Transformation 89: Down to Earth.

24/1/2014

It's the post party come down, and it comes down hard as Uncle Bob has a real off day as his total lack of enthusiasm for silly combiners shines through in my look at:

Aerialbots Over America! Part 1.

8 Comments

Simon Hall

26/1/2014 06:34:00 am

A fair review of what feels like an above average episode of the cartoon. On the odd occasion I picked up the weekly TF comic, I always seemed to miss the 'good' British stuff and end up with one of the US stories that had a totally different feel to them.

Reading the US and UK stories a separate runs in the Titan collections, its vey easy to take them as two separate versions of the same story. Bob's run on the US comics works better as a complete body of work, and its in these collected editions that I better appreciated his work.

Mixed in the with the more lively UK work, there's a definite feeling of the comic taking a bit of slump. Especially as the US stuff, with its ponderous narrative boxes and fairly static, leaden artwork seems to move at such a sedate pace.

A definite come down after Target 2006, for sure.,

Tim Roll-Pickering link

27/1/2014 08:21:54 am

Having first read this as a random find I didn't have the context of coming straight off the back of Target 2006 and so there was nothing to let me down. Consequentially it didn't feel too bad and the Insecticons provided some of the best moments. That cover's also a nice example of how to do good toy based art.

However the elephant in the room with the new toys is that the combiner concept may make for some great toys but doesn't provide the easiest story material. Just how much of each member is in the personality of the super robot? Is the super robot run by committee or are the minds actually fused together? What happens if one of the team is unavailable? What if a limb gets torn off in battle? Are the individual team members telepathic/computer linked? There's a lot of potential but limited space to explore it, particularly when the super robots are usually only deployed in battle scenes. All that leaves is just some big robots stonking about and overlarge teams where many of the members are similar. I think only Afterdeath really manages to solve the latter problem.

Stuart

28/1/2014 09:14:22 am

Here's a fun fact: Based on website visits Aerialbots Over America is near enough exactly half as popular as the Poster Magazine.

Tetsuro

29/10/2015 04:40:19 pm

I give up; what's the art goof you were referring to?

Also, I'm not sure why you didn't comment on it, but something about this comic has bothered me ever since I was a kid; namely the panels where the giant drill is introduced. The first panel makes it look like it's already drilling the dam, but then it isn't, and suddenly it is drilling it again...?

Stuart

29/10/2015 05:24:41 pm

My brain is probably addled (working nights means I've only just awoken), I can't spot a reference to an unexplained art goof. Can you give me a hand by pointing out where I mention it?

Felicity

27/10/2019 05:13:22 am

“Despite the bizarre art goof as Ricky enters the dam, Don Perlin gets some nice panels in.” [Just under the scan of the panel of Ratchet threatening Donny, at least on my screen.]

I’m curious to know what it was too! :-)

Stuart

27/10/2019 09:57:46 am

Ah, that would be him holding Megatron in plain sight as he goes past the guard...

Felicity

27/10/2019 05:17:57 am

Re: “A to Z”: This is just a minor pet peeve of mine, but why don’t designers of text understand that we read left to right, *then* top to bottom? If I knew nothing about the Transformers I would read it from top left, starting with the picture of a black-and-red F-15 robot, to top right, the next item being the word “Astrotrain.” A strong vertical dividing line between the two columns might have solved it. Also I don’t know if it being diagonal was a factor. :-)

Transformation 89: Down to Earth.

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