Transformers: Armada (mini-comic)
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The Transformers: Armada toyline included a series of four mini-comics, which rolled out as the line progressed. Produced by Dreamwave, the mini-comics were printed back-to-back with a catalog featuring the current waves of Armada toys. None of them have any overt link to any other Armada fiction, but all four were written by Chris Sarracini, and loosely fit the Earth-based status quo established in his five-issue opening arc for the Dreamwave ongoing series, with events of course differing from Simon Furman's continuation of that ongoing. The comics were at first printed with up to six languages, to the point where more than one printing of the comic in a single booklet was needed to allow room for all the dialogue. Later volumes would cut down on the number of languages present.
It's currently unknown which specific assortments of toys shipped with which volume of the comic. It would be logical to assign each to each subsequent wave of product but in practice it didn't line up this way. Volume 2 advertises wave 4 figures in its product catalog section that wouldn't see retail until 2003. Volume 3 proves to be the rarest to find packed in with figures and has been found with what should be wave 1 releases, clearly showing the presence of later case assortment revisions. Also undocumented is the exact number of printed variants of each comic. Some would be markedly thicker than other copies of the same volume, owing to a greater number of languages repeating the story. Some copies would include only English material throughout, making these more desirable to English speaking collectors. It's very likely Volume 1 never received this treatment however, as Hasbro's stance at the time was that multilingual packaging copy was the way forward. All four original volumes have never been collected into one publication, but were included as bonus unlockables in the 2004 Transformers video game—albeit in pretty poor resolution—and the first two were reprinted at a larger size as bonus material in the first two collected editions of Dreamwave's Armada run. The last two have never been reprinted.
In 2016, Fun Publications would release a fifth pack-in comic with Timelines Skywarp set in the same continuity.
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