The Transformers (issue)

This article is about the first comic issue of the first comic series about Transformers. For other uses of The Transformers, see Transformers (disambiguation).

The Transformers (US) #1 » The Transformers (UK) #1–2 »
Largest Transforming Transformers Optimus Prime! One of six blind-packed $500,000,000 toys!
"The Transformers"
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First published	May 8, 1984
Cover date	September 1984
Plot	Bill Mantlo
Script	Ralph Macchio
Pencils	Frank Springer
Inks	Kim DeMulder
Colors	Nelson Yomtov
Lettering	Michael Higgins, Rick Parker
Editor	Bob Budiansky
Continuity	Marvel Comics continuity
Packaged with	Optimus Prime

A group of sentient warring robots crash-lands on Earth four million years ago. When they awake in the present day, their battle begins anew.

Synopsis

On the Saturn-sized mechanical world of Cybertron, life has evolved not through carbon bonding, but via "naturally-occurring gears, levers, and pulleys". The resultant sentient robots, the Autobots, live in peace for many eons, until some of their number fall victim to a lust for power. Rallying behind the banner of the powerful Megatron, these "Decepticons" rebuild their bodies, allowing them to change at will between a humanoid form and the form of various war machines. The Decepticons unleash a furious war on the Autobots, intending to conquer the planet and rebuild it as a cosmic dreadnought.

Faced with annihilation, the Autobots turn to a noble leader from their own ranks: Optimus Prime. Under his leadership, the Autobots, also now gifted with the ability to "transform", rally and counterattack. And thus, an all-consuming war rages across the planet for a thousand years, while the planet itself—dislodged from its orbit by the titanic battles—spins out of control through the cosmos.

Eventually Cybertron enters another solar system and is faced with destruction as it approaches an asteroid belt. Aboard a huge spacecraft dubbed the Ark, Optimus Prime leads a team of Autobots on a mission to clear a path through the asteroids. After the mission is completed, the Decepticons attack the weakened Autobot warriors. Facing inevitable defeat, Optimus Prime sends the Ark on a suicide course into a supposedly lifeless planet. The crash renders all the combatants inert.

Combat Deck bought a junker lot from eBay.

Four million years later, a volcanic eruption reactivates the Ark's dormant computer, which finds the planet now teaming with mechanical "life". It reactivates the ship's passengers, rebuilding them to resemble the planet's natives. Damaged, the computer does not recognize friend from foe, and thus both factions are restored to life. After checking themselves over, the Decepticons flee for other parts, leaving the Autobots to make their home in the crashed Ark. Observing the planet, Optimus notes that they must work to save the planet from the Decepticons, whom they've accidentally unleashed upon it.

Optimus Prime sends a team of five, under the command of Prowl, to scout out the new world and make contact with the natives. En route, they are sighted by Decepticon spy Laserbeak. The Autobots mistake a drive-in movie theater for some kind of religious ritual; Bumblebee over-enthusiastically nudges a "native", violently jostling its teenage occupants Buster, Jesse and "O". As Buster and the others climb out to see what happened, the Decepticons attack, intent on keeping their foes from establishing an alliance with the planet's natives. The Autobots reluctantly transform and defend themselves, turning the drive-in into a battlefield. During the battle, Prowl realizes that the automobiles are not alive at all, but the small, pink creatures fleeing from them are; the Autobots retreat to draw the Decepticons' fire away from the apparently defenseless fleshlings.

During the battle, Buster hears the damaged Bumblebee cry out in pain, and ends up "driving" him away from the battlefield. That night, his father "Sparkplug" finds him tinkering with the yellow Volkswagen Beetle in his garage. He's delighted that his son is finally showing some interest in mechanics, but not so amused when the car cries out that it needs help, because it's dying...

