Start of the Road.

A baron featureless desert- and I'm being chased by someone who can become a fighter jet! This may call for a major reassessment of my loyalties!
Issue 13: The Enemy Within! Part 1. 9th March 1985.
So here I am, back from Auto Assembly 2012, relaxed and chilled out and considerably lighter in the wallet. My main comic related purchase was some original Jeff Anderson art from Enemy Action, which, rest assured, I will be gloating over when we get that far.
But, in terms of relevance to this article, one of the main guests was Simon Furman. I've been going to Auto Assembly since 2003 (and boy, hearing people talk about the 2009 convention as some dim and distant event made me feel old) and there's only been one year when they've held the convention that he hasn't been in attendance. It's entirely possible he turned up and sat in the hall by himself when it wasn't help in 2007. He's almost part of the Transformers furniture, and it's extremely odd to think that there was a first time his name appeared in the credits of our favourite comic.
Another thing that's easy to forget with him being so ubiquitous, is how essential he was to the success of the book as well. Not just because of the strong run of stories and ideas he'll contribute in the years to come, but because as an editor as well as a writer he brought an editors sensibility to the book.
Why is this going to be important? If you look at the other Marvel UK books that presented American material interspersed with home grown there's more often than not a distinct lack of coordination. Both the UK Turtles and Real Ghostbusters comics had a much more haphazard approach, printing American issues in random orders and with absolutely no effort to link the original British strips into them. The only real precedent for the approach Transformers took was the Star Wars weekly, which- with it's robotic letters page answerer was obviously influential on it's sister title in more ways than one.
Furman, with the mindset of an editor (which he will formally become on the title in the future) was very clearly thinking in terms of “How does this work as a whole?” with a determination to make everything fit together. Up to this point Man of Iron has been done more along the lines of those other books with little concern for wider continuity. The new boy isn't going to change that straight away, but even in this very first issue there's a name check for Spider-Man. And he'll slowly use this two story arc to bring things back to where the American stories left them. Which will pave the way for a run of stories that will, up till the early 200's at least, present the entire Transformers world as an epic, unified whole.
Furman himself isn't very proud of his pre-Dinobot Hunt stories. As editor of the Titan reprint series in the early 2000's he actively stopped any of this material being included in their books. Which it has to be said, was somewhat unfair on the stories written by other people (poor old Man of Iron managed to be skipped twice as the American reprints didn't include it either). For the most part they’re not as bad as he thinks, there's one real stinker in those early stories and a couple of perfunctory ones but generally these are tales that range from strong to excellent. Certainly (and not unsurprisingly for a freelancer with a large number of credits) there will be the odd weaker story later on that did get the reprint treatment.
It would actually be understandable if The Enemy Within wasn't very good. A relatively inexperienced writer who hasn't worked with the characters before who likely wasn't viewing it as anything other than a stop gap rather than an audition for a full time job. We'll shortly see the some of the impact that the decision to go weekly will have but it's likely when this was written that there were still no thoughts in that direction meaning- once they created enough of a gap between the publication of the US issues and the need for them in the UK- there would have been no need for any more original British material after this little run.
But this opening instalment is actually very strong. And very quickly shows us a lot of the strengths Furman is going to bring to the book. First and foremost amongst them is his skill for doing “quick sketch” characterisations that rapidly establish our heroes and villains with a minimum of fuss and give them just enough depth for the reader to “get” them right off the bat. This is a hugely useful skill to have when writing a book with such a large cast that is constantly introducing new ones.
Issue 13: The Enemy Within! Part 1. 9th March 1985.
So here I am, back from Auto Assembly 2012, relaxed and chilled out and considerably lighter in the wallet. My main comic related purchase was some original Jeff Anderson art from Enemy Action, which, rest assured, I will be gloating over when we get that far.
But, in terms of relevance to this article, one of the main guests was Simon Furman. I've been going to Auto Assembly since 2003 (and boy, hearing people talk about the 2009 convention as some dim and distant event made me feel old) and there's only been one year when they've held the convention that he hasn't been in attendance. It's entirely possible he turned up and sat in the hall by himself when it wasn't help in 2007. He's almost part of the Transformers furniture, and it's extremely odd to think that there was a first time his name appeared in the credits of our favourite comic.
Another thing that's easy to forget with him being so ubiquitous, is how essential he was to the success of the book as well. Not just because of the strong run of stories and ideas he'll contribute in the years to come, but because as an editor as well as a writer he brought an editors sensibility to the book.
