Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 3

The Transformers Civil War continues to rage on their homeworld of Cybertron and also Earth, which the Decepticons have identified as ripe for fuel exploitation. New reinforcements have arrived on both planets via the intermediary world of Nebulos, and the Autobots are rejoicing at the return of Optimus Prime, restored to life as a Powermaster. However, the threat of the time-travelling Decepticon warlord Galvatron remains and a new threat has been located in deep space: the mysterious Underbase.

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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Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 2

The Autobot-Decepticon War is now raging on two planets, their homeworld of Cybertron and the organic world of Earth, which the half-stranded Decepticons plan to loot for its energy resources. Both sides are battered the loss of their leaders. Decepticon fuel auditor Ratbat arrives to oversee operations, to the despair of the overly-logical Shockwave. Meanwhile, the Autobots elect Dinobot leader Grimlock as their new commander, praising his single-minded devotion to getting them off the planet and fighting the Decepticons. But Grimlock's ruthless leadership style and disdain for human casualties soon has multiple Autobots considering their loyalties. Elsewhere in space, the conflict has spread to the peaceful planet Nebulos, and even through time, with future Decepticon commander Galvatron running riot on modern-day Earth, and Ultra Magnus vowing to stop him.

I covered the first compendium volume (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, easy-to-collect volumes, but it's also annoying that these 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.

For the stats, Compendium 2 collects issues #24-44 of the monthly Transformers US comic, the four-part Transformers: Headmasters mini-series and issues #96-187 of the weekly Marvel UK comic, noting that half of those reprint the US comic anyway, so it's not quite as impressive as it sounds. However, this is still almost 1,250 pages of Transformers action, published from approximately October 1986 to October 1988.

This is dumb.

The collection kicks off with the "kill the leaders!" story arc that both the UK and US comics followed for a while. Everyone knows that Transformers: The Movie killed off Optimus Prime and replaced Megatron with the even more powerful Galvatron in a storyline set twenty years in the future, but for the comic book, American writer Bob Budiansky was tasked with likewise getting rid of them in a completely different story. Prime's death - getting blown up after losing a video game duel with Megatron (!) - is infamously stupid, so British writer Simon Furman tried to make it resonate a bit more with a UK-original story beforehand showing Optimus Prime wanting the Autobots to carry on and thrive in his absence. As usual, the British story arc, which also incorporates Megatron's battle of wits with the disembodied head of Lord Straxus and both Prime and Megatron returning to Cybertron, is well-written, better-characterised and milks the situation for pathos, action and even a little bit of comedy. The American storyline is borderline nonsensical in comparison. It's clear Furman didn't quite have the full outline for what Budiansky was planning, resulting in some awkward plotting (the Predacons showing up in both storylines requires some cheesy rewriting of American speech panels to give Megatron amnesia).

After Prime and Megatron return to Earth and promptly die (it will not shock you to learn they will return, eventually), Budiansky develops one of his better notions, namely making Grimlock commander of the Autobots. This is one of those ideas that initially seems insane, but Budiansky makes it work: none of the other Autobots is really a viable candidate, and Grimlock is both the most powerful Autobot at large after Prime's dispatch, and shows a determined level-headedness in stopping an attack on the Ark by Trypticon, the largest single Decepticon warrior ever created. Grimlock secures his election when he turns down the job after realising his own selfish motives, in a very rare moment of self-reflection. The Autobots, moved by his wholly uncharacteristic selflessness, make him leader anyway and about three weeks later realise they've made a horrendous mistake when he makes himself a crown and starts referring to himself in the third person. Grimlock sends Goldbug and Blaster on a mission to apprehend a rogue human villain who has stolen Autobot equipment and order them to kill the squishy human with prejudice. After having him arrested by the police instead, Blaster and Goldbug realise their new leader is too barmy and go AWOL, which Grimlock predictably does not take well.

Literally the only reason Goldbug and Wreck-Gar survive this is because Galvatron is so bewildered that they'd even think they were any kind of threat to him.

