Transformation 323: Alive and Kicking.

20/7/2018

This week it's the most exciting development in the comic for years as the amazing Krok makes his memorable debut.

Plus, try the new extreme Optimus Prime diet, meet the new Autobot leader and read a perfick Combat Colin adventure.

It's all in the issue no one expected, Still Life! Part 1.

18 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

21/7/2018 12:37:25 am

I wonder if Prime thinks that Grimlock has learnt his lesson from before? And also considering how much the Autobot-Decepticon alliance was built on the back of the personal trust that had developed between Prime and Scorponok, maybe this is a deathbed realisation (helped by being exposed to the release of the Matrix) that the Autobots and Decepticons just can't easily fuse together and the former need a leader who won't let his guard down?

Probably because of that Combat Colin panel, I suddenly have visions of Prowl being voiced by David Jason as Delboy recounting his mother's numerous last words on her deathbed that always seemed to support him in arguments with Rodney, on everything from investing in markets that didn't exist then to always sending the younger brother to the fish & chip shop.

Primus was not exactly shown to be the benign whiter than white being of myth and if, as I speculated, he was deliberately seeding conflict to bring the alliance together at the last moment then he may also have built the civil war into the Transformers in order to breed them up as fighters for the necessary conflict. IIRC, not having the issue to hand, this doesn't actually go for the simple "Autobots Good, Decepticons Bad" but rather that they are fundamentally two separate peoples that cannot easily live together in spite of their shared experiences. It's a cynical view but in the real world this came out right at the time of the break-up of Yugoslavia.

This is, I think, the first time the comic has reach about the start of the new school year without any kind of booster effort - no cartoon tie-ins, major storylines, introductions of whole new lines of TFs (the Action Masters are hardly front and centre the way the Head/Target/Micromasters were) and so forth. Sadly this is another sign of the book limping to the end rather than deciding it's better to fight and die.

Ian Hewett link

21/7/2018 02:14:33 am

The point you mention about Primus instilling the civil war into them to make them ready for Unicron was something I explored in my fanfic The Science of Gods back around the year 2000 when I was administrator of Seibertron. I doubt it’s still there.:D

Stuart

21/7/2018 03:52:34 am

Grimlock does indeed call the two sides good and evil. You can put that down the bias, but Reg does again show it to be what Furman meant literally.

John D. link

24/7/2018 12:27:46 am

I agree with Tim here. I always interpreted Grimlock's dialogue as his own point of view, which was not necessarily correct, but perhaps expedient in the circumstances - "the planet appears to be wrecked and we need to get to try and find the Ark and get off it".

Will Rigby

21/7/2018 06:47:51 am

When you think about it Regeneration One doesn't need to exist, when most of the Marvel plot points were already resolves or just recycled from the Generation 2 comic.

J'mie

23/7/2018 12:05:46 am

I was genuinely hoping RG1 would be a nostalgia-fest for the long-time reader that cleared up minor loose ends like the Roadjammers, the Mechanic, what happened to the other Powermasters, a better finale for Ratbat (the best Decepticon leader in the series), and other easily-forgotten but fun aspects of the original series. It was such a waste, I think some of the fans or fans-turned-pro could've handled it better.

John D. link

24/7/2018 12:34:48 am

Given the rather dreary and spaced out storylines of Regeneration One, the motivations behind it are at best unclear. I would have cringed at seeing the Roadjammers or Mechanic return - but you know, fair point, maybe that would have bene more faithful. Throwing the carefully established Marvel UK continuity in the bin was absolutely baffling. As Stu has said, Scorponok had been given a wonderful send off already. Letting Earth be mostly destroyed - because nobody could be bothered checking in - was incredibly at odds with the tone of the preceding stories. Andy Wildman delivered rushed art (I don't think he was helped by the too-modern and proficient colouring!) and jumped as soon as a better (presumably better paid?) gig came along. Etc.