Why is this going to be important? If you look at the other Marvel UK books that presented American material interspersed with home grown there's more often than not a distinct lack of coordination. Both the UK Turtles and Real Ghostbusters comics had a much more haphazard approach, printing American issues in random orders and with absolutely no effort to link the original British strips into them. The only real precedent for the approach Transformers took was the Star Wars weekly, which- with it's robotic letters page answerer was obviously influential on it's sister title in more ways than one.
Furman, with the mindset of an editor (which he will formally become on the title in the future) was very clearly thinking in terms of “How does this work as a whole?” with a determination to make everything fit together. Up to this point Man of Iron has been done more along the lines of those other books with little concern for wider continuity. The new boy isn't going to change that straight away, but even in this very first issue there's a name check for Spider-Man. And he'll slowly use this two story arc to bring things back to where the American stories left them. Which will pave the way for a run of stories that will, up till the early 200's at least, present the entire Transformers world as an epic, unified whole.
Furman himself isn't very proud of his pre-Dinobot Hunt stories. As editor of the Titan reprint series in the early 2000's he actively stopped any of this material being included in their books. Which it has to be said, was somewhat unfair on the stories written by other people (poor old Man of Iron managed to be skipped twice as the American reprints didn't include it either). For the most part they’re not as bad as he thinks, there's one real stinker in those early stories and a couple of perfunctory ones but generally these are tales that range from strong to excellent. Certainly (and not unsurprisingly for a freelancer with a large number of credits) there will be the odd weaker story later on that did get the reprint treatment.
It would actually be understandable if The Enemy Within wasn't very good. A relatively inexperienced writer who hasn't worked with the characters before who likely wasn't viewing it as anything other than a stop gap rather than an audition for a full time job. We'll shortly see the some of the impact that the decision to go weekly will have but it's likely when this was written that there were still no thoughts in that direction meaning- once they created enough of a gap between the publication of the US issues and the need for them in the UK- there would have been no need for any more original British material after this little run.
But this opening instalment is actually very strong. And very quickly shows us a lot of the strengths Furman is going to bring to the book. First and foremost amongst them is his skill for doing “quick sketch” characterisations that rapidly establish our heroes and villains with a minimum of fuss and give them just enough depth for the reader to “get” them right off the bat. This is a hugely useful skill to have when writing a book with such a large cast that is constantly introducing new ones.

Ravage Vs. Starscream,
The opening scene in the Decepticon base gives us the most strongly defined characterisation any of the Transformers have thus far had. Coming off the back of the fairly taciturn Man of Iron having Megatron talk in paragraphs is almost enough to bring on culture shock.
Some of the stories we'll be seeing in the next year will; as revealed in James Roberts IDW notes; be very much inspired by the cartoon. Somewhat ironically considering how anti-the show the comic will later become. It'd be interesting to know if we're starting to see that influence here. It's impossible to read Starscream's dialogue without hearing Chris Latta's voice (somewhat unfortunately for the strain this causes on the vocal cords of your inner monologue). It's genuinely hard to tell if this is a deliberate result of Furman having already seen some of the series or if it's a coincidental result of the character's profile being followed closely for the first time and Latta had just nailed what was on the page with his performance.
Either way, it's worth noting that Starscream is going to be pretty much ignored by the comic for the best part of 200 issues. The American series will treat him as a background extra (and he'll spend a good chunk of it in a box) and his British appearances will be sporadic, a decent supporting role in Target: 2006 and a one-off Christmas story being about it before the Underbase Saga.
This story will, by happy coincidence, explain why he's such a meek background presence until after Megatron is “dead”, and why we'll see so little of his backstabbing and treachery. Making it possibly the very first example of a British story adding some rich extra details to the American series.
What's really nice about this opening is how smartly Megatron and Starscream are written. Starscream is successfully manipulating the other Decepticons to agree with him whilst Megatron- very much a political animal working to keep the troops he needs on side- is equally manipulative in trying to give hie lieutenant enough rope to hang himself. These pages are a joy to read, especially when the all to often ignored Ravage (a rarity in being a smart buy entirely loyal Decepticon) speaks up and acts as Megatron's sounding board for his plan.
The heart of the issue is then taken up with a duel between Starscream and Ravage. In a nice touch there's mutual respect between them; Ravage acknowledges Starscream's plan to lure the Autobots into a massive battle is a good one and Starscream seems entirely genuine in his initial reluctance in having to hunt Ravage down once he realises he's been overheard (which is why you should never speak your plans out loud to yourself when alone).
