The Transformers (issue)

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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

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the comic we go...

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.

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Humans

Quotes

"We have lived peacefully with the Autobots for eons, slowly, secretly gathering our strength and pursuing our technology. Now we shall strike at those who have brought the stagnation of peace and plenty to Cybertron. They shall learn the way of conflict... the way of war... the way of Megatron."

— Megatron, have you thought this through?


"Strike! Strike! With all the might at our command! Death to the Autobots and the decay they stand for!"

— Megatron launches his war


"The Ark and its secrets must never fall into enemy hands, so I plotted an alternate course that would take us on a suicidal heading... directly into the third planet of this system. Farewell, my friend. Though we die, at least our enemies are taken with us."

— Optimus Prime pushes the fatal button


"Let us never forget our primary purpose -- to spare this world from the scourge we have unwittingly unleashed upon it!"

— Optimus Prime's "we" is more of an "I"


"Bumblebee, come back! We must reconnoiter first!"
"You can't check the exuberance of youth, Prowl!"

— Prowl and Hound


"I had hoped to Optimus we could avoid this, but... it seems our adversaries have left us little choice. Assume defensive configurations."
"Now yer talkin' my lingo."

— Prowl and Brawn


"So, Starscream, you strike at me because you think isolation makes me vunerable? You have obviously never flown in the face of my glass-gas gun!"
"Yarrgh! The gas coats me, making my metal brittle and breakable as glass!"

— Cliffjumper and Starscream team up to tell the reader how CJ's special gun works

Notes

Production notes

Generic robots use the color schemes of Bumblebee, Trailbreaker, Sunstreaker, Hound, and Optimus Prime; the last of these, in the bottom right, bears a resemblance to Optimus and might be intended to represent a "pre-war" incarnation of him.
Since he's called out in the caption box, it's probably fair to assume that the robot armed with the ion blaster represents Optimus Prime, albeit miscolored. On his right is a robot using Sideswipe's design, apparently armed with a fusion cannon.
  • The Transformers was initially conceived as a four-issue limited series. At the start of its production, character models had not been finalized for the majority of the cast; as such, for the first two issues of the series, the appearances of the Autobots and Decepticons is quite variable, based either on early designs created for the first animated commercials (Optimus Prime, Sideswipe, Prowl, Jazz, Megatron, the three Decepticon jets, Soundwave, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw) or on the toys themselves (most evident on characters like Ironhide and Ratchet). The finalized models were ready in time for issue #3, but the early color schemes used in these issues for certain characters—like Optimus Prime's lack of a silver stripe on his torso, Megatron's black helmet, Starscream's blue chest-vents, and the entirely-purple Soundwave—would persist throughout most if not all of the comic's run, in some cases becoming hallmarks of the characters' Marvel appearances.
  • In addition to these teething troubles, artist Frank Springer and colorist Nelson Yomtov played fast and loose with what robot and technology designs they did have. Multiples of Optimus Prime's Combat Deck are used to represent the "revival drones" that rebuilt the Ark's crew on pages 11-12, while a Onebox component like that used by Ironhide and Rachet appears mounted to the hull of the Ark, firing on the asteroids, on page 6. Further, a range broad of generic Transformers appear throughout the issue; some are wholly original (such as the one prominently displayed on the title page that fans would go on to dub "Big Red"), but others use and abuse existing characters' designs and/or color schemes (as seen in the images at right). As the brand was in its infancy at this stage, some of these might have been intended to represent actual characters, but whether they do so is probably best left up to you.

