Transformers (Titan Magazine)

"GIVE ME YOUR POCKET MONEY."

Transformers was an ongoing monthly magazine published in the United Kingdom by Titan Magazines (later Titan Comics), running from summer 2007 to winter 2014.

Initially tying into the live-action film series, it featured a mix of original comic strips, reprinted IDW Publishing strips, and regular features and competitions, with over fifty pages a month. The title was rebranded as Transformers Universe from issues #22-25, during which time it also included original Transformers Animated strips, left over from the comic's short-lived Transformers Animated sister title.

After issue #25, the comic was rebranded as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and relaunched with a second volume to tie-in with the new movie. The subtitle was dropped with issue #8, which also saw the IDW reprints come to a conclusion, and the length of the magazine drop to 32 pages; not long after, with issue #10, the comic strip was reduced in length to only eight pages. The focus on the live-action movie continuity continued, however, with the second volume running to 21 issues before being relaunched for a third volume, renamed Transformers: Dark of the Moon. This volume only ran four for issues, and was followed by a fourth volume, titled Transformers: Prime. After twenty issues, the series was rebranded one last time, for a fifth and final volume, Transformers: Age of Extinction, which concluded after five issues.

Despite its extremely chaotic nature, it was the longest running UK Transformers comic since Marvel's, with 75 issues over the span of seven years. If it had gone on much longer, bet you it would've relaunched with yet another name.

Content was not the only ever-changing aspect of the comic: The cover stock, the cover's size, and the price all proved to be fluid, launching at £2.99, falling to £2.50 after the comic's size was reduced, occasionally rising to £2.70 or £2.75 when the magazine would feature larger-than-the-comic glossy card covers, before increasing to a shocking £3.99 from the last few months of 2010, concluding with a £4.99 final issue.

Titan has produced three digest-sized collections of the UK strips under the title Transformers Adventures. IDW reprinted the first eight issues' worth of strips in the United States in late 2008 as a four-issue miniseries, under the title Transformers: Saga of the Allspark, as a tie-in to The Reign of Starscream.

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Development

Titan picked up the rights to a Transformers comic in 2005 after Panini, publishers of the short-lived UK Armada comic, allowed it to lapse. Titan sat on it, reasoning "bugger Cybertron, let's wait for the upcoming film and make £££££s!". Work began on it in October 2006, though all information on the film was top secret even for Titan until IDW's movie comics began.

According to Steve White, Transformers was seen as "the big one", the title that would get Titan Magazines the attention and kudos of the UK comic industry.<ref name="fractalmatter">Steve White interview (archive copy)</ref> It seemed to succeed, selling enough to get original cover art after #6, quite a feat in the UK licensed comic market.

Comic strip

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"Har har! Looks like the Dreadwinds are gonna be DEAD tired, EH READERS?"

Opening each issue is an original comic strip: 10 pages before #13 (Vol.1), 11 pages before #10 (Vol.2), and eight pages from then on, with two 15 page special events. The bulk of these were written by Simon Furman (who departed in 2011) and Robin Etherington (joining in 2010), with four Primes, by Chris Cooper, and illustrated by a mix of artists. A number of artists had been seen on other Transformers comics—Geoff Senior, Nick Roche, Staz and Guido Guidi.

The Titan strips were tied in to the IDW movie prequel, which was being reprinted in #1-13, but apart from that they've ignored IDW's movieverse comics and vice versa. It's also notable that while IDW's artists will generally try to redesign characters to resemble the movie's designs, Titan's artists have generally drawn the toy characters looking like their toys. This means a number of characters, like Ransack, can look completely different depending on which company's comic you're reading.

While IDW stopped making movie tie-ins after Michael Bay allegedly got narked off at a Dark of the Moon spoiler,<ref>Comic Book Resources, 28th June 2017: "How IDW’s Transformers Movie Comics Outshine Michael Bay’s Films": "See, when the trade of the DOTM adaptation was thrown up for pre-order on Amazon, one of the preview pages showed Sentinel Prime’s heel turn and his murder of Ironhide. Irritated, Bay requested that there be no more comics in order to prevent that happening again. Not wanting to kill the goose that lays the explosive eggs, Hasbro pulled the plug."</ref> Titan had no such problem. So urg, it turned out to be good they spent so long on prequel strips.

