TRANSFORMATION 3

1/6/2012

In the third instalment of the comic all about Warrior Robots In Disguise the Deceptcions landscape, Ravage spies and Buster totally fails to get off with any hot chicks in Power Play! Part 1.

4 Comments

donnyfinkleberg

15/7/2012 04:48:17 pm

Firstly, great idea for a blog, will follow this project with interest.

Regarding the first half of the issue being given over to the power plant theft - while it's clumsily done, this is presumably to give the Cons some exclusive marketing time, introducing their individual "powers" out of the shadow of the plot-driving, and traditionally better-selling, good guys? While Salicrup has taken over scripting duties, i think i've read somewhere that Budiansky plotted the whole thing and, due to the sheer quantity of hands-on involvement required in guiding the scripters, probably acted more as a co-writer than editor.

Re: the "recap of things we already know" - Jim Shooter, ed in chief, enforced some strict rules at marvel during his tenure in the 80s regarding style, structure and layout, one of which was that every issue should include a recap so any kid picking up the issue on spec would know what the hell was going on. Considering the unfamiliarity of the set-up, the thumping amount of plot in US issue 1, and sheer size of the cast, it's perhaps unsurprising that there's a lot of recapping going on in this issue. You might have already seen this, but there's a wealth of interesting info on 80s marvel, and some specific TF related stuff, here:

http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/06/secret-origin-of-transformers-part-1.html

Stuart

16/7/2012 10:07:14 am

Well, it's great to have Robot Master himself following the blog.

The difficulty of steering the Transformers ship and the sheer amount of work Bob put into it is something I'll talk about when we return to the US stories. As much as he may have gone off the boil later on he really is the closest person we have to a "creator" for the franchise.

I've read the Shooter thing before, but it is interesting stuff.

snowkatt

8/5/2013 01:37:58 am

from the looks of it i was here right from the start ( judging from the comments on issue 2 )
hah !

ahem

i am here to say that verity's last name is carlo not carlos
( and i am surprised nobody caught that yet )
and i rather like her ( so does uncle magnus it seems )
verity hunter and jimmy are so far the best human characters we have seen in transformers fiction
outside of buster
because unlike his grinning loon counterpart buster was actually smart enough to realise that his life is in perpetual danger around the autobots and stay out of their way !

trouble usually finds him not the other way around

Snowkatt

1/9/2025 03:37:47 pm

12 years later I still stand by what i said about Verity and still consider her one of the better human characters in transformers fiction.
Especially compared to the imbeciles in the G1 cartoon or the insufferable bloody kids from Prime which tend to get in the way on a sodding battlefield.
What are they even doing there ?!

Prime is where I gave up on the cartoons.
Not Energon but Prime.

About the repeated info dumps given by bumblebee however, don't forget that this comic comes from an era when the Shooter edict was in full swing.
IE every comic is somebodies first, and the reader needs to be brought up to speed.
Also don't forget that this comic comes from a time where there were no reprints, no trade paperbacks, no easy access to older comics.
You either bought it off the rack, or later on might find back issues in the bin of a specialist comic shop.
But that is a bit out of the way for the target audience at the time.

And for story purposes Bumblebee does need to info dump on Buster, to bring him up to speed.

This would have been twice as bad and twice as redundant in the dutch Transfomers issue 1, considering that was a 48 page comic reprinting US 1 and 2
At least this is a fort nightly reprint of us 2, so it's less egregious.

Finally the black and white art does look way better than Yomtov's splotchy colors, but I've always maintained that Yomtov has been the weakest link of the US comic.

TRANSFORMATION 3

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