Chronologically, the UK Annual stories "State Games" and "And There Shall Come...a Leader!" are set during the early events of this issue.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Optimus Prime (4) Prowl (10) Ironhide (13) Cliffjumper (14) Sideswipe (15) Huffer (16) Bumblebee (17) Sunstreaker (18) Brawn (19) Mirage (20) Bluestreak (21) Jazz (22) Gears (23) Hound (24) Windcharger (25) Ratchet (26) Wheeljack (27) Trailbreaker (28)	Ravage (1) Megatron (2) Soundwave (3) Rumble (5) Skywarp (6) Frenzy (7) Laserbeak (8) Starscream (9) Thundercracker (11) Buzzsaw (12)	Buster Witwicky (29) Sparkplug Witwicky (30) Jesse (31) "O" (32)

Notes

Artwork and technical errors

Hoo-boy.

• The artwork uses early character designs for many characters, some of them heavily toy-based (Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn, Gears), others based on early models that would later be changed (Megatron, Starscream's color scheme), and still others completely random (Gears again).
• In his very first appearance, parts of Soundwave's backpack, arms and legs are colored red.

Jazz experimented with electrum before it was cool.

• As he and Optimus Prime report to the Autobot Elders, Jazz is shown with two missile launchers instead of one, and is colored yellow and blue instead of his proper white and black. He's also extremely toy-based, right down to having the toy's conjoined uni-feet, and complete with Earthly car parts!

...Nemesis Prime, is that you?

• Page 7:
  • As the Decepticons first strike the Ark, Optimus Prime is colored almost entirely red.
  • A blue-chested, red-legged Optimus Prime is among the invading Decepticons! In the same panel, Optimus himself is colored entirely red and is missing his chest windows. Prime's thought "Our firepower - no match" is missing its punctuation.
  • None of the invading Decepticons resemble the ten Decepticons later shown to compose Megatron's crew.
• Page 8: Prowl is missing his door/wings, though one could retcon this as being his "Cybertronian" body.
• Page 12: The robots undergoing repair don't really correspond to any Transformer known to be present.
• Soundwave converts to his tape player form and flies off with the jets! Or starts to, at least—he's not shown in the next panel as the Decepticons flee the volcano.
• In the giant two-page Autobot spread:
  • Sideswipe seems to have a made-up or at least off-model head.
  • Wheeljack's "ears" are kind of folded up against his head.
  • Bluestreak is missing his door/wings and shoulder rockets.
  • Gears is a strange alternate model bearing almost no resemblance to his toy or later design.
  • Hound, Wheeljack, and Sideswipe are all missing their shoulder launchers.
  • Trailbreaker is missing his force field projector.

"Follow your dreams, you can reach your goals; I'm living proof. Beefcake. Beefcake!"

• Page 16:
  • Gears seems to have an entirely new, entirely different model here.
  • Bluestreak is colored like Prowl.
  • Bumblebee suddenly has the toy-based "backing plate" behind his head, whereas before he didn't.
  • Not all of the silhouettes correspond to actual characters.
  • Sunstreaker's "ears" are misshapen.
• Page 17: Sparkplug's "okay" is missing a period at the end.
• Page 19: Prowl calls Brawn "Bumblebee". More Deception generics visible on the cliff.
• Page 22: Starscream's entire cockpit cowling is colored as though it were a canopy.
• When Ravage confronts him, Hound has two shoulder launchers.
• Soundwave is colored silver-blue as he attacks Prowl and Cliffjumper. His gun is missing its narrow tip.
• Cliffjumper's arms are colored white as Prowl orders the retreat.

Continuity errors

• It's said in this issue that the war between the Transformers knocked Cybertron out of its orbit, which sounds...very improbable because of the sheer magnitude of force required for something like that to happen; Cybertron would have likely been completely obliterated before it would've been knocked out of its orbit.
• Numerous generics show up aboard the Ark. By story continuity, it should only have the 18 crew members shown here, plus the future Dinobots (whose characters presumably didn't exist yet in real-life terms).
• Page 10: "The drone swiftly plots its return to the Ark"—it's not clear from context if "it" is the jet scanned by the probe, or the probe itself. Neither makes a lot of sense.
• Over the course of the series, some of this issue's early details would be retconned away or simply ignored. Among them are the notion of a Saturn-sized Cybertron, the "naturally evolving" origin of the Transformers, and the toy-based appearance of several characters, such as Ratchet, Ironhide, Bumblebee and Brawn.