Transformers (2007)

Prequels and sequels

I suppose you'll just have to read the comic, which you could consider a historical document.{{#if:|{{{quote2}}}}}{{#if:Starscream, #21's Star Screams|Starscream, #21's Star Screams{{#if:|, {{{3}}}|}}|}}

I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE AND I BRING YOU...

Issues #1–6 were set before Transformers and were based on specific characters, filling in details of the war and characters (like Devastator) who were not given much development in the film. The first two strips, starring Optimus and Megatron, tied in to the IDW prequel comic in the same way Marvel UK's stories tied in to the Marvel U.S. series. At the end of #2, four of the characters had been scattered across the galaxy and #3–6 focused on their solo adventures on alien worlds. They also featured characters from the toyline, such as Clocker, in secondary-character roles.

Issues #7–8 were set immediately after the Mission City battle in the film, dealing with leftover plot elements like the whereabouts of Scorponok. Time and later film drafts have not been kind to these two strips: Scorponok stubbornly deciding to not be dead in Revenge of the Fallen, and poor #7 had the Transformers' final battle being in Los Angeles.

Alternate universe

Bloody foreigners, coming over here, taking our jobs...

For issues #9–13, the strip featured an alternate reality story, "Twilight's Last Gleaming", where the Decepticons had captured the AllSpark. Rather than just being a 5-part divergence, this alternate reality rolled on into the second year of the title and lasted until #25, the end of the first series. This was intended to allow Titan to do pretty much whatever they wanted with the cast and universe without having to worry about the plot of the second film.<ref>SCRIPT (W)RAP — UK on Simon Furman's blog</ref>

The alternate reality boasted a sizeable cast, covering both characters from the film and ones who only had toy bios like Elita-One. It opened with Sam Witwicky already dead, Optimus Prime missing in action (later found to be offline), Autobot reinforcements gathering on the moon, and the Decepticons cyberforming the Earth. The resolution had Megatron dead (with Starscream usurping command) and the AllSpark destroyed.

In this second year, the Autobots had to handle the aftermath of an Earth-shattering story, something that had not been done before. Story-lines included the Decepticons deliberately preventing America from rebuilding, Jazz being reborn as an amoral villain, a second group of Decepticons under Stockade, and then a very big twist. The central plot-line first involved Earth's slow, destructive demise from the aborted cyberforming of Twilight's Last Gleaming, before being replaced with the formation of a Decepticon Heartland and Starscream's manipulation of the American government.

The alternate universe ended with a three-part story called "Revolution" that pitted the Autobots and Stockade's Decepticons against an all-out conquest attempt by Starscream. It tied up most of the loose ends; the few left dangling may be because the story arc ended an issue earlier than planned.<ref>SCRIPT (W)RAP — UK: "certainly we’ll be staying in the Twilight’s Last Gleaming continuity at least until issue #26, which as far as I’ve got stories mapped out."</ref> The last shot of the alternate universe was Mikaela Banes and Bumblebee driving off into the sunset, awwww!

A few nods have been made to it since. In 2014, Transformers Collectors' Club would have their exclusive Circuit toy come from this timeline and in 2015, Ask Vector Prime sketched out what the Fallen and Sentinel Prime (and no-fiction almost-toys like Blue Maximus) did here. Furman advised Jim Sorenson on these entries.<ref>Ask Vector Prime 23rd Feb 2016 - "It's Over, FINISHED!": "With a little guidance from Simon Furman, we were able to detail the future of forgotten splinter timelines like Rhythms of Darkness and Twilight's Last Gleaming."</ref> Across 2015 and 2016, the Allspark website began uploading scans of this storyline under the TF Pulp header (see Links below).

Artist "consistency"

Hi, I'm Arcee!

Titan's first volume became infamous for inconsistency in the movie strip art. For reasons unknown, instead of using one or two artists it used hordes of them (plus a few inkers and colourists) in #1-25, none ever doing more than one issue in a row. Different artists had different styles and, not to put too fine a point on it, different ideas of how many of the Movie design's fiddly bits they want to draw.

