BackStreet's Back, Alright?
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? Do You Really Want to Make Me Cry?
The Transformers Annual 1989.
Comic Stories:
Destiny of the Dinobots!
Dreadwing Down!
The Chain Gang!
Text Stories:
The Quest!
Trigger-Happy! Part 1.
Trigger-Happy! Part 2.
Aww No! A human! I’ve had it up to here with you bothersome bipeds!
The 1989 Annual is something on a strange beast. On the surface it seems to repeat the structure of last year’s book, even down to the Lee Sullivan cover alongside the similar shape to the stories. But even without knowing it’s the last book with original comic content (and indeed, the last colour UK stories full stop), there’s an oddly melancholy nostalgic air to things.
This may be down to the fact that this book is edited by Furman (under the Chris Francis name), probably after the point he knew he’d be leaving the role of the UK book. As well as the recap only going as far as Time Wars, art from this book was used in The Facts booklet given away with issue 200, suggesting a lot of this was already put to bed by the end of 1988, or around the time the Budiansky Offer was made. There’s certainly a lot of extended back references here that feel like the guy in charge looking back as he prepares to go face new challenges.
The Transformers Annual 1989.
Comic Stories:
Destiny of the Dinobots!
Dreadwing Down!
The Chain Gang!
Text Stories:
The Quest!
Trigger-Happy! Part 1.
Trigger-Happy! Part 2.
Aww No! A human! I’ve had it up to here with you bothersome bipeds!
The 1989 Annual is something on a strange beast. On the surface it seems to repeat the structure of last year’s book, even down to the Lee Sullivan cover alongside the similar shape to the stories. But even without knowing it’s the last book with original comic content (and indeed, the last colour UK stories full stop), there’s an oddly melancholy nostalgic air to things.
This may be down to the fact that this book is edited by Furman (under the Chris Francis name), probably after the point he knew he’d be leaving the role of the UK book. As well as the recap only going as far as Time Wars, art from this book was used in The Facts booklet given away with issue 200, suggesting a lot of this was already put to bed by the end of 1988, or around the time the Budiansky Offer was made. There’s certainly a lot of extended back references here that feel like the guy in charge looking back as he prepares to go face new challenges.
This starts with the initial text story, The Quest!, which like the opening of the last two Annuals is a thinly disguised history of the comic. Adam Reynolds doesn’t return however, meaning an entirely new framing sequence and the piece covering the entire history of the series rather than just updating on what’s happened in the last year.
At some unspecified point in the future, alien child Dicet has a school report on a major inter-planetary war. Deciding on Transformers he “Borrows” an experimental time machine to visit key moments of the conflict (oddly only up to the start of 1989), but after he returns to his home time and gets a bollocking for it, he worries that briefly interacting with Ultra Magnus on the volcano might have changed history in ways he can’t imagine as his father seems ever so slightly different...
Hey, maybe that explains the forthcoming Earthforce divide?
At a guess this uncredited piece was written by Furman as in previous years. Notably the covering of a major event Budiansky skipped in his stories—Optimus taking command of the Autobots back from Grimlock—feels very much like the sort of thing he would do. It’s also nicely written and has some fun “Alienisms” for the lead as he describes things (an unreliable narrator means minor differences in the end of Time Wars that were probably the result of this being written before the finale don’t matter so much either).
However, having to cover five years in five years means a lot of major things get left out—no Target: 2006—and as an attempt to bring potential new readers up to speed before jumping on the weekly some of the choices are a bit baffling. There’s no real need to cover the Volcano story in such depth but not mention the far more relevant to current events Underbase saga (which the UK team would have been aware of at the point this was put together). In many ways a more in-depth look at just the year between Annuals would have been more helpful, but by itself it’s an enjoyable piece, if not as strong as the previous two where the human character had more of an investment in the story of the invasion of his planet.
At some unspecified point in the future, alien child Dicet has a school report on a major inter-planetary war. Deciding on Transformers he “Borrows” an experimental time machine to visit key moments of the conflict (oddly only up to the start of 1989), but after he returns to his home time and gets a bollocking for it, he worries that briefly interacting with Ultra Magnus on the volcano might have changed history in ways he can’t imagine as his father seems ever so slightly different...
Hey, maybe that explains the forthcoming Earthforce divide?
