TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Part 5 in an ongoing series blatantly ripped off from an idea by Hooks of the Allspark.

Last time it was G1 cartoon. This thread is about all the things you LOVE about the Transformers comics (G1 and G2) by Marvel. No flaming. No badmouthing. Just post everything you like about the Marvel comics in here, be it the characterization of Blaster and Grimlock, Geoff Senior's artwork or the huge bodycount in G2.

For the Marvel haters, there is a separate thread here, so make sure you only post the positive stuff in this one.

Next up: Transfandom (no, not the website).

Having only read a few G1 and G2 issues, I don't have much to say, however,
1) The storys. Very creative. Darker than the cartoon.
2) The Swarm attack.
3) Soundwave and the Cassettes.
4) Jhiaxus oblitorating San Fancisco.

It actually felt like there was a war going on.

Actual characterisation.

Actual plots.

Lots of very good art... Senior is still the ultimate TF artist for his ability to convey scale and dynamics, while most of the British artists were competent. And there's William Johnson too.

A number of excellent characters, too many to list.

The fact that, for whatever reason, they brought back classic characters.

The detailed backstory.

The realistic number of Transformers.

The origin of the Transformers, and Unicron. Toasters and monkeys? **** off...

Decepticon leaders who tended to get things done.

A fair degree of consistency, all things considered.

-Prowl, Grimlock (When written by Fruman), Nightbeat, Galvatron...

-A sense of scale to the whole thing, a big broad canvas but one on which the better charecters still stood out.

-The fact they took full advantage of the fact the comics code didn't apply to robots...

-The UK letters page. It's a difficult thing to do right (just look at the Dreamwave efforts) but this walked the knowing humore line perfectly for the most part. The Shagpile carpet joke was worth the price of the comic alone...

-But most of all, for giving me a love of reading that's lasted to this day.

The Underbase saga, with so many casualties.

Superion smashing with his fist a bridge of something, fighting with Menasor.

Skids before Circuitbreaker ( I wrote the name correct? Only knows in spanish...) dismantled him.

We saw really casualties, and arms ripped off, and heads...(just remembering Megatron playing with Cyclonus head and crushing his nebulan teammate in Time Wars)

Unicron. Unicron. Unicron.

And of course Galvatron, before gets kidnapped by Hook and company. When i was a child, this issue even frightened me. Well, a little...

Most of what Furman wrote.

That issue with Ratchet and Megs merged was great. Must've read that comic alone like a billion times when I was a kid...

[AOL user] Wot Clify rote. lollerskates [/AOL user]

...with generous helpings of what Dalek wrote, too. It isn't easy to come up with characters that feel realistic when most of your protagonists are ancient giant robots.

Senior and Yaniger are the benchmarks by which I measure robot art; dark and filled with angles, no US manga nonsense, no CGI gradients.

Whilst the art in G2 is often more suggestive than representational, I like the package as a whole—Richard Starkings tied things together perfectly with the speech balloons and fonts. It's wild when it wants to be, and tells the story... something more recent comics frequently fail to do. There are maybe a couple of splash pages in the whole thing.

Furman pulls off a good few gut-punches in his writing over the issues; most notably Ratchet/Starscream, US #75, US G2 #1, etc. I enjoy the overblown narration, though I can see why it irritates others.

A healthy dose of farce to offset the fact it's a series that, when you get down to it, is about a fairly brutal civil war.

I'd like to echo that the TF comic basically set me off on the road to reading things like Watchmen, Miracleman, Planetary et al...

I've also liked the way that G2 and a handful of others [Target 2006, the final Unicron US arc] genuinely feels like a graphic novel split across issues... when it gels, the narrative feels so tight and purposeful.

I like the way the comic basically goes somewhere. Sure, there are loose ends left, right and centre, but I don't think any of us would have preferred a MTMTE #8 style "let's tie up all the **** in forty pages, regardless of narrative crassness" summary.

Things that I love about the Marvel TF Comics...

...the epic stories of Furman's US run.

...Neil Yomtov's colors were spectular (especially in Wildman's run)

...Andrew Wildman's art. The best Transformers artist ever!

...Geoff Senior's art.

...Darek Yangier's art in G2.

...the lettering in the G2 series.

...no stupid alternate covers.

• I love how Budiansky and Furman would select characters seemingly at random and give them characterization. The comic, especially in the early years when Hasbro was breathing down Bob's neck to flog toys, could easily have focussed on the guys with the most expensive toys and ignored the smaller guys, but if anything it was the other way around. While the cartoon gave us our fill of gestalts, Omega Supreme, citybots, etc, the comic gave us the likes of Ratchet, Skids, Smokescreen, Inferno, Ratbat, Goldbug, Nightbeat, Bludgeon, Carnivac, Spinister, the Sparklers, and probably a pile more that I'm forgetting.
• I like how the Decepticon leaders actually seemed to have goals, instead of randomly causing trouble just because they're supposed to be evil. Shockwave wanted to build more Decepticons so that he could overrun Earth and stripmine it for resources. Ratbat wanted to take as much fuel as he could while expending as little effort as possible. Scorponok was mainly concerned with cementing his own power base. Thunderwing wanted to get his grimy hands on the Matrix. Bludgeon wanted to return to the ways of conquest, etc...
• I like the variety in the art. Between Senior, Wildman, Yaniger, and the whole host of other artists who worked on the TF titles, we got quite a few different interpretations of the characters. Contrast that with the DW titles with their generic 'house style' art that always ended up looking essentially the same no matter who drew it.
• The fact that characters actually suffered and died had a big impact on me as a child. The Ratchet/Megatron fusion in The Price of Life scarred me so badly that I couldn't even look at the cover of the book for about five years (to this day, I still get shivers when I read it...). Seeing so many of the characters whose toys I owned get melted in On the Edge of Extinction was like a punch in the guts. And then there's Rhythms of Darkness, quite possibly the first time it ever occured to me that the 'bad guys' could win out in the end.

