It has occurred to me that, if I'm not going to blast through all four of the TransFormers annuals I own as quickly as possible, I should at least try to deal with one every year... and, having dealt with the 1985 annual in January of 2022, I'm a little overdue on this one, even in the worst case scenario.
With the advent of Marvel/Grandreams TransFormers annuals, and since I was a
regular reader of the TransFormers comic (when the newsagents actually received it and remembered to add it to our
newspaper delivery) it became inevitable that I'd continue to receive them as Christmas gifts.
I mentioned in the write-up of the
1985 book, I'd been getting other annuals for years already, and TransFormers
pretty much became my primary interest once they appeared on the scene.
While I probably enjoyed the first book at the tender age of 11, looking at it
again, more than thirty years later, I found its content almost
frustratingly bad, not helped by the distinctly variable artwork
throughout. Let's see if the second collaboration presents any improvements...
The second annual produced by collaboration between Marvel Comics UK and
Grandreams certainly presents quite a shift in terms of its
presentation. It's still hardbound, with another
gorgeous painting on the front and back covers, but the book loses
(almost) all its puzzle pages, and features an increased proportion of text-based content, from a five-page introductory precis,
to a pair of Who's Who charts at the back. It gains a double-page image of
the Dinobots for the inside front cover spread (from an image painted by John Higgins, originally used as a poster given away with the comics) and character profiles for Optimus Prime and Megatron, 'linked' from the
main text by the instruction to turn to the relevant page,
almost like a proto-Hyperlink.
The cover image is sadly uncredited, and my brief research
suggests the artist is generally unknown. Its style is a curious hybrid of the
US animation models with hints of toy accuracy, and painted in the
super-glossy, semi-realistic style of the toy packaging. It features an
awkward, stiffly-posed Optimus Prime front and centre in robot mode. To
the right, his truck mode speeds along the ground behind him, accompanied by
Prowl, while Wheeljack and Jazz in robot mode are apparently
flying above them, in stiff, awkward poses of their own. To the
left, Ravage appears to be leading Soundwave along the ground, while
Starscream flies above them, and all are in robot mode. The background
appears to be a desert scene at night, with a volcano
not dissimilar to Mount St. Hilary visible just behind Optimus Prime's
legs. A number of buttes dotting the horizon, evokes Monument Valley, Arizona,
rather than the sort of scenery one might expect from Oregon. The night sky is
cloudy, but the moon (I'm guessing) is bright enough to cast flares of
light, and Cybertron hovers to the far right, its towers and roadways
reflecting the moonlight. This book, just like the first, has stood the
test of time, and remains in great condition... Though the cover image is a
bit of a step down in quality, in my opinion.
Comic Book Stories
To A Power Unknown:
At this point, we cut to "a secret research establishment", where a secret
briefing is taking place. Professor Purnel introduces himself and his
assistant, the suspiciously-named Zeke Heilmann, then initiates the second
test-run of his device, P.A.R.D. - Purnel's Auto-Reverse Defence system. While
he goes on to expound about the system's capabilities - returning missiles to
the enemies who launched them - Heilmann lurks the in the background, thinking
suspiciously. Purnel explains that his system already covers the entire world, but
will not affect man-made technology until programmed to do so.
Which brings us back to Starscream, attacking Optimus Prime... But P.A.R.D.'s
effects come into play the very moment his missile hits Prime's trailer.
Naturally, the result of this is that the Seekers (or should I call them
Sweeps?) have an existential crisis and want to give peace a chance.
Starscream even questions his kill order, while the Autobots squabble amongst
themselves, yet are all in agreement on the subject of taking out Optimus Prime. The Autobots
leader, suddenly finding himself on a small country lane flanked with dry
stone walls, crashes into a tree and is described by Jazz as "Off the road...
A sitting truck!"
Meanwhile, back at the lab, Purnel's guest - identifying himself only as the
"European Security Advisor" - suggests he's ready to approve the project,
subject to seeing the blueprint. Before that, Purnel decides to lead his guest away to view the
project's cost analysis, and Heilmann sees his opportunity to acquire the
blueprints himself.
Back with the Autobots, P.A.R.D.'s effects are fading, and Sideswipe is able
to prevent Jazz shooting Optimus Prime, while Mirage appears to be suffering
from a hangover. Prime has recovered enough to transform, but all their
systems are still scrambled. As Starscream attacks, Prime orders his team
to scatter and continue their mission, leaving him to deal with the
Decepticon. Prime finds that his gun has malfunctioned, while Starscream contacts his
comrades saying that he's still experiencing some malfunctions, but has a
target lock on Prime... only to find he's unable to fire. As he beats a hasty
retreat, Prime begins to suspect that the Decepticons are not the source of
the signal they're tracing, and crawls into a nearby disused rail tunnel.
