Had the Guts, Got the Glory.
Issue 5: Lost in Space Part 3: Ironhide/Movie Prequel Part 5/Beast Wars: The Gathering Part 5. 8th November 2007.
Surrender now, or you’ve got yourself a problem!
As a lover of puns, I do have to give credit to whoever put the cover together for the “STEEL YOURSELF” tag-line. Because Ironhide is, like, made of steel.
Probably.
It works for me anyway.
Surrender now, or you’ve got yourself a problem!
As a lover of puns, I do have to give credit to whoever put the cover together for the “STEEL YOURSELF” tag-line. Because Ironhide is, like, made of steel.
Probably.
It works for me anyway.
The third part of Lost in Space has a distinct advantage over the previous issues in that the featured character, which would be Ironhide if you haven’t guessed, is incredibly close to what is regarded as his “Classic” Generation One persona. Gruff, tough and looking for a fight.
The film version is funnier, getting some of the best gags with his overwhelming urge to kill everything, but Furman writing what he knows generally works here.
The story itself makes the overall title of this arc something of a misnomer (again suggesting it was a last minute addition) as we join Ironhide after he is no longer lost in space. Some time has passed and, after wandering around various planets, he has picked up Ratchet’s message from the third issue and is on his way to a rendezvous.
A big sinister ship has caught up with him as he’s flying along, and start the story with him being sucked in by a tractor beam. With the wonderful revelation that his protoform mode has a really angry face.
The film version is funnier, getting some of the best gags with his overwhelming urge to kill everything, but Furman writing what he knows generally works here.
The story itself makes the overall title of this arc something of a misnomer (again suggesting it was a last minute addition) as we join Ironhide after he is no longer lost in space. Some time has passed and, after wandering around various planets, he has picked up Ratchet’s message from the third issue and is on his way to a rendezvous.
A big sinister ship has caught up with him as he’s flying along, and start the story with him being sucked in by a tractor beam. With the wonderful revelation that his protoform mode has a really angry face.
Inside some big aliens with a touch of the of the Egyptian to them insist they have detected traces of the Allspark on him and they want it back, as it was their creation that was stolen from them. And if they won’t answer his questions, they’ll rip it from his mind.
Luckily Ironhide has seen Flash Gordon and, like Dr. Zarkov, he knows the best way to resist mental torture is to flood your head will irrelevant memories. And because he’s a good Hasbro boy he makes sure to focus on an event that involves him leading a team made of some of the rereleased Energon toys that were put out because of the insatiable appetite for product.
Plus new characters Bumper and Slipstream (one of whom looks like G1 Gears), who almost uniquely for such non-toy boys are not born to die and make it to the end of the flashback.
Back in the day on Cybertron, Team Ironhide are attacking a Decepticon prison that turns out to be entirely automated because the ‘Con resources are spread pretty thin. Ironhide’s third rule of soldiering: Take nothing at face value.
This reminiscence of the rescue of Real Gear toy Longview makes Ironhide take that advice to heart, so he breaks free and starts blasting, revealing the aliens to be holograms. Turns out the ship had been found by much less impressive scavengers (not to be confused with Scavengers) who used an Allspark detector aboard to locate the residue of it in Ironhide and hoped to use him, via the projections, to get and strip the holy artefact.
Luckily Ironhide has seen Flash Gordon and, like Dr. Zarkov, he knows the best way to resist mental torture is to flood your head will irrelevant memories. And because he’s a good Hasbro boy he makes sure to focus on an event that involves him leading a team made of some of the rereleased Energon toys that were put out because of the insatiable appetite for product.
Plus new characters Bumper and Slipstream (one of whom looks like G1 Gears), who almost uniquely for such non-toy boys are not born to die and make it to the end of the flashback.
Back in the day on Cybertron, Team Ironhide are attacking a Decepticon prison that turns out to be entirely automated because the ‘Con resources are spread pretty thin. Ironhide’s third rule of soldiering: Take nothing at face value.
This reminiscence of the rescue of Real Gear toy Longview makes Ironhide take that advice to heart, so he breaks free and starts blasting, revealing the aliens to be holograms. Turns out the ship had been found by much less impressive scavengers (not to be confused with Scavengers) who used an Allspark detector aboard to locate the residue of it in Ironhide and hoped to use him, via the projections, to get and strip the holy artefact.
Ironhide smashes the tracer—but oddly still leaves the space pirates in charge of an amazingly advances ship—and flies off wondering what the original aliens connection to his species was.
Which sounds like foreshadowing, but as it’ll never be mentioned again, I suspect Furman was just having a little fun here with no expectation the films would wind up delving (albeit oddly) into the origin story.