Continuity notes

• The origin of the Transformers given in this issue, quoted in the synopsis above, would be the source of much fandom mockery over the years - until various latter day stories would give it the name "atechnogenesis" and offer it up as one of several possible-but-unverified origins for the Transformers, who themselves did not know if it was true or not.
• The "revival drones" that reactivate the Ark's crew are based on Optimus Prime's Combat Deck.
• Though many generics appear in the pre-Earth battle aboard the Ark and its aftermath, the art might be seen as providing an "out": On page 12, what looks to be a huge pile of unrepaired Transformers can be seen between behind Optimus and Megatron as they re-awaken.
• Megatron's statement that "one of our mightiest is missing" plants the seed for Shockwave's debut in issue #4. This brief mention parallels the character's cameo appearance in cartoon's first episode, which likewise set the stage for his full-fledged appearance in the fourth episode. Shockwave was among the first, if not the first, of the second-year toys to be released.

Generics

This issue features a broad range of generic Transformers, from peace-loving Autobots to a Decepticon raiding party. As the brand was in its infancy at this stage, character models were not yet fixed and coloring tended to veer towards the random, so some of these generics may have been intended to represent actual characters. Whether they do so is probably best left up to you.

• 
  The first glimpse of the Transformers. The Autobot on the far right may represent a pre-war Optimus Prime (Orion Pax/Optronix?) while the others share design elements (if not colors) with the 1984 Autobot cars.
• 
  Since he is called out in the caption box, it is probably fair to assume that the robot armed with the ion blaster represents Optimus Prime, albeit miscolored. That may be Sideswipe to his right, apparently armed with a fusion cannon.
• 
  In one of the more famous mistakes from this issue, a robot resembling a miscolored Optimus Prime leads the Decepticon raid on the Ark.

Real-life references

• Mount St. Hilary is obviously inspired by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
• Unlike the contemporaneous cartoon, which was always shy about specifics, the comic immediately lets us know that the action is set near Portland, Oregon.
• A hitchhiker compares the sound of a team of Autobots driving down the highway to the Indy 500.
• The Autobots visit a drive-in movie theater, which in the early 80s were still a thing.
• The cover for the Marvel UK Transformers #2 edition is an homage to the famous cover of EC's Weird Science #16. The Martians of Mars Attacks were inspired by the same cover.

UK printing

• The UK printing in both the original issues and the Collected Comics reprints omits the two-page spread of the Autobots introducing themselves. The original UK printing instead shifts the spread to the centre pages (out of order with the rest of the story) as a poster, with the Transformers logo pasted over the smaller top-left frame. It would eventually appear by itself in the first annual and with the rest of the story in The Complete Works reprint (though the smaller previously obscured panel would be redrawn by Geoff Senior - presumably Marvel UK damaged the original while creating the poster). This means the early UK continuity initially lacks an official complete list of the Autobots originally on Earth and appearances by Red Alert in "The Enemy Within!" and (seemingly) Inferno in "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" are thus easier to reconcile.

Issue #1:

• Backup strips: Machine Man - "Byte of the Binary Bug" Part 1
• The letters printed in issue #1 of the UK comic were provided by pupils from Greycourt School (in Ham, near Richmond in South West London) who were visiting the Marvel UK offices. Their visit was written up in a magazine published at the school. The teacher who arranged the visit was Stephen Payne, former president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and soon to be publisher of Visual Imagination Magazines (Starburst & TV Zone).

