Alas, I was dealing with Life Stuff last month and couldn’t get a recap together for #40, but I have returned! Okay, so one person on Twitter asked about it, but that’s pretty much all it takes.
The Lost Lights finds the missing Vis Vitalis just in time to learn that its captain Thunderclash, the most obnoxiously good Autobot of all time, is at death’s door! And the crew is invited to the dying hero’s pre-wake! But something here may be — dun dun DUN! — more than meets the eye!
The Elegant Chaos arc reaches its end here. Five million years in the past Brainstorm stands before a half-finished Megatron, finger on the trigger, as Rodimus and the others rush to save reality as they know it by saving one of the universe’s greatest tyrants. In the present Megatron, Ultra Magnus, and Perceptor can only stand by and watch as the fate of their entire timeline plays out in the past.
Just what is Brainstorm thinking? Can Rodimus’s team stop him? And is Megatron even worth saving?
In the wake of the Fan-Built Bot poll that told Hasbro loud and clear that we want more female Transformers, the Generations toyline is getting a huge shot of robo-estrogen as new character Windblade is joined by her bestie Chromia and, to the surprise of many, a slavishly G1-accurate Arcee.
When the new Arcee toy was revealed at BotCon 2014, a lot of people were surprised that Hasbro was making that version of the character. Some said they would have preferred the newer, more relevant IDW design. The original Arcee has spent decades attached to problematic art and a dismissive view of her as a token character. But for us older women in the fandom who grew up with G1, she’s the toy we’ve wanted since we were kids.
IDW has teamed up with the folks at Humble Bundle – which sells bundles of games, books, and other digital content at a heavy discount to support various charities – to offer the Humble Transformers Bundle! You can pay whatever you want to pick up the first four volumes of the Transformers Classics collection. If you choose to pay more than the current average (at $10.16 as of this posting) you also get All Hail Megatron 1-4, Autocracy, and Spotlight Vol. 1 with a promise of other books to be added soon, and if you pay $15 or more you get all of that plus More Than Meets The Eye and Robots in Disguise Vols. 1 & 2! This is DRM-free, multi-platform, and can be sent as a gift, so it you’ve purchased all these already you can still help out by buying them for that friend who NEEDS to read more Transformers comics!
TakaraTomy has strange ideas for Transformers. While Hasbro is putting together award-winning TV shows and working with Hollywood studios, TakaraTomy is…making toy sneakers and caps that turn into Optimus Prime.
And sometimes they do strange, inexplicable crossovers, like toys that change from iconic Transformers vehicle modes into Disney characters. And then there’s this: Crossing Transformers with the influential, deeply psychological 90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. Like a fanfic on a GeoCities site circa 1999, the Autobots are teaming up with NERV to take down a Starscream-possessed Angel Sachiel. Why? Because TakaraTomy is doing a limited-release Masterpiece Optimus Prime in Unit 01 purple and green, which is already bad enough without having to fanfic things up. At least it’s limited to 1000 pieces.
You can check out the official page for the crossover here, though I think even Google Translate will be hard-pressed to make any of it actually make any sense. I’ll be off in a corner being appalled on behalf of Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno.
This is the second in a series of articles re-visiting Marvel’s version of Transformers, covering the 80 issues released in America and the 4-issue miniseries “The Headmasters.” Images are scanned from my personal copies of each comic.
…close enough.
Over the course of the rest of the original 4-issue miniseries, plot points similar to the cartoon’s “More Than Meets the Eye” are carried out: The Autobots establish a human-Cybertronian relationship with Earth in general and the Witwickies in particular; the Decepticons try to get energy; Starscream plots against Megatron; there are a few big battles; the general status quo is set.
But a couple things differ strongly throughout the arc.
This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles re-visiting Marvel’s version of Transformers, covering the 80 issues released in America and the 4-issue miniseries “The Headmasters.” Images are scanned from my personal copies of each comic.
Here we go again for the first time…
It was a world transformed.
In 1984, Marvel comics began a series of comics that would be the very first representation of Transformers in fiction, edited – and soon written – by Bob Budiansky, the same man who named most of the early characters and wrote the bios printed on the toy packaging.
Though I feel the animated cartoon that soon followed became, for most folks, the definitive version of the G1 story, the comic rumbled along far longer than the ‘toon lasted and morphed into its own totally unique version of the mythos.
I was a kid in the early 1990s, when Transformers was in decline, and my first introduction to the property was by way of an old Marvel comic I found at my local library. I spent much of my childhood scavenging yard sales, book stores, and flea markets for signs that Transformers once existed, and it oftentimes paid off in the odd issue of the Marvel comic, usually far distant in the chronology from any other that I owned. So I pieced this story together in my mind and it became just as cherished as the cartoon that I also adored.
Has the notoriously nerdy staff at The Weather Channel been queuing up Generation 1 on Netflix? Though this year’s list of winter storm names was compiled with the help of a high school Latin class, ruling out another batch like last year’s Winter Storm Gandalf and Winter Storm Orko, it looks like a few names still manage to have geek cred – if you’re a more-than-casual Transformers fan. Most noticeable is the entries for consecutive letters O and P, Orion and Pax. According to the Weather Channel’s post about the new list:
Cleon, Gemini, Ion, Nika, Pax, Seneca and Yona were names substituted into the list because the name submitted by the Bozeman students for each of those letters was either retired by the National Hurricane Center, had alternate meanings or were difficult for English-speakers to pronounce.
So while the students suggested Orion, following it with Pax was a decision made by the Weather Channel staffers. And while Dion is explained as “Short for Dionysus; Greek god of wine and winemaking, among other things,” we also know him as Orion Pax’s old dock-yard buddy.
Big Bad Toy Store has announced that Takara’s MP-22 is Masterpiece Ultra Magnus “Perfect Edition.” This version is the newer MP-10 Convoy mold with an all-new trailer that transforms into Magnus’ classic battle armor. BBTS doesn’t have any photos up as of yet, but we’ll be sure to post any that emerge from ethical sources.
The toy is available for pre-order on BBTS for the low-low price of $290, with the toy expected to arrive in August of next year.
If you like your toys to shatter into a cloud of golden glitter after a decade in storage, then this news is for you: The limited edition Linkin Park Soundwave, complete with matching Ravage, Lazerbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ratbat, is now available in LA-based SURU’s online store for a mere $150.
Based on the original G1 Soundwave mold, the special Linkin Park Soundwave is made almost entirely from gold plastic with a few gold chrome accents and is ready to use weaponized rap rock against all who oppose Megatron’s rule. Can you get $150 of enjoyment out of this toy before the plastic completely disintegrates?
Alas, I was dealing with Life Stuff last month and couldn’t get a recap together for #40, but I have returned! Okay, so one person on Twitter asked about it, but that’s pretty much all it takes.
