I covered the first two compendium volumes (of four) of Transformers: Til All Are One previously, noting both that it's great that Skybound and Image Comics have brought the Marvel Transformers run back into print in four volumes, but it's also annoying that these unified volumes were only available in a Kickstarter campaign. The mass-market paperback editions split the UK and US stories apart from one another, an act of editorial madness that will long live in infamy. This should be the definitive way the comics are collected from now on. This volume collects together issues #45-80 of the monthly Transformers US Marvel comic, alongside issues #188-254 of the UK comic, for around 1,197 pages of Transformers action, originally published between October 1988 and May 1991.
This volume is pretty much all pay-off, with the storylines and characters established in the first five years of the comic reaching a series of massive climaxes that takes over two-and-a-half years to fully resolve. The early UK storylines in this edition are dedicated to resolving the "Galvatron Saga" that began near the end of Volume 1 with the classic Target: 2006. Having established himself as a threat to the rest of the Transformer species, Galvatron finds himself being hunted by no less than seven factions simultaneously: Optimus Prime, Shockwave and Scorponok's forces on present-day Earth, the Autobot Wreckers and Decepticon Mayhem Attack Squad on present-day Cybertron, and combat teams led by Rodimus Prime and Soundwave from future Earth. It turns out that the prolonged presence of Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge in the past and the resulting shifts in the timeline have heavily disrupted the space/time continuum, causing a rift to form in the fabric of the universe that threatens to destroy everything. After a few complications, the final battle takes place in Time Wars, where Simon Furman merrily lays waste to recently-delisted toys and some toys that were never released in the UK in the first place from years earlier (so both hello and goodbye to the Deluxe Insecticons in the space of a few pages).
What should have been the grand finale to over two years of plotting and build-up falls a bit flat. There are some major continuity glitches here, such as the modern-day Autobots completely forgetting about the "mass-displacement" process for time-travelling, leading them to assume Optimus Prime has been killed (again) when fairly obviously he hasn't. It's also a story without much nuance, with a huge running battle with numerous casualties but there isn't really much meat here. The characters have to survive and try to keep Galvatron contained until basically the plot resolves itself without much intervention by anyone (bar arguably Shockwave and Scourge). This means both the huge casualty list was completely unnecessary and Galvatron also ends up looking like a chump: his two years on Earth accomplished absolutely nothing. This may be more down to Furman bringing Galvatron back to present-day Earth because Target: 2006 was so awesome, but then not being able to have him win or take command of the Decepticons because that would have been ignored by Bob Budiansky in the American comics. Still, some good action sequences and the story does bring Ravage back into play after years of being MIA.
The US storyline then brings in its own epic with the "Underbase Saga," where the Decepticons create an island resort to improve their image with the humans (!) but it turns out to be a cover to research the impending arrival of the mysterious Underbase. Although Ratbat initially plots to seize the Underbase for himself, he is surprised - and absolutely nobody else is - when he is betrayed by Starscream, who sets out to seize the Underbase for himself. All of the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth have to join forces to try to stop him, but the result is a total massacre with the better part of fifty Transformers deactivated, some for good.
This is a bit of an oddball story, with Budiansky killing a whole bunch of Transformers but not in a very interesting way. There are some good character moments for Prime and Scorponok, and finally seeing Starscream get everything he ever wanted, only to find you can have too much of a good thing, is quite amusing. There are also some good character moments for the Transformers' long-time human ally Buster Witwicky. It's really also the last hurrah for Budiansky, who manages another five issues of mostly-stand-alone lightweight fare before finally retiring his writing pen. Budiansky created so much of the Transformers lore and characterisation that continues to hold try now, forty years later, that he deserves respect, but his stories were always very hit and miss, and sometimes even his really good ideas were let down by variable dialogue and pacing issues.
Budiansky's retirement means that Simon Furman gets to take over the American comic as well as carrying on his work for the British one, giving him UNLIMITED POWER (kind of). His UK stories from this era suffer from a shift in format in the UK comic, which switched to shorter, black-and-white stories with previously-planned 2-week arcs now unfolding over 4 or 5, completely disrupting both pacing and also his planned efforts to tie together the UK and US storylines more firmly. A new, dystopian future story arc depicting the fate of Rodimus Prime and his team from Time Wars as they return to a completely changed future where Galvatron and Unicron still endure is very promising, but underdeveloped. Another arc where scattered survivors of the Time Wars regroup as a new group that transcends the Autobot-Decepticon division is also intriguing, but again it feels like there's not enough time to do it justice. In the middle of this, Budiansky has to introduce the new Micromasters, which Furman then has to continue, meaning yet another set of interesting storylines is diluted by dozens of new characters suddenly showing up.
However, this chaotic period starts easing up as Furman sets in motion his master plan: a new epic saga spanning two full years of the comic and drawing on his UK time travel epics for inspiration that he can repackage for the US audience without violating UK continuity (which more or less works, if you squint a bit). This arc starts with the revelation that Megatron is alive and now in control of part of Cybertron. He kidnaps Ratchet to have him work on a new secret weapon. This sequence of events results in the resurrection of three classic Autobot warriors - Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebee (Ratchet cheerfully admits to disliking Goldbug, so rebuilds him in his original form) - and the apparently for-real destruction of Megatron, resulting in the rise of the powerful Thunderwing as the new Decepticon leader. These mid-tier events take a turn for the epic when Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebee are teleported to the centre of Cybertron to discover the face of Primus, the Transformers "god," etched on the side of its core. Furman gets to canonise his origin myth for the Transformers here (having previously established it in the UK future epic The Legacy of Unicron two years earlier) for the US audience. At the end of a pitched battle, Primus is briefly awoken, his scream of pain revealing the location of Cybertron to Unicron.