Issue #2:

• Backup strips: Machine Man - "Byte of the Binary Bug" Part 2

Trivia

• Advertised as part #1 in a four-issue limited series, a modest statement referenced when the series finally tapped out seven years later with issue #80, and again in 2013 when Regeneration One finished its run.
• Other latter-day references to this issue include:
  • A loving homage in IDW's Robots in Disguise Annual issue
  • Various parodies and homages to its distinctly surreal cover art including an incentive cover of "The Death of Optimus Prime", and Cover B of the final issue of Regeneration One.
• Printed on high-quality Mando paper.
• On May 22, the first Usenet post about Transformers is posted by Ted Nolan to net.comics, regarding this issue. Capsule review? "Worst comic of the year."
• The cover price is 75 cents, which would be $1.50 when adjusted for inflation to 2007 dollars. In November 2007, IDW Publishing's Transformers comics cost $3.99.
• The cover corner box, a staple of Marvel's covers from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, features a character model of Optimus Prime. A new, more dramatic pose would debut with the first ongoing issue (issue #5).

Bot Roster

• Autobots: 18
• Decepticons: 10, plus one missing.

Covers (13)

• 
  US issue #1 - First he will crush the planes, then he will crush the giant floating heads.
• 
  UK issue #1 - Is Soundwave on Ultra-Energon?
• 
  UK issue #2 - Is this girl that into her doll that she didn't see the giant f*cking robots?
• 
  Collected Comics (UK) #1
• 
  Collected Comics (US) #1

• US issue #1 cover: gigantic Optimus Prime, tiny Starscream, Gears, Laserbeak and the Witwickys, by Bill Sienkiewicz.
• UK issue #1 cover: Soundwave and Buzzsaw kick Prime's ass, by Jerry Paris.
• UK issue #2 cover: the Autobots depart the Ark, by John Ridgway.
• Collected Comics (UK) #1 cover: Prime and Megatron battle, by Michael Golden. Reuse of US issue #2's cover.
• Collected Comics (US) #1: The Story Begins... cover: Prime, Ravage and Laserbeak battle, by (unknown).

• 
  The Complete Works Part 1
• 
  Die Transformer #1
• 
  The Transformers Comics Magazine #1
• 
  Beginnings TPB
• 
  Beginnings hardback

• The Complete Works Part 1 cover: reuse of UK issue #1's cover.
• Die Transformer #1 cover: A very bright Optimus Prime battles Decepticons, by Scholz.
• The Transformers Comics Magazine #1 cover: reuse of US issue #2's cover.
• Beginnings TPB: the Ark, Prime, Ravage and half of Cybertron, by Andrew Wildman.
• Beginnings hardback cover: Shockwave stands over Blackrock Enterprises's oil-drilling platform, by Ron Garney and Chris Blythe.

• 
  US issue #1 (25th Anniversary Optimus Prime pack-in)
• 
  Classic Transformers Volume 1
• 
  The Transformers Classics, Vol 1

• 25th Anniversary Optimus Prime cover: now including tiny disclaimer: "Headline from original comic; this reissue is not part of a series."
• Classic Transformers Volume 1 cover: featuring panels from this issue, "Power Play!", "The New Order", "Brainstorm!" and "Prime Time!".
• The Transformers Classics, Vol. 1 cover: Optimus Prime, by Guido Guidi.

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US

• The Last Starfighter (Inside cover)
• Free Spider-Man Comic from Fig Newtons
• Olympic Sales Club
• Mile High Comics
• Block of various Sketchy Things (I.E. Charles Atlas)
• Helen of Toy mail-in military scenes
• Marvel bonus certificate
• Muppets Take Manhattan storybook & record (Inside rear cover)
• Star Wars home console video arcade cassette (Rear cover)

Reprints

• 1985 — The Transformers 1985 Summer Special
• 1985 — The Transformers: Collected Comics (US) #1 - The Story Begins...
• 1986 — The Transformers: The Complete Works Part 1
• 1986 — Die Transformer #1
• 1987 — The Transformers Comics Magazine #1
• 2003 — Transformers: Beginnings
• 2008 — Classic Transformers Volume 1
• 2011 — The Transformers Classics, Vol. 1