Transformers Classics UK trade paperbacks

[Paulbot]

The weekly Transformers UK comic was available in many newsagents across Australia and for many fans growing up in the 80s the definitive Transformers comic series.

Titan books reprinted most of the major UK stories, and IDW reprinted these in comic book and trade paperback format.

Now IDW have gone back to the beginning with the aim to republish all the UK material and if this book is any indication it's going to be a fantastic collection of books.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6164/6252774635_44f879767a.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6252774635/)

Format

It's printed in regular comic trade paperback size, but it's thick, 296 pages. Because the UK comic was a larger format the page is reduced in size to fit with a large margin around the page, but with a 'page' border around the content it doesn't look too bare.

The paper is not super glossy but good for the reproductions. Given the age, and the lack of digital copies of the original material, it's mostly scans. These range in quality and aren't perfect, but good enough.

Original material that was black and white is still black and white in this book. Some of the scans come from the "Collected Comics" reprints not the original books but, besides the wrong "Next issue" text on the last page of an 'issue' it's unnoticeable.

Content

There's a complete cover gallery but at a reduced size that fits four comics a page. Beside each gallery is a quick summary of what's in the issue.

The book starts with a foreward from the collator (fan and now IDW writer James Roberts) and then an overview of the history of the UK comic complete with interviews of staff from the time. Similar features were in the Titan reprints but this is much more in depth.

Each story starts with a text overview, often with interviews with the writers, a summary of how the story fits with the US material, and where the stories have been reprinted.

Interspersed are pictures of the free gifts and adverts and fact files, staff photos and other random things. The book ends with even more of these, with many toy ads which are interesting but again only at about quarter page size.

Stories

This book covers the stories:
"Man of Iron!"
"The Enemy Within!"
"Raiders of the Last Ark"
"Decepticon Dam-Busters!"
"The Wrath of Guardian/Grimlock!"
"Christmas Breaker!"
"Crisis of Command!"
and the contents of Annual 1986

None of these are particularly that essential. Man of Iron was reprinted in the US series so it's probably the best known. The Dambusters story is a retelling of events from the original cartoon three-parter told as a flashback by Ratchet to the Dinobots (so the plot is probably even more well known).

Crisis of Command features Geoff Senior's first art (and his striking rendition of the animation models after so much of the toy based art makes his issues a highlight to me).

There Shall Come A Leader from the 1986 annual is an interesting look at the start of the war, but you've got to wait until the next book for State Games (the origin of the war that has inspired most re-tellings since).

Pics

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6049/6252774867_a7b598257f.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6252774867/)
History text

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6230/6252774755_0abce3566c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6252774755/)
The Enemy Within (Toy-based art example)

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6156/6252774977_760466f396.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6252774977/)
Crisis of Command

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6156/6253305988_afb5ac22f2.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6253305988/)
Geoff Senior's early TF UK art

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6039/6253306102_df1db8cd92.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6253306102/)
Cover galleries

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6239/6252774911_b2342c8cd3.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbot/6252774911/)
A Dinobot poster included in one of the early TF comics

Overall

This isn't the best of Transformers UK, but it's a great way to get some of the most obscure TF comics. The series is off to a great start but the background information and interviews and random content reprints are somewhat more interesting than the stories the book reprints. I don't think this is essential (book three is likely where the essential reading will appear) but it's well worth considering for the complete picture.

[griffin]

Is the cover gallery all UK covers, or just the covers of the issues included in that volume?

And does it mention anything about the non-TF content in the UK Comics?

Oh, and how much was it?

[Arcee]

Is this the Volume 1? Do we know how many volumes altogether are there going to be?

I've got IDW's Best of UKs, read a tiny bit of it and loving what I've read (except that the drawing is a bit of too much exertion of the eyes :(). I'm wondering if I need to get a complete set of the UK line.

[UltraMarginal]

I had a flick through it the other day in the shop, is it in chronological order? it all seemed a bit disorganised to me?

[Paulbot]

Is the cover gallery all UK covers, or just the covers of the issues included in that volume?

And does it mention anything about the non-TF content in the UK Comics?

Oh, and how much was it?

The covers are for issues 1 to 44 (which is inclusive of all the stories this book reprints and the UK covers for the issues reprinting *US #1-12).

There's very little actually about the non-TF content. I wonder if a latter volume will provide a back-up strip index.

It's $30 USD (but I paid $18 AUD shipped)


Is this the Volume 1? Do we know how many volumes altogether are there going to be?
*
I've got IDW's Best of UKs, read a tiny bit of it and loving what I've read (except that the drawing is a bit of too much exertion of the eyes :(). I'm wondering if I need to get a complete set of the UK line.

We don't know how many yet. At least five volumes I'd guess. The art gets better but it's not crash hot to start with.


I had a flick through it the other day in the shop, is it in chronological order? it all seemed a bit disorganised to me?

It's in publishing order. The first few UK stories are all 'flashbacks' between the first four US stories but otherwise everything flows (except perhaps the text stories in the Annual).

[UltraMarginal]

that seals it then.

getting these for sure

[gavnushkatron]

Thanks for a comprehensive and xcellent review :)

I decided to start reading the G1 Transformers comics a couple of months ago. So I went ahead and purchased Vol.1 of both the US and UK classics.

The white margins around the pages are a bit distracting, yet nothing drastic. And I would really have loved if they placed each of the covers before each respective issue, instead of batching them into galleries. And as mentioned in your review that some of the scans are not the best, the colors can get really dark.