There's probably more, but if I continued on I'd only be repeating what others have said.

everthing Furman wrote i enjoy even the other Writers weren't bad either

i really like Andy Wildmans Artwork

(on side note Furmans now writing the Power Rangers SPD Comic in the Uk Magazine Jetix, with Artist Andrew Wildman);)

-Making Ratbat Decepticon leader. An insane idea that probably shows how much Bob didn't care at this point, but it works somehow, even if the stories he's in don't always.

-The fact that thanks to Marvel UK's crazy cross-over policy it's possible to put Doctor Who and Thundercats in the same universe as Transformers if you really, really want to.

- G.B. Blackrock. Easily the best reccuring human charecter by a very comfortable margin.

Another love, the price on old issues. Just picked up #39 for only $3.00 at my comic store.

Stuff wot I liked (aside from lots of things already mentioned)...

Early UK stories where the characters actually looked like who they were rather than the generally inferior anime models (Brawn in 'The Enemy Within' is a particular delight - he was the first toy I owned and I hate his anime appearance)

Early UK stories again just because they were some great stories ('Man of Iron' and 'Crisis of Command' are still some of the best ever printed IMO)

The awesome colour work on the UK stories up till around the time of 'Target: 2006'

The fact that Optimus actually died in 2006 and stayed dead, (although they messed this up by having him constantly die/ressurect in the intervening years instead) leaving Rodimus to develop into a proper leader.

Am I a shameless "UK comics ruled!" type of fan? Why yes... yes I am.

The last few issues from 70 onward of the first run were very exciting and contained quite a few cool Optimus Prime scenes ("Do you have the white flag? You'll bind my wound with it, soldier! We're Autobots, we never give ground and we never, never surrender!" followed by "I surrender" in the next panel.)

I completely loved the Generation 2 idea - Camouflage Paint Megatron, Decepticons teaming up with the Autobots to fight the Jhiaxus branch of the Decepticons, exchanging laserguns for projectile weapons, the damn cool cover of the number 1 issue where Prime has got a few bullets in his head and the headline reads "This is not your father's Autobot!" Man, those were the days!

Overall I really liked the concept of having the 12 issues of Generation 2 as one self-contained story arch, in case the series tanks. Thanks to that, we've got a consistent story and aren't left hanging "Hey, what's going to happen next?" It's a pity that it didn't sell well enough to warrant a continuation (and the recent run of transformers comics was very hard to come by in Germany, so I kinda stopped halfway through as I was missing issues in between anyway).

Originally posted by inflatable dalek -The fact that thanks to Marvel UK's crazy cross-over policy it's possible to put Doctor Who and Thundercats in the same universe as Transformers if you really, really want to.

Thundercats had a crossover story? I don't remember that.

Personally, I love that it makes it possible that TF is in the Marvel Universe, thanks to Marvel US's crossover policy.

Well, I guess that if I ever run out of material to add to my Doctor Who reference site I've got plenty of material to expand into there.

Anyway, things I really love about the Marvel TF comic:

Almost all of the UK stuff, and all of G2.

UK artwork - particularly the covers

Dark stories that make it feel like the TFs actually are part of a war. Plots that work on an adult level more so than most other incarnations of TF.

Emirate Xaaron, Impactor, Swoop, Soundwave (especially the UK and UK letters page versions), Ravage, Baddass (Furman) Grimlock, Badass Dinobots, Carnivac, Bludgeon, the "grown-up" portrayal of Bumblebee, Baddass (Budiansky) Blaster, tons of other great characters. I even like Scrounge.

Character development in numerous cases.

Robo Capers, Matt and the Cat, Combat Colin

The UK letters page - particularly when run by Soundwave and Grimlock

Numerous moments that stick in my mind,. and lots of great stories - particularly The Legacy of Unicron, Dinobot Hunt, In the National Interest, G2, the Edge of Extinction Arc, and Target: 2006.

I think I appreciate the comic more now than at the height of my childhood obsession with it.

Pretty much everything mentioned by Cliffy, Dalek, Denyer, and Hound (and lots of others as well)

Originally posted by Bouncelot
Thundercats had a crossover story? I don't remember that.

Indirectly, Death's Head links TF with the DWM strip, which also had some Marvel created badies from the Thundercats in one story (who were also in a Combat Colin strip as well aparently), so therefore it's all the same Universe.

Originally posted by inflatable dalek
Indirectly, Death's Head links TF with the DWM strip, which also had some Marvel created badies from the Thundercats in one story (who were also in a Combat Colin strip as well aparently), so therefore it's all the same Universe.

You mean the Gwanzulum (blue furry shape-changers)? I didn't know they appeared in Thundercats as well.

The greatest Transformers stories ever, both in writing and art, issue #7 and #8.

-Racthet made for a great protagonist.

-Most bad guys were genuinely menacing instead of buffoonish.

-Death's Head, yes?