Transformer's Comic Books

I'm just going to start this post by saying that I do like Transformers, and to be honest probably way too much. Just like a lot of other thirty-somethings, I do feel a bit nostalgic about some of the cartoons and toys of the 80's. So when I say I like Transformers, I'm talking about Gen 1 80's nostalgia candy.

Here's the thing though, the cartoons really sucked. Now don't go hating now if you still love the cartoons, I'd watch them, but just how many times can you screw up the coloring and voices of Thundercracker, Starscream and Skywarp. I mean really, I don't know how many times it would be Skywarp's paint job with Starscream's voice or Thundercracker would fluctuate between his coloring and Skywarp's.

That's not the only problem with the animation either. Call it a pet peeve, but if in one scene a Transformer is towering over two-story houses, he shouldn't be just slightly taller than the human he's catching while rescuing them.

The toys were cool, and I still have some of them. I really liked these toys when I was growing up, and my smart grandmother held on to some of them for me and gave them to me when I was an adult. However, there's no story to toys.

Fortunately there was a Transformers product that did have good writing and kept up with all the additions to the toy line. In 1984, Marvel started producing what would turn into an 80 issue run of Transformers comics. It started off with a four part miniseries, but with the successes of the cartoon and toy line, Marvel just kept it going.

Right out of the gates, the storyline was so much better than the cartoon as the writers seemed to understand continuity. To be honest, it did take some ramp up time, but right away there were some major differences between the comic and the cartoon. To give you an example, when there was a shootout, there were actually casualties on each side; the shots actually managed to hit something! I remember Ratchet (the Autobot Medic) being upset that he didn't have enough parts to repair all of the Autobots, and more and more of them were being shutdown and put in stasis until the necessary part could be found.

Now, I have to get into the movie a bit, because a lot of Transformers, on both sides, bought it in the movie, but come on, the movie was weird, and it still managed to screw up paint jobs (Rewind and Eject come to mind as they both changed colors by walking). There's another comparison though, and it was the Matrix. The comic had like a 20 issue run of the Matrix Quest, in which Optimus Prime (the coolest Transformer ever) lead all the Transformers along with Scorponok to battle Unicron, and that's how Optimus dies. Oh, and by the way, he dies because there's only like a fifth of him left, he doesn't just turn gray.

The stories throughout the comics are good, though a little dated, and the comic also manages to keep up with all the Transformers that were released in toys, not just the first years worth or so, and it manages to incorporate them into the story in inventive ways, like the space bridge! Slag pits, Head Masters, and a storyline of Galvatron vs. Megatron, what more can you ask for? Oh, and BTW, Spike isn't a pansy in this version either.