You may be asking, "who the hell is Goldbug?" At this point we have to rewind a little bit and follow what will the dominant strand of the UK comics in this collection: the return of Galvatron from the future. Having previously visited contemporary Earth in the classic Target: 2006 arc, Galvatron secretly kept hold of his time travel device and, after being booted into space by Rodimus Prime at the end of the movie, triggered it. His arrival on present-day Earth is not well-received by anyone, as he beats the hell out of Perceptor's newly-arrived resistance cell from Cybertron and even bests the Dinobots in combat. When Shockwave joins the fight, fearful that Galvatron will usurp him, Galvatron is forced to retreat, since there are so many Transformers present that he knows will survive until his time, he can't just kill them without disrupting the timestream (that ship has already sailed, but nobody knows that yet).

With Galvatron MIA and the war on Cybertron resuming in the year 2007, Rodimus Prime puts a bounty on Galvatron's head. The incredibly resourceful mechanoid bounty-hunter freelance peacekeeping agent Death's Head conducts a subtle investigation (by finding Cyclonus and Scourge and beating them up) that concludes Galvatron probably returned to the past, so Death's Head goes after him. He immediately meets Bumblebee and immediately blows him into a thousand pieces, to show he's not messing around. Rodimus Prime, aware of the threats he has unleashed on Earth's past, time travels back to solve the problem, and Wreck-Gar takes it upon himself to rebuild Bumblebee as Goldbug. After some more shenanigans, the Autobots and Death's Head engage Galvatron in combat and fail to stop him before being forcibly returned to their own time. It falls to Goldbug and present-day Ultra Magnus to, at least temporarily, halt Galvatron by burying him in lava (as you do). Unfortunately, Magnus suffers the same fate.

American readers may vaguely recall Bumblebee being instead killed by the human counter-terrorist organisation G.I. Joe and rebuilt as Goldbug. However, Simon Furman and the UK editors took one look at the G.I. Joe and the Transformers mini-series, realised it was possibly the worst-ever comic about either franchise that could possibly be published (the passage of forty years has only solidified this impression) and ejected it from their continuity. The replacement story is much better and Wreck-Gar being able to rebuild a basically-dead Transformer is something that was already established in the movie with future Ultra Magnus, so it makes more sense than G.I. Joe somehow being able to rebuild a Transformer from scratch. There will be many more crossovers between the two franchises and absolutely all of them will be much better than the initial one (although, for the sake of completionists, Compendium 4 does include that story).

The Transformers equivalent of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Move Along Home. Yes, its dumb, but it's also aware it's dumb, and does some funny things with it.

The volume continues to flip between stories on contemporary and future Earth and Cybertron. The present-day US stories focus on Goldbug and Blaster in exile, during which time they find new allies like the Throttlebots and new enemies like the Scraplets, who threaten to destroy all mechanical life on Earth until it turns out they have a very dumb weakness. Grimlock's relentless pursuit of the exiles, to the point of ignoring the Decepticons moving to a new base of operations in the Florida Keys, continues to gnaw away at the loyalty of his Autobots, eventually resulting in Wheeljack calling in his friend Sky Lynx from Cybertron to help resolve the situation which, predictably, goes sideways. Meanwhile, the ignored Decepticons, now jointly commanded by Shockwave and Ratbat, whose pedantic budget calculations for Decepticon fuel expenditures threaten to drive the usually coldly logical Shockwave completely insane in one of Budiansky's more amusing double-acts, are allowed to run riot on Earth, leading to the Autobots' human allies having to fight them instead (with mixed results).

The UK stories divide into two groups. One continues to entwine around the American stories, providing better rationales for what the hell is going on in the American strip. For example, Furman has a story about the Throttlebots fighting the Combaticons and even defeating them (albeit with help), which better explains why the Combaticons are so incessant in chasing the Throttlebots down in the American stories. The other is largely set in the future, with the big-ticket story being The Legacy of Unicron.

It's a bit mind-boggling that this creation myth is still being expanded on almost forty years later.

