Transformation 304: Feel the Rapture.

8/3/2018

This week, you don't need to read the comic as the Transformation page tells you the entire plot.

But, if you still want to go forward... Who shoots Circuit Breaker? And meet Rapture and Thunderpunch! All this and the Giggly Granddad in my look at ISSUE 304!

11 Comments

Tetsuryu

9/3/2018 04:31:00 pm

Yup, that's comic is definitely based on the cartoon series.

Police Academy is a funny franchise in the sense that nobody wants to admit to liking it...yet they'll recognize any of the characters in an instant. I think someone did basically describe the movies as a live action Muppet Show where every character boils down to a single trait, which is probably true.

But I really did love those silly toys. Unfortunately the built-in gimmicks meant they didn't last very long, Larvell Jones had a gimmick where pushing his arm down made his jaw move - I went through two of them and the arm broke on both. He came with a giant megaphone that was essentially a kazoo. I can't remember what Tackleberry's gimmick was (I think I lost the whole figure somehow), but Hightower is the one that lasted the longest, he came with a scooter he could throw by pressing his legs together. I think he eventually broke too but I'm not even sure of when or how.

Stuart

10/3/2018 10:57:03 am

Odd I never saw the toys. Must have led a sheltered life!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

12/3/2018 10:10:12 am

The Police Academy cartoon doesn't show up in the Radio Times genome archive, though I think only has the BBC listings. * Maybe it never reached here at all and so anyone reading the UK comic may have been left confused by the presence of cartoon only characters and concepts, if there were any.

(* We've reached the period when the TV listings regulations were restricted, allowing for multiple competing magazines. Yes kids, there really was once a time when only one magazine carried BBC listings and only another carried ITV & Channel 4.)

Including the original back-up strip way back in TF #99-102, Action Force/G.I. Joe had clocked up pretty much four years exactly at Marvel UK so this announcement may well be a consequence of contractual obligations lapsing. It's possible that had the strip been popular with readers and/or editorial then it might have continued for a while (although I don't know if the contracts were different for continuing regular features as opposed to specials & annuals) but the very limited number of letters printed on it suggests it wasn't a big thing in the postbag. Though that announcement does have a strong whiff of trying to make it sound like "BY POPULAR DEMAND" in case anyone is upset.

Tetsuryu

16/3/2018 12:30:42 pm

Maybe the cartoon was shown on Sky? Here it was only really available on home video, but I distinctly remember catching some of it on the telly in a bar with a satellite TV.

Yes, I went to bars when I was pint-size. I had one of those childhoods I guess.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

16/3/2018 01:00:40 pm

Sorry that should say "when the TV listings regulations were DErestricted". I remember all the publicity as new listings magazines launched, newspapers began supplements and both the Radio and TV Times suddenly had to advertise heavily - the TV Times advert for the expansion was amusing.

LiamKav

25/10/2020 05:54:31 pm

I'm about 90% convinced it was shown on a Saturday morning magazine program (Live & Kicking and the like) as I remember the episodes being split in two and the bumper they used when starting the second part.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

25/10/2020 08:00:26 pm

Wikipedia includes it on a list of programmes that were on CITV but with no references and no mention on any of the articles on Saturday morning shows.

Uraael

13/3/2018 12:46:48 pm

"...whatever pressure Hasbro have brought to BARE to keep it going no longer an issue"

I don't do Grammar/Spelling Nazi as a rule but this one was amusing in light of your comments re: Circuit Breakers' "sellotape bikini".

On CB herself, I *know* her design is male-gaze pandering of the most blatant kind....I know this....and yet I still can't help think of her fondly. While she never learned the difference between Red Badge/Purple Badge (somehow shooting Red Badge every time when it came to a choice) I do think she's a great wee character. Intelligent and capable but then seriously neurologically damaged, this story marked the first time anyone had given her any thought whatsoever in quite some time, "Uncle Bob" having probably forgotten he created her. Furman's attempts to resolve her psychological issues was very sweet...even if he was doing that so he could shatter it many issues later to show how desperate his Unicron battle was (You MONSTER, Furman).

I keep hankering for a modern reboot of the character because I basically miss her. She had potential to remain an interesting part of the TF universe, as long as someone was interested in giving her character more than one dimension. And no, 'Sephie' in the TFCC fiction doesn't really count.

PS: for all that the artist is pants everywhere else, that image above is brilliant. She's TERRIFYING.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

16/3/2018 01:17:18 pm

Circuit Breaker's inability to distinguish between the factions doesn't seem that unusual given the stories we see her in. At the time of Shockwave's attack the Autobots are off line and the most prominent robot battle is between two who've both attacked human resources. Blackrock comes to a similar conclusion until Jazz persuades him otherwise but Circuit Breaker is never backed into a corner and forced to confront this.

Later she works for RAAT who have the same philosophy and then after leaving them she doesn't actually encounter an Autobot for over four years, confronting only Decepticons in her few stories in the interim.

JeremiahEcks

8/3/2025 05:37:03 pm

Budiansky was fond of her and was using her relatively close to the issue he was going to leave on (#50 - she showed up approx. #44ish or around there).

Indeed he had her appear in Secret Wars II in Marvel and in that story she actually inadvertently saved the 616 universe by convincing the Beyonder not to destroy it). His intent was to get her into the main Marvel universe as much as possible.

Sadly only he was interested in her and she got tarred with being a 'Transformers' character. Furman only picks her up here I think because Marvel own her and she's already established.

I think Marvel miss a trick by not using her. Send her after Iron Man or War Machine. In 616 Marvel we never find out her origin and it wasn't Shockwave who took her out. Maybe she got damaged in a fight between Iron Man and a Dreadnought robot?

Felicity

25/12/2019 12:21:28 am

I like the sound of the trendy Combat Ponytail.

I remember the “Police Academy” cartoon but I don’t think I ever got the chance to see it. The comic looks like it’s an adaptation of the cartoon. I also remember seeing something about the comic in Marvel Age, with a profile on Hightower.

It feels like it was a Star comic, and yet weirdly, it wasn’t, it was a regular Marvel comic. And yet, strangely, “Visionaries” was a Star comic despite being more similar to “Transformers” than to “Count Duckula” or “Heathcliff” or “Muppet Babies.” Go figure.

Funnily enough at my elementary school there was always an extra week or two after final exams where the school year was over academically, but we still had to go to school, so the teachers would show movies or have us play games. And it was during one of those weeks when I saw “Police Academy 2” and another when I saw “Johnny Dangerously” and they were both way too intense for my sheltered elementary-school self. There were jokes I did not get until a decade later, like what was being implied morally about Mauser when he still had hair glued to the palms of his hands after Mahoney’s shower prank. Or the oral sex at the lectern that Lassard thinks was from Mahoney. Or anything involving the Blue Oyster Bar. Or “elephantiasis of the nuts.” Ah, the quality education you get when you go to a private school. ☺

Transformation 304: Feel the Rapture.

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