The subsequent fight in the desert in beautifully drawn by John Ridgeway (sadly on his last issue), and sees both Decepticons using sensible tactics and their specific powers to try and bring each other down, with Ravage eventually loosing. And, again in a nice touch, Starscream is genuinely sad at having seemingly buried the spy under a ton of rocks, but that now means there's no going back.
Some of the stories we'll be seeing in the next year will; as revealed in James Roberts IDW notes; be very much inspired by the cartoon. Somewhat ironically considering how anti-the show the comic will later become. It'd be interesting to know if we're starting to see that influence here. It's impossible to read Starscream's dialogue without hearing Chris Latta's voice (somewhat unfortunately for the strain this causes on the vocal cords of your inner monologue). It's genuinely hard to tell if this is a deliberate result of Furman having already seen some of the series or if it's a coincidental result of the character's profile being followed closely for the first time and Latta had just nailed what was on the page with his performance.
Either way, it's worth noting that Starscream is going to be pretty much ignored by the comic for the best part of 200 issues. The American series will treat him as a background extra (and he'll spend a good chunk of it in a box) and his British appearances will be sporadic, a decent supporting role in Target: 2006 and a one-off Christmas story being about it before the Underbase Saga.
This story will, by happy coincidence, explain why he's such a meek background presence until after Megatron is “dead”, and why we'll see so little of his backstabbing and treachery. Making it possibly the very first example of a British story adding some rich extra details to the American series.
What's really nice about this opening is how smartly Megatron and Starscream are written. Starscream is successfully manipulating the other Decepticons to agree with him whilst Megatron- very much a political animal working to keep the troops he needs on side- is equally manipulative in trying to give hie lieutenant enough rope to hang himself. These pages are a joy to read, especially when the all to often ignored Ravage (a rarity in being a smart buy entirely loyal Decepticon) speaks up and acts as Megatron's sounding board for his plan.
The heart of the issue is then taken up with a duel between Starscream and Ravage. In a nice touch there's mutual respect between them; Ravage acknowledges Starscream's plan to lure the Autobots into a massive battle is a good one and Starscream seems entirely genuine in his initial reluctance in having to hunt Ravage down once he realises he's been overheard (which is why you should never speak your plans out loud to yourself when alone).
The subsequent fight in the desert in beautifully drawn by John Ridgeway (sadly on his last issue), and sees both Decepticons using sensible tactics and their specific powers to try and bring each other down, with Ravage eventually loosing. And, again in a nice touch, Starscream is genuinely sad at having seemingly buried the spy under a ton of rocks, but that now means there's no going back.

How I feel after the weekend.
It has to be said that the other plot, the one that gives the issue its cover is, whilst competently done, much less interesting. Messing with a technobabble machine sends Brawn crazy and makes him decide everyone is his enemy. After beating up Sideswipe (who is cosplaying as Gears in issue 2) he stomps out of the Ark swearing vengeance on all who stand in his way.
The good guy goes bad plot is something everyone and their dog has done- the reprint of this story in the early 300's must have come around the same time as Channel 4's Sunday lunchtime repeats of Land of the Giants as I always associate it with the episode where Captain Steve gets some magic mushrooms all over his nice red flight suit that makes him a paranoid nut- but that's not the problem. Furman will effectively make a career out of taking extremely well worn tropes and doing fun things with them.
The problem is, we've never seen Brawn “normal”, his total number of lines to date can be counted on the claws on his hands. So there's there's nothing shocking or surprising about him being out of character because he's never been in character (and nor will he be, this story will be all she wrote for Brawn as a featured player). How much more interesting it would have been to have Mirage in the lead instead of as a secondary player, we've already seen he has doubts about the war, them being explored through this story could have been very interesting.
And, even though it's a point every single review of this story has made it's worth repeating, as good as Ridgeway is with the Decepticon pages Brawn just looks really, really, really silly drawn lugging things about with his super strength when drawn with his flimsy toy arms.
We do however wind up with a great climax when, as part of his plan to draw the Autobots out, Starscream bombs the living crap out of an American air force base. Which also means Ridgeway gets to bow out with a great splash page of mass destruction.
The Openers page sees our second “Hello From Hasbro”, but as the best Anthony Temple can come up with is a tease for the Jump Starters it's down to a letter asking about the Insecticons prompting a big picture of their toys to really get some excitement going for the line.
