James Roberts 90's Transformers Fanzine project

[Paulbot]

On twitter/x today, James Roberts outlined a new project

I’m thinking about releasing a big new book celebrating the old school Transformers fanzines of the 80s and 90s, to be released in time for the 40th anniversary 🧵

It would be a large format, photo-heavy book, part reference guide, part history (the early 90s End of Days is a critical but under-catalogued period in TF history), containing interviews with a host of zine editors and contributors

In 1990/91, the demise of the Marvel comics and the end of the toyline in the US gave every impression that the franchise was dead, even if the toys continued elsewhere

Fans from 84 were now old enough to make fanzines, and with no new canonical fiction the time was right for the fandom to embrace the DIY ethos and Take Control™️

If this project is to work, I need as broad a sample of TF zines as possible. I have 150ish from the Transmasters days, but there are lots more out there. Zines from the 80s, plus non-UK/US zines, are especially hard to come by, as are general toy and SF zines that featured TFs

This is me putting my toe in the water, trying to gauge interest and to see how much material is out there. So to get to the point: if you own or know of or made or contributed to TF fanzines published in the 20th century, please get in touch by emailing me at tfzines40@gmail.com

If I decide this has legs, I’d find ways to take high quality scans of the material, and to interview zine creators and contributors

Please could you spread this message far and wide so I can determine the amount and the availability of the source material. If any of you post on TF sites and message boards, please fly a flag for this project. Thank you!

We are all on this forum because Griffin created the AusTrans newsletter in the 90s, and if this book goes ahead AusTrans/Ozformer must be included.

Do some of the other folk from those early days who are still posting here have physical copies anymore? Demonac, Dirge, Goktimus?

I've got my copies of the penultimate 5 issues, and print outs of the "email versions" from issue 12, Sep 1997 onwards, and I think a saved copy of the web version of issue 1 when Griffin posted that again as an anniversary celebration.

[griffin]

Does anyone who still has the original printed copies, be willing to sell them back to me?
I only ended up with 14 of the physical issues that I posted out to members back in the 1990s, and I really should have the full set archived in my collection. (When people bought back-issues towards the end of the run, I must have been sending out my copies, thinking that I would reprint them later... but never did.)

I could reprint them, but they wouldn't be the same as the original printings, as many of them had different coloured paper for their covers... as well as typos and errors that might have been corrected later.

I thought that I only printed up to issue 47, but seeing as I have issue 61 on-hand, I must have done at least 60 issues.

[James R]

Hey!

I found this post because I’m halfway through the fanzine/fandom book project and I desperately need to acquire good quality scans of Austrans *and* speak to the people responsible. Can anyone help??

[Seraphim Prime]

Hey!

I found this post because I’m halfway through the fanzine/fandom book project and I desperately need to acquire good quality scans of Austrans *and* speak to the people responsible. Can anyone help??

Griffin was responsible for the books, and can probably be reached by DM on these boards. I don't have an email for him unfortuantley.
GOktimus Prime & Dirge were also pretty involved in Sydney based fandom activities and you could give them a DM for information around that event, the comic produced and the exclusive figurine.

[James R]

Thanks so much, I’ll do that.

In the meantime, if anyone has any other leads for me, let me know here or by emailing tfzines40@gmail.com.

I want to pay due respect to the Australian fandom.