As Jazz pulls up to a building from which smoke and fire are billowing, he
starts to check his systems. Heilmann emerges, observing that the fire was
caused by the removal of P.A.R.D.'s core, before realising that the convenient
rally Porsche is the perfect getaway vehicle. Long before the advent of
cellular telephones, and with blatant disregard for road safety, Heilmann
attempts to contact his handler via CB radio, informing them that he's headed
to the coast. Jazz, meanwhile, is still feeling muddled and resolves to let
the human drive him around till he can figure out his next move. En route,
they pass Starscream, making a landing next to the country road, and Heilman
presumes this is an extraction vehicle sent by his handlers.
Jazz's missile hits the human, while Starscream lands and decides to
go mano-a-mano with the Autobot. As some jets arrive, Starscream believes it's
Decepticon reinforcements, but Jazz recognises they're human-piloted
(specifically RAF Tornados) and so the pair resolve to escape and fight
another day. Starscream 'hides' from the jets in a junkyard (evidently
somewhere near a port, given there's a ship in the background) by holding a
large panel over his head, though there is a human standing right in front of him.
Jazz is a bit more sensible, and waits out the search in a car park. The story
concludes with a callback to the very start, with the very same motorist complaining about what he thinks is 'modern art' blocking the road ahead, but
actually turns out to be a still-malfunctioning Optimus Prime, who waves at
the motorist while laying across the roofs of his fellow Autobots.
Will Simpson's artwork is a curious hybrid of toy accuracy with the
sensibilities of the animated TV show. I particularly like the attention to
detail on the robots' faces, such that they actually look robotic, even if
they're not especially true to the toys. Vehicle modes are particularly well
rendered, to the point where I wondered if Simpson is a particular fan of
drawing cars and jets... Though perhaps not, considering he was more recently
the storyboard artist on Game of Thrones... His handling of humans is
pretty typical for British comics at the time, and stands up well today.
Mennell and Prigmore's story is pretty
interesting, though the science behind it is all nonsense. A signal that
somehow blankets most of the planet, upsetting Cybertronian bodies, while not
affecting human technology, despite being explicitly created for just that
purpose? And it's supposedly a system for sending missiles back to their point
of origin? I mean, what does P.A.R.D. actually do? Reverse the polarity of the
neutron flow? And how does Purnel hope to demonstrate this system if it's not currently programmed to affect man-made technology? How will any results be observed? What are the criteria for a 'successful' test?
Purnel is curious character, since he's been working with
Heilmann for five years, and has clearly suspected him of something for some of that time. Rather than dismissing him, he chooses to contrive a visit from a fake
Government official as a means of entrapping his colleague... And Heilmann's
escape plan leaves a lot to be desired: stealing a random car, then boarding a fighter jet - which he simply presumes has been sent by his contacts - when it touches
down in a field he passes while driving to the coast. Why was he headed to the coast? Had his contacts initially planned on a nautical extraction?
Still, the idea of a human-created system that alters Autobot and Decepticon
personalities such that the former become psychotic murder machines (the likes
of which the Decepticons were not traditionally depicted as, by and large) while the latter
start fawning over each other and the humans (which the Autobots never really
did) is quite fascinating, in that it presents a Shattered Glass-like
situation, yet is sufficiently different from the Shattered Glass concept, not
least because it's the result of a human-made machine. One has to wonder why
this concept wasn't revisited in later media, particularly the likes of
TransFormers Animated and TransFormers Prime.
As is often the case, the bad-guy Autobots make for the more compelling
characters, as they're depicted as being quite willing to kill each other, and
only form a loose alliance to kill Optimus Prime after he failed to detect
Starscream's missile, and it blows a hole in the trailer they'd been riding
in. The other puzzling aspect to this is that Prowl, Jazz, Mirage and
Sideswipe are riding in the trailer in their robot modes, supposedly to save
fuel after what is referred to as a "sky jump". Granted, the trailer would only be able to accommodate one or two cars
in real life without installing additional platforms (perhaps this story would
have been better suited to Ultra Magnus?), but aren't their robot modes going
to be equally cramped in there? And then, once the action kicks off toward the end, Prowl, Sideswipe, Mirage and Prime are nowhere to be seen, which makes me wonder why they were introduced in the first place.