Continuity notes

  • As is only natural, some of this issue's early details would be retconned away or simply ignored as the series progressed and expanded its mythology, including the idea of Cybertron as "Saturn-sized," and the idea that the Transformers had "naturally evolved". In particular, this origin would be source of much mockery in the earlier days of online fandom, but modern media went on to dub the idea of spontaneously-evolving mechanical life "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.
  • Megatron's plan to turn the planet into a "cosmic dreadnought" would be further explored in the Marvel UK story "Legion of the Lost!".
  • 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 pilot episode, which likewise set the stage for his full-fledged appearance in the first regular episode of the series proper. Shockwave was among the first, if not the first, of the second-year toys to be released.
  • Bot Roster:
    • Autobots: 18 active
    • Decepticons: 10 active; Shockwave missing in action

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 in the state of Oregon. Issues #5 and #7 will later name Portland as the location of Sparkplug's garage, presumably making it the unnamed city we see here and elsewhere in the next few issues.
  • 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.

Continuity and plotting 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, when per story continuity, it should only have the 18 crew members shown here (plus, according to issue #4, the future Dinobots, whose characters presumably didn't exist yet in real-life terms). That said, the art on page 12 seems to provide a possible "out" for this by showing what looks to be a huge pile of unrepaired Transformers between behind Optimus and Megatron as they re-awaken.
  • 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.
  • A solitary reference is made to "Aunty" as the name of the Ark's computer. This was an early name conceived by Jim Shooter when he wrote the original treatment for the Transformers backstory, at a time when the spaceship itself did not yet have a name. During hand-written re-writes of his treatment, Shooter replaced the name "Aunty" with "The Ark," which came to be treated as the name of the ship itself, with the apparent intent being to make the computer and ship synonymous with one another. Consequently, the inclusion of the outdated "Aunty" name in this issue appears to be in error; it would never be used in the US series again, but did reoccur in one early UK-original story.

Artwork and technical errors

Hoo-boy.

  • The iconic cover of this issue depicts Optimus Prime in a design that appears to have been based on a reference image in an early model sheet that was offered on eBay in 2016[1], which in turn is based on an early prototype or mock-up for his original toy's Diaclone predecessor depicted in an early Diaclone catalog.[2]
  • Page 2: In his very first appearance, parts of Soundwave's backpack, arms and legs are colored red.
Jazz experimented with electrum before it was cool.
  • Page 5: As he and Optimus Prime report to the Autobot Elders, Jazz is colored like Bumblebee. Additionally, he is drawn to be extremely toy-based, complete with Earthly car parts, right down to having the toy's conjoined uni-feet, and has two missile launchers instead of one.
...Nemesis Prime, is that you?
  • Page 7:
    • Panel 3: As the Decepticons first strike the Ark, Optimus Prime is colored almost entirely red.
    • Panel 5: 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.
  • Page 13: 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:
    • Panel 1: Bluestreak is colored like Prowl.
    • Panel 1: Sideswipe is colored like Sunstreaker.
    • Panel 1: Gears seems to have an entirely new, entirely different model.
    • Panel 2: Bumblebee suddenly has the toy-based "backing plate" behind his head, whereas before he didn't.
    • Panel 3: Not all of the silhouettes correspond to actual characters.
    • Panel 4: Sunstreaker's "ears" are misshapen.
  • Page 17:
    • Panel 5: Sparkplug's "okay" is missing a period at the end.
    • Panel 6: Sparkplug is meant to say "learnin'," to parallel the way he drops the g from the end of "readin'" in the first half of his sentence, but the word is written with the g... and the apostrophe meant to signify its absence.
  • Page 19: When an Autobot asks Prowl "why would machines worship moving pictures of strange objects?", Prowl identifies the speaker as Bumblebee, but the art shows the speech bubble emanating from Brawn. It's not clear which is in error.
  • Page 22: Starscream's entire cockpit cowling is colored as though it were a canopy.
  • Page 23:
    • Panel 2: When Ravage confronts him, Hound has two shoulder launchers.
    • Panels 5-6: Soundwave is colored like Megatron as he attacks Prowl and Cliffjumper. His gun is missing its narrow tip, looking more like Megatron's fusion cannon, which is likely what caused the coloring error.
  • Page 24: Cliffjumper's arms are colored white as Prowl orders the retreat.