This story is a genuinely impressive epic, in which we learn that, after the events of Transformers: The Movie, Unicron's head didn't go into orbit around Cybertron but instead flew through space and crashed on the planet of Junk. Unicron has mind-controlled the Junkions into rebuilding his body. Using his mental powers to reassert control of his creations Cyclonus and Scourge, Unicron has them usurp command from future Shockwave and unleash a massive assault on the Autobots which, with both sides so evenly-matched, threatens to wipe out both sides, leaving Cybertron ripe for Unicron's return. Obviously this plan does not work out. The story is impressively epic and give Furman the chance to his give own origin story for the entire Transformers franchise, here casting the Transformers as the creations of the light god Primus, designed to stand as the last line of defence against Unicron, the Chaos-Bringer. Furman had apparently seen the "the Transformers are the creations of the Quintessons, despite the Quintessons having no idea who they are in the movie," idea and roundly rejected it.

However, the story is also a nice piece of continuity-straightening. At its conclusion, Death's Head is ejected from the Transformers universe altogether and into his own comic, whilst Cyclonus and Scourage end up in Cybertron's distant past, where they come under the command of Scorponok.

The story then switches to a completely new - and enormous - cast of Transformers in the four-part Headmasters mini-series. An Autobot resistance cell led by Fortress Maximus and including the contemporary versions of Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr (so far all their appearances in the comic have been of their future selves from the movie timeline) tire of the war and flees to the planet Nebulos, hoping to live in peace alongside its inhabitants. The power-hungry Nebulan Lord Zarak constantly disrupts their attempts to make peaceful contact, forcing Fortress Maximus, Highbrow, Hardhead, Chromedome and Brainstorm to remove their heads as a sign of goodwill, which the Nebulan leader Galen accepts. Frustrated, Zarak contacts Maximus's nemesis Scorponok, whose Decepticon army quickly reaches Nebulous and starts laying waste to the planet. Galen and several friends "binary-bond" to the Autobots, replacing their heads and becoming the titular Headmasters. The Decepticons rapidly copy the trick and capture the Autobot Headmasters, reducing Nebulous to a dystopia under Zarak's rule. The remaining Autobots come up with the Targetmaster concept, turning Nebulan companions into powerful weapons, and are able to rescue the Headmasters. Aware they are laying waste to the planet, the Autobots flee on their starship, the Steelhaven, and the Decepticons follow.

Beware the pitiless gaze of hundreds of thousands of 8-year-old kids collectively saying, "what kind of fresh gimmick hell is this now?"

This isn't the best mini-series ever (though it wipes the floor with the G.I. Joe crossover) and Budiansky struggles with the mind-boggling weight of the size of the cast. As well as the Autobot and Decepticon Headmasters and Targetmasters, we also meet the Monsterbots, Terrorcons, Horrorcons, Technobots and, er, Sixshot (who makes his only Marvel G1 appearance in one panel, has one line of dialogue, and is never seen or head from again). Nebulos and its people, who are basically just human (not even green, as the cartoon suggests), are also fairly undeveloped. What does make the story work is its better-than-normal musings on the price of peace, how pacifism can be sustained in the face of mindless hate, and wouldn't it be awesome to turn into a giant robot's head or gun? Thoughtful stuff indeed.

Having fled from Nebulous, it's not a surprise that the two groups find their way to Earth, responding to a distress call sent by Goldbug. There's some creaky continuity-twitching as we meet Buster's somehow-never-before-mentioned (remember the comic was over four years old by this point) older brother Spike, who promptly replaces Galen as Fortress Maximus's companion. The cast somehow immediately gets bigger as both sides invent the Pretenders, Transformers clad inside bio-genetic shells for...reasons that are never entirely made clear. You can see Budiansky struggling here as even he can't introduce twelve new Transformers in one issue and give any of them more than the most cursory characterisation (in his defence, he does try again later on, and manages to give at least Cloudburst, Landmine and Skullgrin a bit more to do).

Not for the first time, Optimus Prime makes a shocking (note: not that shocking) return from the dead.

He does rally to the occasion, however, as he brings together the arrival of the Headmasters, their first stormy meeting with Grimlock (who has really lost the plot by this point, despite his success in getting the Ark back into space again) and a full-scale battle with the Decepticons as the catalyst for the return of Optimus Prime. There is some very nice plotting here as Goldbug travels to Nebulos to rebuild Prime only to find the planet's fuel sources poisoned to defeat any future Transformer incursion. However, the villainous Hi-Test has created the Powermaster process to negate the poison, empowering two Decepticon warriors in causing havoc on the planet. Hi-Test's angry former mento, Hi-Q, agrees to undergo the Powermaster process to save Optimus Prime. I think Budiansky put more thought into this storyline than he did the Headmaster mini. Anyway, Prime's back and the first thing he does is...visit the circus? It's to rescue Sky Lynx, but still, some odd decisions there.

