Transformation 321: RIP Zarak.

6/7/2018

It's the exit for a Decepticon who has clawed on to leadership longer than anyone else (thanks to the decision not to release Overlord in the West).

Plus Grimlock shows how to slap the devil and the Neo Knights are laughable.

All in my look at ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION PART 3!

10 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

7/7/2018 01:34:02 am

With the exception of Fortress Maximus & Spike, I'm struggling to think of any time in the last few years that a Headmaster has really been shown as two beings. A lot of the time the heads come off simply to do small scale work and they could easily have become a single entity by now (as they are in the Japanese cartoon). Maybe every Headmaster and Nebulan ultimately fuses into a single mind and Spike wasn't so wrong to keep trying to evade it.

Alexander Hayden James Smith link

7/7/2018 03:12:31 am

Highbrow and Gort in 'All in the Minds', or is that too far back? Certainly, I can't think of many others. Perhaps Muzzle and Nightbeat in 'The Big Shutdown'?

Tim Roll-Pickering link

10/7/2018 11:59:53 pm

Well the annual was three years ago so pretty much at the limit. Nightbeat's head may have used the name "Muzzle" but even then it was exploiting the separate head trick rather than being shown as a distinct entity.

Jon Talpur

7/7/2018 09:42:10 pm

I remember the letters page answer to C. Smith's question regarding Hasbro UK's plans to continue the line over the next four years, which in hindsight proved to be a remarkably accurate response, suggesting that, bucking the trend up to that point, Hasbro UK actually had a long-term strategy to keep the line going. Post-1995 would be another matter altogether, of course.

I can only assume the question was influenced by the discussion of the toyline ending in the US comic's letters pages since the UK was still getting new toy releases. By this point an increasing number of readers with access to the US comics knew the UK comic was very much on borrowed time, making for a melancholy feel to this final stretch of issues.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

7/7/2018 10:14:03 pm

Yeah - it was around this point I discovered a comics stall in our local indoor market, only picking up the US comic in time for the last two issues.

IIRC there was actually a break in Transformers toys here between Generation 2 and Beast Wars, which meant from the latter onwards the UK was about a year plus behind. The response here suggests this coincided with the ending of some long term Hasbro contracts.

Will Rigby

10/7/2018 05:56:51 am

Wait, your the same person as Inflatable Dalek, who used to do reviews for TFArchive?

Anyway another good overview.

Stuart

10/7/2018 06:32:05 am

My secret is out! ;)

Yes I am indeed.

Charles RB

10/7/2018 11:31:31 pm

"And just imagine looking at this and thinking that Scorponok was a lose end that needed revisiting for ReGeneration One."

That always felt like a loose end from IDW getting shoved hard into G1 (rather like Nefarious, which feels Machination-y and not much like the films)

John D. link

14/8/2018 07:38:20 am

Just to add that if I had one grumble about this issue it would be the lack of strategy about how to fight Unicron. There seemed to be no plan whatsoever...

Felicity

30/12/2019 02:37:34 am

On that cover Optimus Prime looks like he has a plastic bag over his mouth and is trying to breathe in. The artist must not have realised that the metal faceplate isn’t like a kerchief worn over the mouth, with the mouth moving around behind it. Neither did the voice actors in the English dub of “Headmasters,” who spoke their lines in a muffled voice whenever it was a character with a faceplate.

The comic was never consistent about how much of the robot mind and how much of the human mind is in the Headmaster. At first it seemed like the Headmaster Transformers killed themselves by offering their heads to their Nebulan partners, and their personalities only emerged posthumously as the Nebulans’ minds were “suffused with latent engrams” from the Transformers. Whether the original Transformer personality re-emerges when they separate was never explicitly shown, the way it was in the cartoon.

Fortress Maximus thinks of himself as an Autobot when dealing with Grimlock on the moon but as Spike when he sees Buster (“My brother!” he says, while still in Fortress Maximus mode).

As you point out, the original Scorponok never seems to be around; even as Scorponok, Lord Zarak thinks of himself as Lord Zarak wearing his Scorponok suit, not as Scorponok.

The Targetmasters and Powermasters seem to have a different deal. Hi-Test and Throttle argue with Dreadwind and Darkwing. Optimus Prime and Hi-Q can operate independently. Optimus Prime can even retain his trailer-components-as-armour without Hi-Q in his chest. Then of course that gets changed in the last five issues as it turns out there is a merging.

And here comes the Prowl/Grimlock dynamic that basically ruins Simon Furman for me as a writer. All the good writing he’s done, which I’ve tried so hard to focus on up ’til now, is undermined by this aspect, which makes me feel depressed and angry whenever I think about the last year of the comic.

Hooray for cat pics!

I thought that poster at the bottom was Underbase Starscream at first!

Transformation 321: RIP Zarak.

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