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interests / alt.toys.transformers / Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #20

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* Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #20Zobovor
`* Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THEEvil King Macrocranios
 `* Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THEZobovor
  `- Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THEEvil King Macrocranios

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Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #20

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Subject: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #20
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Thu, 17 Feb 2022 03:21 UTC

Oops! Been buying a house, totally forgot to post this.

THE TRANSFORMERS issue #20 was entitled "Showdown!" First printed on June 17, 1986, the issue had a pull date of September 1986. Herb Trimpe had become the go-to artist for front covers by this point, and the cover for this issue features Megatron and Skids squaring off, with Megatron boasting, "This town ain't big enough for the two of us Autobot—DRAW!" in a riff on the classic Western films of old.  Specifically, it originates in The Western Code, a film from 1932, in which the Nick Grindell character states: "This town ain't big enough for the both of us and I'm going to give you twenty-four hours to get out. If I see you in Carabinas by this time tomorrow, it's you or me!"  It's an iconic line that's seeped its way into pop culture (and it was also cited, incidentally, in the Transformers cartoon during Metroplex's first meeting with Trypticon).

We need to stop for a moment to appreciate how Megatron's fusion cannon is tucked just slightly behind his leg, and how Skids also has his weapon at his side.  Neither of them have armanents that are properly holstered, but they're nonetheless reenacting the classic Western shootout in the proper style.  The only thing I dislike about the cover is that this is a depiction of a dream sequence, so it never actually happens.  (I also dislike the idea that, apparently, gigantic shapeshifting alien robots from outer space is apparently such a dull concept that the writers are already trying to figure out ways of making it more interesting to readers.  "Hey, what if we did Transformers visits the Wild West?  What if we did Transformers on the Moon?  What if we did Transformers at the circus?"  Yes, these are all things that happened eventually.)

Written by Bob Budiansky, Herb Trimpe also provided the interior pencils, with Ian Akin and Brian Garvey providing the inks.  Janice Chiang was the letterer and Nel Yomtov, as always, was the colorist.

The issue begins with a full-page spread of Ravage hunting for Robot-Master, who as we all know escaped from the clutches of the Decepticons in the last issue.  Needing to change out of his ridiculous comic book styled costume, Donny Finkleberg finds a temporarily abandoned campsite and "borrows" some clothing.  He leaves some money behind, though, so I guess he's not a completely terrible guy.  He's becoming a more sympathetic character than when we first met him.

Donny comes across the damaged form of Skids, who was abandoned by the Autobots in the previous issue.  Skids can't call out for help, and Donny has no use for a wrecked vehicle, so he moves on.  Shortly afterwards, Ravage tracks Robot-Master's scent to the campsite and obliterates it. There are no remains of any flesh creatures, however, so he knows the hunt isn't over yet.

In a small town not too far away, we meet Charlene, cashier at the local food market, and the grocery bagger Wendell, who clearly has a crush on her.  Charlene's car has just died (how convenient), and she goes out of her way to explain how attached she was to it.  Hmm, it's almost as if the writers are setting her up to meet a Transformer who turns into a car, or something.

Aaaaaaand it's another human interest story.  Budiansky sure loves these, doesn't he?

Anyway, Wendell gives her a lift home, but Charlene is more interested in taking the path less traveled and wants to see the local hiking trails.  They find Skids, whose radio is still running, so she knows it's at least partially operable.  Charlene recognizes the value of a vehicle that can be repaired, and neither she nor Wendell consider checking for its VIN number to find out who it actually belongs to.  Finders keepers!

It's interesting to note that the name Charlene pops up in this comic book a LOT.  Like, I think this is the third character we've met with the name so far.  Budiansky might have had a girlfriend with that name, or at least he knew somebody in real life named Charlene.  We may never know for sure, unless somebody asks him at one of his convention appearances..  It happens far too often to be a coincidence, though.

One oddity about this scene is that Charlene specifically identifies Skids as a van. In real life, the toy isn't a van at all, but a compact car called the Honda City Turbo.  It's not surprising that people would mistake him for a van, though, since the car was only marketed in Japan and parts of Europe, and thus would be unfamiliar to the American writers and artists..  (If you compare the Skids toy to other toys like Jazz or Sideswipe, he's clearly too small to be a van.  But, the scale of the Transformers toy line was all over the place, since the relative scales of all those jet planes and dump trucks and race cars was wildly inconsistent.)  Also, the way they draw Skids, particularly in this very issue, is very van-like, even moreso than his standard character design.  So, there you go..  In fiction, at least, he's officially a van.  

