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interests / alt.toys.transformers / Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE #1

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o Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THEZobovor

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Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE #1

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Subject: Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE
TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE #1
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Sun, 15 May 2022 03:40 UTC

The Transformers: the Movie, released in August 1986, wa a huge game-changer for the Transformers cartoon series.  It was the first time main characters were killed off, permanently replacing most of the main cast. Also, the setting of the story jumped ahead 20 years, from 1985 to the far-flung future date of 2005.  Optimus Prime was dead, replaced with Rodimus Prime.  Megatron had been transformed into Galvatron.  Nothing would ever be the same again.

Marvel Comics treated the Transformers motion picture very, very differently.  The comics timeline never jumped ahead the way the cartoon did, so most of the toys released during and after the movie were simply folded into the present-day comic book adventures. Instead of representing a turning point for the comics, then, the movie was simply a weird, random adventure taking place in the future.  Readers of the comics would sometimes write to the editors, confused about events depicted in the comics.  How could Prime and Megatron die in the present-day and then be alive again for the movie?  How could Bumblebee get turned into Goldbug but then become Bumblebee again in 2005?  The editors eventually were forced to reject The Transformers: the Movie as merely one possible future, rather than the ultimate destiny for all of these characters.  Indeed, the movie adaptation was largely forgotten, eventually, at least until Simon Furman took the helm as writer, and folded many of the movie's concepts and characters (Galvatron, Unicron, etc.) into the present-day narrative.

The Marvel adaptation THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE #1 was printed on September 2, 1986, and had a pull date of December 1986.  Ralph Macchio adapted these stories, as the actual movie script had been written by Ron Frieman and Flint Dille and others.  This freed up Bob Budiansky to serve as editor, as he had done during the early issues of the comic.  Don Perlin drew the pencils, many of which were based directly on the theatrical storyboards.  Ian Akin and Brian Garvey inked the artwork, and Nel Yomtov colored it.  Janice Chiang provided the letters.  

So the story starts out approximately the same as the theatrical version, with the world-eating monster planet Unicron nearing planet Lithone, terrorizing the populace with its looming presence before eventually eating their world.  In the comic book adaptation, Lithone inhabitants Kranix and Arblus can transform into vehicles, an idea that was conceived for the characters but eventually rejected for the animated film.

This is a future in which Autobots like Ironhide and Cliffjumper (deactivated by this point in the comics) are suddenly alive again, and are stationed on outlying moon bases, as the Decepticons have gained a foothold on planet Cybertron.  The premise of Cybertron having moons was already worked into the present-day comic book, perhaps as a lead-in to this story.  (In the cartoon series, the moons suddenly appeared with zero explanation.)

Bumblebee and a new character called Spike are stationed on one of the moon bases.  The concept of Spike as a character was translated to Buster for the comic book, so Spike's existence is a bit of an oddity here.  Spike was never part of Marvel Comics before this moment, though he will eventually be worked into the comics at a later date shortly after the Headmasters are introduced.  

Seen here, Bumblebee is wearing two bumper stickers on his arms, which was originally an idea from the movie script—one is supposed to read "I ♥ CYBERTRON" and the other "I ♣ DECEPS."  The inkers may have misinterpreted the pencils, as the finished art seems to depict "180 DECEPS" instead.

Optimus Prime sends a team aboard a shuttle to head towards Autobot City, a new stronghold on Earth.  Megatron boards the shuttle and attacks.  Brawn, Prowl, and Ironhide die for a second time in the comics, while Ratchet unceremoniously joins them as well.  He was a much more important character in Marvel Comics, and it seems like a tragic send-off to lump him together with these nobodies.  The deaths of these characters were shocking in the cartoon, but given the almost cavalier way in which many Autobots and Decepticons (especially the 1984 characters) have already been dispatched in the comics, it just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

The stolen shuttle arrives and Megatron attacks Autobot City.  The city is at one point identified as Fortress Maximus, amusingly.  This was a name Hasbro had considered and rejected for Omega Supreme, and then considered and rejected a second time for Metroplex.  The actual Fortress Maximus character will make his debut in THE HEADMASTERS #1, still about a year down the road by this point.  