But the Decepticons have it even worse. The story introduces Megatron, Soundwave, Shockwave and the Seekers/'Sweep Squad', with Rumble (or Frenzy) appearing in a single panel. While all leave whatever small US town they were it, only Starscream and his team are shown arriving in the UK, but then Skywarp and Thundercracker are never seen again after they split up.
We're also left wondering what happened to Prime's trailer. It's seemingly just left behind, since the conclusion of the story sees Prime in robot
mode, being carried by his team. Given the importance of the whole "injury to
one module is felt by the other two" aspect of Prime's character in Plague of
the Insecticons, from the previous annual, it's strange that it's not even
alluded to here. Then again, I don't believe it ever came up in the main comics, or the TV show, and became just another forgotten detail of his original profile.
There's also a very woolly sense of how many of a given Cybertronian's functions are under their own direct control and how many are subsystems to which they have restricted access... I can (sort of)
acept Prime's gun jamming as pure chance, given that an earlier panel shows Jazz perfectly able to
fire at Prime, but Starscream reports "video-scan malfunction. Visuals locked
in!" then "Negative weaponry! Jammed by the Autobots? Manual control only,
pulling out!". Surely 'video-scan' is equivalent to 'visuals', and then...
when is Starscream not operating his jet mode on manual control? Or does he mean pilot-operated
controls within his cockpit? If so, the absence of a pilot would surely make
'pulling out' difficult... Yet that's seemingly the case, as he reports on the
next page "Power blast! Automatic flight cells non-functioning! Switch to
manual drive! Require assistance!". He also - somehow - loses radio contact
with his team, and his visuals are evidently sufficiently impaired for him to
be unable to differentiate between F-15 Eagles and the comparatively tiny Hawk
T1 jets flown by the Red Arrows.
You have to love the vague locations UK writers tended to use when setting a story in the US - omitting any mention of the state, as if there
aren't instances of several towns/cities across the US sharing a name. On the upside, while Pinewoodsville is a
fictional place (possibly referencing Pinewood Studios in the UK?), it's
depicted as getting its name from the pine trees clearly evident in the
background of a couple of panels. This would at least be somewhat consistent
with Oregon, which is host to several species, but I have to wonder if that
was simply a fortuitous accident on the part of the artist. Then again, even the geography of the UK is a bit woolly, with
the Autobots going from motorway to country lane, and then Jazz going through
fields to the lab, then waiting out the RAF search in a (possibly suburban) car park, and Starscream seemingly hiding out at
a sea port. Granted, he'd have the speed and range to travel further in his escape but, with both being tailed by armed jets, I'd have thought Starscream would have had a harder time of it.
Probably the biggest gaffe in the whole story is that the Autobots are shown
to be flying across the Atlantic - individually, in robot mode - something
they were incapable of on almost any other occasion, either in the TV show or
the comics. Meanwhile Shockwave and Megatron apparently also fly individually,
albeit in their alternate modes... as guns... And Soundwave is not shown to
have travelled to the UK at all, when he would theoretically be best equipped to trace the signal.
And, of course, the name of the villain of the piece - Zeke Heilmann - cannot
go without comment. It's clearly a reference to the old Nazi salute of "Sieg
Heil!" and, in retrospect, feels like such a goofy element to the story,
particularly when he's revealed as a spy. It's almost a shame that his
employers are not also revealed, lending the whole story a rushed feeling.
The basic concept of the story is quite strong, but it needed an editor to pare it down and strip out the unnecessary elements, not least the relocation to the UK.
Victory!:
Rather than being a standalone story, like most of the others that appear in
these annuals, this story is a supplement to what had been happening in the
comics - specifically, concluding the story Dinobot Hunt from issues 46-50 of the Marvel UK comic. However, this is a story in which things are not as they first appear.
Then we switch to Swoop, in a similar battle situation. He captures Soundwave and flies off with him. On the ground, Optimus Prime instructs Swoop to release his prisoner, but the Dinobot bombardier doesn't listen. Soundwave, preferring death to humiliation in front of the other Deceptions, activates some kind of self-destruct function. The sudden explosion engulfs Swoop, then fades into darkness, in which he seems to hear voices...