The volume is rounded off by another future Furman epic. Set wholly in 2008 (future time is advancing at the same rate as in the present), the comic sees the Quintesson homeworld on the verge of total annihilation, sparking their decision to invade Cybertron to use it as a replacement. They also attack Autobot City on Earth to split the Transformers' attention between the two planets. This is a pretty good story, even finding a way of incorporating the otherwise inexplicable American adaptation of the (awful) TV episode The Big Broadcast of 2006 into the main continuity. The characterisation given to the various Quintesson characters like Lord Kledji and General Ghyrik is surprisingly good, and it feels like this is Furman redeeming both the Quintessons and Rodimus Prime as characters (Rodimus gets demoted to Hot Rod for a bit here, allowing him to reflect on what elements the Matrix draws out of him to make him a better leader). We get some of the best battles seen to date, and the sole appearance of Metroplex in the entire G1 Marvel continuity. The main mike-drop is left for the end, however, when we discover that Quintesson was destroyed by a growing rift in the fabric of space and time, one that may threaten the entire universe. What I really like about this is that the astute reader probably already knows what is causing this, and what may be able to fix it, but that's for Compendium 3.

This Transformers homage to zombie movies is surprisingly good.

This volume does cover a lot of ground and there's a lot going on outside of these main arcs. There's a solid stand-alone Christmas story about Starscream being brought back online and joining forces with a human to "do good," though in reality it's just a way of pettily annoying Streetwise, who keeps expecting him to do something evil instead. A team-up of various female human characters encountered during the saga so far feels like it could be complete cringe, but surprisingly it works reasonably well (though Swindle's repair bill may disagree). There's even a whole mini-Furman epic arc set on Cybertron with the Wreckers discovering that Megatron got a lot further in his plan to turn Cybertron into a mobile battle station than anyone thought possible, and a mad Autobot scientist now wants to complete his work. And also raise an army of Transformer zombies because...why not? Some very nice characterisation for Ultra Magnus, Xaaron and Springer here. We also have Furman's own G.I. Joe crossover as the Joes' UK branch, Action Force, comes face-to-face with Megatron in London. This is a bit of a throwaway action story, but it's fine, with some nice Geoff Senior artwork.

This compendium is mostly very good stuff. The absolute insanity of putting Grimlock in charge of the Autobots is one of those great ideas that almost writes itself, and Budiansky does some of his best-ever work see the consequences play out. Furman remains the stronger writer, though his Galvatron arc feels a little unfocused here. Target: 2006 was phenomenal because of how it was really epic and quite tightly-written at the same time, but the arc here drags out too long (bearing in mind Galvatron returns to Earth in the opening issues of this compendium and is still skulking around, not doing that much, at the end). Galvatron is such a powerful character, it's hard to use him and have him not just win instantly, and I'm not sure Furman does his best work here in having Galvatron in stealth mode instead. However, The Legacy of Unicron and Space Pirates, both future epics without much interaction with Galvatron, are both all-timer classic stories. Also, this compendium handily collects all of Death's Head's appearances in Transformers, making it clear what a great character he is.

Where the compendium suffers is the sheer, unrelenting avalanche of new characters it constantly introduces. You can see Budiansky railing against the dying of the light, having a strong arc focused on Blaster and Goldbug (formerly Bumblebee) and even throwing some bones to old favourites like Ratchet and Wheeljack, whilst trying to fob off the entire Headmasters and related cast to a mini-series, but eventually it gets a bit much for him. Modern Transformers fans may be completely bemused to see big-hitters like Trypticon appear in all of two issues, Metroplex in one, and Sixshot in one panel, whilst characters like the Throttlebots, Sparkabots, Flywheels and Sandstorm get much more substantial appearances.

