The Transformers: a life-long love affair
An Introduction to SciFi Continuums investigation into The Transformers on their 40th anniversary year
If there has been one constant in my life, it is my love of Transformers. I discovered them when I was seven or eight years old (way back in the 80s) and have stayed a fan ever since. My love affair was mainly with the comics, but I do try to keep up with the cartoon and movies. I also still have a small assortment of the toys (and my son is now obsessing over Rescue Bots and the Legacy Dinobots, which I’m far from discouraging).
It was the comics though, especially the writing of Simon Furman and the art of Andrew Wildman and Geoff Senior, which first hooked me, in the latter years of Marvel UK’s run. During the 90s I largely dismissed the Beast Wars cartoon (only to realise my mistake some years later) but did seek out the G2 comics wherever I could. I brought the UK Fleetway comics (short-lived as it was) and sought out the American comics from my nearest comic book shop. I only ever managed to get about half of the 12-issue run, but I tried.
I went to university in late 2000 and through their much better internet access (back then I had been reliant solely on dial-up), I found scans of all the old UK comic strips online.* I was delighted. Until then I had never understood the difference between the US and UK-orientated material, nor had I ever read more than a handful of the stories before I had started to buy the comics sometime after the 200th issue. My first year in uni was enhanced by my first full read-through of the Marvel UK comic from start to finish. It was then, that I realised how well connected the stories were, but also where continuity fell short. It was then that I began to learn more about the behind-the-scenes processes and people that had been involved. It was then that I truly started to figure out my own head-canon for how all the stories fit together.
One year later, the great re-boot of Transformers comics began with Dreamwave putting out a new G1 continuity alongside comics of the then-cartoon, Armada. Around the same time, I discovered online comic material from Transformers Conventions: the Reaching the Omega Point storyline, and some years later, Simon Furman’s mini-novel: Alignment. And, also at the same time, Titan Books started to republish the US and UK Marvel stories from start to finish. I collected these avidly, preferring (as I do to this day) the print versions over digital.
If there was one moment in time that I would consider a personal golden age of Transformers, it was around the time of my undergraduate degree. Not, necessarily because of the quality of the outputs, but just the rediscovery of a fictional universe that I had, until then only had fragmented access and knowledge.
I left university in 2004 around the same time that Dreamwave Productions went bust. The next year was a bit of a low point. No new comics, but also a low-paid job and desperately trying to find a way to get a funded place on a Ph.D. programme. Things took a turn for the better when (after nearly giving up) I managed to succeed in getting funding and moved to Sheffield in October 2005. This coincided with IDW Publishing putting out its first Transformers comic: Infiltration Issue 1, in the same month. Things were looking bright again.
IDW’s run has had its highs and lows, but for the most part, I’ve enjoyed their stories and how they have opened up the Transformers brand to more inclusivity, various crossovers, and storylines that move outside of the simple binary war of good vs evil. When their continuity brought in other properties as a ‘shared Hasbro universe’, I was on board, but couldn’t afford to buy the floppies any longer. Their price in the UK had gone over £3, the quality of the paper had declined, and IDW started to reduce stories by two pages. On top of those changes, the need to pick up the likes of ROM, Micronauts, Action Man, M.A.S.K., and G.I. Joe, made it financially impossible. I transferred my allegiance to trade-paperbacks and have mostly continued with that even after the shared universe ended.
When IDW lost the licence in 2022, I was living in London. There had been a fair bit of change in my life in the previous years (partly caused by the pandemic), but more changes were on the horizon. I remember purposefully heading out to the Forbidden Planet comic shop off Oxford Street South on a cold lunch break a week or so before Christmas, to pick up the final issue of IDW Transformers. The issue was the final part of Shattered Glass II, a series that follows in the footsteps of Star Trek’s Mirror, Mirror stories: where Autobots are evil and Decepticons are good. As a final output, it was a strange ending for IDW. It was sad to think that that was it, especially as Hasbro hadn’t yet announced a successor.
In January 2023 there would be no Transformers comic on sale. That was okay, I still had quite a lot of IDW’s output to finish reading, not just Shattered Glass, but also the final volume of their second ongoing, the King Grimlock mini-series, and the Beast Wars volumes. That would certainly keep me going in the gap between publishers.
By the time summer came around, I had all but given up expecting any further Transformers comics coming onto the market in 2023. There had been early rumblings about Skybound taking the license, but nothing had been heard since which seemed to suggest that negotiations had failed. I began to think that Hasbro was having difficulty selling the license. Of course, that was all a rouse.
In June 2023 new rumours began to surface that Skybound’s new ‘shared universe’ Void Rivals was, in fact, a backdoor pilot for a new Transformers series. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but then I also wasn’t entirely unconvinced. I went as far as to note the date of release for Void Rivals issue 1 in my calendar to make sure that I was free enough to get to a comic shop if, indeed, the rumours proved true.
In the end, they did indeed, prove true.
Several days before the first issue was due to be released the news broke that Void Rivals included a guest appearance from Jetfire! I purchased the issue and have continued with Void Rivals and the entire ‘Energon Universe’, including the Transformers ongoing and now the Gi Joe mini-series’ focused on Duke and Cobra Commander.
So, that brings us to January 2024. This year is a special year for a franchise that has, in part, shaped my life and fuelled my imagination. Transformers toys, comics, and cartoons first came onto the market in 1984, forty years ago. Indeed, the first public advertisement for Transformers was due to appear on 6 January 1984. This was a simple advert for Hasbro animated cartoons, which included a small picture of a Transformer and a description that the cartoon would be about ‘cars and planes’ which transform ‘into robots and battle for the universe’.
How will SciFi Continuums celebrate the Transformers 40th anniversary?
In these essays I plan to share a combination of reviews, history pieces, and fictional accounts from the Transformers stories themselves. I will also be looking at continuity; where are the gaps, how do stories fit together, is there a better reading order than other ways?
Of course, Transformers now have many universes across multiple formats. There is no real way to make all this material cohesive. But is there a way to read the material in some form of order, providing a loose structure to link one universe to another? I have spent a lifetime building such a reading order (my own head-canon) and so I will be sharing that here as well, in case anyone is interested.
For 2024 I will also attempt to follow the approximate release schedules of the Transformers in its maiden year, starting with the advert I mentioned earlier and eventually reviewing the comics, cartoons, and toys as and when they came out, forty years ago on that day. I hope you might join me.
* It’s worth noting that when I discovered these scans the Transformers comics property had been dead (or on life-support) for the best part of a decade. The resurgence of the brand happened about a year later. These scans, therefore, whilst almost certainly breaking copyright, were literally the only way to read these stories in 2000. They did their job in relighting my interest just in time to start buying new (and old) stories again as floppies and trades.