Snarl finds himself facing off against the Guardian robot, introduced in issue #20, and reappearing at the end of the Decepticon Dambusters! story, related to the Dinobots by Ratchet as they return to the Ark, in issue 30. The Guardian appears to have taken out most of the Autobots, leaving Snarl to fight him alone. He manages to behead the larger robot with a swipe of his tail, only wishing it had presented more of a challenge... However, the headless robot stands back up and lands a crushing blow on the unsuspecting Dinobot, despatching him in the now-familiar darkness, in which he seems to hear voices...
Slag, on the other hand, finds himself facing off - very briefly - against Shockwave. The Decepticon stands at a precipice above a tar pit, taunting the Dinobot. Slag charges, sending them both over the edge. Shockwave's battered and broken body is seen in the background as Slag sinks into the tar, succumbing to the darkness, in which he seems to hear voices...
Victory! is an intriguing story, but it's clearly filler material... and it's filling a gap that doesn't even really make sense. The Dinobots are knocked out of commission in issue 50 of the comics, then miraculously recover in issue 65 - there's even a note in this story that it's happening before issue 65. However, their appearance in that issue is utterly meaningless - filler in itself - because that's the concluding issue of the Robot Master storyline, and issue 66 switches focus back to Cybertron.
Nevertheless, I like the idea - that the Dinobots, feeling humiliated, are essentially giving themselves a form of therapy, trying to prove to themselves that they are fully functional again, and completely battle-ready. It feels like this story was written for the comics, but edited out at the last minute when the US-written material suddenly took focus off the events on Earth.
One thing that always bugged me about the comics and the TV show was the dichotomy in the way the Dinobots were presented. The latter always presented them as being of limited intelligence, and frequently as lumbering goofballs, while the former - particularly with Furman at the helm - presented them as far more thoughtful, employing their characteristic brand of destruction more strategically. Given that only Sludge and Slag have below average intelligence scores on their G1 Tech Specs, I feel that Furman got it right (something I rarely feel obliged to admit, thankfully).
I'm possibly in a bit of a minority in the TransFormers fandom, but I really dislike Geoff Senior's TransFormers artwork. In stories focused on humans, his style is very much par for the course in British comics of that era, albeit with a penchant for extreme expressions and sharp teeth. I quite liked Dragon's Claws, and his dynamic, angular oeuvre may be ideally suited to other properties, but his TransFormers artwork is just awful. It occupies a weird slot between the more toy-accurate material in the earlier UK comics and a more angular take on the G1 cartoon's animation models, but ends up coupling the boxy robot forms with seemingly skin-tight battlemasks on the likes of Optimus Prime and Soundwave. Possible the best bit of art in the whole thing is also the most horrific: the panel in which the Joy Meadows robot rips off her human disguise has actually stuck in my memory ever since I first read this annual back in the 1980s. I wasn't exactly traumatised by it, but it's quite a shocking image. Not only was it unexpected, but it's surprisingly explicit, and makes me think of the similar surprise reveal in Revenge of the Fallen.
At the end of the day, Victory! serves its purpose: bridging a gap in the narrative of the UK comics... but it's poorly paced and generally surplus to requirement.
Prose Stories
In The Beginning/The Story So Far...:
Written by Simon Furman, this is not so much a story in and of itself, but a recap of the Marvel Comics TransFormers lore, padded out by framing it within the conceit of a hacker named Adam accidentally blundering into the Decepticons' mainframe while attempting to access the Portland National Bank computers - using a Sinclair computer, no less - for a $1 bet. It's fairly typical of any story involving hacking back in the 80s, as written by someone who didn't understand hacking, but this really didn't need to be presented from human perspective. The incongruity of an American child using a Sinclair computer rather than a Timex (Sinclair's US partner at the time) or, more likely, a Commodore 64 is probably due to Sinclair being the more recognisable British brand back in the mid-1980s. However, the idea than the Decepticons' mainframe computer - let alone the potted history of the Autobot-Decepticon war, as documented on 'War-Tape One' - being accessible via a simple modem connection is absolutely ludicrous... Then again, I suspect computer modems and bulletin boards were just beginning to make it into the public awareness due to features in the computer magazines of the day, and Furman wanted to give the impression of having his finger on the pulse.