Wendell mentions that his cousin Bob has a service shop in town, and he clearly wants to get into Charlene's cowboy jeans, so of course he offers to get the "van" towed and serviced.  Now, remember how Sparkplug Witwicky was totally flabbergasted by Bumblebee's inner workings in issue #2, and he worked long and hard until he just barely managed to get poor Bumblebee working again?  Well, evidently Bob is an automotive genius.  He dismisses Skids' internal mechanics as a little unusual, but one panel later Skids is fixed up and on the road.  That Bob is some kind of idiot savante.  Sparkplug was sweating motor oil from his very pores for hours before he ever got to this point.  

Also, gas prices in this story are 98 cents for regular and $1.05 for unleaded.  Put THAT in your exhaust pipe and smoke it. Actually, don't do that, because gasoline is highly combustible.

Skids decides he wants to pretend to be Charlene's car for a while.  At some point after the lettering was finished, they went back and added, "At least this'll be a lot safer than what I usually do," suggesting that some editor thought Skids did not yet have sufficient motivation to do so, until this addition was thrown in.  We know Optimus Prime basically forgot about him and left him for dead.  That seems like plenty of reason to me!

I'm honestly a little confused.  Didn't the early stories indicate that Transformers don't have starters or ignition keys or gas pedals?  How does Charlene not think this is unusual?  Or did Wheeljack add those features at the same time he added all the facsimile technology?  (Oh, and Skids is missing his Autobot symbol in this story, because his facsimile tech is still activated.  Nice touch.)

By a staggering coincidence, who should be driving along at just the precise moment Skids is leaving the garage than none other than Jake Dalrymple.  You know, the dipshit in the Lamborghini Countach from last issue.  Well, he starts road raging and going after Skids right away, recognizing him from the previous story.  He cuts off Skids, and Charlene nearly veers into a telephone pole.  Skids, who has the most sophisticated braking system of all the Autobots, somehow can't stop in time.  Instead, he executes some fancy footwork... er, wheelwork, and starts driving sideways along the guard rail.

Jake's girlfriend, Frannie, is trying to talk him out continuing the pursuit, like any sensible woman would, but Jake is in it for blood at this point..  Skids executes a few more fancy tricks, which finaly results in Jake's car being covered in paint from some poor guy just trying to finish a storefront sign.  

So, Charlene is thoroughly freaking out at this point, because she knows she didn't pull off any of those fancy tricks behind the wheel.  Skids realizes he needs to reassure her and reveal his true form, so he transforms to robot mode.  At first, she recognizes him as one of the "awful robots I heard about on television," which speaks to the efficacy of the Robot-Master propaganda, until he explains that he wanted to keep pretending until he was forced to blow his cover in order to rescue her.

We get the prerequisite "millions of years ago on Cybertron" flashback, but told through the lens of Skids, somebody who never wanted to be a warrior.  He's a student of life, first and foremost, and wants nothing more than to get back to those studies.  He resolves to do so under the guise of being Charlene's car.  

I want to talk about colors for just a moment. Both Marvel and DC have a long, storied history of using bright primary colors for its hero characters (Spider-Man, Captain America, Superman, etc.), and secondary colors for villains (Green Goblin, Lex Luthor, etc.)  Charlene wears a bright red shirt and a bright blue cowboy hat, so she's clearly our protagonist for this story. Wendell is also a good guy character, but he's less important than Charlene, so he gets to wear pink... a muted, less vibrant version of red.  Jaky Dalrymple is an antagonist, so he's entirely secondary colors—purple car, orange shirt.  Donny Finkleberg is interesting, though, since in his post-Robot Master attire (which was orange and red), he's got a green shirt, but red pants.  So, still both villian and hero colors together.  He's morally ambiguous, and it's hard to predict what he's going to do.  He's probably the most unpredictable character in this story, and that makes him interesting.

So, Jake and his girlfriend are at the local diner, talking about the crazy van that seemed like it was almost alive, and Donnie Finkelberg overhears the conversation and butts right in.  Elsewhere, Charlene is teaching Skids all about the Old West, since she's a big fan (her bedroom is cluttered with horses and cactuses and things).  She's particularly enamored with High Noon (a real-life Gary Cooper film from 1952) and the romantic theme of the film's hero being "willing to stay and die for what he believed in."