Then there were other issues like:

• Elita-One started out looking just like her toy, but by her second strip her head was being altered to resemble Generation 1 Elita One (either to differentiate her from Arcee or as deliberate homage). How much her head resembles Elita One differs depending on artist... and in #14 and #16, she has the toy's head again!

Hi, I'm Arcee!

• Arcee constantly alternates between being drawn like her movie design or like her Scout-class toy (only not blue).
• Andrew Wildman drew Ratchet looking like the white, face-plated Cybertronian Ratchet in Movie Prequel #1, which was reprinted in Wildman's issue. Unfortunately, in the issue immediately before, Nick Roche had drawn Ratchet looking exactly like his movie self!
• Colouring is fluid for many characters and sometimes entirely wrong: Armorhide has been green and white-and-blue, Starscream has been both grey and bronze (and once had a huge fanged mouth), Thundercracker has been blue and black...
• Poor Theodore Allen changes hair, age, and build in seemingly every appearance.
• The Decepticon Heartland base changes from a squat bunker with guns to a tall phallic tower, then into a different bunker, then into a bunker/tower combo thingy.

This issue was solved in Vol.2, which used a single artist in Jon Davis-Hunt.

Animated

(You need a caption for this?)

...quite possibly the greatest animated TV series ever in the history of mechanoid lifeforms!{{#if:|{{{quote2}}}}}{{#if:A very excited editor, #10's contents page|A very excited editor, #10's contents page{{#if:|, {{{3}}}|}}|}}

Issue #17 featured a 6-page Transformers Animated story written by Furman, written to promote the spin-off. Unsurprisingly, it featured Grimlock. The strips became known among the fandom for having inconsistent characterization, such as Megatron actually buying that Starscream had become loyal to him when Animated Megatron's whole thing is how he doesn't forgive traitors; Optimus Prime rather coldly dismissing a Transformer who lacked a spark; Lugnut being a childish moron; and Megatron being more of a hammy, pun-making, mustache-twirling baddie. Also notable was the debacle of Afterburn; an Autobot originally announced as the Animated incarnation of Sideswipe, fan reaction to his design was so bad that he was hastily renamed.

When the spin-off buggered off into cancellation, Transformers began printing the leftover strips from #23 to #25. The first and third were done as "pull-out" comics. By the second, it had began to diverge from the Season 2 continuity... which will never be followed up. Doh!

Revenge of the Fallen

Prequels

{{#if:The Twins"Reversal of Fortune"|

"Don Murphy's stating an opinion! LEG IT!"

With the reboot, the comic returned to prequel strips, this time for Revenge of the Fallen. Furman announced that the focus would be on Mudflap and Skids and their interactions with the new movie cast.<ref>IT BEGINS AGAIN… on Simon Furman's blog</ref> This lasted for the first eight issues, with the first six following a specific formula: The twins' plotline had them run into a number of newly introduced characters, with a specific goodie and baddie being crucial to this part of the plot. Unlike the first run of prequels, there was no IDW prequel being reprinted and thus no attempt to tie into it.

A Decepticon army was being gathered on Cybertron by Starscream, albeit a Starscream secretly backed by the Fallen. Skids and Mudflap, accidentally discovering the Decepticon plans, fled to Earth to warn the other Autobots. The menacing Ransack was dispatched to silence them, but failed. The twins waited to warn Optimus and tried to adjust to life on Earth with NEST (and NEST tried to adjust to life with them!), while the Decepticons under Soundwave began searching on Earth for something, simultaneously trying to ensure the twins never talked.

The Decepticons finally achieved this by framing the twins as traitors. At the same time, with the Fallen incapacitated, Soundwave and Starscream were doing their own thing more often, causing a clash with Ransack that they were determined to end permanently. After the twins spent a few days as fugitives, Soundwave went to them and offered them a position in the Decepticons, their first mission being to bring Ransack in. The twins accepted...or so Skids wanted him to think, using that as a way to capture one of the Decepticons to show their credentials to the Autobots. That done, the twins took the fight to the enemy, bringing about the destruction of the Decepticons' Mars base and much of their drones.