Great TPB for those of us who seek a complete collection in chronological order. I am really ooking forward to purchasing all the rest! :D

[Trent]

I picked this up a few weeks ago but haven't read it yet. Thanks for the review

[Paulbot]

Volume 2 comments

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Although only a few more pages than the first volume, the second one feels thicker and it feels like there's more content.

The first volume's stories are kind of forgettable, a bit primative and rather stand-alone. The second volume starts to show more meaty stories as well as establishing the parallel continuity that took the oddly neglected parts of the US stories and ran with them without causing too much contradiction.

For instance, after their introduction (in US#8) the Dinobots disappeared from the US comics except for a cameo appearance (in US#19 - where they walked off) until the 'Grimlock as leader' story started ( US#27). Almost two years? Whereas in this volume you see that in the UK the Dinobots really got a chance to shine and the Grimlock I prefer (not the King nor the cartoon buffoon) originates. Similarly, Buster and his connection to the Creation Matrix get revisited, something the US comic pretty much ignored after it's first year.

The art improves too, but for those who love the modern Dreamwave or IDW styles will be disappointed. This book has what I think are Will Simpson's best issues (Devastation Derby and In The National Interest) and I like his take that falls somewhere between Cartoon model and Toy.

Unfortunately the art is let down by the printing/scanning/paper choice. The painted colours (so more advanced than the US comic book colouring at the same time) are washed out. I've tried to take an example here to illustrate. Side by side with the Titan reprint you can see how the reds and blacks are less solid and bold.:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1qw0wXxGp1qbguy1o1_500.jpg

The covers return (still in the four a page format) and there's a good range of bonus scans of fact files, adverts etc. The inclusion of 1986 Annual is most notable for State Games, the 'origin of the war/origin of Megatron' story that has influenced modern takes by IDW and the Exodus novel. There's a few text stories from that Annual that I've never had the opportunity to read to, so I'm happy for the chance at last.

So while I've read most of this content before, and own original copies or better quality reprints, I'm still happy to have another solid volume of these stories in order. I recommend this volume over the first, but still think volumes 3-5 (or how ever many it takes to get to 205) are the ones that essential reading.

[Seraphim Prime]

I'm loving these collections. After having bought the IDW Best of UK collections, I really wanted to get into the UK line of comics, but had never had a chance to own them.

This is a really nice collection, with the retrospective foreword by James Roberts a marvellous look at comic history.


I had a flick through it the other day in the shop, is it in chronological order? it all seemed a bit disorganised to me?

The other issue with the organisation of the UK collections is that they were interspersed among the existing US issues, so there will be some gaps if you're trying to read the UK exclusive stories in one hit.

[GoktimusPrime]

*sigh* Disappointing to see that IDW's G1 reprint quality is still as shoddy as ever. :( (T-T)

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y227/goktimusprime/avatars/Hotrod-facepalm-uk187.gif

[Cat]

*sigh* Disappointing to see that IDW's G1 reprint quality is still as shoddy as ever. :( (T-T)

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y227/goktimusprime/avatars/Hotrod-facepalm-uk187.gif

A lot of the stuff people are responding negatively to is intentional on IDW's part. It's the use of half-tones (which I can't explain in detail, as I'm not a colourist, and don't really know the details).

[GoktimusPrime]

I picked up Vol.2 today. It was shrinked wrapped in the store, so I couldn't browse through it -- just opened it now and had a flick through. The reprint quality is actually worse than I expected. :(

Some of the bonus material is interesting though. I read the foreward by James Roberts which explains why the UK comics were better written than the US ones - but without necessarily bagging out the US comics. i.e. Budiansky was under pressure from Hasbro to introduce more new toys into the US comics leaving massive plotholes that Furman saw fit to fill in. :)

[Paulbot]

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m84l3bpENo1qbguy1o1_500.jpg

Volume 3 is out now.

The reprint quality feels a bit better than Volume 2, but still quite washed out and not up to the standard of the Titan reprints (or the originals).

This book has reached the point where I started reading Transformers comics so many of these tales hold a fond place in my heart. It covers #78 to #112 which has a couple of the longest individual UK arcs (Target: 2006, the 'return to Cybertron') and starts the longest running overarching tale of Galvatron in the current era.

Some nice bonuses include: the poster from 78/80 at full page size (that hung on my wall for many years), the A-Z profiles from this run of issues, the TF-related Robo-Capers strips (including the Christmas morning one I was always personally fond of), the colour corrected pages from 101 (as a kid I thought that was just illustrating Galvatron's seeing-red fury!), and the Cybertron: Middle Years text feature from #83.

Oddly #93 "The Gift" is placed out of order in this collection with no explanation that I've found yet. (I wonder if it was printed after #100 in the "Best of UK: Prey" edition?)

All the three volumes have great commentary, it's a real selling point for those who've read these stories before, but this volume is where what makes TF:UK so special really begins so I'd recommend this volume more highly.

[Paulbot]

http://25.media.tumblr.com/da97a24943017512b60c3e3791e4577e/tumblr_mprrqwzEat1qbguy1o1_500.jpg

Volume 4 is finally out. It's been a long wait. I had this preordered since August last year!

It's the thickest volume yet and I'm happy to finally own that missing chapter of Ancient Relics I didn't have.

Same issues with previous volumes in that the colouring is not always quite right. I've owned most of the comcis in this volume for 25 years so it does bug me that it's not always that well reproduced. The Titan reprints were much more accurate so I'm not sure why IDW have always got it a bit wrong.

Hopefully not as long a wait for the next volume.

[Gouki]

Good thing I'm reading 98% percent of the reprints for the first time, as the colouring or presentation has never bothered me. I'm loving these Classics books, and hope that they're doing well so the line isn't just dropped.