At a guess this uncredited piece was written by Furman as in previous years. Notably the covering of a major event Budiansky skipped in his stories—Optimus taking command of the Autobots back from Grimlock—feels very much like the sort of thing he would do. It’s also nicely written and has some fun “Alienisms” for the lead as he describes things (an unreliable narrator means minor differences in the end of Time Wars that were probably the result of this being written before the finale don’t matter so much either).
However, having to cover five years in five years means a lot of major things get left out—no Target: 2006—and as an attempt to bring potential new readers up to speed before jumping on the weekly some of the choices are a bit baffling. There’s no real need to cover the Volcano story in such depth but not mention the far more relevant to current events Underbase saga (which the UK team would have been aware of at the point this was put together). In many ways a more in-depth look at just the year between Annuals would have been more helpful, but by itself it’s an enjoyable piece, if not as strong as the previous two where the human character had more of an investment in the story of the invasion of his planet.
From its title, you’d assume Furman was also the author of our first comic story, Destiny of the Dinobots! However, it’s actually a combined effort between Steve White (as plot, “Dinosaur Consultant” and colours no less) and Steve Allen on the actual writing.
It is however the only comic this year to tie properly into the weekly, as during 1990 Furman will pick up on Snarl having a terminal illness. It’s not known at this point if Furman gave them this plot point for future use or if he just liked the idea, but even with Snarl’s life at stake it feels rather small fry compared to the Galvatron links of the last two years.
The story opens in 1992 in The Savage Land—leading to a “See Issue 7” box, adding to the nostalgic feel—as the Dinobots are attacked by an unlikely team up of dinosaurs (considering they’re out of character for the story, you have to wonder why it needed a “Dinosaur Consultant”). It turns out Snarl is dying of corrodia gravis, which will basically freeze him up in his own body. Their plan was to get one of those memory crystal things Skids and company had their minds stored on (more old continuity!) from the shuttle that brought them to Earth and store his personality on there till they can make him a new body.
The crystal and various bits of equipment is missing though, and after a hunt and a fight with the shuttle’s weaponry (leading to an amusing “Cheek!” from Grimlock) they find a human palaeontologist, Professor Embray.
That’s one hell of a bad ass palaeontologist to have done all that, and like all fictional scientists he clearly knows All Science to be able to get alien technology working.
It turns out the Savage Land dinosaurs are dying, and obviously a crystal that was designed to store the personalities of alien robots is the one thing to keep their decline in check, leaving Grimlock with a moral quandary. Save Snarl or the dinosaurs?
Swoop (whist having a very Blackadder line of dialogue: “I’ve an idea so sneaky you could pin a purple badge on it and call it a Decepticon!”) has the solution though: Put Snarl’s mind in that of an actual Stegosaurus to keep it safe till they can fix him with a new body, creating a sad yet hopeful ending and—by accident or design—an explanation for Snarl not being in the film.
It’s largely a quite silly story despite the writing out of Snarl, but it’s also good fun and has some nicely written Dinobot moments that would convince you it was written by Furman if you weren’t paying attention to the credits. It even fits in terms of continuity, if you assume the attempted fix with the transfusion from Starscream we’ll see towards the end of the black and white era didn’t take and they had to look for another solution come early 1992.
On art Andy Wildman does OK, though his crying dinosaurs look a tad odd and if any story should have been drawn by Dan Reed in this book it should have been the giant monsters one.
It is however the only comic this year to tie properly into the weekly, as during 1990 Furman will pick up on Snarl having a terminal illness. It’s not known at this point if Furman gave them this plot point for future use or if he just liked the idea, but even with Snarl’s life at stake it feels rather small fry compared to the Galvatron links of the last two years.
The story opens in 1992 in The Savage Land—leading to a “See Issue 7” box, adding to the nostalgic feel—as the Dinobots are attacked by an unlikely team up of dinosaurs (considering they’re out of character for the story, you have to wonder why it needed a “Dinosaur Consultant”). It turns out Snarl is dying of corrodia gravis, which will basically freeze him up in his own body. Their plan was to get one of those memory crystal things Skids and company had their minds stored on (more old continuity!) from the shuttle that brought them to Earth and store his personality on there till they can make him a new body.
The crystal and various bits of equipment is missing though, and after a hunt and a fight with the shuttle’s weaponry (leading to an amusing “Cheek!” from Grimlock) they find a human palaeontologist, Professor Embray.
That’s one hell of a bad ass palaeontologist to have done all that, and like all fictional scientists he clearly knows All Science to be able to get alien technology working.