Despite being the second issue in a row to deal with hallucinations and mind games on someone who just wants to shoot things, Ironhide himself being my favourite of the secondary Autobots from the 07 film means I still enjoy this a great deal, and though the Energon toys do not fit the aesthetic of the ILM effects they still nicely expand the world.
Guido Guidi (of whom we’ll be seeing more in the reprints) does his usual strong job on art, probably coming closest of anyone working on the book yet to making the lead feel like their CGI model. What is especially interesting is one of the fake aliens, with his three points hat and beard, would seem to be an influence on the later IDW character of Mortilus that he designed, who also has a link to the origin of the Transformers.
Which sounds like foreshadowing, but as it’ll never be mentioned again, I suspect Furman was just having a little fun here with no expectation the films would wind up delving (albeit oddly) into the origin story.
Despite being the second issue in a row to deal with hallucinations and mind games on someone who just wants to shoot things, Ironhide himself being my favourite of the secondary Autobots from the 07 film means I still enjoy this a great deal, and though the Energon toys do not fit the aesthetic of the ILM effects they still nicely expand the world.
Guido Guidi (of whom we’ll be seeing more in the reprints) does his usual strong job on art, probably coming closest of anyone working on the book yet to making the lead feel like their CGI model. What is especially interesting is one of the fake aliens, with his three points hat and beard, would seem to be an influence on the later IDW character of Mortilus that he designed, who also has a link to the origin of the Transformers.
The fifth part of the Movie Prequel undergoes an odd format change. The original first US issue was entirely narrated by Bumblebee, and the second starts by looking as if it is going to do the same with Megatron. But he almost immediately gets defeated by the one true nemesis of all versions of Megatron and Galvatron: Ice and snow. As he sinks below the ice and shuts down (though its careful to say this is down to him having used up all his power before landing rather than because it’s a bit cold), the issue winds up losing its narrative structure.
Which should be a problem, but instead things pick up as the awkward voice-over is dumped, and instead we see Captain Archibald Witwicky (the assumption by the team seems to have been he would be played by a considerably younger actor that the much missed and then in his mid-70’s W. Morgan Sheppard. More of this in the weeks to come) and his sick of constant bad luck crew finding something under the ice in 1897.
We then cut to 1898 and an asylum where, the frankly ripped, Witwicky is interrogated about the thing he saw that sent him mad and blind, but not before he’d drawn a load of cubes.
His visitors are happy he’s not a credible witness and can be locked away forever, with his crew being easy to sweep under the carpet as well. It turns out, as they decide to send his affects (including a pair of glasses) back to the family these two Victorian gentlemen live in a house full of aliens in display cabinets (which pretty much contradicts the film) and at house number 7 (which I’ll kindly put down to a coincidence as in the film Sector 7 are named for the seven founding families).
This again shows a major problem with doing prequels, all this information is conveyed quickly and efficiently within the film in such a way you don’t really need to see it in-depth. And the magic of ILM is capable of creating a considerably more striking Arctic wilderness than one man and a pencil can.
Which should be a problem, but instead things pick up as the awkward voice-over is dumped, and instead we see Captain Archibald Witwicky (the assumption by the team seems to have been he would be played by a considerably younger actor that the much missed and then in his mid-70’s W. Morgan Sheppard. More of this in the weeks to come) and his sick of constant bad luck crew finding something under the ice in 1897.
We then cut to 1898 and an asylum where, the frankly ripped, Witwicky is interrogated about the thing he saw that sent him mad and blind, but not before he’d drawn a load of cubes.
His visitors are happy he’s not a credible witness and can be locked away forever, with his crew being easy to sweep under the carpet as well. It turns out, as they decide to send his affects (including a pair of glasses) back to the family these two Victorian gentlemen live in a house full of aliens in display cabinets (which pretty much contradicts the film) and at house number 7 (which I’ll kindly put down to a coincidence as in the film Sector 7 are named for the seven founding families).
This again shows a major problem with doing prequels, all this information is conveyed quickly and efficiently within the film in such a way you don’t really need to see it in-depth. And the magic of ILM is capable of creating a considerably more striking Arctic wilderness than one man and a pencil can.
Beast Wars is largely given over to a big fight between the Maximals and Predacons as Optimus Minor sneaks aboard the remains of Ravage’s ship.
We do get a conversation between Razorbeast and B’Boom about the former having a Predacon spark signature that revives the Furman favourite idea that Decepticons/Predacons are evil on a genetic level, with Razorbeast having had to undergo soul surgery to hide himself as one. Which is slightly different from what the cartoon did, where Megatron’s reprogramming of protoforms felt more like extreme (and not 100% reliable) brainwashing.