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 2 (****) is still pretty decent stuff. The growing pains of the first compendium are gone, and the consistency is much better. The constant appearances of new characters may get wearying after a while, even if both the primary writers are adept at using them in interesting ways. But there is some fun action here, and the totally unhinged deliciousness of Grimlock as Autobot leader cannot be overstated. If you can find a copy without pawning a kidney (or waiting an indeterminate amount of time for the near-inevitable Kickstarter reprint), this is reasonably recommended to any Transformers fan.

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SAGA creators speak out after hiatus

The creators of the hit comic book Saga have spoken out after fan criticisms grew with no new issue in the series for over eighteen months, despite repeated promises to have new material released this year.

Saga was created by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples, with the first issue published in March 2012. The comic was an absolutely massive success, and for a long portion of its publication it was the biggest-selling western comic in the world. The production rate for the comic was originally steady at around nine issues per year. The comic went on a pre-planned hiatus in July 2018 at the halfway point of the entire story, with 54 issues down and 54 to go, but the hiatus lasted longer than expected, with publication only resuming in January 2022. Between January 2022 and March 2025, only 18 new issues were published, taking the total up to 72, with 36 issues left. Nothing further has appeared since then.

Brian Vaughan, who has also been busy with other comics and working on the script for Dune: Part Three, had confirmed some months ago that he had completed the scripts for the next arc (six issues) and refined the outline for the entire rest of the story. Fiona Staples has now issued a statement, confirming that the delays have been down to her workload. This was from a combination of her former formidable work-rate (she illustrates every issue in full, including the covers) being interrupted by the arrival of children, and agreeing to her dream project (a 240-page adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, due next year). This left her seriously overextended. With that project complete, Staples has returned to working on Saga and now has at least the next issue done, with work underway on the rest of the arc.

This seems to make resumption of Saga in 2027 very likely, although of course the health and well-being of the creators should be prioritised. With a different project, it might be tempting to get in another artist (even ignoring her co-ownership of the franchise), but Staples's visual aesthetic for the series is so singular and unique that I don't think it would ever work. The good news is that it sounds like the project should shortly be back on track, and on the home stretch.

TRANSFORMERS fuels sales of the ENERGON UNIVERSE project to over 7.5 million copies

Robert Kirkman and his imprint Skybound Comics (a subsidiary of Image) have reported on the enormous sales success of their Energon Universe project of interrelated comic book series. Three years and three months into the project, cumulative sales of individual comics and collected editions have reached a very impressive 7.6 million.

The Energon Universe is a collaboration between Skybound and toy company Hasbro, and involves new, original characters and Hasbro's existing properties coexisting in a shared universe, similar to the Marvel and DC Comics multiverses. The project launched with the original title Void Rivals in June 2023, which tells the story of two soldiers from the opposing sides on a war forced to work together to survive being marooned on a remote planetoid. The first clues that this universe was bigger than it first appeared was when they stumbled across the Transformer Jetfire and helped him get back on his feet. Later issues revealed that the war between the two sides was a side-effect of the ancient struggle between the Transformers and the Quintessons, with the mysterious Cobra-La species also involved.

The project expanded with Transformers, launching in October 2023, and then a series of G.I. Joe mini-series launched across 2023 and 2024. These comics established both the G.I. Joe and COBRA organisations being founded in response to the Transformers' presence on contemporary Earth, a marked difference from previous iterations where the two franchises awkwardly coexist on the same world but forget about each other for 95% of the time. An ongoing G.I. Joe comic began in November 2024, with the Autobot Hound becoming an honorary member of the G.I. Joe organisation. A further Marvel property, M.A.S.K., launched as a new comic in June 2026. The robot character Rom the Space Knight has guested in several issues of Void Rivals, with a possible eye to launching his own series later on.

According to Kirkman, the entire Energon Universe project has sold 7.6 million copies to date, with Transformers accounting for about 3.5 million of the total. Issue #1 of the Transformers line is the most-reprinted comic in the line, knocking up 15 printings since 2023 and selling over 350,000 copies, possibly rivalling the original Marvel #1 from 1984 as the best-selling Transformers comic of them all. Kirkman also confirmed that Transformers is now Skybound's second-biggest-seller in collected editions, behind only Invincible.