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Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #20

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Subject: Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE
TRANSFORMERS #20
From: evil.kin...@gmail.com (Evil King Macrocranios)
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 by: Evil King Macrocrani - Mon, 28 Mar 2022 03:52 UTC

On Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at 7:21:55 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:
> Oops! Been buying a house, totally forgot to post this.

Speaking of houses, I was noticing how Charlene in the comic is a small town supermarket cashier and she has a two story house with at least one room full of western memorabilia. Ah those 80s jobs where minimum wage paid enough to live the dream.

> the cover for this issue features Megatron and Skids squaring off, with Megatron boasting, "This town ain't big enough for the two of us Autobot—DRAW!" in a riff on the classic Western films of old. Specifically, it originates in The Western Code, a film from 1932,

In the comic it shows Skids watching a bit of High Noon with Charlene so I searched through that script (https://www.stockq.org/moviescript/H/high-noon.php) to see if the line was in there. It isn't. That means Charlene and Skids must have watched another movie with the line at some point in the several days they spent together doing anthropological studies. (I'll bet they watched a ton of movies while Wendell just simmered alone in whatever mansion he could afford as an 80s grocery store bagger.)

> In a small town not too far away, we meet Charlene, cashier at the local food market, and the grocery bagger Wendell, who clearly has a crush on her..

I think the Charlene and Wendell characters would have been more relatable if they were rendered as teenagers but the way Trimpe draws them they look mid-to-late 20s to me, if not in their 30s. I feel like supermarket cashier and bagger were teenager jobs back then. Yet Wendell looks downright super heroic, with a face and build reminiscent of Captain America. I doubt Budiansky gave Trimpe any direction on how to draw them. I think it would have served the story better if they were younger, like Buster and Jessie types. The jobs line up with that. Or at least if they were in managerial positions more in line with their outward appearances that would at least partially explain how well off Charlene was. She was experiencing nostalgia for a time she never lived in, which is kind of a mid-life crisis phase thing and that lines up with her appearance but her job just doesn't.

> Aaaaaaand it's another human interest story. Budiansky sure loves these, doesn't he?

Maybe if he concentrated a little less on the humans he could have fit more Transformers into his Transformers comic.

> Budiansky might have had a girlfriend with that name, or at least he knew somebody in real life named Charlene. We may never know for sure, unless somebody asks him at one of his convention appearances.

This is why you should go to one of those conventions. At least hit one Budiansky appearance. These questions ain't gonna ask themselves.

If Charlene is someone Bob was obsessed with, I wonder if Wendell is named after someone he didn't like for whatever reason. Wendell sure is a simpy loser here, unable to get the girl and resigned by Charelene's estimation to be a grocery store bagger for the rest of his life. But then Trimpe didn't get the memo and Wendell looks like Captain America.

> Donny Finkleberg is interesting, though, since in his post-Robot Master attire (which was orange and red), he's got a green shirt, but red pants. So, still both villian and hero colors together. He's morally ambiguous, and it's hard to predict what he's going to do.

This is a brilliant observation and I hope Nel is out there somewhere reading this, knowing someone got the message.

> She's particularly enamored with High Noon (a real-life Gary Cooper film from 1952) and the romantic theme of the film's hero being "willing to stay and die for what he believed in."

What's interesting about the use of High Noon is that the woman love interest plays a part in the shootout at the end of the movie. So if you were reading the comic and were familiar with the movie, you could almost take its inclusion as foreshadowing that Charlene was going to figure in the climax in a big way. But that doesn't really pan out. Heck, there's a set of steer bull horns mounted to her wall (Chekov's steer horns?) and she never uses those. Maybe I'm reading too much into all this. Also in High Noon the sheriff in the end throws his star on the ground and rides off into the sunset with the girl, rebuking his responsibilities. I guess that also thematically fits in with how Skids was behaving in the moment.

> When Skids admits he's known only war, Charlene resolves to help him make some new memories. They spend all their time together, even to the point where she's rebuffing movie date invitations from Wendell.

I feel like Wendell was being set up as an antagonist for Skids but the story just never went there. There's the one scene where Charlene turns down Wendell's date invitation and Wendell is standing menacingly with his back against a wall, looking over his shoulder while Charlene gets in her van. He's posed in the way a bad guy who's waiting in ambush poses. It almost feels stalker-ish.

