Transformers (Titan Magazine)
Transformers (rebranded Transformers Universe from issue #22-25, then Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with Vol.2 #1, likely to be rebranded again as, I dunno, Transformers: Go-Go-Go-Gobots or something) is an ongoing monthly magazine published in the United Kingdom by Titan Magazines. It ties in to the live-action film series and features a mix of original comic strips, reprinted strips by IDW Publishing, and regular features and competitions. It is over 50 pages long each month.
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. [1] It seemed to succeed, selling enough to get original cover art after #6, quite a height in the UK licensed comic market. It's already the longest running UK Transformers comic since Marvel's!
Titan briefly ran a Transformers Animated sister title from 23rd October 2008, but unfortunately it didn't make £££££s and died after issue 3.
The main comic was rebooted and rebranded in June 2009, just in time for the second film. This is not an unusual tactic for Titan, who have done this repeatedly with their Star Wars comic to give sales a little bump. Unfortunately, the reboot has seen the comic use stock-photo covers again (sob!). The preview in #25 of the first volume lied that this was "an EXTREME makeover!!!".
Titan has produced digest-sized collections of the UK strips under the title Transformers Adventures. Two have come out, the first reprint #1-6 and the second #7-13, while a third is advertised on Amazon.co.uk [2] but has mysteriously never come out. Simon Furman doesn't know whether or not Titan plans to print more. [3] IDW reprinted the first eight issues' worth of strips in the United States in late 2008 as a four-issue miniseries, under the title Saga of the Allspark, as a tie-in to Reign of Starscream [4]
| Titan Transformers issues Volume 1: |
|---|
| #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11 | #12 | #13 | #14 | #15 | #16 | #17 | #18 | #19 | #20 | #21 | #22 | #23 | #24 | #25 | |
| Titan Transformers issues Volume 2: |
|---|
| #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | |
Comic strip
Opening each issue is a 11-page original comic strip (10-page before #13). These are written by Simon Furman and illustrated by a mix of artists, many of whom have been seen on other Transformers comics — Geoff Senior, Nick Roche, Staz and Guido Guidi.
Transformers (2007)
Prequels and sequels
Issues #1–6 were set before the film 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
For issues #9–13, the strip featured an alternate reality story, Twilight's Last Gleaming, where the Decepticons had captured the All Spark. 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. [5]
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 All Spark destroyed.
In this second year, the Autobots had to handle the aftermath of an Earth-shattering story, something that had not been done before. Storylines 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 plotline 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-parter 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 last shot of the alternate universe was Mikaela Banes and Bumblebee driving off into the sunset, awwww!
Transformers Animated
Issue 17 featured a 6 page Animated story written by Furman, written to promote the spin-off. Unsurprisingly, it featured Grimlock.
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
With the reboot, the comic has returned to prequel strips, this time for the second film. The spotlight is going to be focused on Mudflap and Skids and their interactions with the new movie cast. [6] Unlike the first run of prequels, there's 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. Now the twins wait to warn Optimus and try to adjust to life on Earth with NEST (and NEST tries to adjust to life with them!), while the Decepticons under Soundwave begin searching on Earth for something, while trying to ensure the twins never talk. They achieved this by framing the twins as traitors...
Artist "consistency"
Titan has, by this point, become infamous for inconsistency in the movie strip art. For reasons unknown, instead of using one or two artists it uses hordes of them (plus a few inkers and colourists) in #1-25, none ever doing more than one issue in a row. Different artists have different styles and, not to put too fine a point on it, have different ideas of how many of the Movie design's fiddly bits they want to draw.
But then there's other issues like:
- Elita-One started out looking just like her toy, but by her second strip her head was being altered to resemble the G1 Elita (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!
- 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 Prime Directive issue 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, 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.
It appears model sheets aren't being used...
At the start of volume 2, it was announced Jon Davis-Hunt would be doing a long run, so consistency at last!
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 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!).
- 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.
- 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 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 Arsenal - Starting in Volume 2; a text feature explaining about military weapons.
Fantastic Free Gift!
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, the UK comics industry is in such a piss-poor state that 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!
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." [7]
Reprints
To fill out the pages while keeping costs down, the magazine reprints 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 so far have included:
- The Movie Prequel: #1–13
- Beast Wars: The Gathering: #1–13
- Megatron Origin: #14–25
- Beast Wars: The Ascending: #14–25
The Diamond solicit for Volume 2 #1 said that it would reprint "the official movie prequel", though which one was not specified. [8] Oddly, this was then not included, and instead we got:
- All Hail Megatron: #1-12
How this will work, when Titan started only publishing parts of the AHM issues from #2 (Vol.2), is unknown. From #4, they've started giving titles to the reprints instead of "Part X".
Audience
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 thus far is four and a half!
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 competition in #7 for the Best of Simon Furman trade, with the question being: what robot bounty hunter Furman had made.
Letters and photos have also shown a sizeable number of female readers of varying ages, which Starscream openly approved of.
Multi-continuity
While the current focus of the comic are, obviously, the films, the title has been multi-continuity from the start; in #22 to #25, the logo was even altered to say "Transformers Universe".
"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 G1 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 G1 prequel story Megatron Origin, while informing the young'uns that G1 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 boxsets were being released at the same time as the film [9]. The Beast Wars cartoon itself had been repeated in full on a loop on Channel five 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 boxsets.
The new 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.
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.
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 [10] and the sales stopped appearing in the indicia. Sales in 2009 are thus unknown. The expectation is that sales will have bounced up again after the second movie, though at the moment there's no way to know. Worryingly, Chris McFeely confirmed that Diamond UK had stopped carrying the title after #4 due to low orders [11], though this may not reflect the newsagent trade (where most of Titan's business lies).
The sales for #1 of the Saga of the Allspark reprint series sold 11,417 in the North American direct market [12]; this had dropped to 8,939 by #4. [13]
![[8]](http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/pah25/f.jpg){kind=link}