Ransack fled to talk to the Fallen, with Soundwave desperately pursuing, while the twins were officially part of the Autobots' Earth team. After this, they decided not to bring up the Fallen again and just let what would happen, happen.

Sequels

Even the characters wish Transformers comics were still weekly!

From #9, the comic began doing post-movie strips. New young, untrained Autobots became the POV characters, starting with Jolt and soon taking in new toys like Rollbar who underwent training, with the remaining Decepticons believed to be a mop-up operation. This assumption went horribly wrong when Bludgeon broke free of NEST's jail and took a bunch of other prisoners with him as his own splinter faction. This conflict would harm human-Autobot relations, forcing the creation of a covert strike team, before it finally came to a head when the Autobots were cornered in a fatal ambush...

You'll want a Dead End toy after Vol.2, is what we're saying.

...which sounds epic and exciting, but the six issues between Bludgeon's escape and the final clash would only focus directly on Bludgeon's machinations twice. Robin Etherington, who'd previously written half of the Animated strips, returned in #10 and contributed a run of three scripts during the Bludgeon saga, only one of which dealt with that ongoing plot. (An upside is that he used William Lennox and Robert Epps as characters, neither of whom had been touched by Furman) Furman's first post-Bludgeon script (#14) didn't feature the character, and #19 was a one-shot Christmas story that interrupted the forward progression of #18; insult to injury, Jolt and his mates ceased to appear after #14. Injury to further injury, the comic went bimonthly after the eighteenth issue and that left only two issues to wrap everything up, leaving lots unwrapped (the human relations plot quietly died) and having Megatron turn up to beat up Bludgeon in the middle of a massive Decepticon ambush on the Autobots.

It's not all doom-and-gloom though, as several characters like Blazemaster and Dead End got meaty roles, Bludgeon gets to be far more dangerous and effective as a villain than he managed in other mediums, and Jolt actually had stories and dialogue.

Some of the issues may have run out of their originally intended order: we know for a fact that "Inside Out!" was meant to appear in #14 instead of #13,<ref>Furman's blog: "Just turned in issue #14′s script for Transformers UK, featuring ROTF Bludgeon (who’s also in the current issue [#9], now on sale), and set in South Africa at the time of the World Cup. Talk about synergy."</ref> and the story that did appear in #14 resembles one of the preceding Jolt-and-rookies stories. The Christmas issue has Dead End tracking Bumblebee, something that happened at the end of #21.

Dark of the Moon

"So you spoke to Titan? This is getting ridiculous."
"Yeah, don't worry, they promised this is the last relaunch."

The comic re-branded itself for Dark of the Moon on June 2011, and kicked things off with an eight-page prequel strip, "Fight for Fiesole", by Etherington: Starscream going to excessively dangerous lengths to prevent the Autobots from finding the lost Sentinel Prime. While this initially seemed like this would be the only prequel before the film came out — there's even a caption saying the story continues in the film — the remaining three issues would all be prequel tales.

"Dealing with the Devil" would stand out as it gave a reason for Robert Epps to depart NEST: he was left shaken by a failed mission and his dependence on the Autobots. The other two stories, however, were simply one-off stories that could have happened at any time or with any characters, more akin to mid-Earthforce than anything else.

Unlike the previous volumes, Titan rebooted itself after a mere four issues.

Transformers: Prime

Oooch!--

From October 2011, the comic was reworked for the Prime franchise. Etherington continued as the main writer with occasional issues by Chris Cooper and another round of musical chairs for the art. The stories retained its lighter Earthforcy tone in comparison to the TV series.

The first few issues were done-in-one eight page stories that stood apart from the strips; "School Is... Out!" in #5 changed things by explicitly mentioning the episode "Crisscross" and the comic would change as the cartoon's cast did, but in general it stayed continuity-less. The big outlier to this was the de facto 2-parter of "The Mind Trap"/"The Novo Incident", interlinked stories involving Knock Out's fiendish neuron refractor device in China. This two-parter was by Cooper, who would also show fan bonafides by inventing Prime versions of the Seacons (complete with the "Special Team" label) and Tantrum.<ref>A Prime Tantrum appeared in the Transformers: Retribution novel three months before the issue came out but Cooper would've written the script beforehand.</ref>

In one of those fun things that happens with tie-ins, two of Cooper's scripts use Skylynx and one with Darksteel, both about to be in the show. By the time the scripts saw print, the very last episode of Prime had used them in an irreconcilable way!

