even if it was an electric one).

JeremiahEcks

2/3/2025 07:57:10 pm

"That kid's movie, Robocop II"...

Err, I was 8 or 9 when I first saw it. Mind I think I was 7 when I saw the even more violent first one...

My parents just let me watch whatever I wanted as long as I didn't have nightmares. Put it this way - Transformers' Dark Awakening was far more traumatic to me than RoboCain blowing up a warehouse...

... but not by much.

And I turned out totally well adjusted. Totally. The voices tell me I am so it must be true.

Transformation 287: A Spoonful of Sugar.

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