After the history lesson, the story turns into a kind of rudimentary 'Choose Your Own Adventure'-type thing, where Adam inputs a query, and a page reference within the annual leads you to the information Adam would have seen. However, his first query is for information on the supposed terrorist leader known as 'Robot Master' (aka Donnie Finkleberg, an in-universe comic-book creator from the Marvel comics, used as part of a Government cover story to obscure the facts of the Autobot/Decepticon activity on Earth), yet the first Datafile entry referenced is for Optimus Prime, supposedly as a sample of what the Datafile has to offer. His next query is about Megatron, for which he seems to bypass the access code (Walther P-38, apparently) and security rating requirements with ease. Having learned about Megatron, he almost disconnects from the mainframe and, having successfully retained his access, the computer's datacore finally seems to realise it's been hacked and starts to prepare countermeasures, in the form of a million-volt charge, to be delivered via the hacker's own connection. Adam makes additional enquiries about the TransFormers' activities on Earth and the charge slowly builds, even as the Decepticon mainframe continues to provide information, most of which is a summary of the stories from the comics. Even when the text clearly states that the next instructions received will trigger the electrical response, Adam is able to ask one more question, and then prepares to disconnect for the night.
In fact, the countermeasure is only deployed as he chooses to disconnect, and Adam's life is apparently saved by the fortuitous arrival of his cat, causing him to reel backwards just as his computer explodes. At the very end, rather than simply counting his blessings and swearing off hacking for life, Adam wonders if the Autobots have a computer... Which, by this point, would surely go without saying.
Now, call me a stickler for detail but, as someone who grew up with some Sinclair computers in the house, this remote attack by the Decepticons' mainframe is all the more unlikely because Sinclair machines were known for their cheap keyboards. One has to assume that Furman was at least imagining a ZX Spectrum rather than the ZX80 or 81 and, while the Spectrum+ and the first 128K model were available by 1986 (having launched two years earlier and one year earlier, respectively), as well as third party keyboard upgrades, most of them were plastic or rubber, neither being known for their ability to conduct electricity. Furthermore, the keyboard membranes were so cheap and light, they would likely have burnt out long before there was any danger to the user.
Return of the TransFormers:
The story begins on a cold, wet, windswept coastline, as Danny remembers his encounter with the Autobots and, from that, extrapolates that these giant, alien, shape-changing robots must surely be "so advanced as to have long ago renounced violence" and that they "had visited Earth to promote peace and understanding". Since his encounter, he has kept a scrapbook of news clippings related to the robots, in the hope of ascertaining where they might appear next... However, due to this obsession, his school grades have been slipping and he's been avoiding his friends. It's because of this that his mother decided to take him on a coastal vacation... in the middle of winter. The moment the story mentions a hydroelectric power plant a few miles from their hotel, you start to see where the events are headed.
Cut to Optimus Prime, agonising over the idea of creating the Aerialbots - a combiner team which Prowl has pitched as "a new generation of 'Ultimate Autobots', designed specifically for combat". Prime had considered this to be a 'perversion' of the Matrix, feeling that it would only further escalate their conflict with the Decepticons... but eventually relented, only to be disappointed by their weaknesses. There's a nod to the animated TV show, in that Jetfire - who Prime assigns to lead the Aerialbots on a reconnaissance mission - is referred to as a "renegade Decepticon". Curiously, he's tasked with assessing them in combat by undermining their decisions and forcing them into conflict with each other, just so Prime can know "whether or not they're worthy of the name Autobot". This bombshell then cuts straight to the Aeriabots grumbling amongst themselves, as Jetfire climbs higher into the air, leading Silverbolt to realise that his vertigo is being tested.
The story then returns to Danny Phillips, as he strolls, unchallenged, into the power station, seemingly deserted... At least until he hears machinery, and runs into some robots, and we're treated to this rather disingenuous gem from the author:
"After months of patient waiting, Danny had at last found the TransFormers. Found them here, where he least expected to see them."
He's further confused when he realises that this group of robots is keeping the plant workers captive in "what could only be described as a cage of brightly shimmering energy", contrary to the impression he'd got from the robots that saved him from a burning building.
Here, the story shifts back to Jetfire and the Aerialbots, where the former's contentious leadership causes Slingshot to attempt a single-bot assault on the power station, with the rest reluctantly tagging along. Another quick scene change reveals that Danny has been captured, and it seems as though he's about to be crushed by Skywarp, when Jetfire bursts in through the wall, causing the Decepticon to simply drop the human. A battle ensues, in which one of the Aerialbots shoots the pile of Energon cubes the Decepticons had amassed, and Jetfire orders Fireflight to take Danny to safety. He flies directly back to the hotel, and hands an unconscious Danny back to his mother. He's soon joined by most of the other Aerialbots, who announce that Silverbolt and Jetfire chose to pursue the Decepticons as the made their escape.