After the tenth issue, the magazine went quarter-yearly until #16 when it went back to bimonthly, though roughly as #17 was a month later, and #20 a month earlier. From this we can safely guess sales weren't too hot.

The volume got axed at #20, making way for a Age of Extinction rebrand.

Age of Extinction

--NOT COOL, Titan.

The magazine went monthly again and, once again, the strip ran movie prequels. Etherington did the first two before being replaced by Martin Fisher. The first issue told a bridging story between Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction, with Drift appearing in the immediate aftermath of Chicago and explaining how he'd turned to the Autobots, while the fourth had Lockdown right before he was hired by the Creators. Other than them, the scripts exist in a floating 'then-ish' in which the AOE Autobots are the cast with no other 'bots around but Cemetery Wind has yet to do anything. Stinger made an odd appearance in the third issue as a KSI escapee years before they should be building Transformers, sentient, and a malevolent villain who goes after Bumblebee and lives to fight another day. We assume Fisher was not fully informed of Stinger's backstory beyond "he, like, looks like Bumblebee and they don't like each other, now sell our bloody toys".

Strangely, prequels before the film that had been out for months didn't bounce sales much! The comic went the way of Dead End's lunches after #5.

In fiction

Titan Magazines were warned of reprisals if they continued to peddle Autobot propaganda #7's Star Screams, but would not heed them... so, in 2008, Starscream seized control. Most of the staff were captured, starved, and forced at lash point to keeep working; the only relief were visits to conventions. #13's Star Screams Soon they would be locked in cages. Months of this soon left Den Patrick and Steve White broken, mentally and physically. #19's Star Screams However, secret Maximal agent Fur-Man remained on the loose. #21's Star Screams

After Starscream's nervous breakdown, before new occupier Barricade could consolidate his group, the Autobots launched a strike. While there's a power-sharing agreement over the letter page, the Autobots seem to run the rest of the comic and were responsible for hiring Jon Davis-Hunt for an extended run. #1's Law and Disorder However, Ironhide threatened Furman to alter the ending of his alternate universe stories... #12's Law and Disorder

The comic was once again seized when Lockdown took aim at the staff and told them he was doing the letters now. #1's Lockdown's Letterbox

Regular features

• Autobot vs Decepticon Smackdown — last seen in #5 (as "Human VS Decepticon Smackdown"), this pitted two characters against each other and gave a list of their strengths and weaknesses. The outcome of the fight was left up to the reader to decide. This feature saw a return in #20 as Beast Wars Battlefield, pitting Grimlock against a real Tyrannosaurus.
• Top Gear — this section provided competitions to win Transformers merchandise, as well as telling readers about awesome new stuff it'd be cool to have.
• Character Profiles — an in-depth description of an individual character's personality, history, abilities and weaknesses. Originally these were taken from Transformers: The Movie Guide, but from #8 (Bonecrusher) the movie-based ones have been new creations. As of issue 14, the profiles have included Beast Wars characters, adapted from Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook. When volume 2 started, it took the The Movie Universe profiles as its base but expanded on them (unsurprising as Furman wrote both!).

You love it, you slags!