The fights however do give us some of the more pleasingly nuts fun of Beast Wars, as a frog fights a techno-ram and we get a good hard look at a mandrill’s big red bum. The issue ends with things looking bleak for Razorbeast as Magmatron, now, inevitably, going “Yes”, advancing on him.
We do get a conversation between Razorbeast and B’Boom about the former having a Predacon spark signature that revives the Furman favourite idea that Decepticons/Predacons are evil on a genetic level, with Razorbeast having had to undergo soul surgery to hide himself as one. Which is slightly different from what the cartoon did, where Megatron’s reprogramming of protoforms felt more like extreme (and not 100% reliable) brainwashing.
The fights however do give us some of the more pleasingly nuts fun of Beast Wars, as a frog fights a techno-ram and we get a good hard look at a mandrill’s big red bum. The issue ends with things looking bleak for Razorbeast as Magmatron, now, inevitably, going “Yes”, advancing on him.
The free gift (and I forgot to say that last issue came with some badges) is the first of many, many disc shooters.
The Smackdown feature shakes things up by being a human Vs. Decepticon fight, between Sam Witwicky and Frenzy. Though, despite trying to make Same seem a bad ass who knows how to “Physically impose himself on problems” and seemingly messed up Trent, without Mikaela to save his ass this time it’s clearly a Frenzy victory.
The big competition this month is for season 2 of Beast Machines, and requires you to know what species of spider Blackarachnia turns into. Which is, though you could make a pretty reasonable guess from the name, a slightly tricky one for kids who haven’t seen the original Beast Wars cartoon. Hell, even season 1 of Beast Machines isn’t much help considering she could be just about anything in that.
Character Profile looks at Jazz, claiming he’s adept at avoiding injury.
Honestly, I’m not saying anything. Got to leave something to scrape off the bottom of the barrel next week.
Top Gear has competitions for a mistransformed Blackout and some Fast Action Battlers and promotion for IDW’s Art of Transformers book, emphasising the artists featured who have already worked on TFUK.
Mech Mail shows TFWiki (in its very early form at this point) was already the first stop resource for anyone working on official product as there would be otherwise no need to answer 7 year old Daniel Richie of Ireland’s question about the name of the female Decepticon in Cybertron by including Thunderblast’s Japanese name of Chromia as an alternative.
The Smackdown feature shakes things up by being a human Vs. Decepticon fight, between Sam Witwicky and Frenzy. Though, despite trying to make Same seem a bad ass who knows how to “Physically impose himself on problems” and seemingly messed up Trent, without Mikaela to save his ass this time it’s clearly a Frenzy victory.
The big competition this month is for season 2 of Beast Machines, and requires you to know what species of spider Blackarachnia turns into. Which is, though you could make a pretty reasonable guess from the name, a slightly tricky one for kids who haven’t seen the original Beast Wars cartoon. Hell, even season 1 of Beast Machines isn’t much help considering she could be just about anything in that.
Character Profile looks at Jazz, claiming he’s adept at avoiding injury.
Honestly, I’m not saying anything. Got to leave something to scrape off the bottom of the barrel next week.
Top Gear has competitions for a mistransformed Blackout and some Fast Action Battlers and promotion for IDW’s Art of Transformers book, emphasising the artists featured who have already worked on TFUK.
Mech Mail shows TFWiki (in its very early form at this point) was already the first stop resource for anyone working on official product as there would be otherwise no need to answer 7 year old Daniel Richie of Ireland’s question about the name of the female Decepticon in Cybertron by including Thunderblast’s Japanese name of Chromia as an alternative.
The lengthiest letter to date comes from Eddy P, who, from the mentions of his brother Ben and own art talent, I was able to use my amazing detective skills on to work out is another familiar name in modern fandom, Ed Pirrie. Who, unlike Ben, is not ascribed a random fake age. His suggestions for artists from the old days who could come back includes Staz, leading to a wait and see response.
P also suggests changing the format of the book to the more prestigious card covered format used for the DC reprints the title has been advertising since issue 1, but this gets a more negative response as the book is already something of an outlier for a title designed to sell tat to kids.
Before we hit the big issue I think you’ve all been waiting for next week, there were other spin-offs than comics to the 07 film. But does the first to be covered here stand a ghost of a chance?
ISSUE 4
2007
KO-FI
COMMENT
P also suggests changing the format of the book to the more prestigious card covered format used for the DC reprints the title has been advertising since issue 1, but this gets a more negative response as the book is already something of an outlier for a title designed to sell tat to kids.
Before we hit the big issue I think you’ve all been waiting for next week, there were other spin-offs than comics to the 07 film. But does the first to be covered here stand a ghost of a chance?
ISSUE 4
2007
KO-FI
COMMENT