Ryan F

21/7/2018 10:08:56 am

I think the easiest way to debunk the idea that the Autobot /Decepticon divide is a genetic one is simply to look at the past.

Carnivac and Catilla both switch sides, as does Jetfire, who was presumably built with ‘Decepticon genes’ by Shockwave. On the other side of the coin, we have Autobots such as Flame who are obviously evil.

And what does that do to the Decepticons’ origins? Rather than having always been two separate groups divided by genetics, stories such as ‘State Games’ shows Old Cybertron as being populated by a united people until the Decepticons rose to power.

I think in the Flame/Zombie arc it’s even stated outright that the trigger for war between the two factions is Megatron’s plan to move Cybertron. Surely if the populace were split into diametrically opposed ‘good’ and ‘evil’ factions, the war wouldn’t even need such a trigger?

It just comes out of nowhere and is a really, really bad idea. One of Furman’s biggest mistakes in his TF writing, IMHO.

Ryan F

21/7/2018 01:10:11 pm

And while I’m on the subject (as you can probably tell, this plot point is a huge bugbear of mine!), the idea that the Decepticons are simply evil due a genetic quirk, well... doesn’t that make them the tragic victims in all of this?

Imagine that, due to a genetic defect, you were cursed to go through life as a violent, sadistic despot? The Decepticons aren’t the villains here, they’re simply... living with a disability?!?

It just makes you retrospectively wonder why, if this genetic quirk is such common knowledge, it takes millions of years before a single Cybertronian scientist (Shockwave, in RG1) tries to do anything about it?

The Transformers are able to grow, shrink, combine, displace their mass, binary-bond, resurrect themselves from death, build space bridges, move planets, and have physics-defying weaponry such as fusion cannons, glass gass and torsion rifles. Why weren’t the Decepticons cured aeons ago?!? The whole thing is just nonsensical, and frankly a bit insulting that genetic defects / quirks / disabilities turn people evil.

It just reduces an interesting concept (the hows, whys, and motivations for the entire Transformer war) into the simplest, least interesting, and most banal “explanation” that it was possible to come up with.

I love Furman to bits, but some of his stuff just makes me want to strangle him sometimes.

Simon Hall

22/7/2018 12:20:29 pm

I'm only discovering Reg One through the Hachette partwork series and ... it does feel like the answer to a question no-one asked. I'd rather Furman had gone to town with a follow up to Generation 2 (still my favourite TF run) than worrying about the original Headmaster Heads (Budiansky's idea of them remaining in contact with their bodies by remote control or whatever makes no sense given how we see Spike/Fortress Maximus relationship work, for example) and getting into some silly genetics based idea for good vs evil.

I do enjoy these last few issues of Transformers for the reasons Stuart has outlined - the war ending because there's no resources and the planet is f**ked is both honest and blackly comical. Prowl's surmonising is a bit grating, but I enjoy him for being a priggish stick-in-the mud. And yes, Grimlock was probably the best choice for leader. As we'll soon see! Always a bit curious as to why we never saw Ultra Magnus in the US Marvel stories...

Ryan F

22/7/2018 12:52:45 pm

The reason that the future movie cast (not just Magnus, but also Springer, Galvatron, Arcee, Wheelie etc) were never used by Budiansky is simply that he didn’t like them!

Bob named and developed personalities for every Transformer up to the point that he left the comic, and the only exceptions were the movie cast, who were developed by Sunbow.

As such, Bob was reticent to focus on characters that he didn’t personally have a hand in creating. I think the only exceptions were those Movie characters that were later repurposed as Targetmasters (Hot Rod, Cyclonus etc.), where his hand was forced by Hasbro, who insisted they be included in the comic.

Remember, in 86 the third season of the cartoon was in full swing (and focussed primarily on the movie cast), meaning that the cartoon did most of the work in showcasing these toys, which meant that the comic didn’t have to (with the honourable exception of the Big Broadcast fill-in issue).