The good guy goes bad plot is something everyone and their dog has done- the reprint of this story in the early 300's must have come around the same time as Channel 4's Sunday lunchtime repeats of Land of the Giants as I always associate it with the episode where Captain Steve gets some magic mushrooms all over his nice red flight suit that makes him a paranoid nut- but that's not the problem. Furman will effectively make a career out of taking extremely well worn tropes and doing fun things with them.
The problem is, we've never seen Brawn “normal”, his total number of lines to date can be counted on the claws on his hands. So there's there's nothing shocking or surprising about him being out of character because he's never been in character (and nor will he be, this story will be all she wrote for Brawn as a featured player). How much more interesting it would have been to have Mirage in the lead instead of as a secondary player, we've already seen he has doubts about the war, them being explored through this story could have been very interesting.
And, even though it's a point every single review of this story has made it's worth repeating, as good as Ridgeway is with the Decepticon pages Brawn just looks really, really, really silly drawn lugging things about with his super strength when drawn with his flimsy toy arms.
We do however wind up with a great climax when, as part of his plan to draw the Autobots out, Starscream bombs the living crap out of an American air force base. Which also means Ridgeway gets to bow out with a great splash page of mass destruction.
The Openers page sees our second “Hello From Hasbro”, but as the best Anthony Temple can come up with is a tease for the Jump Starters it's down to a letter asking about the Insecticons prompting a big picture of their toys to really get some excitement going for the line.

Before Grimlock...
The back-ups continue to be decidedly mediocre, two instalments in and I'm still not sure what The Chromobots actually is. And I don't have to point out Machine Man deserves all the pain the Rory McGrath lookalike wizard man can throw at him do I?
The main areas of interest are the final set of Design a Decepticon winners (including Targetmaster) and, for a change, Robot Round-Up. Which is amusing for covering both the extremely kid friendly Metal Mickey and the uber violent 18 certificate Terminator. Which, even if it were suitable for the target audience, shouldn't be included as Arnie is of course a cyborg in the film rather than a robot. Standards are slipping.
As a final thought, as well as selling me the entire comic series, the masked mystery man whom I inherited my issues from also included a couple of discs of scans of the entire lot. Which has not only proven immensely useful for this project (as I have the same computer using skills Brawn does with his claws) but has allowed me- once I downloaded a CDisplay app- to read these comics on my phone. And as I normally read the next issue over the weekend after the last one has gone up (so it gives me the best part of a week to put my thoughts in order, not that you'd guess) I was able to enjoy this nearly 30 year old story on my phone whilst having a beer in a bar whilst sitting only a few feet from the man who wrote it. That would be pretty much mind blowing to the 9 year old me who first read this story in the reprint back in 1991.
Mainly because he hated the taste of beer. Old me has sold out.
Next week I have a stag do to attend (which, in a small meaningless coincidence, is for Michael Reynolds, the friend who kindly drove these comics half way across the country for me to save an insanely large postage bill even though he found the idea of buying so many old comics mighty odd) so it's likely the write up on issue 14 will be going up on Thursday. Join me as Furman starts to experiment with his storytelling technique and Brawn is as mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
Issue 12
1985
Comment
The main areas of interest are the final set of Design a Decepticon winners (including Targetmaster) and, for a change, Robot Round-Up. Which is amusing for covering both the extremely kid friendly Metal Mickey and the uber violent 18 certificate Terminator. Which, even if it were suitable for the target audience, shouldn't be included as Arnie is of course a cyborg in the film rather than a robot. Standards are slipping.
As a final thought, as well as selling me the entire comic series, the masked mystery man whom I inherited my issues from also included a couple of discs of scans of the entire lot. Which has not only proven immensely useful for this project (as I have the same computer using skills Brawn does with his claws) but has allowed me- once I downloaded a CDisplay app- to read these comics on my phone. And as I normally read the next issue over the weekend after the last one has gone up (so it gives me the best part of a week to put my thoughts in order, not that you'd guess) I was able to enjoy this nearly 30 year old story on my phone whilst having a beer in a bar whilst sitting only a few feet from the man who wrote it. That would be pretty much mind blowing to the 9 year old me who first read this story in the reprint back in 1991.
Mainly because he hated the taste of beer. Old me has sold out.
Next week I have a stag do to attend (which, in a small meaningless coincidence, is for Michael Reynolds, the friend who kindly drove these comics half way across the country for me to save an insanely large postage bill even though he found the idea of buying so many old comics mighty odd) so it's likely the write up on issue 14 will be going up on Thursday. Join me as Furman starts to experiment with his storytelling technique and Brawn is as mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
Issue 12
1985
Comment