> Jake decides to vandalize Skids and takes to him with a lead pipe, shattering his windshield and causing him to black out.

Skids takes Ravage's blasts to his door no problem, but a lead pipe breaks his windshield and sends him into a coma?

>Frannie finally grows a backbone and urges him to do something to help Donnie and Charlene. He drives head-first into Ravage, which gives Skids time to rouse from his reverie.

I don't think Jake's hero turn is logical for the character at that point. He pretty much decides to wreck his $250,000 car out of love or respect for Frannie, whose inputs he never valued up to this point? Plus he launches at such an angle that it's the passenger side of the vehicle that takes the impact. I think he didn't really change but was instead trying to kill Frannie and collect insurance on her and the car.

> Skids realizes that he can't play make-believe, and needs to return to the Autobots. Charlene is heartbroken, but she's got Wendell to fall back on, so that's something.

I don't think she settled for Wendell. Her exact line when Skids suggested she give Wendell a shot was "That's a nice idea". 'Nice idea' doesn't sound like committal to the guy or a promise to Skids that she'd actually follow through. I think she ended up with Wendell's mechanic cousin Bob, who is the only competent adult in the whole story with his life together. WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

>Zob (I wish Legacy Skids would come out soon)

I will enjoy watching you eat crow when Hasbro does a Marvel Legends Charlene and you actually know who that obscure action figure is.

Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #20

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Subject: Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE
TRANSFORMERS #20
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:01 UTC

On Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 9:52:23 PM UTC-6, evil.king.m...@gmail.com wrote:

> Speaking of houses, I was noticing how Charlene in the comic is a small town supermarket cashier and she has a two story house with at least one room full of western memorabilia. Ah those 80s jobs where minimum wage paid enough to live the dream.

Maybe she inherited it? It's definitely a huge juxtaposition from Donny Finkleberg in his run-down apartment in the slums.
> I think the Charlene and Wendell characters would have been more relatable if they were rendered as teenagers but the way Trimpe draws them they look mid-to-late 20s to me, if not in their 30s. I feel like supermarket cashier and bagger were teenager jobs back then.

I could be way off the mark, but when this issue was written, I remember teenager jobs being, like, delivering newspapers or maybe flipping burgers at a fast food joint or working at a service station. Those were entry-level jobs for young people. Whenever I shopped at Toys "R" Us as a kid, I remember most of the cashiers being adults. I never got the perception that it was a kid's job.

I think there was an overall shift in entertainment as a whole. Your average character tended to be in their 30's or 40's, but in the early 1990's there was a big shift to focus on young people. It was around the time Friends or Star Trek: Voyager started airing. Suddenly it was all people in their 20's, like that was the new grown-up adulthood. So if this issue of the comic had been written a decade later, it would have been populated by teenagers who looked like they had stepped out of Gen13.

> Maybe if he concentrated a little less on the humans he could have fit more Transformers into his Transformers comic.

I mean, I get it. The toys turned into Earth vehicles, so obviously the story has to take place on Earth. Part of the thing that makes the Transformers concept interesting is watching them try to blend in and adapt. The culture clash stories can be a lot of fun. But Budiansky leaned in hard towards the human interest angle.

I think the problem is that while the cartoon stuck with the same core group of people for the most part (Spike, Sparkplug, Carly, Chip) the comic book had this continuously rotating cast of newcomers. Cartoon Spike only reacted with shock and surprised when he met the Autobots for the first time, and after that hanging out with huge warmongering robots was commonplace. But in continuously introducing new characters, you get stuck in that very narrow storytelling framework where people are just constantly flabbergasted to meet these alien robots from the great beyond.

> This is why you should go to one of those conventions. At least hit one Budiansky appearance. These questions ain't gonna ask themselves.

Noted!

> Heck, there's a set of steer bull horns mounted to her wall (Chekov's steer horns?) and she never uses those. Maybe I'm reading too much into all this.

I think the bull's horns were just set dressing to establish that she's a big Western girl. It would be different if she'd called attention to them in dialogue. Budiansky was never subtle about plot points he intended to play a big role later on.

> I feel like Wendell was being set up as an antagonist for Skids but the story just never went there. There's the one scene where Charlene turns down Wendell's date invitation and Wendell is standing menacingly with his back against a wall, looking over his shoulder while Charlene gets in her van. He's posed in the way a bad guy who's waiting in ambush poses. It almost feels stalker-ish.

