IDW to reprint more obscure UK comics

From the new IDW solicitations (via Seibertron.com) comes news of a new TF UK reprint.

This time, straight to trade, UK stories that are often overlooked appear to be getting a reprint.

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TRANSFORMERS CLASSICS: UK, VOL. 1



Written by Bill Mantlo, Ralph Macchio, Jim Salicrup, Steve Parkhouse, Simon Furman, art by Frank Springer, John Ridgway, Mike Collins, covers by Andrew Wildman.

Classic Transformers tales from the UK continuity begin here! Re-mastered and re-colored, these vintage TF stories are presented in order, many published for the first time in the United States! Writer and life-long TF fan James Roberts (Last Stand of the Wreckers) provides in-depth historical perspective in each volume, and TF UK artist Andrew Wildman provides new covers!

276 pages, $24.99.

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I'm very happy that it's being "remastered" as many of their recent Best of UK reprints have had that photocopy look to them. Some of the UK comics though had brilliant painted colouring (mostly from issues around the 60s to 80s) and it'd be a shame to lose that.

It's also a little odd that the US writers and artists are included in the credits. Could they possibly be reprinting all stories (UK and US) from the UK comic? That seems like overkill! (I've got my question for BotCon's IDW panel now!) But the Marvel US stories could look nice in new colour.

That's cool! I really like the old marvel art style. :)
Not sure if I'll get this though, I've been trying to pick up the Titan UK reprints, to my knowlege they're more complete/ comprehensive? Honestly I'm also a little confused as to where the split between the US and UK runs is. :o

The Titan UK trades are better quality reproductions than the IDW ones. They are a little random though sometimes including stories that don't thematically fit. The first few told the Galvatron story based around the 'epics' (Target 2006, Wanted Galvatron, Legacy of Unicron, Space Pirates, Time Wars), and the later ones went back and picked up others on a similar themes (Dinobot Hunt, Second Generation)

Many of the black and white stories were reprinted in digest size, but again it was a bit random.

From both some tales fell through the cracks. Particularly early ones like Enemy Within and Annual Stories like There Shall Come A Leader.

Titan's reprints are complete for Marvel US except for (IIRC) #43 Big Broadcast of 2006 & the limited series of the Movie, the Universe series and backups, the two GIJoe crossovers, and I think the Ghosts story from G2 #2

The UK stories take place in between the US issues, which makes me wonder when the new trade lists the US creators could this be the most comprehensive reprinting yet.

Ah, RE-coloured... I mis-read that, as in colouring the UK B&W stories (for the first time). I guess that'd be too much to hope for, as it would probably be expensive (depending on how much 'recolouring' they are doing to the existing prints).

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Originally Posted by Paulbot

The Titan UK trades are better quality reproductions than the IDW ones.

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Yeah, that's the thing that bugs me with IDW's G1 reprints (both of US and UK issues)... the repro quality is pretty crummy. :(

You know it's bad when my original G1 issues that I purchased in the 1980s still look better than my recently purchased new reprints from IDW! The Titan reprints on the other hand look better than my aged original G1 issues (as they should).

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

Yeah, that's the thing that bugs me with IDW's G1 reprints (both of US and UK issues)... the repro quality is pretty crummy. :(

You know it's bad when my original G1 issues that I purchased in the 1980s still look better than my recently purchased new reprints from IDW! The Titan reprints on the other hand look better than my aged original G1 issues (as they should).

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Not only that they missed a page in my Classic GI Joe volume 11, granted marvel did the same thing in their volume 2, but they reprinted it in the next issue and later fixed the problem I believe. Will IDW do the same. They also missed out on the battle maps and other extra tidbits from the original issues too. :mad:

And the there's the whole not being able to show Marvel characters in the Transformers classics reprints, . its nice to have these reprints but I can't say much for IDW quality.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zed

And the there's the whole not being able to show Marvel characters in the Transformers classics reprints, . its nice to have these reprints but I can't say much for IDW quality.

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While that's annoying, it's a legal thing that's beyond IDW's control, so I don't fault them for that. The print quality on the other hand... what's the excuse?

without seeing this new release, I'm hoping the print quality is good and they've somehow managed to tie both us and uk stories together in one continuity. that would be freaking sweet.

US and UK stories are essentially one continuity, with some discrepancies here and there. Basically the UK comics were written as an "expansion" of the US comics, but occasionally there would be discrepancies because Budiansky and Furman weren't cooperating -- pretty much Budiansky wrote the US comics, and it was up to Furman to expand on it in the UK comics. Sometimes the UK stories would digress from US continuity at behest of Hasbro UK, like the Earthforce Saga, which was written to promote the Classic G1 reissues. But that story has since been retconned as out-of-continuity* anyway.

And when Furman took over from Budiansky in writing the US comics, he cemented the US continuity even further into events that occured in the UK comics. The Matrix Quest is a classic example of this -- even though Matrix Quest was a US story, the precursor events that led to it occured in the UK comics and the US comics even had flashbacks to events from the UK series! (e.g. Optimus Prime's original body being buried in space aboard a funeral barge, Deathbringer etc.) :)

There's always room for writers to try and resolve some of the continuity discrepancies between the US and UK G1 stories, but that doesn't make them separate continuities per se... the UK comics were intended to be part of the same continuity as the US (and vice versa when Furman took over the job of writing the US comics).

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*Having said that, in US#75 when Grimlock uses the Ark to smack Unicron across the face, there's this reference/tribute to Earthforce. :D

IDW did end up getting permission to print circuit breaker etc, sadly not soon enough :(

I asked Andy Schmidt at the IDW booth today about this new collection. It is only UK stories. The writer/artist credits in the original solicitations were wrong. James Roberts will be writing contextual introductions for the stories.

He also said that there will be new editions of the Marvel reprints with updated colouring and they've done a deal with Marvel so they can reprint the Spider-Man issue etc.

i've got a bunch of the titan trades, not sure whether to grab some IDW ones as well..

Apologies if this is a tad off-topic, but I'm looking to get into Marvel G1 to learn about the origins of Transformers, and I don't usually read much in the way of comics.

Taking this into account, is the difference in quality between the IDW reproductions and the Titan reproductions worth paying double the price? The US Marvel collection via IDW is only 6 volumes whereas the Titan collection would contain 16 similarly priced volumes.

Titan's were more complete, but at this stage I'd wait for the new editions from IDW that will include the Spiderman and Circuit Breaker stories and have improved colouring. They'd be cheaper too than Titan collections secod hand.