• Letters page — Letters and fan-art from readers, with a prize for the Star Letter. Originally called Mech Mail, readers were invited to write in and say which Transformer they'd like to answer the mail (a traditional gimmick)—Starscream got the nod, and from #7 the column was called Star Screams. The tone was very over-the-top, with "Starscream" threatening death to readers who like the Autobots, slagging off the other characters, and so forth. Following the reboot, the strip was renamed Law and Disorder, and Barricade and Ironhide got the gig. Barricade picks up where Starscream picked off, while Ironhide is a nicer letters host; they argue and insult each other, similar to Dreadwind and Hi-Test in Dread Tidings. This has been followed in every subsequent rebrand: in Dark of the Moon changeover, it was Mega-Mouth with letters being answered by an extremely bad-tempered Megatron and Sideswipe; in Prime Megatron took over from his movie incarnation, while Sideswipe was replaced with Arcee; and Age of Extinction has Lockdown and Crosshairs. In practice, the last three columns have read pretty much the same.
• Artobots — a special section for readers' fan-art.
• Posters — a pull-out poster in the centre pages, sometimes double-sided. Generally it's a poster version of the front cover, though #7, #18 and #19 featured the art of what would have been a cover but were scrapped/altered at the last minute. Vol.2 has started to use covers from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron as posters.
• How To Draw... — This feature instructs small children how to draw the incredibly fiddly and complicated movie-verse Transformers. "If you found this one a bit difficult to draw... well, it's all part of Megatron's evil plans!" It's also shown how to draw sequential art and cover images. It's noted to not actually work as a how-to-draw and is generally unworkable.
• Colouring pages, usually under the name The Purple and the Red.
• Puzzles. In Volume 2, these got a consistent name of More Than Meets The Eye.
• Bumblebee's Way-Past-Cool Reviews — Video game reviews. Which aren't written in Bumblebee's "voice". And aren't way past cool. Or even cool.
• Why [x] Like Being A: — irregular feature explaining all the cool features of a Transformer's alternate mode.
• Arcee's Soulmates — Starting in #20 and ended in #25; a small personal's column in Star Screams, with Transformers (all of which are specific characters but go unnamed) putting a lonely-hearts ad out. I am not joking about this.
• Starscream's Stars — Starting in Volume 2, Starscream writes a horrorscope! (Instead of Scorpio, there's Scorponok, ho ho ho.)

• Sideswipe's Armoury — Starting in Volume 2; a text feature explaining about military weapons.
• Bumblebee's Guide: The Solar System — Starting in Volume 2; "Bumblebee" gives minor facts about the solar system and its bodies, some of which are Transformers related.
• Megatron's Mind Maulers — Starting in Volume 2; pitiful humans, dare you attempt to answer the mighty Megatron's questions and puzzles?!
• Starscream's Stumpers — Starscream took over the puzzle page as of Volume 3. Volume 4 kept the name and turned it over to Starscream.
• Episode Guide — Volume 4 also brought with it a regular feature covering an episode of Prime per issue. Of course, with only 13 issues a year and 26 episodes to a season, catching up is going to take a while.

Fantastic Free Gift!

Oh yeah, and Starscream's in here too.

It's a battle-scarred and ancient tactic, known well to British and Irish comic fans: a cheap item stuck to the cover, that is hopefully desirable enough to convince a child to buy the comic. It's been around for decades, but traditionally was placed on the early issues and then on the occasional later ones to cause a short-term sales boost. These days, due to the fragile state of the UK industry and demands by retailers, every damn issue has to have them—and they're often bulky, which leads to badly-shelved and bent comics in the newsagents—and Transformers is no exception.

Free gifts have included a target-shooting game, Autobot/Decepticon dog tags, a notebook and pen, stickers, a pinball game, sweatbands, and many toy guns.

They are always large enough to take up a significant amount of space on the cover they are stuck to, necessitating some pretty ugly graphic layouts that cover the illustrations with text in order to leave a large blank space for the gift to be attached to so it won't obscure anything important. This can often make the covers look really freaking bad when you take the gift off; a quick perusal of the cover images on their relevant articles will make immediately apparent the frequent emptiness of the bottom left-hand corner in particular.

Issues #23-25 had a splashy two free gifts, both of the extras being Animated themed. You might think that this was Titan getting rid of gifts they'd had made for the cancelled Animated comic... and you'd be right, since the promised gift for #25 is the sacred Pencil Pod promised to us in Animated #4 but that never arrived! Vol.2's comics, from #4 to #7, would also use two free gifts, the second being nummy candy from Haribo. In #19, the Animated Pencil Pod turned up again!