It turns out the Savage Land dinosaurs are dying, and obviously a crystal that was designed to store the personalities of alien robots is the one thing to keep their decline in check, leaving Grimlock with a moral quandary. Save Snarl or the dinosaurs?
Swoop (whist having a very Blackadder line of dialogue: “I’ve an idea so sneaky you could pin a purple badge on it and call it a Decepticon!”) has the solution though: Put Snarl’s mind in that of an actual Stegosaurus to keep it safe till they can fix him with a new body, creating a sad yet hopeful ending and—by accident or design—an explanation for Snarl not being in the film.
It’s largely a quite silly story despite the writing out of Snarl, but it’s also good fun and has some nicely written Dinobot moments that would convince you it was written by Furman if you weren’t paying attention to the credits. It even fits in terms of continuity, if you assume the attempted fix with the transfusion from Starscream we’ll see towards the end of the black and white era didn’t take and they had to look for another solution come early 1992.
On art Andy Wildman does OK, though his crying dinosaurs look a tad odd and if any story should have been drawn by Dan Reed in this book it should have been the giant monsters one.
The first part of our text story, Trigger-Happy!, is notable for not having Triggerhappy in it. Even as a cameo. Which feels odd. Instead it’s about our favourite Triggerbot, Backstreet.
Written by Ian Rimmer—adding to the old school reunion feel—this was clearly done in close consultation with Furman as it gives us a solid glimpse of where he expected at least the British stories (and possibly the American as well) to be by the end of 1989 had things behind the scenes not gotten so unpredictable.
So, in keeping with what we briefly saw in the Scorponok Aspects of Evil! story, the Decepticons are split into three factions led by Scopry, Shockwave and a newly calm and focused on his future as Galvatron Megatron. All whilst Optimus Prime and the Earth based Autobots try to keep them all in check. If the format of the weekly had never changed this is almost certainly where we would have ended up by December.
All of which is more interesting than the actual story, which mainly serves to show Ian Rimmer was a really good editor rather than a writer. Backstreet balls up a mission that causes Decepticon damage to a generic human town, leading Override to come down to hard on him and send him running off in a panic with threats of Optimus Prime having him terminated (though as the cliffhanger is Prime saying he may have to terminate Backstreet, this more accurate than anything).
Megatron plans to use the terrified Autobot to his advantage by both having his out of control actions turn the humans against the Autobots and to get him as a new recruit. Which seems a bit unlikely and suggests a more cordial human/Autobots relationship that would have been likely even in Furman’s alternate plan, but it does give us the best bit of the whole story as Backstreet destroys a human military convoy—presumably killing a lot of people—thinking they’re Combaticons.
However, it’s not all that engaging and the comic’s continued attempts to make us care about the Triggerbots always leave you feeling slightly baffled. You don’t for a second believe Prime will have him killed either, leaving no drama to events.
Illustrations are by Art Wetherell and Stephen Baskerville, including a great one of Prime doing a kung fu punch into his own hand.
Oh, and Autobot Scoop is in this first half. Remember that, it’s important.
Written by Ian Rimmer—adding to the old school reunion feel—this was clearly done in close consultation with Furman as it gives us a solid glimpse of where he expected at least the British stories (and possibly the American as well) to be by the end of 1989 had things behind the scenes not gotten so unpredictable.
So, in keeping with what we briefly saw in the Scorponok Aspects of Evil! story, the Decepticons are split into three factions led by Scopry, Shockwave and a newly calm and focused on his future as Galvatron Megatron. All whilst Optimus Prime and the Earth based Autobots try to keep them all in check. If the format of the weekly had never changed this is almost certainly where we would have ended up by December.
All of which is more interesting than the actual story, which mainly serves to show Ian Rimmer was a really good editor rather than a writer. Backstreet balls up a mission that causes Decepticon damage to a generic human town, leading Override to come down to hard on him and send him running off in a panic with threats of Optimus Prime having him terminated (though as the cliffhanger is Prime saying he may have to terminate Backstreet, this more accurate than anything).
Megatron plans to use the terrified Autobot to his advantage by both having his out of control actions turn the humans against the Autobots and to get him as a new recruit. Which seems a bit unlikely and suggests a more cordial human/Autobots relationship that would have been likely even in Furman’s alternate plan, but it does give us the best bit of the whole story as Backstreet destroys a human military convoy—presumably killing a lot of people—thinking they’re Combaticons.
