Wednesday, 27 July 2011

Original TRANSFORMERS storyline to resume

For a laugh, I recently went through the original run of Transformers comics on the Westeros.org forum. This incorporated all 80 issues of the original US comic published Marvel between 1984 and 1991, as well as the British comic stories that were interwoven with them. It was therefore a very surprising, but appropriate, coincidence that IDW (the current license-holders for Transformers comics) then announced that they would be picking up the original storyline left truncated by the comic's unexpected conclusion in June 1991.


The original creative team - writer Simon Furman and artist Andrew Wildman - are returning and the new comic will pick up storylines left dangling back in 1991. Apparently they are ignoring the Generation 2 sequel mini-series that ran in 1993-94, since they feel it hasn't aged as well as the original comics.

Transformers #81 will be released in 2012. The current plan is for a 19-issue arc taking the comic up to #100 and a grand conclusion to the original story begun way back in 1984. Depending on when the exact dates, that could carry them through to the franchise's 30th anniversary in 2014. Needless to say, old-school Transformers fans who still have all of their old comics in a secure drawer (cough) are very pleased by this news.

Simon Furman on what to expect from the new title:

"It is going to shatter your trousers! Guaranteed!"
Excellent. Though probably not a hint that the first storyline will be called Shattered Trousers.
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8 comments:

  1. Andrew Leonard27 July 2011 at 15:07:00 GMT

    Very cool. I hope they release the older comics in a new omnibus for new readers to catch up.

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  2. Adam Whitehead27 July 2011 at 15:10:00 GMT

    I think you can get the original UK and US runs in various different omnibuses at the moment. The Titan Book collections from 2002 or so are the best ones to go for, as the more recent IDW ones have been hampered by not being able to feature Circuit Breaker or other characters crossing over with the Marvel comics continuity, or so I understand.

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  3. Alex27 July 2011 at 16:12:00 GMT

    Heh. I've got issues 1-30 of the UK run at my parents house (hopefully). You could spot the American penned stories because all the noble talk was replaced by phrases like "stick it in neutral Megatron!"

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  4. Anonymous27 July 2011 at 18:56:00 GMT

    I had the series complete at one point (in varied condition). Sold the whole box for $25 back in...1992 or 1993. I'll have to look for that omnibus.

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  5. Paul D28 July 2011 at 12:14:00 GMT

    This is awesome. The original series, starting when Furman took over (around issue 51) is legitimately great space opera.

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  6. Lagomorph Rex29 July 2011 at 15:59:00 GMT

    out of the 84 US issues(including Headmasters) you can get about 74 of them in the IDW trades.

    IDW is also undertaking reprinting the leftover stuff from really early in the UK run that Titan never got around too..

    Other than that, Titan is totally the way to go... but some of them are fairly expensive now due to IDW not reprinting all the issues.

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  7. Francesco Radicati29 July 2011 at 17:54:00 GMT

    Shattered trousers don't sound very nice at all.

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  8. neil whitehead12 August 2011 at 17:05:00 GMT

    Can't total the cost of supplying the young Adam here with his weekly fill of the comic plus the toys which, had they not been played with, would be worth a small fortune. Hey! Ho! Such are the joys of parenting!

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