According to editor Steve White, coming up with free gifts is "a nightmare for our marketing department, who have no real experience on a more male-orientated older title and have to come up with ideas that don't just rely on some piece of cheap plastic... However, they're constrained as much by money—yes, we'd love to have a Minicon on the first issue, but we have to get real."<ref>Steve White interview on TransFans.co.uk</ref>

Instead, it was reality who got Mini-Conned when the first issue of the magazine's third volume did came with a cover mounted Revenge of the Fallen Legends Class figure! Titan said on the magazine's Facebook page that "there will be more action figures" and Vol.5 did see surplus Prime toys being given away.

Reprints

Transformers Mag is educational. It teaches small children that BW Megatron is badass.

To fill out the pages while keeping costs down, the magazine reprinted comics published by IDW. The reprints in Vol.1 were cut into 5–8 pages segments (though one was once 12 pages out of necessity), deliberately shorter than the UK strip so it was clear which is the primary story.

The reprints in Volume 1 included:

• Transformers: Movie Prequel: #1–13
• Transformers, Beast Wars: The Gathering: #1–13
• The Transformers: Megatron Origin: #14–25
• Transformers: Beast Wars: The Ascending: #14–25

Combiner!

The Diamond solicit for Volume 2 #1 said that it would reprint "the official movie prequel", though which one was not specified. Oddly, this was then not included, and instead we got:

• The Transformers: All Hail Megatron: #1-8

The first issue promised All Hail would last until #12. Savvy readers wondered how this could work, as the reprints were cut into bits (except #1 and #8). Then, in #8, it was announced that All Hail was ending... and the issue reprinted random fragments from All Hail #6, #7, and #9 (the last having one edited page made out of three normal pages), ending with telling us to buy IDW's trades to see the full story. Presumably, this wasn't the original plan at all.

From #4, Titan gave titles to the All Hail Megatron reprints instead of "Part X".

After All Hail finished its run, Titan dropped reprints entirely.

iPhone and PSP strips

From February 2010, Titan started offering Transformers as a downloadable strip for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Sony PSP. It started off with a reprint of #1, Vol.1, which was absolutely free on iPhone! (On PSP, you have to pay for it)

You can only download the strips if you live in the UK or Eire. Sorry, Americans!

Zinio offered a digital subscription to the comic and back issues dating back to mid-2011, however this was discontinued as of the end of 2012.

Audience

Younger readers? Pah, all they do is write in to fawn over that brightly coloured dishwasher, Bumblebee, or whine how Jazz dying in the 2007 film is 'unfair'.{{#if:|{{{quote2}}}}}{{#if:Barricade, Vol.2 #1|Barricade, Vol.2 #1{{#if:|, {{{3}}}|}}|}}

"Starscream called us worthless!! Yayyyy!"

The primary audience of Transformers is, of course, young children—as well as the features and editorial sections being written in juvenile tones (and the presence of free gifts), the letters page is full of kids sending in their praises, photos of their collections, suggestions for stories, and drawings of their own characters. Steve White has openly admitted it's a "junior" title, though they attempt not to talk down to the audience, citing this as a flaw in the short-lived Panini Armada title.

The youngest reader record was four and a half!

"That's not how that background character's feet looked in the last issue! To the wiki!"

There is, however, a sizeable minority of older fans and this is openly recognized in both interviews and in the comic itself. This generally does not affect the content, with the exception of a few references to older fiction in features and the letters page (Starscream certainly enjoyed referring to Generation 1!); one big exception was the competition in #7 for the Best of Simon Furman trade, with the question being: what robot bounty hunter Furman had made. Older fans have brought up continuity quibbles in Vol.2's letters page, which got a favourable response in #1 and a ruder one in #5. Of course, the biggest acknowledgement of older fans was the time Starscream said only losers edit Transformers wiki pa— wait, hang on...

Letters and photos have also shown a sizeable number of female readers of varying ages, which Starscream openly approved of.

Multi-continuity

While the focus of the comic at the end was the movies, the title had been multi-continuity from the start; in #22 to #25, the logo was even altered to say "Transformers Universe".

"CELTIC!"
"RANGERS!"