However, it’s not all that engaging and the comic’s continued attempts to make us care about the Triggerbots always leave you feeling slightly baffled. You don’t for a second believe Prime will have him killed either, leaving no drama to events.
Illustrations are by Art Wetherell and Stephen Baskerville, including a great one of Prime doing a kung fu punch into his own hand.
Oh, and Autobot Scoop is in this first half. Remember that, it’s important.
The second comic, Dreadwing Down!, is the only credited contribution from Furman in the book, but oddly seeds nothing for the weekly and is instead a standalone piece of fluff.
The Decepticon Powermasters have stolen a super duper Nebulon power cell from HiQ that will stop them needing to eat all the time (another unexpected callback!), but HiQ had needed it to perform surgery on a human injured in a Transformers fight, meaning they have to pursue despite this no doubt being the fondest wish of eateries owners everywhere.
If it’s a Nebulon device you do have to wonder why Hitest and Throttle—or indeed any of the Powermasters—didn’t just grab one from Nebulos.
Still, Dreadwing is forced to crash into the sea by the Arielbots, and a pissed off Prime has to lead a Powermaster salvage mission where they fight the Seacons on their own turf and with only 30 minutes of air for the Nebulons (which seems like a severe design flaw in the suits, and are the Decepticon ones better as we’ve seen those guys in space?). Prime has Hi-Q and the other Autobot Nebulons retrieve the power source (which gets about three different names over the one story) and go back to the surface, with everyone assuming Prime has died without checking. He hasn’t because Hi-Q left the Decepticons Nebulons to drown (so their suits aren’t better then) and so the Seacons had to go save them. Which was nice of them. The emotional reunion is short lived however as Getaway has a good cry about rusting.
This is a rather lacking story and feels like Furman knocked it out very quickly. It’s also more in keeping with the style of the first couple of annuals where continuity is sacrificed on the alter of toy promotion as characters who could never have all hanged around together on Earth are all hanging around together on Earth. Dan Reed’s art is solid, even if it doesn’t give him a chance to show off at his best, but overall it’s easily skipped.
The Decepticon Powermasters have stolen a super duper Nebulon power cell from HiQ that will stop them needing to eat all the time (another unexpected callback!), but HiQ had needed it to perform surgery on a human injured in a Transformers fight, meaning they have to pursue despite this no doubt being the fondest wish of eateries owners everywhere.
If it’s a Nebulon device you do have to wonder why Hitest and Throttle—or indeed any of the Powermasters—didn’t just grab one from Nebulos.
Still, Dreadwing is forced to crash into the sea by the Arielbots, and a pissed off Prime has to lead a Powermaster salvage mission where they fight the Seacons on their own turf and with only 30 minutes of air for the Nebulons (which seems like a severe design flaw in the suits, and are the Decepticon ones better as we’ve seen those guys in space?). Prime has Hi-Q and the other Autobot Nebulons retrieve the power source (which gets about three different names over the one story) and go back to the surface, with everyone assuming Prime has died without checking. He hasn’t because Hi-Q left the Decepticons Nebulons to drown (so their suits aren’t better then) and so the Seacons had to go save them. Which was nice of them. The emotional reunion is short lived however as Getaway has a good cry about rusting.
This is a rather lacking story and feels like Furman knocked it out very quickly. It’s also more in keeping with the style of the first couple of annuals where continuity is sacrificed on the alter of toy promotion as characters who could never have all hanged around together on Earth are all hanging around together on Earth. Dan Reed’s art is solid, even if it doesn’t give him a chance to show off at his best, but overall it’s easily skipped.
The second part of Trigger-Happy! also isn’t up to much. Everyone—including Decepticon Scoop—winds up in an amusement park with Backstreet turning down Megatron’s offer of teaming up and redeeming himself by saving Optimus’ life. Amusingly this comes after a Gratuitous Movie Quote as Megatron declares “It’s over Prime!”. All Gratuitous Movie Quotes we’ve had in the decades since would be much improved by Backstreet awkwardly slotting himself into them.
Prime, now knowing Override was being a dick, them forgives Backstreet for his disobeying of orders and human killing. But only after doing the full Simon Cowell style “The termination...”
*Dramatic music, close up of contestant’s worried face. Cut to commercial break, come back from the adverts with a quick dramatic recap*
“...of Backstreet’s role as a solo look-out!”