The Constructicons combine into Devastator, and the art is cribbed from TRANSFORMERS issue #19.  As before, somehow Mixmaster's mixing drum turns into Devastator's face, and he ends up laying down on the ground after they all combine.  What an odd selection of panels to borrow from.  It's not even that cool-looking.

Optimus arrives aboard a shuttle and sends the Dinobots to deal with Devastator.  A no-longer-dead Sunstreaker is on hand as Prime decides to end Megatron's reign of tyrrany once and for all.  In the animated film, a well-intentioned Hot Rod interferes with the duel, and Prime's compassion ends up being his downfall.  In the adaptation, Hot Rod is nowhere to be found, and Prime and Megatron both just... fall over after fighting for a while.

On Prime's death bed, he speaks of joining the Matrix.  Now, in the cartoon, we'd never heard of the Matrix before.  In the comics, it's already a well-established concept.  But up until now, it was a computer program that granted life to new Transformers.  Now, Prime is talking about joining the Matrix as if it were some receptacle for the afterlife.  

Also, in the animated version, Prime dying and passing the Matrix onto Ultra Magnus is a somber moment, but in the comic book Magnus seems a little drunk with power.  His eyes glow as he claims the Matrix for himself, and talks about seizing his purpose and his future.  (Also, Sunstreaker is present for Prime's death in this version.)

The Decepticons retreat aboard Astrotrain (the first such time he's been featured in Marvel Comics up to this point) and dump their wounded into space.. Megatron and the others float until they meet Unicron, who makes Megatron an offer he can't refuse.  Fans of the cartoon have debated endlessly about which specific characters were recreated into Unicron's servants.  The artwork in Marvel Comics offers little to corroberate any argument—the characters are drawn vaguely.  At least eight soldiers are created, one of them out of a Dirge/Ramjet/Thrust type conehead robot.  

Then, Megatron is reborn as Galvatron, as we end the first issue of the adaptation.  Marvel Comics based their version of Galvatron on the grey-colored Hasbro toy rather than the purple colors used in the cartoon, so Galvatron has a very different look.  The grey colors are rendered in light blue, a limitation of the four-color printing process, so in some ways their rendition of Galvatron is actually much closer in appearance to Megatron.  

Weirdly, not only is Hot Rod's role reduced significantly in this early part of the story, but Kup, acting as his mentor, is absent entirely.  He's on the front cover, and they drew him during Prime's death scene, but he's been reduced to being completely inessential.  I realize they have a lot of ground to cover, and there are only 23 pages in this issue, but the Hot Rod and Kup dynamic is such a central part of the story that it seems strange to ignore it completely.  

What's really strange is that Bob Budiansky was already planning to kill off both Optimus Prime and Megatron in the regular comic book (we lose Prime in issue #24 and Megatron in #25).  I'm not sure if this was the result of him knowing about their fate in the movie, or Hasbro's request that he make room for even more characters, or some other reason.  Prime was largely absent for much of the first year of comics, and was only really active as Autobot leader after his restoration in issue #12.  Killing them off in the main story sort of undercuts the ends of the characters as depicted in the movie adaptation.  It's just not very shocking like it was in the cartoon. For better or for worse, the comics had already been killing off characters for a while now (pretty much all the 1984 Autobots and Decepticons except for a few stragglers like Bumblebee and Wheeljack and Soundwave), so perhaps it simply lacked whatever gravitas it might have had otherwise.  

The adaptation would run for three issues, being printed concurrently alongside the regular TRANSFORMERS title as well as the TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE character profile collection.  The following month would also see the debut of yet another mini-series, G.I. JOE AND THE TRANSFORMERS!  We'll look at all of these next month, of course!

Zob (just found some Biker Scouts in my Star Wars collection that have all turned yellow, and I'm not happy about it)

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