Transformation 306: Stormy Weather.

23/3/2018

This week, Andrew Wildman arrives on art and Furman pauses to take stock before we kick off on the final great story arc of the series.

Plus, Optimus has had enough of people being happy, Grimlock loses his rag and Waverider makes his great contribution to the series.

All in my look at The Eye of the Storm Part 1!

6 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

23/3/2018 04:45:21 pm

An incredible cover and as someone who had Latin lessons at the time it did help make the comic feel mature, even though I was unfamiliar with the statue.

It's around this time that Marvel US made the decision to axe the series. There also seems to have been a mini collapse in the boys' adventure comics market around this time - in the space of just a few months Transformers went fortnightly and Thundercats ended, while over at London Editions Magazines Superman & the Justice League went bimonthly and an attempt at a weekly DC title called Heroes bombed and was cancelled after just eight issues. All this could have been behind the confusion over format changes, page extensions, multiple back-up strips and so forth in this period as the title doesn't quite know what it's doing for the long run.

Although Transformers ultimately didn't make the switch, it was around this time that the switch was made by LEM for their Batman and Superman titles (although a few others would use glossier for a little longer). Maybe LEM beat Marvel UK for the Kympress contract? (Kympress paper is a term that Google can't produce much on.)

Ryan F

23/3/2018 08:09:05 pm

Yeah, comic sales figures were down across the board around this point in time. Although not as steep a decline, 2000 AD also lost a lot of readers around this time, too. My pet theory is that the explosion of the video games market meant that boys were spending less on comics, but I don’t know for sure.

Also, any industry-wide sales slumps will obviously hit smaller titles the hardest. It’s recently come to my attention that - even at its peak - TFUK was being outsold by “girly” comics like My Little Pony. It seems that girls made up a huge percentage of the comic-buying public in the UK, so maybe it stands to reason that boys’ titles would be more vulnerable to market instability.

Simon Hall

25/3/2018 01:31:18 pm

The Titan trades from 2000 (wow) were my first exposure to this story line and it is excellent and does work well as stand alone story. It's still one of my favourite Transformers stories ever and I like that it nicely builds to the arrival of Unicron. Wildman's art always looks 'wrong' to me when he inks it himself (sorry Andrew). As with Jeff Anderson, you forget how much Steven Baskerville brings to the table on inks. Up there with Mark Farmer as one of the best inkers I've ever seen.

Generally, this was an interesting period for UK comics and probably the last time you could comfortably say we had an industry. Whilst boys adventure titles aimed at 7-11 year olds were foundering, there did seem to be something of an outlet for more mature fare aimed at the teen and up market developing over the late '80s / early '90s. It won't last, sadly, leaving 2000AD the last man standing by the close of the decade.

Simon Hall

25/3/2018 01:35:15 pm

I forgot to mention, is that this story-arc - like that of Generation 2 - shows what Furman is capable of when he's got a clearly mapped out design of what he wants to do. Good stuff.

Tetsuryu

29/3/2018 03:10:43 pm

You mean like pushing the introduction of Action Masters as long as possible, hoping the comic would get cancelled before he had to actually write any stories heavily featuring them?

Felicity

25/12/2019 07:37:08 am

I liked the “They were the dream” intro at the top of the page.

I had to look at that cover twice because at first glance the shading looked like the Photoshop style that’s become standard in the last 20 years—but that wouldn’t have been likely in 1991; it was probably hand-painted.

Ah, it was Chromedome who had the joke about the “leg quest.” It would have made sense if it had been Longtooth, though! I’m not sure if I like the way the Hot Rod’s “Ha ha” has no punctuation or not. Let’s say that I like it. I need to balance out all the things I don’t like with some positivity.

Grimlock continues to just be the worst character of the series. The scene might have been more flattering to Waverider if he had been drawn without his helmet, as José Delbo drew Landmine and Cloudburst a few years before. Instead he looks awkward and uncool, like he’s half-suffocating.

I have to agree with Don Daley. I am not a fan of Andrew Wildman’s “Transformers” work (though his “GI Joe” work did grow on me!) and anything that can be done to make it more “on-model” is certainly appreciated. Perhaps Wildman made the Transformers stand and move in ways that were *too* natural and un-Transformer-like. It is definitely not an improvement on Dwayne Turner, IMHO.

Spike’s hair was best in “Trial by Fire,” when it was spiky, like his name. His subsequent hairstyles, like the Caesar cut in “Slaughter on the Slopes,” the ’fro in “Rhythms of Darkness,” and the generic hair he will have in “The Last Autobot,” are not as great.

Better than recycled paper: recycled stories! ☺

And just to end on something positive, I like the Autobots having some fun in their time off and Fixit looks cute in that shot of him working on Chromedome’s leg.

Transformation 306: Stormy Weather.

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