The bastard.
Other than the Scoop thing, which is both endlessly hilarious (evil Scoop even gets to be in the illustrations!) and worrying in that this shifting between parts suggests a certain lack of care in Furman’s editing, this is pretty poor stuff. Luckily the text stories in the final two books will be much more memorable.
Prime, now knowing Override was being a dick, them forgives Backstreet for his disobeying of orders and human killing. But only after doing the full Simon Cowell style “The termination...”
*Dramatic music, close up of contestant’s worried face. Cut to commercial break, come back from the adverts with a quick dramatic recap*
“...of Backstreet’s role as a solo look-out!”
The bastard.
Other than the Scoop thing, which is both endlessly hilarious (evil Scoop even gets to be in the illustrations!) and worrying in that this shifting between parts suggests a certain lack of care in Furman’s editing, this is pretty poor stuff. Luckily the text stories in the final two books will be much more memorable.
The final comic strip (and also the last work on the franchise for a long time for writer Dan Abnett and the last we’ll be seeing from Dan Reed), Chain Gang!, continues the slightly irrelevant feeling.
In the most basic Transformers plot, Skullgrin, Bomb-Burst and Iguanus are attacking an oil rig for fuel. Three Autobot Pretenders (I neither know or care which and the story is right in front of me) try and stop them, and both sides must team up to stop a jet they’ve accidentally hit from crashing into the rig and killing them all, with the Autobots then sending the cons to prison.
It’s a nothing of a story that has only one genuinely funny moment at the end as Bomb-Burst is genuinely put out at being locked up after he helped out. Other than that though, it’s another one you can skip entirely. Though at least the Pretenders give Reed the chance to bow out on what he does best: Wibbly wobbly monsters.
In the most basic Transformers plot, Skullgrin, Bomb-Burst and Iguanus are attacking an oil rig for fuel. Three Autobot Pretenders (I neither know or care which and the story is right in front of me) try and stop them, and both sides must team up to stop a jet they’ve accidentally hit from crashing into the rig and killing them all, with the Autobots then sending the cons to prison.
It’s a nothing of a story that has only one genuinely funny moment at the end as Bomb-Burst is genuinely put out at being locked up after he helped out. Other than that though, it’s another one you can skip entirely. Though at least the Pretenders give Reed the chance to bow out on what he does best: Wibbly wobbly monsters.
The extra features are also very much in the style of the 1988 book. There’s a fiendish quiz where the answers page has art from the weekly with new dialogue (Prime and Galvatron are now arguing over who won the quiz) and various profiles of new toys. In this case the Race Car, Off-Road, Air Strike, Sports Car and Battle Patrols. The poor Micromasters aren’t worthy of individual write ups, each team instead getting a paragraph summing their general ethos up.
There are also posters mostly based on covers. These being Collected Comics 6 (appropriately just before Destiny of the Dinobots!); Magnus in the lava from 160 (presumably because The Quest! makes special mention of that moment) and a slightly random opening page to issue 185.
It’s fair to say that if the 1987 book is generally seen as the weakest of the original content Annuals, this is the most forgettable. None of the stories are especially strong, none really further the plots of the comic (bar one we don’t yet know is going to be a plot point) and despite the sense of a man looking backwards over his career it does feel like Furman was editing it out of a sense of obligation before his tenure ended. The next two books at least have a mystique thanks to their rarity and the impressive text stories. This is an empty and hallow experience.
Next up, and to finish both 1989 and the decade, it’s the Collected Comics of the year.
ISSUE 250
1989
COMMENT
There are also posters mostly based on covers. These being Collected Comics 6 (appropriately just before Destiny of the Dinobots!); Magnus in the lava from 160 (presumably because The Quest! makes special mention of that moment) and a slightly random opening page to issue 185.
It’s fair to say that if the 1987 book is generally seen as the weakest of the original content Annuals, this is the most forgettable. None of the stories are especially strong, none really further the plots of the comic (bar one we don’t yet know is going to be a plot point) and despite the sense of a man looking backwards over his career it does feel like Furman was editing it out of a sense of obligation before his tenure ended. The next two books at least have a mystique thanks to their rarity and the impressive text stories. This is an empty and hallow experience.
Next up, and to finish both 1989 and the decade, it’s the Collected Comics of the year.
ISSUE 250
1989
COMMENT