Well, that was one long and crazy "ROLL OUT!" I truly wish I had ANY control over where this writing addiction takes me and what my brain decides to focus on.
Rosa and I did end up watching the "live action" movies again when I finished the three TV series. (The cartoon shows I watched on my own this time, She loves me, but does have limits.) Those movies are loud, fun and have a lot of explosions. Woo! Granted, as much of a fan as I am, the final two Bay films are WAY too long.
With Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts it looked like the "live action" movie franchise was heading in a very cool, and much more G1 friendly, direction. Alas, that is not to be.
There is even more Alasness to Transformers One not getting a follow up. The cast, setting story and art were phenomenal. Why can't we have nice things? They really screwed up the promotion and marketing with that one.
Anabelle joined in for the watching of those final three films, because they are the best ones. She was also inspired to watch some G1 cartoons, mostly because, "You won't shut up about them!"
For reasons I cannot explain, she decided she needed to see "Grimlock's New Brain." This may be due to her mindset that calls "Spock's Brain" the greatest Star Trek episode, as she also selected "Kremzeek!" Due to my influence after watching the three listed films we all watched together, (See above- "You won't shut up about them.") we included Transformers The Movie between those two episodes. Her most frequent comment, "This is overstimulating." When we finished, her response was, "Well, I never have to see any of those again." At least she tried. (Rosa went downstairs to exercise. She did watch the 1986 movie with me shortly before my full rewatch, and watched all the series with me when the disks were first released back in the day. See, they do love me.)
Before closing out what was planned as a short diversion which somehow, yet again, morphed into a 62 week long, over ninety one thousand word (somewhere between 1984 and The Hobbit ) dive into my multi-form robot obsessed subconscious, I feel I owe everyone an apology. This apology is not intended for the length of the aforementioned extended dive, but sure, have one for that too.
As is often true, I have lied about comic books once more.
Over a year ago, before yet another franchise review blew up to insane proportions but after talking about the Larry Hama run on G.I. Joe comics, I stated:
"I could never get into the
equally acclaimed Simon Furman Transformers comics."
What I left out of that was the fact that when we first started collecting comics in the Eighties, my friend Lee and I would regularly read each other's books. Therefore, I could keep up with the regular Avengers while he read my West Coast collection of that group. He kept an eye on what Thor was doing in my purchases, and I did read the American Transformers comics at his home. (Those were mostly by Bob Budiansky, yet another comic book creator from The Bronx who also named most of the early characters and wrote the "Tech Specs" on the back of the toy boxes. Simon Furman wrote the British Transformers comics issues.) For reasons not worth going into, mostly because I have absolutely no idea what they were, we both collected Iron Man.
Full collections of Transformers comics were more sporadic and harder to locate than the easily accessible G.I. Joe ones I assembled as soon as they were reprinted. However, an offer for a Kickstarter campaign last year lured me in. (Likely, due to me being in the throws or obsessively watching and writing about these characters.) It was the only way to get the US and British comics in the proper order. (In the UK, comics came out more frequently than here, therefore those extra Furman stories had to be placed between issues written by Budianski, and other American writers.)
Did I spend more on this set than I should have?
Quite likely.
However, acquiring this many issues in normal sized collections would have cost at least four times as much. Also they would not be in the correct order with the tales from both countries intertwined. They also would not have been in awesomely shiny hard covers, with a whole bunch of extras like prints, facsimile editions, pins, stickers, tech specs, bookmarks, and a nifty metal Autobot/ Decepticon coin that Anabelle thought was incredibly cool and now owns. WOO!
Starting to work through them has been an entertaining, if somewhat weird, experience. I don't really remember the sporadic readings in Lee's room under the shadows of his awesome, multi-shelf collection of Decepticons. The stories, LORE, personalities and key events are very different from what I know. Many of the designs look much closer to the toys than the modified for smoother animation cartoon appearances. (For some, after the first issue or two, designs changed to match the cartoon. I guess they wanted Ironhide and Ratchet to be able to move.) However, the names and character appearance order (gotta sell those toys!) match the cartoon. The main weirdness comes from much of the LORE being pulled from these comics to use in the later shows and films I've seen, plus crossover comics I've read that came out well after the original cartoon. This means that weirdness expands as completely different events than I'm expecting lead to stuff that is directly referenced in the later outings of the franchise.
One difference that is nice, is everyone seems smarter. This ranges from things like the animal cassettes being capable of speech, to the Dinobots being standard Autobots that crashed with the Ark, with their forms explained by being sent out early when Shockwave landed in Marvel's Prehistoric "Savage Land." The use of thought balloons also helps, as an indication that characters are not being fooled as often as they were in the show. (Half the early Decepticon panels needed space for Megatron to think about how best to handle, "Starscream is betraying me again.") Human character interaction is also different. Sparkplug is still there, but is much less in the foreground. Also, his son is the blonde haired "Buster" who is nothing like Spike, and has friends not reflected in the cartoon at all. Autobots we barely got to see in the show have focus stories, while Optimus spent most of the first half of the enormous Volume One as a disembodied head, and prisoner of Megatron. They needed his head because that's where the Autobot Matrix resides in these tales... which functions like the Key to Vector Sigma. Optimus himself uses it after he's recovered to bring Omega Supreme, to life after he's created by Grapple in the Eighties. (As opposed to being one of the oldest transformers on the show with his own back story from Cybertron's distant past.)
Heck- to fill space in the British titles, Galvatron and the movie Decepticons came back in time to the Eighties BEFORE the movie adaptation came out!
Honestly, t's like LORE bingo in here.
The personality changes are the most jarring. Shockwave, who showed enough loyalty to call Megatron every day for four million years on the show, mutinied against him and took over the Decepticons in the early comics. It was up to Soundwave, awesome in every universe, to get the two to work together again.
As an exploration of these wild differences, next week we will begin following the storylines in what will likely be at least a one hundred week journey through the comic book adventures of the Transformers!!!! Woo Hoo!
WAIT!
I'm joking!
This really is the end.
Disney World planning starts in the next one, honest.
Please stop throwing tomatoes!
These books are a fun ride, and I'm a fan of these characters in any form.
And yet...
There is no competition for the original shows always being my favorite, and worthy of this level of obsession. In general, I am much more a fan of the different groups having different personalities and intelligence levels, as the show handles it. But it is far more than that. There is just something special about how the writers rose above the animation issues, children's programming restrictions, and never ending mandates to bring in and sell the new toys to still create a full mythology of fun and cool characters, in a large and crazy universe filled with insane other worlds, yet maintaining the central theme of giant robots beating the crap out of each other.
They are truly more than meets the eye.
(Yes, I did that joke before, but I feel only making that reference twice in fourteen months showed a great display of restraint on my part.)
Thank you for sharing what has become a bizarrely long Cybertronian journey with me.
THE END!
🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅
ReplyDeleteIt was a joke.
ReplyDeleteThanx for the tomato inspiration.