Transformation: A Handy Autobot.

16/8/2013

Well, just look at the image of scared and screaming robots. This week I cover the beginning of Uncle Bob's best regarded and darkest story, as we return to Cybertron and see the whole planet has gone to hell. It's a long one this week so buckle up for:

Return to Cybertron Part 1: The Smelting Pool! Part 1

5 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

16/8/2013 02:50:17 pm

I wonder how many contemporary readers realised that Scrounge and Straxus were comic-only characters instead of "toys only available abroad" ones like Perceptor and Blaster. It may have been a shock to see their fates.

And although you've gone into the point in an essay elsewhere, I'll add I'm another who thinks the whole "four million years" rarely works in TF fiction once Cybertron is reintroduced. It strains credibility that it could have been in such a state of affairs for so long (though the cartoon going from very low on energy to even lower is sillier). Oddly I think Dreamwave handled it best with its long shutdown.

Stuart

16/8/2013 03:34:53 pm

Yeah, the non-toy character Vs. character with a toy the U.K. didn't get is something I'm (hopefully) going to go into around the time of the introduction of the Wreckers.

But generally I think that most of the young readers didn't think of the comic in terms of it being a toy promotion, more it being a comic/cartoon that had some toys made of it, so there wasn't that automatic assumption that every character must be based around a toy (tellingly, IIRC a lot of the letters on the subject are along the lines of "Will character X be getting a toy?" rather than "Where is the toy for character X?").

As per the four million years thing, I do fully agree it's never been properly used, and that there this issue could have been exactly the same if it had been two years since the Ark left Cybertron.

But, like you say, I've talked about that at the Archive (and to be honest, after doing so many Transformations I'm not 100% sure whether I've spoken at length on the subject here before, I suspect trying hard not to repeat myself is going to be more and more of a problem as I go on) and with a very, very packed issue that was the easiest thing to drop even though my initial thinking was to go into more depth on it.

Ryan F

16/8/2013 03:46:30 pm

Love the comment about how the movie has had a big influence. It kinda steals the thunder a bit from my own notes in a few weeks' time, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed it. See also how Beachcomber's alt mode here is basically Kup. However, I think I'm right in saying that the first time Cybertron was shown with two moons was 'Next best thing to being there' where it was shown as a hologram thingy. And wow! James Roberts! That's amazing!

Stuart

16/8/2013 04:14:34 pm

If you want James Roberts to hug you, give him peanut M&M's.

Having just checked, though I think it's fair enough to regard them as moons now because of subsequent continuity, I don't think the two white balls around the hologram of Cybertron were intended to represent moons at the time. For starters,the both have several smaller white balls circling round them.

I think (and this is just a guess rather than certain knowledge) they're meant to represent some sort of lens-flare style visual caused by the hologram generator rather than anything "real".

Felicity

28/10/2019 12:46:47 am

You point out a really good connection I hadn’t made before, that when Blaster later hooks up with Bumblebee (as Goldbug), he is in a sense getting another partner who is a smaller, weaker Autobot with a yellow paint job.

I also hadn’t made the Terminator connection (despite Ferak being called a hunter-seeker!) or clued in that Straxus is running the equivalent of the Holocaust for Cybertron. Wow!

Transformation: A Handy Autobot.

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