Transformers: In-Dept Look...
 

Ok please correct me if I'm wrong. What I'm posting here goes by what I've known from watching the US shows when it aired here during the 80's. A sort of...chain of command or evolutionary about the whole Transformer Universe.

Omnicron - Father to Primacron
Primacron - Creator of the Quintessons and Unicron
Quintessons - Built Cybertron and the "Robots" to maintain its "vastness"
2 types of Robots: Manufacturers and Military(Arsonal)
Robots - Revolted against the Quintessons, exiling them off of Cybertron.

and of course you know the story of how years later they came up with a means of self-preservation. Manufacturers later became the Autobots and Military robots became the Decepticons.

Add here....or correction and add here...

The timeline and history differs greatly between the comics and the show.

...and even between the 2 main comic series (US and UK), and different versions of the shows (US and JPN).

Word, its all a mess you cant take any of it as gospel.

I mean wtf was the Primacron theme in COTP all about, and his "assistant" the creation matrix.....guess we can blme Toho or whoever produced that episode, either way, where's the continuity control.

In the UK mags it was Primus and Unicron who were gods formed out of rock in the " big - bang".

They made Rodimus in the look of Primus, in the future he travels into Unicrons mind to refight the battle and end the 3rd coming of Unicron of something tbh is was great but made no sense.

Ended up being killed by dynamite lol

wait wait wait.....WAIT A MINUTE....you all are telling me that the comic and US shows were DIFFERENT? Plus there were Japanese shows AND UK comics?
DAMN IT ALL....just when I felt comfortable about learning about something, lol.

Did the US comics have Deaths Head?

Possibly the best TF character.......yes

lol

What about Centurion, he appears in my fave TF comics after the Movie where time is displaced and TF's keep getting warped into Limbo, gets mutilated by a psychotic Galvatron. Great times.

It's hard to remember. I think Death's Head did appear in the US comics towards the end, when Simon Furman came over and started writing ours. He then incorporated the whole Primus origin into the US comics, also (but in a slightly different way). But the US comics stayed pretty much in the present for the most part, as opposed to the UK comics doing stories taking place in the "future" after the movie.

Centurion, I don't remember...

You UK guys got the Wreckers. I was always jealous of that.

speaking of Transformers...

did you guys know one of Orson Welles last roles was the voice of Unicron in the Transformers movie?

:cool:

Orson Welles had an awesome! voice for Unicron
in the Transformers Movie. :cool: ;)

GI Joe was different in comic form to. I never had that many issues but I heard that it blew the TV series away.

Also did the Generation 2 story only take place in the US comics and did later Japanese character such as Star Saber ever make and appearance?

Yep, he passed away just before the release of Transformers The Movie if I'm not mistaken.

Generation 2 was a US comic (although there was a UK comic also, but I don' believe it was by Marvel UK, and I haven't heard anything good about it). The US comic was written by Furman, widely considered the best TF comic writer (he could even make the fucking Pretenders interesting), and drawn by a number of people of varying degrees of talent. The definite highlight were the parts drawn by the great Geoff Senior, who drew a number of the UK TF comics, as well as some Action Force (GI Joe) stuff. IMO, he's still the greatest TF artist ever.

The series ran only 12 issues. It featured none of the Japanese characters like Star Saber, or anything like that. Like was said before, there are many TF continuities, and the Japanese continuity is far removed from anything else. The US and UK stuff went one way, and the JPN stuff evolved into yet another cliche giant robot anime (not bad, but not Transformers, imo -- lost in the crowd of similar stuff).

Strangely enough, the US Gen 2 series began with a crossover with the US GI Joe comic. Cobra repaired Megatron, and as part of a bargain, rebuilt him into his Gen 2 tank form.

This TF comic stuff sounds kinda cool.....realllly dorky...but cool. I used to be into it when it first came out but lost interest after ahile.
Are there any trade paperbacks that have the whole series? Or do you have to hunt for every issue?

Fact did you know that Megatron wasn't going to be a tank. Hasbro felt funny about releaseing a gun toy during the early 90's when all of the controversy over toy guns were going on.

Realllly dorky only begins to cover it... but yeah, I like the stuff. You are in luck, most of the good US stuff (from the very end of the US series), and a lot of the excellent UK stuff has been collected into trades from Titan Books. In fact, you can order them off Amazon.com. They are:

For the US series:

-- Primal Scream (issues #56-62, and don't worry, I'm looking at my books to type this -- I don't have it memorized or anything)
-- Matrix Quest (#63-68)
-- All Fall Down (#69-74)
-- End of the Road (#75-80...the end of the series)

Those last two I like a lot. They feature the final showdown with Unicron, Megatron vs. Galvatron, Galvatron vs. Fortress Maximus, death of Scorponok... lots of good, dorky fun.

-- Dark Designs (issues #1-6 of the Generation 2 comic. Unfortunately, the issues of GI Joe that crossed over with this story...#139-142, are not included for licensing reasons)
-- Rage in Heaven (#7-12 of the Gen 2 comic, which is the end of the series)

The art of the Gen 2 comic is all over the place.. some pretty good, some pretty bad...but the story is interesting.

For the UK volumes you can get from Amazon, I recommend:

-- Target: 2006
-- Fallen Angel (featuring Death's Head, the guy Baseley09 was talking about)
-- Legacy of Unicron
-- Space Pirates
-- Time Wars

These are pretty much the top of TF comics. A lot of great post-movie era stories.

Very cool. Thanks. Ill check em out when I get the time. Im guessing the early comics are just promotional tools for the show or do they just suck ass?
Hows the art work?

Are Gi Joe comics good or are those crap? And in crap I mean too kiddie for us "adults" :smirk:

The earlier stuff isn't as good, imo. The art is all over the place. A lot of the artists would obviously rather have been drawing people, and it shows sometimes. And the early writer, although he did do some cool stories, had too many boring human characters, when all kids wanted was to see Transformers clobbering each other. In that respect, the UK stories are superior, focusing almost completely on the robot characters.

Frankly, the Marvel GI Joe comics whoop ass all over the TF comics. The first 50 issues have been collected into trade paperbacks of 10 issues each.

If you're a fan of both TF and GI Joe, I'd actually recommend the GI Joe books more. Especially the volume that contains the late #20s (volume 3), which has the origin of Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow. I'd go as far as to say that Larry Hamma (who wrote about 152 of the 155-issue series) was one of the 3 consistantly best mainstream comic writers (meaning Marvel and DC) of the 1980s.

You can find the first volume on Amazon for $15, but I didn't see the others. You should be able to find them in comic shops, but they run about $25 each, due to their large size. Be careful to look for the Marvel volumes, and not the new volumes from Devil's Due Comics. The new series is hit and miss, but even their best issues are not close to the Marvel issues.

I heard from an obsessive TF fan that he actually died while they were making the movie and in the end had to get Leonard Nimoy to finish his lines.