#42 is here

Just got my Mag yesterday and thought I would go over it, you can tell from the start that it is not going to be a good one. Otherwise they would have put the front page on the website, When I last checked after ordering the Runabouts, they still had the Wheeljack cover issue up.

Cover page - Has an image of optimus and The Motor Master clashing. The promoted aspects of the mag are (a bad sign) All-New Animated Allspark faeture and interview with LeVar Burton (From rescue-Bots.)

First page - Usual blab from the club hyping stuff. Talks about a Pre-orders for Drift and O/Run being up soon (too late for us) and a releaunch of the McAx.com club auction site, asking all members to add a couple of items to kick it off. Interestingly, it alludes to how many memeber there are by stating that there should be over 8000 items on the auction site(assuming everyone does add two auctions). So About 4000 or so members.

Page 2 - Interview with Michael Verret. Usual sort of interview they do with Hasbro people "Are you a fan?" "Favourite toy?" A couple of interesting questions on the packaging and changing style of bios (from skills and stats of g1 to rivalries and story we see now)

Page 3,4 - Levar Burton Interview. "did you know Tfs before?" "Excited to be part of the line?" Erm, didnt find this all that interesting, It takes up two pages and has a couple of shots of the rescue Bots and screen shots of the show.

Page 5-10 - New Comic Story "A Flash forward." 6 Pages. 4 of which happen 'off screen' from the G1 movie. That leaves 2 to set up a new Premise, which it does, but it fails to build any suspense and is horribly disappointing. Plugs the Battlechargers although they are drawn with the same face. But the G1s have different faces. Now I have to check on the clubs ones.

Page 11 - Ultra Magnus Bio

Page 12 - Runamuck bio.

Page 13 - Allspark Almanac page featuring, Road Rage, Chromia and Flashpoint.

Page 14 - Fake Animated Rosanna concert ad. Except they mess it up with tickets and a fan pass for Grandus on the page. I think it would have been more effective if they had it a fill ad with the info requireed for fanservice addressed somewhere on the ad.

But it leads into the next page which has

Page 15 - Transformers I.Q Multiple Choice Quiz.
A fan pic and that annoying Recordicons cartoon.



Man this is an awful issue. At least the quiz is better than a half assed word search, but still, no toys.

Considering how it was out before the Toyfair and they mention the toyfair in the first page, you'd think being an 'official' club they'd be able to have maybe ONE piece of preview news about what we are going to see at the fair? After all they should be best pals with Hasbro.

Buuuuuut no. Not a thing.

I am really beginning to see Griffin's point about the lack of toy coverage, which really is what I am after. I don't follow the comics closely enough to care and the club one is usually badly drawn anyway. More toy coverage in this mag would actually boost it up in my opinion. Right now it has the standards of a fan mag. And a bad one of them at that.

At least there were no hideous grammar errors that jupmed out at me this time, although I bet I could read it again and they'd be there. Interstingly in the credits section, they credit Richard Chang for the SD TCC Side Burn Design, but they have a SD Runamuck up there instead. Oops.

So to summarise, "Bah!"