Kirkman has paid tribute to Daniel Warren Johnson, who launched the Transformers line by penning the first 24 issues and drawing the first six. This may be a vague nod to increasing fan complaints that the comic's storyline has developed pacing issues since Kirkman himself took over writing with the 25th issue.

An animated adaptation of the Energon Universe is in the planning stages, following the huge success of Kirkman's Invincible animated series at Amazon.

Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan & Cliff Chiang

1 November 1988. Erin Tieng, a new resident of Stony Stream, on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, is starting her new role delivering newspapers. Falling afoul of Halloween revellers, she joins forces with three other paper girls for mutual protection: Mac, KJ and Tiffany. The girls find their job complicated by the normal problems: creepy residents, overzealous cops, bullies and, obviously, a trans-temporal war between two different groups of time travellers from the far and even further futures. Sucked into a conflict spanning millions of years, the four girls have to work out how to survive, get home and prevent the annihilation of the universe. And get their papers delivered on time.

Paper Girls was an American comic book published between 2015 and 2019. Written by Brian K. Vaughan, better-known as the writer of the epic science fiction saga known as, er, Saga, the series has become a cult hit over the years. Amazon started adapting the show in 2022, creating a first season that was well-cast and excellently paced with some intriguing variances from the source material whilst also remaining faithful to the big picture. Obviously, being good, it could not be allowed to survive beyond a single season.

The original comic series was collected into a single volume a few years back, large enough to be used to stun a yak if wielded correctly. Read as a single piece, Paper Girls is relentless in its pacing. Every issue throws new ideas, new factions, new characters (or different versions of existing ones) and new creatures at the reader. Weird alien beings from another dimension? Sure. Dinosaurs? Obviously! Older versions of the main characters suffering from existential and mid-life crises? Go wild. This turns the book into a compelling page-turner, if an occasionally confusing one. Unlike the well-paced Saga, it's sometimes easy to lose the thread of what's going on in Paper Girls, what each faction is after, what resources they have access to and so forth.

In a way that increases the reader's empathy with the core quartet of girls, who sometimes get as lost in the morass of competing timelines, alternate selves and wars being fought for obscure reasons that haven't even happened yet. Our central quartet are grounded, interesting characters who grow and learn from their crazy experience. Sure, maybe they take the insane events a little too easily in their stride (the TV show works a bit better by slowing down the craziness, giving them more time to adjust to what's happening), but that also feels true to the 1980s SF movies the comic feels like it's homaging.

Ultimately the crazy SF antics are a backdrop to the simple notion of adolescent friendship. As Stephen King said, the friendships you form in later life are nothing like the ones you form at and before the age of 13 or so, and the whole book feels like it revolves around that idea. This gives the story universality, but can feel a bit like an overtrodden path, especially as contemporary projects like the superficially similar Stranger Things (which started after Paper Girls but obviously got a lot more attention) also went down the same route. But universal narratives which a lot of people can relate to remain powerful, especially if attached to the furniture of combat robots, weaponised lizards and religions emerging from modern corporate entities.

Paper Girls: The Complete Story (****) is a fun, breathless read, if sometimes a tad overwhelming or confusing. The well-drawn central characters pull the narrative back on course when it threatens to meander, and there's enough crazy SF antics to keep genre fans entertained. The book is available now. 

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Amazon releases first teaser for PAPER GIRLS

Amazon TV has released the first teaser for its upcoming series Paper Girls, based on the comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang.

Paper Girls ran from 2015 to 2019 and attracted critical acclaim, solidifying Brian Vaughan's position as one of the world's premier comic book writers (along with his work on Y: The Last Man, Runaways and Saga). Beginning on Halloween, 1988, the story follows four teenage girls in Stony Stream, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) who deliver papers in their spare time for extra money. The girls are inadvertently caught up in a temporal war involving two factions from different periods in the future, and find themselves travelling between different periods of the past and future in an effort to stop the conflict.

The series stars Sofia Rosinsky as Mac Coyle, Camryn Jones as Tiffany Quilkin, Riley Lai Nelet as Erin Tieng and Fina Strazza as KJ Brandman. Other castmembers include Ali Wong and Nate Corddry. The series was filmed between May and October 2021.

