Transformation 292: The Only Way to be Sure.

15/12/2017

This week, Jazz is the light in Thunderwing's life, Windsweeper is swept off his feet and a totally mysterious one eyed one handed purple Decepticon appears.

It's all in my look at ISSUE 292!

And the CHRISTMAS QUIZ still has a week to go!

8 Comments

John D. link

15/12/2017 09:15:15 pm

From here on in it was pretty hard to find these issues. I missed this one and maybe the next, so I think I only (spoiler alert!) saw what happened in a flashback in a later issue. The idea of gravity exhausting the autobots was a good one. Ps I don't get the front cover pun?

Stuart

15/12/2017 09:45:54 pm

Windsweeper is literally hanging about.

Sounds like I was lucky to be able to keep getting the book right through to the end!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

16/12/2017 10:51:55 pm

I had a standing order at my local Menzies so generally didn't have a problem but there were a couple of issues (299 & 312 from memory) that just didn't show up there and I only found subsequently in Asda - over two weeks later in the case of 299. It seems a lot of us suffered distribution problems in some form.

Tigerbread

18/12/2017 09:00:44 am

I remember putting in a standing order to reserve it at my newsagents as well back in '88. The next week I went in and asked for my reserve copy....and was led straight to the magazine rack where it usually sat.
Just 10 years later that place became a Super Inks, coincidence? I don't think so...

Simon Tilley

13/10/2019 09:38:39 pm

I seemed to recall drifting off the comic circa issue 235, picking up back issues around the 275-290 era from the newsagents closest to my Nans during the summer holiday era and then not finding anywhere that sold it.

By chance I happened across issue 309 in a newsagent in a neighbouring estate as my self employed Dad had to pick some cash up nearby and was hooked again. I discovered that our large Tesco got the issues on a Tuesday as I recall (only a few though) so every fortnight after school it became a routine to go there and I got a regular fix through 1991 right up until 319 where Tesco stopped ordering it.

Panic set in as 318 had the Unicron cliffhanger, I managed to find issue 320 at Sainsburys in town but this became a mission to get into town and back as an 11year old and managed to get a copy but I did up until 329 which I missed buying, not sure what had happened but I was taught the error of my ways as Sainsburys stopped stocking the comic after this and I missed this and 330. Can't recall exactly where but picked up the last 2 issues (with no idea these would be the last ones) from elsewhere but as an adult now I realise that sales must have been poor by current standards as Turtle Mania was everywhere and at the start of 1992 many of the kids who were fans 8 years ago were now teenagers with no interest in comics. Picking up issues with any success was not an easy task in the final year of the book.

Felicity

19/12/2019 07:53:57 pm

Mixed message from Simon Furman about the Classic Pretender shells. When he first introduced them in “Skin Deep,” it was presented as this great new tactic that Ratchet recommended to Jazz: if you need backup, ask your Pretender shell to help you. Hey, this is great! It was a continuation of Bob Budiansky’s “divide and conquer” strategy from “Pretender to the Throne.” But then, between the supposedly unstoppable Starscream feeling pain when someone shoots his Classic Pretender shell, and this issue, it seems like it’s not such a great advantage any more.

I still like the Pretenders and Classic Pretenders, though.

It just occurred to me that the guy on the operating table who says “So I says to Optimus Prime, ‘Hang the Matrix Quest, how about a leg quest?’” a few issues from now might be Longtooth, out of his shell! I never put that together until now.

I was so dense back then. I didn’t figure out that it was Shockwave in Blackpool, despite the one big clue: his speech patterns. As the creative team presumably intended, I didn’t realise the yellow glow was coming from one eye (I thought it was just two eyes, obscured); I couldn’t see the gun arm (because of the water and seaweed); I couldn’t make out the shape of the body (through the seaweed and water and darkness); and I didn’t realise the mystery robot was purple (I thought it was just the night-time lighting). All of that is forgiveable. But I should have clued in when he started talking like Shockwave.

I don’t like that the tramp was killed, and that it was a painful death.

I do like the use of Jazz’s headlights. Furman may have been inspired by the Autobots using their headlights in robot mode in “The Revenge of Bruticus.”

HR Giger’s aliens also tended to be a bit too sexual for a children’s comic, so we can forgive Geoff Senior for toning it down.

I feel bad for Windsweeper. It’s bad enough to be grabbed by a tentacle, but he’s the germ-phobe of the group, so it would be extra-traumatic for him.

It’ll be fun watching Thunderwing fight the monster, because they’re both scary and evil, so no matter what happens, they deserve each other.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

19/12/2019 08:06:00 pm

That's the no-longer-new toy effect, although curiously Thunderwing was released the same year as the Classics. Once you're no longer the big thing then you get your arse handed to you, your gimmick is no longer so spectacular and things move forward. And with Action Masters of all four on the horizon it presumably made sense to at least ditch the shells even if Furman was going to postpone the actual gimmick for as long as possible.

I don't remember Shockwave speaking in quite such a formal computer form before.

Felicity

20/12/2019 01:14:06 am

That’s a good point; I’d noticed in the original cartoon that all characters were at their strongest and most unbeatable when they were first introduced. This is the flip side of that.

If Shockwave didn’t start saying things like “Logic dictates…” and “Interrogative:” in this, his first scene, then I can forgive myself for not figuring it out right away.

Transformation 292: The Only Way to be Sure.

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