UK printing

Issue #1:

  • Published: 20th September, 1984
  • Backup strips: Machine Man ("Byte of the Binary Bug," Part 1)
  • Other features: Spot-the-difference contest to win a Jazz figure; "Robot Round-Up," a two-page text feature looking at modern advancements in robotics
  • 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).[3]

Issue #2:

  • Published: 4th October, 1984
  • Backup strips: Machine Man ("Byte of the Binary Bug," Part 2)
  • Other features: "Design a Decepticon" contest to win a Decepticon jet figure, "Robot Round-Up"
  • The two-page spread of the Autobots introducing themselves is omitted from the story, with new text captions added to the end of the preceding page and the start of the next to link them together. The spread is included in the issue, however, repurposed to become a pull-out poster, with the Transformers logo pasted over the two panels in the top-left corner (showing the Decepticons escapsing, and Prowl and Optimus watching them go). The spread would also be printed in this edited form in the the 1985 annual. In a sense, this means the early UK continuity initially lacks an in-story list of the Autobots originally on Earth, making appearances by Red Alert in "The Enemy Within!" and Inferno in "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" a weeeee bit easier to reconcile.

Other trivia

Covers (3)

  • US issue #1: gigantic Optimus Prime, tiny Starscream, Gears, Laserbeak and the Witwickys, by Bill Sienkiewicz.
  • UK issue #1: Soundwave and Buzzsaw kick Prime's ass, by Jerry Paris.
  • UK issue #2: the Autobots depart the Ark, by John Ridgway.
  • US issue #1 - First he will crush the planes, then he will crush the giant floating heads.
    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 #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?
    UK issue #2 - Is this girl that into her doll that she didn't see the giant f*cking robots?

Reprints

Reprint notes

  • The UK Collected Comics #1 omits the double-page Autobot roll-call scene, as the original UK printing of the issue did (see UK printing, above).
  • The Complete Works reinstates the Autobot roll-call spread, but replaces the two panels in the corner with a single exterior shot of the Ark, re-used from UK issue #42, drawn by Geoff Senior. Presumably, this had to be done because Marvel UK either damaged or lost the original panels after removing them to edit the page into a poster for their original printing of the issue (again, see UK printing).

IDW Transformers Classics edits

For The Transformers Classics series of trade paperbacks, IDW Publishing "remastered" the coloring of the series with varying degrees of success. These changes were sometimes to fix errors, but often to alter characters' color schemes to make them resemble their toy and/or cartoon selves, and were rarely applied with consistency. IDW's recolored version was also used for Hachette's Definitive G1 Collection.

  • Soundwave is recolored blue throughout the issue, erasing his standard Marvel purple color scheme, as well as correcting the coloring errors on pages 2 and 23.
  • Page 1, panel 5: The blue thighs of the generic red robot (second from the left) are recolored to also be red.
  • Page 5: Jazz's colors are corrected as best they can be, changing him from incorrect yellow to white and blue.
  • Page 7: Optimus's colors in panels 3 and 5 are largely corrected, though his pelvis remains blue.
  • Page 15: Wheeljack is recolored to add a patch of green to his chest.
  • Page 22, panel 4 and page 23, panel 1: For these two panels alone, Starscream is recolored into his finalized, predominantly white color scheme, as opposed to the early blue scheme he has in the rest of the issue.
  • Page 23-24: For these two pages, Hound's legs are recolored from their standard Marvel solid blue to green with white thighs.

Advertisements

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)

UK

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Early model sheets at The Allspark.
  2. ↑ Diaclone catalog scans at 1501bc.com.
  3. ↑ Extract from Greycourt school 1984 sci fi mag detailing visit to the Marvel UK comics offices that resulted in comments appearing in the letters page of Marvel UK Transformers #1 http://www.flickr.com/photos/48819633@N05/5297859701/
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