John D. link

24/7/2018 12:25:16 am

I don't think it's fair to say Bob Budiansky didn't like Ultra Magnus etc. Rather, they were active in "the future", and he was probably finding it hard enough introducing whatever Hasbro needed introduced without also trying to include toys Hasbro felt were being advertised adequately elsewhere - and which were from a whole different timeline (which would have needed explaining). Simon Furman spotted a gap and made a good job of developing stories within it. I wonder if this was with the express consent of Hasbro UK as the amount of Movie toys seemed pretty high (it was easier to get Wheelie than a Dinobot, from my recollection).

JeremiahEcks

22/3/2025 07:54:23 am

@John D - not to be contrary but didn't Budiansky openly say he disliked them atva convention?

Charles RB

22/7/2018 04:17:35 pm

Grimlock as leader makes perfect sense after Earthforce - he did an okay job there, he's got all his Earthforce buddies around, Prowl did help keep him on track there. The fact Earthforce isn't in continuity with Still Life is the problem and I have to assume Furman, having spent a year writing okayish-leader-Grimmy in the UK as well as sensible brave warrior Grimlock in the US, forgot this wouldn't make as much sense to people who'd only seen half of it.

This also shows Marvel Prowl is a very different chap to IDW, where he's a by-the-book prig but he's not a dodgy geezer. IDW Prowl would have said Prime wants Grimlock to support and help this other leader that he totally named, who just so happens to be someone Prowl is friends with/has something on

Cradok

27/7/2018 12:47:47 pm

This is where my newsagent started getting my subscription in regularly again, at least for a couple of months. I've got everything from here to 330, missing only the last two issues. As such, this was the last new Transformers run for me until I started college in 2000, so a lot of what goes on in these next eight issues forms a lot of what I think of when certain things are mentioned. This - along with Earthforce to a lesser degree - is what I think of for Prowl, for example.

Felicity

31/12/2019 03:10:54 am

Is the lyric “Where do we go from here?” from “Looking for Satellites” by David Bowie? That’s what started playing in my head when I read it, but it sounds like a common phrase that could be from dozens of songs.

The extra words that Prowl relayed to Grimlock from Prime, I always took to be implied by Prime, knowing that Prowl would know what he meant about what an Autobot leader had to understand.

I mean, hey, if you want to get technical, Prime never actually named Grimlock as leader. He just said “Tell Grimlock. Make him understand.” Prowl could have interpreted this to mean anything he wanted. The fact that he was honest enough to go with the interpretation that Prime meant, instead of making up his own mind, is a testament to his moral fibre.

It’s amazing Bludgeon was leader at all, and before him, Thunderwing, and before him Scorponok, and before him, Ratbat, because all of them seem way too weird and oddball to be the Decepticon leader character. After all, they don’t even turn into guns!

The idea that Decepticons are just genetically evil makes me think of “Evil brain impulses!” from the episode “Microbots.”

This does raise the question of how a supposedly good god like Primus could create evil beings. A question that theologians wrestle with in the real world too. Tim Roll-Pickering and Ian Hewett’s theory of Primus deliberately subjecting them to millions of years of war to make them fighters is a cool explanation. It reminds me of a cool 1980s “Twilight Zone” episode called “A Small Talent for War.”

This is one area where the cartoon has fewer problems. The Decepticons are more warlike because they were designed to be military hardware; the Autobots had to work at being soldiers because they were designed to be consumer goods. No one is genetically evil, though if a Megatron or an Optimus Prime goes to Vector Sigma and makes a request, I guess they can be programmed to be good or evil.

I never realised Grimlock’s neck was Nucleon-immobilised during his conversation with Prowl! I’ll have to re-read that part with that in mind.

Toilet stall doors must look different in England!

Ryan F

31/12/2019 10:19:11 am

See, I saw “Where do we go from here” and immediately thought of ‘Love Plus One’ by Haircut One Hundred.

Stuart.

31/12/2019 11:21:07 am

Honestly...

https://youtu.be/7XdAQpq_1Xw

Transformation 323: Alive and Kicking.

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