Transformation 93: Mistletoe and Wine.

21/2/2014

Merry Christmas and a happy new year 1987!

Jetfire has some vital and important questions to ask, starting with, why does Prowl only ever do anything in James Hill scripts?

All in the special seasonal issue (and 100th Transformation!) that is The Gift!

Look out for the '86 Annual and Collected Comics entries before next Friday.

9 Comments

snowkatt

21/2/2014 08:22:46 pm

i never really cared for this cover
not only is it divorced from the contents ina typical modern comic way but the art also seems stilted as well

1987 also seems to show the american comics slide in to irrelevance
there are quite a few good to decent comics but none of them can hold a candle to the uk output

even headmasters which budiansky seemed the most enthusiastic about is mostly middeling its quite obvious fatigue is setting in

and it only gets worse in 88
even though i like most 87 american comics there is a noticable decline

anyway this issue is a notciable fluff piece so much fluff i actually tend to forget it excists untill i read it again

prowl shows first signs of his pricktitude which creeps back in to modern comics with bumblebee's wishy washy leadership ( something im getting rather tired off ) in dark cybertron ( which so far is dull the lead up to it was better part 9 was actually quite good btu thats part 9 of a 12 part story ! )

inoffensive but wholly forgettable is the best i can say about issue 93

and for the next two weks we are stuck with beavis and butthead
uhuhuhuuhuhuh

Chris Chapman

21/2/2014 11:42:00 pm

Agree that generally 1986 was generally a poor one for the US comic, but it still had The Smelting Pool/Bridge to Nowhere, didn't it? They certainly weren't fluff pieces.

Plus, Furman obviously rather admired them as we'll see in the Prey saga thong in a few weeks.

snowkatt

22/2/2014 12:47:14 am

come to think off it other then the smelting pool and the bridge to nowhere
the 1986 offerings have been rather poor compared to 1984 1985 and even 1987

87 is even better then the 86 offerings for the US comic
after that fatigue sets in though and 88 is abysmal

Stuart

22/2/2014 02:10:54 am

Damn you Chapman, you're right, typical of me to forget to mention the best American story of the year in my summing up of '86.

I think Snowkatt and I are going to disagree on the joys of Runabout and Runamuck...

Tim Roll-Pickering link

22/2/2014 01:07:26 pm

I'm not sure Only Fools and Horses is the best thing to be compared to for Christmas 1986 - A Royal Flush is widely considered the worst episode of all including by star David Jason and creator the late John Sullivan. It shows lead character Delboy in a bad light and was actually re-edited for later repeats & the main DVD release to try and undo some of the damage.

The Gift is different but I feel it also lets the lead down - an Autobot is upset because he finds his instinct is to protect the innocents first? I can see what the story's aiming for but it's not quite there - Cold Comfort And Joy will tread similar ground but much more effectively (but then I first read that one as a child and this one only in adulthood when the Titan trades reached it). Most of the continuity is good but it does create problems that the Special Teams debut is recent to Christmas yet was set in July, yet another reason to have relettered Aerialbots over America to Thanksgiving.

Stuart

22/2/2014 06:57:43 pm

But... it's still better than a Savile hosted Top of the Pops right? :o

Simon Hall

23/2/2014 01:13:30 am

...reading this blog and the comments, I've just realised how minor continuity issues don't actually bother me. In my child-like and simplistic view of the world (and Transformers comics) things are either good or they are bad.

I like this story. Mainly for the characterisation. Again, the weekly pace does mean the UK comic generally trumps the US book on this front, giving the characters a bit of space to let their personalities show. I just liked that this was a rather sweet Christmas story (better than Christmas Breaker, anyway). I first read this in Collected Comics #something something when these stories were all relatively fresh (I say that, but they were anything up to five years old by the time they were reprinted) so the broad context of the piece remains for me and I enjoy it for what it is.

Griffiths art is nice as well, and its a bit of a shame we don't see more work from either him or James Hill (whom off the back of this and his work on the Annual might actually have been a better writer than Furman for the book - compare this to Furman's Enemy Within debut, for example...). Whatever happened to James Hill? what is he doing now? Is he happy? I hope so.

snowkatt

23/2/2014 02:55:28 am

james hill seems to have dropped off the earth

according tot his his last comic work was in 2006
but that may be a wholly different james hill
http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Credit.aspx?id=3dfc0f08-7992-4adc-81a2-daf0857ba171

mike colins however is on deviantart and you could ask him if he knows http://www.mikecollins.deviantart.com/

or if you dont have deviant i could ask in your stead if you like

Stuart

23/2/2014 08:09:46 am

It doesn't go into specifics, but the interview with him in the Classics UK 2 book mentions 25 years of working with licensed properties, seemingly mostly in an editorial/development role. Not only does he think a story as important as State Games to the background of a franchise would be rejected by the property owner out of hand in brought in by an outside writer now, it'd actually be his job to reject it.

Generally continuity niggles don't bother me hugely (though amongst consenting adults they're always fun to point out and discuss) but it'd be nice if comics only published weeks apart could get the details right.

Agreed it would have been nice to see how Griffiths would have developed on the series, other than a few covers his only other TF work is inking the first issue of the Pannini Armada comic, which isn't the send off anyone deserves.

Transformation 93: Mistletoe and Wine.

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives

Categories