Transformation 309: In Two Minds.

13/4/2018

This week, a surprisingly deft look at reactions to mental illness and how often they're inappropriate and wrong.

Plus a comedy robot, Optimus Gazza and a massive poster.

All in my look at ISSUE 309!

11 Comments

Simon Hall

13/4/2018 08:19:07 pm

I strongly remember the cover to this issue - not because I was reading at the time; (I was in Secondary School and trying to be terribly grown up) but because a lad in my class had this very issue and I was fascinated by it (and liked the bookmark). Can't recall readign it at the time, so I guess for whatever reason I mustn't have asked.

It is a really great issue, and I still find Kup a total dick about this, even if it's understandable with what he's thinking about. I do find it funny that he's happy enough saving those deactivated in lifepods... but I suppose they aren't stumbling around trying to kill people.

This story also matches debates that were likely being had at the time with Tony Bland and (in a weird co-incidence) Alfie Evans today, who is back in the news again, as his parents are fighting to remove their child from Alder Hey for experimental treatment in Italy.

Ryan F

13/4/2018 10:54:30 pm

Yah boo sucks for calling ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ obscure... It might not be required listening to young’uns nowadays but Court of the Crimson King is one of the best and most important Prog Rock albums ever made, in the days when Prog Rock was actually popular and cool.

I think the cover art to this issue (staring eyes, screaming mouths, lolling tongue) might even be trying to emulate the album cover.

I think Harry Papadopoulos (who in a former life used to be a rock photographer) was a big influence on the direction here.

The cover of #313 made a reference to the dance act Bomb the Base, and that of #328 used some Wham lyrics, so he was definitely getting those music references front and centre...

John D. link

14/4/2018 09:45:47 am

Yes I always thought the cover was a tribute to the Court of the akromson King album cover. That, along with the caption, makes it clear this was a deliberate instruction. From the editor do you think?

Harry

13/4/2018 11:12:10 pm

I'd suggest that '21st Century Schizoid Man' might be King Crimson's best known song. It's certainly the only song I know from their earlier prog days, though I admit a soft spot for the 'two Bowie guitarists in one band' 1980s line-up.

Gareth

13/4/2018 11:31:36 pm

Gavin Fearnley of Leighton Buzzard must have been a long-term fan - he previously had a letter published in #81.

Richard link

14/4/2018 12:45:04 am

My gran used to get our TF comic reserved at her newsagent, but around the time of the Flame/Zombies arc it became clear that my brother and I were more interested in the comic than our gran, and that (combined with the fact I was suddenly obsessed with drawing desiccated robot corpses) led to them cancelling the subscription. I barely saw another issue for years until finding this one - and it blew my mind. The detailed, expressive art, the mature storytelling, and the damn scale of the thing. I struggled to find a handful of further issues before the series ended, so this one retains a special place in my mind. And I still have that bookmark! It’s got me through a lot of good novels over the years - it’s currently punctuating chapters in Infinite Jest. I’m fairly sure it’s three original (although obviously similar) Wildman pieces stacked together.

Tetsuryu

14/4/2018 07:27:41 am

It's hard for me to remember that time period - I was like five years old back then - but there was a time when I only had two Transformers comics. One was a special that collected about half of the Robot Master arc into a single isssue.

This was the other one. Talk about a mood whiplash!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

18/4/2018 03:13:50 pm

Way back in 1991 I wondered if the paper screw-up was unique to my copy (although logically that didn't make sense). It's nice to finally have confirmation they were all like this.

In a way Transformers going fortnightly felt like a coming of age, stepping up towards titles with longer shelf lives. At a time when many who didn't read the book (any more) claimed it was for younger children this was a good counter. And the themes of Still Life are quite adult ones.

Machine Man was an incredible surprise and a massive immediate improvement on G.I. Joe.

JeremiahEcks

12/3/2025 12:18:35 pm

I actually really like GI Joe especially this period of it but even I would admit Machine Man 2020 is a huuuuge upgrade. Barry Windsor-Smith isn't always my personal cup of tea (Weapon-X is probably a tad too violent for my personally sensitive palette, and I didn't like his X-Men specific issues) but here, I find his super detailed, hyper techno style fits like a glove.

OG Aaron Stack Machine Man was quite a vanilla hero for me, one I didn't particularly care about, but the 2020 version is one of my favourite comics ever. I think Marvel have missed a trick in not making Sunset Bain a more heavily featured and dangerous baddie beyond an occasional crowd filling one during events or to cause Iron Man a temporary inconvenience.

Felicity

26/12/2019 08:15:55 am

Something to appreciate about this issue: the slurred speech of the Ratchet/Megatron creature. “Awabus!” and “Nuh!”/“Yus!” have stayed with me all these years.

Between the fused Ratchet/Megatron and the Nucleon victims, the body horror really starts kicking in around this time.

In a way, that’s actually bad, because this was happening at a time when a lot of things were going downhill (the art on the comic; the popularity of the toy line; the cancellation of the cartoon beyond even the tiny shreds we got of season five reruns; and more generally, the 1990s would prove to be a depressing decade, in popular culture and in life). So it felt like we were entering dark times and the comic was reflecting that. And having read ahead I know that there’s not much of a light at the end of the tunnel. The stories remain dark and cynical for the rest of the series.

I would have liked to have seen the big ethical issues in this story combined with clean José Delbo art! However I’ll give Andrew Wildman credit for nailing the scariness.

In answer to Kup, wouldn’t leaving Ratchet/Megatron in un-space have meant letting them suffer indefinitely? Bringing them back into real space at least allows the option of euthanasia.

Between Pequod and Hydrus Four in the comic, and Nebulos in the cartoon, it’s safe to say that science fictional bodies of water are pink.

LiamKav

26/10/2020 02:16:35 am

I know that how you view a decade is often influenced by where you were in your life, but were the 90s really that bad? Reagen was gone, Thatcher was gone, the Simpsons was in its glory years, the best Star Trek series started airing in 1993, and we hadn't his 9/11 and the slide in to paranoia and the War on Terror. Aside from Global Hypercolour t-shirts I thought it was a pretty good decade.

Transformation 309: In Two Minds.

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