Substantial references are made to the Generation 1 franchise. #1 had a feature on the animated movie and its DVD, trades of IDW's comics are promoted and offered as competition prizes, and gets repeated nods in the letter's pages. A poster on The Many Faces of Optimus Prime, running in both #17 and #1 of the Animated title, listed all the versions of Optimus Prime as well as Marvel, Sunbow, IDW and Dreamwave Generation One continuity. A follow-up, The Many Faces of Megatron, was run in #2 of Animated and #19 of this title.

As of #14, it began reprinting the Generation 1 prequel story Megatron Origin, while informing the young'uns that Generation 1 is a wildly different variation of the mythos they know and love; this was followed with All Hail Megatron, "an awesome reimagining of Transformer history" apparently.

IDW's Beast Wars comics were the main reprint in Vol.1, being chosen by Steve White for marketing reasons as the Beast Machines DVD box-sets were being released at the same time as the film.<ref name="fractalmatter" /> The Beast Wars cartoon itself had been repeated in full on a loop on Channel 5 in recent years, making it familiar to the target audience. Young readers in the letter's page have written in mentioning it (and #7 had a fan-art of Cheetor), Beast Wars character profiles began in #14, and Starscream has alluded that Simon Furman as a Maximal in the form of "a strategically-shaved ape", especially his head! There have also been two competitions to win the UK Beast Machines DVD box-sets.

The 2008-9 Transformers Animated cartoon received a series of minor features from #10-12 to hype up the show airing on UK satellite TV. #13 saw a 12-page "Pull Out Special" that contained information, plugged merchandise, and hyped the then-upcoming Animated comic; this was repeated with further hype and a six-page strip in #17. After the cancellation of the Animated comic, the three leftover strips and features ran in this comic.

Starting from October 2011, it switched from being film-centred to featuring strips and content about Transformers Prime. It switched back to the film series in summer 2014 with Age of Extinction.

Sales

Thanks to circulation figures printed in the comic's indicia and online sources, we know the comic's sales in the UK and Eire from 2007 to the end of 2008, as reported to the UK industry group ABC.

Titan's CEO appeases the shareholders.

The comic's average net circulation in 2007 was over 45,000 (reported from #10). This basically means it was selling more than the average IDW issue ever had.

The January to June 2008 sales showed Transformers' average sales had dropped to 38,733.

The June to December 2008 average sales, by comparison, are reported by ABC to have dropped to 24,617. (Arrrrg!) Issue 14 was above the average, #18 and #19 below it. A global recession and being tied into last year's big film make for wobbly sales.

From #4 (Vol.2), for reasons unknown, Transformers is no longer registered with ABC<ref>Product page on ABC</ref> and the sales stopped appearing in the indicia. Sales in 2009 are thus unknown. The expectation was that sales bounced up again after the second movie, though at the moment there's no way to know. Worryingly, Diamond UK stopped carrying the title after #4 due to low orders.<ref>Titan Transformers v2 thread on the Transmasters UK forum</ref> Newsagents (where most of Titan's business lies), however, continued to stock the title.

From #9 (Vol.2), the reprints were scrapped, making the comic shorter; from #10 (Vol.2), the strip length was reduced to 8 pages.

Finally, with #18 the comic became bimonthly, usually a sign of bad things. This was a pretty worrying sign, but luckily in late December Titan stated that when the third film came out, the comic "will return to monthly, so you won't have to wait so long between issues."<ref>Transformers Comic on Facebook</ref> It then returned to long gaps, a whopping twelve weeks between issues, after 4.11 and until returning to bimonthly from 4.16 on and then back to monthly with the Age of Extinction rebrand.

The sales for #1 of the Saga of the Allspark reprint series sold 11,417 in the North American direct market;<ref>Comic sales discussion (August 19, 2008) on TFArchive</ref> this had dropped to 8,939 by #4.<ref>Comic sales discussion (November 19, 2008) on TFArchive</ref>

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Finally, Vol.5 saw the title face the dread law of diminishing returns and it died. But subscribers got their subscription moved to [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Adventure Time|{{#if:||Adventure Time}}]] so it wasn't all bad!

References

<references />

External links

• Titan's Transformers Comic webpage
• Transformers Comic Facebook page
• Steve White interview with Fractal Matter (archive copy)
• Steve White interview with TransFans.co.uk
• Titan's digital strips