Paper Girls should debut on Amazon Prime Video later this year.

Wertzone Classics: Saga - Compendium One by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

Alana and Marko were born on different sides of the devastating war between Landfall and its satellite, Wreath. The war rages across the galaxy, consuming world after world, with no official contact between the two sides. But Alana and Marko have, somehow, become lovers and had a child, Hazel, showing that more than just coexistence is possible. This has made them the most dangerous, wanted fugitives in the galaxy and dozens of skilled hunters and assassins are on their tail.

Saga is the story of a girl named Hazel, who is born and grows up under decidedly unusual circumstances. This small-scale story is a window into a much larger and more epic...well, saga. It takes in androids (here depicted as humanoids with televisions for heads), assassins, lie-detecting cats, sex, magic, guns, wooden spaceships, drugs, superheroes and cyclopses. There's so much going on in Saga that it's impossible to convey its sheer scope succinctly.

The comic book's writer is Brian K. Vaughan, late of Y: The Last Man, Paper Girls and his work in television (on Lost and Under the Dome) and its artist is Fiona Staples (also responsible for a recent Archie relaunch). Both had reasonable careers before Saga, but it does feel like this is the project that both had been waiting for, something to take both their careers to the next level. Vaughan's writing is relaxed and confident (some of the misjudgements in tone that plagued early Y are here absent) and Staples' artwork is brimming with character and colour. The combination of the two is potent, resulting in a gripping and page-turning experience.

Saga is a family saga first and foremost, as we see Hazel being raised by her parents: Marko, a pacifist who keeps being forced back into violence and Alana, a rebel without a cause who has suddenly found one (and then two). The cast expands slowly, bringing in Marko's parents, a ghost-turned-baby-sitter, two reporters, a trashy romance author and a lot more besides. The story also follows the lives of several antagonists, most notably the bounty hunter known as the Will (and his companion, the meme-generating Lying Cat) and the noble, mildly psychotic android nobleman, Prince Robot IV. Over the course of these 54 issues the story twists and turns unexpectedly, all narrated with aplomb by the now grown-up Hazel.

This flashback device means that we know Hazel lives to see the end of the story, but everyone else is at risk. And really at risk. The series shows a George R.R. Martin Plus level of willingness to kill off established characters and bring in new ones at the drop of a hat. No-one is safe, which becomes increasingly clear as the series continues and long-running mainstays are dispatched, sometimes very unceremoniously indeed.

Whilst the story has a good line in carnage, it also has a great deal of heart. The series dwells a lot on the idea of family, not just biological but also accumulated, the lifelong friends we make along the way and those recurring people who keep showing up unexpectedly. Saga's grand science fantasy, war-torn backdrop is a compelling part of the experience, but the more interesting theme the series explores is that all of us - every single one - are the protagonist of our own personal saga, and how we live our lives determines how our roles will be seen by others: hero, villain, morally ambiguous bounty-hunter or bit-part extra.

Saga (*****) is a love story, a war story, a tragedy, a comedy, sometimes a vivid fever dream, often a touching story of family and childhood. It's an adult story about life, loss, literature and lovesickness. It's about the appreciation of fine boardgames and finer friends. It's certainly one of the best slices of science fiction and fantasy produced in this rapidly closing decade. Compendium One is available now in the UK and USA.

Note: Compendium One is meant to gather the entire first half of Saga into one (relatively) easy-to-read collection. The first 54 issues of the comic book are collected here, totalling 1,328 pages. Saga had previously been available as six-issue collections and larger hardcover volumes (each combining three collections), but this marks a good opportunity to jump aboard the Saga hype train if you haven't been sold on it so far. Compendium One is obviously huge though, and as a paperback-only release (for now) it puts a bit of a strain on the binding, which I can't see surviving too many rereads, especially if you're transporting it around. On that basis, the hardcover volumes which collect eighteen issues at a time (into still-chunky 400-page volumes) may be a better choice. It's also worth noting that Saga went on extended hiatus after issue 54 was released in mid-2018 and isn't due back until some time in 2020. From that point, it'll likely be another seven years until the series ends and another year or two beyond that before we get Compendium Two. More impatient readers might prefer to follow the volume format to get to the end of the story faster.