Visionaries
Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light was a short-lived toyline released by Hasbro in 1987. The series was set on the alien world of Prysmos, a technological utopia which was suddenly plunged into a feudal, medieval state when the "Age of Science" came to an end and the new "Age of Magic" began. The heroic Spectral Knights and villainous Darkling Lords struggled for control of his new world using magical powers gifted to them by the wizard Merklynn, famously represented in the toyline as colourful holograms on the figures' chests and weapons.
As a contemporary of Transformers, Visionaries received a similar dual-pronged advertising push. The line was given an animated series (lasting only one season of thirteen episodes) produced by Marvel Productions, featuring many voice actors who also worked on Transformers and scripted by Flint Dille, Buzz Dixon and Douglas Booth, and most importantly as far as this article is concerned, a comic book from Marvel Comics. Like everything else to do with the line, the comic book did not last long, running to only six issues and being cancelled halfway through a four-part story. Regardless of this failure, the UK branch of Marvel Comics reprinted the series, but it performed even worse there, and their comic only managed to reprint four of the six issues before folding. They also reprinted the first issue again in an annual released in 1988. The final two issues of the original comic were then split into eight smaller parts, and printed as back-up strips in the UK Transformers comic, running from #183 to #190, during which time the series was branded The Transformers & Visionaries. A few months later, Visionaries returned to the UK comic when the first issue alone was reprinted yet again, this time split up into seven parts and included in issues #213 through #219.
Years later, Visionaries would later share another unusual connection with Transformers when Hasbro reused the name of the brawny Spectral Knight Cryotek for a new Robots in Disguise character.
External links
- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visionaries:_Knights_of_the_Magical_Light" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:Visionaries:_Knights_of_the_Magical_Light">Visionaries at Wikipedia</a>
