THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

OTHER TRANSFORMERS BOOKS AND SERIES

#1: Autobots' Lightning Strike
Reviewed by Inflatable Dalek

Though it's a fairly generic G1 setting, several elements are taken specifically from the TV show. Spike is an engineer who keeps a diary and his Dad had worked on oil rigs. Both the diary and the Autobot’s stated aim of rebuilding their spaceship - both of which vanished from the show after the pilot – suggest that More Than Meets The Eye was the main reference point used. The main thing that would stop this from being TV Continuity is that we're told there are no storms on Cybertron when we see some there, complete with acid rain, in Roll For It.

One curiosity to note is that despite having a reasonably large speaking role, Spike's Father is constantly referred to as... Spike's Father. This suggests that whatever reference material Grant had didn't include the character's name.

Lightning is really electricity, about a 1000 mega volts. Lightning can wreak buildings, wreak trees and sink oil rigs. Transformers is educational, yes?

Mike Collins was a regular artist on the early days of the Marvel UK comic, having the distinction of being one of the few to have both written and drawn it at different times. He's also clearly remained somewhat fond of the robots, having recently put an Optimus Prime homage into a 10th Doctor Doctor Who Magazine comic. As was the custom in the Marvel comic at the time, all the art here is extremely toy based, though the Ladybird books would continue this long after everyone else had moved away from the practise.

This was released in the Talk and Read Series.

The bookends are made of two pages (repeated at the front and back), one for Heroic Autobots and one for Evil Decepticons, giving short little introductions to the following characters: Optimus Prime, Hound, Sideswipe, Huffer, Jazz, Gears, Megatron, Soundwave, Laserbeak, Starscream, Rumble, Ravage. This would be used for all the 1985 books.


As he points out that a mountain has been blown away, Hound has the half loopy grin of a man doing seriously good drugs.

On his first appearance, Gears is a lovely shade of purple.

Bluestreak has big Jack Nicholson teeth.

As the Decepticons fly away in shadow, they seem to include two Rumble's, one Laserbeak and 5 Seekers [Because of the randomness I'm not counting this as appearances by Frenzy and Thudercracker].

On the cover, not only is Optimus' gun a lovely shade of gold, so are his optics [The future's so bright he's going to need shades].


Utterly charming. Here we have something not done very often in Transformers, the comedy of errors. The Decepticons think the tower is something it isn't and repeatedly make arses of themselves trying to destroy it. Despite the simplicity, and the rather heavy handed educational tone, this is carried by some excellent characterisation. How often does Gears get to take such a central role? His Eeyore style whining at everything is contagiously fun.

The Megatron/Starscream dynamic is somewhat old hat, but this is more than made up for on the Decepticon side by Soundwave's befuddlement at what the hell is going on, and the pay off with everyone getting zapped is very neat. A hugely entertaining ten minute read that sees the range start off with one of the strongest entries.

The gang's all here, Optimus Prime and his troops as envisioned by Collins.

Toy based Megatron does his best Bruce Forsyth chin.