The sense I've always gotten is that we know Wendell is interested in Charlene, but she's passing up on the opportunity to spend time with him because she's so enthralled with Skids. But, they're so different from each other that we know it can't last. We know the Skids/Charlene romance is forbidden. So I think the lesson we're supposed to come away with is to... stay in your lane? I guess?

> I don't think Jake's hero turn is logical for the character at that point.. He pretty much decides to wreck his $250,000 car out of love or respect for Frannie, whose inputs he never valued up to this point?

Yeah, it's not really a logical progression for the character. It would have made more sense if Frannie had grabbed the wheel or something and done it herself. But some Marvel editor was probably like, "You can't have her do that! Women don't know how to drive!" or something.

> I don't think she settled for Wendell. Her exact line when Skids suggested she give Wendell a shot was "That's a nice idea". 'Nice idea' doesn't sound like committal to the guy or a promise to Skids that she'd actually follow through.
Yeah, she's clearly not happy about the idea. Frankly, after having adventures with a gigantic alien robot for any length of time, going on dates with a regular, ordinary human would be pretty boring by comparison. In the end, she probably settled down with a nice Maytag washing machine.

Budiansky brought back characters like The Mechanic or Donny Finkleberg repeatedly, but Charlene is a cool character and it's a shame she never made a return appearance. Of course, Skids disappeared off the face of the map pretty quickly, so maybe it's for the best.

Zob (Masterpiece Skids really should have come with a little tiny Charlene figurine)

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Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2022 19:00:26 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Re: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE
TRANSFORMERS #20
From: evil.kin...@gmail.com (Evil King Macrocranios)
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 by: Evil King Macrocrani - Tue, 29 Mar 2022 02:00 UTC

On Monday, March 28, 2022 at 5:01:27 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> > Speaking of houses, I was noticing how Charlene in the comic is a small town supermarket cashier and she has a two story house...
> Maybe she inherited it? It's definitely a huge juxtaposition from Donny Finkleberg in his run-down apartment in the slums.

It looks like I missed a detail. The narration describes it as her apartment. I've never seen apartments that look like that so I'm thinking Trimpe may have flubbed and drew the wrong kind of dwelling. Or maybe Bob and Herb and Mike Carlin the editor all being New York city slickers really had no idea what an apartment complex in Wyoming looked like so he drew a ranch looking thing and they high fived and went on. Whatever it looks like, an apartment is a little more in line with a cashier's salary (even if it's more like a house).

> We know the Skids/Charlene romance is forbidden. So I think the lesson we're supposed to come away with is to... stay in your lane? I guess?

EXACTLY! Charlene didn't transform at all. There is only defeatist resignation and acceptance of a life she found dull and boring because Skids tells her she must. Skids' speech at the end where he's all, "Know your role-I am an awesome robot and you're a cashier so accept it!" is Budiansky totally fumbling the ball. Skids could have come to the acceptance of his fate, thanked her for it, and she should have decided to sell the apartment house and buy a ranch.

Sometimes when I wonder about people from my past, instead of looking them up I just imagine horrible fates for them and let it go. I'm thinking issue 21 is Budiansky doing that for his lost real life Charlene, whoever or wherever she is. (From now on if I think about old girlfriends I will tell myself they married Wendell the grocery bagger.)

> Yeah, it's not really a logical progression for the character. It would have made more sense if Frannie had grabbed the wheel or something and done it herself. But some Marvel editor was probably like, "You can't have her do that! Women don't know how to drive!" or something.

Yes! Frannie grabbing the wheel suits the story well. Actually I have in my head the way it should have ended and in my version there would have been no Jake and Frannie driving a Lamborghini through abandoned gold mine towns in Wyoming. The main human antagonist in this story is Wendell. We would have had about two pages worth of Charlene and Skids going on dates with Wendell silently stalking them instead of the Jake road rage panels. Then Wendell follows them to the gold mine town when he finally can't take it anymore. It's not Jake who busts Skids' windshield, it's Wendell who does it, after bursting from the background and confessing his love for Charlene. Here in Wendell is the hero taking a stand for what he cares about that she's always wanted. Then tragically he dies luring Ravage into the hole. And Skids says, "This town may not have been big enough for those two, but that hole sure was."

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