Transformers Classics UK Volume 1

Product Information

Meanwhile, their British branch, Marvel UK, also published Transformers comics, a mix of reprinted strips from the US series (occasionally slightly edited or recontextualized) and original strips primarily written by the aforementioned Simon Furman: Optimus Prime - Tillbaka till jorden - a translation of issues #28-32 and #34-38 of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise and the Punishment mini-series. Bonus material consists of an afterword by Andrew Griffith. The exact reason for this change is that doing new strips would've meant spending money, and Marvel UK's then-head Paul Neary didn't want to spend it on what he considered a 'dead end' of relying on licensed material. It's also possible he saw cancelling the comic as a way to shake things up. (He would later tell Comics World #33, regarding Death's Head's original self), "I didn't think there was much future in Transformers-based robots". Interestingly, Furman hadn't been asked to write the planned new tales and we don't know if that was due to timing or someone else would've been tapped. [6] Cover dates Devil's Due Publishing experienced success with their revived G.I Joe series under license by Hasbro. Both companies produced their own six-issue mini-series detailing a crossover between the two with permission from Hasbro, but Dreamwave had the exclusive license to produce Transformers comics, while Devil's Due had the exclusive license to G.I. Joe; hence the two different miniseries from both companies with two different ideas behind each company's respective franchise. A second series followed in late 2004, followed by a third in 2005, and a fourth in 2006. The Transformers: Robots in Disguise #1–34 & Annual 2012 (2012–2014); The Transformers (IDW vol. 2) #35–57 (2014–2016) & Revolution; and Optimus Prime #1–25 (2016–2018) — John Barber's series spinning out of The Death of Optimus Prime, initially set on the revitalized Cybertron before moving to Earth

Timelines ended in 2016 when Hasbro dissolved its Transformers relationship with Fun Publications. The rights to the G.I. Joe convention and club continued with Fun Publications another two years, but that too came to an end.After some troubled times and steadily declining readership, the series was finally canceled at issue #80. A combination of factors was likely responsible: the Transformers toyline had become yesterday's fad, the core readership had grown older and moved on, and Hasbro seems to have pulled the plug. Several subsequent series would build upon the series; see Marvel Comics continuity for more information.

The Marvel Comics character Death's Head, a character created by Simon Furman, appeared in certain Marvel UK Transformers stories. In the third issue of the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A–Z (released on March 22, 2006), the entry for Death's Head's describes his encounters with the Transformers to have taken place in an alternate reality, referred to as Earth-120185, thus separating these stories from existence in standard Marvel Universe continuity. This raises the question of whether or not any of the Marvel Comics Transformers stories take place in the Marvel Universe "proper" ( Earth-616), despite such tie-ins as Spider-Man's guest-starring appearance in the original Marvel limited series and Circuit Breaker, a character that originated in the Transformers comics, having a cameo appearance in Marvel's Secret Wars II limited series, which featured nearly every character then existing in the continuity of Earth-616. A case can be made that only the stories that featured Death's Head are separate from standard Marvel continuity, since the character's adventures often involved travel across time and dimensions, not to mention genres; Death's Head also encountered the British science fiction icon the Doctor from Doctor Who once. IDW Transformers #1 (1984) Hundred Penny Press Preview". Seibertron.com. 7 July 2014 . Retrieved 6 August 2014. The US Comic book exists in Earth-91274, the series lasted 80 issues, and also ran one related four-issue limited series based on the Headmasters characters. While the main plot was mostly the same (especially in later issues when writer Simon Furman from the Transformers UK title took over writing chores for the US book as well) there are some major deviations in terms of expanded histories and alternate takes of the characters including a very involved time-travel plot line that appeared in the UK series. Additionally, the US series further divorced itself from the UK continuity with the advent of Transformers: Generation 2 which was publication in the mid-90's following the attempted revival of the toy franchise. The first monthly issue of Real Ghostbusters would have hit the stands at the same time — and been in the same format — as Transformers #333

Contents

Thunderwing was the most recent addition to a crew of dimension-traveling Heralds of Unicron. He was addicted to Dark Energon, and the prospect of an endless supply of angolmois energy was enough to convince him to join. He went to Aurex 402.24 Gamma with the other heralds when his home universe was destroyed. Ask Vector Prime, 19/09/2015 Dreamwave Armada comic Dark Cybertron (2013–2014) — A crossover event between Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye, plus two one-shots to open and close the event. That all came to a crashing end in late 2004 as the company basically imploded, with creators going unpaid, numerous license-granters going unpaid (not just Hasbro!), and Dreamwave head honchos going somewhere far away with wads of cash to try and pull it off again. This left multiple storylines in cliffhanger limbo, but unlike with 3H's stories, nobody bothered to cap them off later (well, with one minor exception), though some scripts for unproduced issues have since surfaced.

According to the third issue of All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z 's entries on Death's Head, the events of the Marvel UK Generation 1 comics take place on Marvel Earth-120185. The universe is named after the publication date of the first Marvel UK-exclusive story, " Man of Iron". For the last few issues of Volume 1, the Transformers: Universe toy line logo was used on the cover.In Japan, the rights to produce comic material for this new Transformers line went to Kodansha, the publisher of several different monthly comic compilations and magazines for kids. Issue #301’s cover by John Marshall, Stewart Johnson and Robin Bouttell riffed on the iconic photograph ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’; issue #306, by Johnson and Bouttell, was a homage to Rodin’s The Thinker (complete with a quote from Tacitus); and issue #309 led with a nightmarish close-up of a fused and screaming Megatron and Ratchet — an exercise in German expressionism with a strapline (“21st Century Schizoid!”) which suggested that Johnson and Bouttell were echoing the sleeve of King Crimson’s 1969 album In the Court of the Crimson King, which contained the song ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’. It was all a far cry from the bright and jokey covers from late ‘89/early ’90, full of puns and speech balloons, that often sat closer to Real Ghostbusters than Action Force. In October 2009, Titan debuted a second Transformers title, based on the animated TV series Transformers: Animated. [2]

A four-part series released throughout the Armada toy line. The series was produced by the same team that started on Dreamwave's Transformers: Armada comic, story by Chris Saccarini and illustrated by James Raiz. The first 2 volumes were printed in English, Spanish, and French. Panel 6: Sparkplug is meant to say "learnin'," to parallel the way he drops the g from the end of "readin'" in the first half of his sentence, but the word is written with the g... and the apostrophe meant to signify its absence.

The Transformers: Autocracy #1–12 (digital, 2012), The Transformers: Monstrosity #1–12 (digital, 2013)/#1–4 (print, 2013), The Transformers: Primacy #1–4 (print, 2014) — Tales set during the early war, by writers Chris Metzen and Flint Dille and artist Livio Ramondelli. At BotCon 2010, the Hasbro design team noted that they had wanted to make the aerial drone unit transform into a robot but were unable to do so (presumably for budget reasons, though they didn't go into that detail). Despite being a lot more successful, Real Ghostbusters enjoyed only a slightly longer shelf life. Not long after launching in 1988, it usurped TFUK as Marvel UK’s bestselling ‘boys’ comic and, like TFUK in 1985, went from fortnightly to weekly. But after its 1989/90 peak, the decline in readers was sharper, and the need to cut costs arose sooner: only a few months after its 150th issue (April 1991), it dropped its story-rich text features. From #172 (September 1991) it stopped producing new comic strips and become a reprint-only title, recycling US and UK material that had featured in earlier issues.