With the Chaos-Bringer on his way to destroy Cybertron, the Autobots launch a desperate search for the missing Creation Matrix, which was blasted in space with Optimus Prime's original body a long time earlier. In the Matrix Quest arc, multiple teams of Autobots have to search an entire star system for Prime's corpse and the missing Matrix, getting involved in various local problems along the way. This arc is superb, with some great one-off stories and ideas. One story is a Western, another is heavily influenced by The Maltese Falcon, and another by Moby Dick (with Longtooth as the whale-hunter). One story influenced by Aliens is a bit hamstrung by the level of violence and gore the comic can get away with showing, but the finale to the Quest, with all hell breaking loose on the Ark and an ending drenched in irony, is outstanding. This arc is also enhanced by the arrival of UK artist Geoff Senior, oft-regarded as the franchise's best-ever artist, who adds a lot of dynamism to the storyline.
The subsequent run of stories, with the Autobots and Decepticons preparing to defend Cybertron against Unicron, is also excellent, with Andy Wildman and Stephen Baskerville adding their distinctive techno-organic art style to the comic. Furman is having far too much fun here, with more scheming, more bringing characters back from the dead, and even having a truly disturbing excursion into body-horror. A subplot about G.B. Blackrock forming an anti-Decepticon superhero team known as the Neo-Knights is a bit wince-inducing (with Furman clearly setting up the Neo-Knights for a spin-off that never happens) but it's not the worst idea the comic has ever had, and allows it to bring Circuit Breaker back into the main story. A high point here is Optimus Prime offering Scorponok his surrender in return for uniting their forces against Unicron and Scorponok having to navigate internal Decepticon politics as he decides on whether to honour the deal or not, only to be interrupted by Shockwave trying to seize command from him (again). We also get Grimlock going on an insane solo mission to resurrect his fallen Dinobot companions using a mystical energy source called nucleon, which goes about as well as you'd expect. By this point Furman had been told the comic would be cancelled with its 75th issue, so he was clearly setting things up for a grand finale.
These events culminate in Unicron's final assault on Cybertron in issue #75 (of the US run), which unfolds rather differently to the movie (and with a far higher body count in known characters). From an action and character standpoint, this might be Furman's finest hour, with even some black comedy thrown in for good measure: Grimlock ramming the Ark into Unicron's face and then leading the entire nucleon-resurrected Autobot army of classic characters into battle over Prowl's frantic complaints is an all-timer franchise visual. If this had been where the comic ended, it would have been an undeniably awesome way to go out.
At the eleventh hour, the comic was given a five-month reprieve. Furman puts into motion a series of new, scaled-down plots revolving around the need to evacuate Cybertron (devastated apparently beyond repair by Unicron), whilst reluctant hero Spike Witwicky has to resurrect Fortress Maximus to defeat a renewed Decepticon incursion on Earth. The Autobot-Decepticon Alliance is also on shaky ground following its apparent victory (albeit at a sky-high cost), and there is a superb political storyline as Grimlock and new Decepticon commander Bludgeon realise they have the measure of one another and try to outsmart the other. The final issue is effective but rushed, with maybe a few too many ideas competing for limited page space. Given the business constraints here, the comic's ultimate end is surprisingly satisfying, even if a few loose ends are left aflap. Even that becomes a boon as Furman would later drawn on some of these dangling threads for the Generation 2 mini-series.
This is the strongest of the three collections containing the main Marvel storyline. Although Budiansky has his strengths and his achievements in creating so many characters for Hasbro is worthy of respect, his plotting and storytelling is a bit too variable in quality. Furman certainly isn't perfect - and his worst-ever story about the creation of Arcee is present in this volume and remains horribly cringey - but he has a much firmer grasp of longer-form storytelling, establishing the stakes and executing them well, with a defter touch at humour. His final two-year run on the American comic might be his best-ever sustained burst of storytelling in the franchise. In fact, that run is so highly regarded that Furman himself has twice tried to create a continuation/sequel to it with both the Generation 2 mini-series and, twenty years later, the Regeneration One series for IDW, and neither were successful.
The volume is also helped by a greater variety of stronger artists. The US comic is buoyed by the arrival of UK talent including Geoff Senior and Andy Wildman, and it feels like US mainstay Jose Delbo ups his game in response. With colouring techniques in American publishing improving at the time, these closing issues of the original run finally start looking almost as good as the UK comic did for most of its run.
With Compendium 3 wrapping up the original Marvel run, it falls to Compendium 4 to contain the odds-and-sods. The Transformers Universe mini-series of character profiles, Generation 2 and the errant Earthforce branch of continuity await.
Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 3 (****½) contains the strongest succession of stories in the original Marvel comic run, with a lot of inventive use of established lore and characters to bring this huge saga to a close. The art is at its best here, and it's easy to share Furman's frustration that the comic was cancelled whilst it was enjoying a renaissance of quality and still selling over 80,000 copies a month (figures any comic company would easily kill for today). If you can find a copy (or wait for a Kickstarter reprint), this is a very solid compilation of Transformers stories.
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