Transformation 300: Here's to the Future.

8/2/2018

Yes ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... after nearly six year I reach the final milestone issue of the comic. Be as keen as Getaway, including an announcement about the future, and look at my write up on ISSUE 300!

Plus, a celebratory ADDENDUM (though perhaps not the one you were expecting).

Thanks for coming this far folks!

11 Comments

Colin H

9/2/2018 05:30:30 pm

Getaway - a dick in any reality, apparently.

LKW

30/9/2018 06:53:24 am

My personal reaction to this was more along the lines of "Wow, it's kind of strange through this look back to see a Getaway I don't hate with the fire of a thousand burning suns," but, considering the results he produces.... Getaway: net sum negative.

Tetsuryu

9/2/2018 06:12:31 pm

The biggest sin of The Girl Who Loved Powerglide is that it's not even the best comedy episode of the series.

Chris Chapman

9/2/2018 06:29:09 pm

I remember picking this one up from our local Post Office - there was very deep snow that year! Nice that the comic lets me put a date to the memory.

Cosmic Horse

10/2/2018 12:11:48 pm

Hmmm, is that screen grab the final appearance of the Delbo coccyx-snapper pose? A sad day...

John D. link

11/2/2018 09:03:41 am

Ha ha! I wonder if Delbo drew that way to avoid showing exit wounds? Maybe he reckoned that looked too violent! Found this story excessively grim and excessively stupid in equal measures and my opinion hasn't changed. Seemed another sign of the gradual weird drift the title had been going on. ( Is that not a generic decepticon head on a spike, rather than Ironside?)
Think I have tried to speculate here before on the costs of creating a comic - if sales were now maybe 30,000 (an completely guessing) instead of the peak of 200,000 (have seen that quoted a few times), surely it was still a pretty profitable publication? Why then was it axed? Was there finite capacity at the Marvel UK printing facilities? Was "Ghostbusters" going to make more money?
And was there ever a Turtles comic? Seems strange there was never a tie-in, given the Turtle Mania that unfolded.

Tigerbread

11/2/2018 05:13:52 pm

There was a UK Turtles fortnightly comic, that reprinted the US Archie comics, which showed an adaption of the season 1 TV origin of the Turtles, then just branched out from there. Then in the latter half of 1990, it became a giant poster comic, with original UK content.

Stuart

11/2/2018 08:34:15 pm

I'll be disapointed if there's not a Delbo pose next week...

Charles RB

10/2/2018 01:44:25 pm

I never knew Darn 'N' Blast was from Yet Anotehr alternate future. Now we have the PERFECT answer for continuity issues! How does Blaster have a sister in the no-female continuity? It's from after Prime's Rib! How are there so many football teams that we don't see on Cybertron and can't be there? IT'S THE FUTURE! They're there then!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

12/2/2018 07:40:20 pm

Is that cover another piece of early toy promotion for the Classics re-release of Sideswip and Tracks? And was there ever a plan to rerelease Mirage?

(I never realised that was meant to be Ironhide's head. The colours suggest I'm not the only one.)

That sidebar is surprising. Although he's not named, it was probably Euan Peters who designed the "Dread Fidings" logo and to slag off a past employee's work in print feels like the sort of thing that would yield a legal complaint if done today.

I have a recollection that the Action Master backstory given here was also in use on the toy boxes and/or some catalogues at the time.

The Girl Who Loved Powerglide was on one of the early tapes I found when my TF interest renewed in the late 1990s - this was the tape with the far more interesting Call of the Primitives. There was a strange period of a few years around then when there was a growing fan demand but no new releases and so we had hunt down the old VHSes. (And it was annoying when episodes were duplicated across releases - without access to a full list it was impossible to know where else to find them.) I found the episode incredibly silly and exhibit A for the case against the cartoon (I hadn't found the release with Carnage in C Minor).

I've always interpreted Powerglide's surprise as a reference to Astoria's age, especially given what she puts the company through, but it seems the animators drew her a bit too old and thus the company seems to be in the hands of a... can we say "woman-child"?

Ryan F

14/2/2018 10:33:40 pm

Never really had a problem with Astoria’s depiction. Sure, she’s a spoilt rich kid and a bit of a klutz, but she’s also assertive, independent, and is able to defeat the Decepticons all by herself, pretty much. It’s telling that, when in Decepticon custody, she’s defiant and valiant, rather than a ‘screamer’.

With three execrable exceptions (Abdul Fakkadi, the poncho-wearing Peruvian stereotypes and that Marissa Fairborne episode where she falls for the obvious con artist), the Transformers cartoon was surprisingly inclusive. There were some notable BAME actors on the cast list (Casem, Crothers, Burghardt, Jones), and a lot of positive role models like Chip Chase, Raoul and that street-urchin-who’s-actually-an-Arabian-prince who helps the Aerialbots. There were numerous female writers on the show, a female executive (Margaret Loesch) and - despite Hasbro wanting to keep the cast to toy characters only - snuck a number of female Transformers into the mix as well (compare this with the comic’s attitude to female TFs).

If you consider all the lame stuff Spike does (bring Soundwave into the Ark, turn into Autobot Spike, get tossed around by Rumble, saved from death by an annoying kid etc.) then Astoria comes across well by comparison, I think.

Transformation 300: Here's to the Future.

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