The story rounds off with a very brief summary of Jetfire's report to Optimus Prime, but it says more about what Jetfire didn't say - basically any of the negative observations about the Aerialbots' performance, both individually and as Superion, are dismissed as "problems the Aerialbots must solve themselves" - before switching back to Danny Phillips for the final scene, where he petulantly throws his scrapbook of news clippings into the ocean, having been disillusioned by his second encounter with TransFormers. Unfortunately, Danny has never been written with enough depth for this scene to carry any real weight, and it just feels like a teenager being brattish, having been 'disappointed' by something he never truly understood.
The story is written competently enough, but feels like it needed to be at least twice as long to thoroughly explore all its angles and actually start to make sense. Everything felt rushed, and the constant switching between brief scenes only exacerbated this. I suppose it's believable enough that a child who was once rescued by an Autobot would become obsessed with learning more about them, and idealise all alien robots... making it equally believable that learning that they're not the bastions of peace he'd imagined them to be was so crushing. However, the overall setting of the story just feels too easy and convenient. It also feels rather quaint that Optimus Prime has to interact with the Autobots' computer via a keyboard, and that information is apparently displayed on a greenscreen monitor. Additionally, Prime's apparent reluctance to use the Matrix to bring the Aerialbots to life is contrary to the whole 'Special Teams' thread in the Marvel comics, as I remember it, and adding Jetfire into the mix seems a little redundant - forcing additional conflict where there would already be natural conflict: in a team of airborne Autobots who don't respect their leader due to his fear of heights.
A Tale From Cybertron - State Games:
In amongst this drama, there's a quick scene switch to the confusingly titled 'Autobot Overlord' - "last in the line of Autobots that once ruled Cybertron", and a being so old, he's almost constantly in need of recharging (Hill clearly had some experience of rechargeable batteries which, even today, lose their capacity over time and repeated chargings). Musing over the longevity of Cybertron's inhabitants, he realises that their current energy crisis was inevitable. The two largest cities essentially control all the resources - Iacon rationing them out to smaller settlements, while Tarn, under the leadership of Shockwave, and Vos, represented by Starscream, both prioritise their military might. The Overlord's bodyguard, Nightstalker arrives, and the two discuss the gladiatorial competition he created "in order to create good will". Turns out it "had if anything widened the deadly rift between the city states, particularly Iacon and Tarn". With that realisation, they depart for the award ceremony.
It's at this point, we cut to Ravage observing - one might say admiring - Megatron, and musing over how he might have the "particular spark of leadership Cybertron had not seen since the time of the ruling Overlords". The gladiator has his hand around his opponent's neck, and is ready to strike the final blow when Optimus Prime rocks up and calls a stop to the fight. Megatron basically discards Sunstreaker, and launches himself at Prime. Seeming gaining the upper hand without any difficulty, Megatron is only brought to a standstill when Prime points a gun at him. At this point the Autobot Overlord arrives and calls for the fighting to end. Prime tries to 'explain', but is basically told to shut up. As Ravage slinks away with Nightstalker, he reflects that the day's games could mark "the opening chapter in the bold new history of Cybertron."
We then cut to the power plant at Tarn, where three saboteurs - confusingly described as Autobots, as the generic term for Cybertronians, because the name 'Decepticon' only appears toward the very end of this story - are arguing about the particular method of sabotage they are employing. One, named Tornado, feels he could level the power station himself, leading to one of his companions - identified only as a commander from Vos - to remind him that "We do so because we have been ordered to do so, and that is all you need to know". The idea is that, somehow, evidence will suggest that the sabotage was perpetrated by agents from Iacon, and Tarn's inevitable demand for retribution would lead to war, in which Vos would remain neutral until both were so heavily damaged, Vos could make a play for global domination. Unfortunately, this early stage of the plan is interrupted by an engineer walking in on them. He recognises them as members of the Vos athletics team and, having noticed the explosives, realises something is wrong, attempts to flee while raising the alarm via his wrist communicator. This gives Tornado the perfect opportunity to use his "wind-creating powers" to silence him. With the engineer's report incomplete, the saboteurs are able to leave the scene unchallenged, and the power station later explodes.
However, Tarn declares war on Vos, not Iacon, and Iacon's ruling council seem to want to remain neutral - taking in refugees from both cities, but offering direct support to neither. Emirate Xaaron asks for a peace-keeping force to be sent to the war zone, but General Traachon refuses, grimly pointing out that it may be in Iacon's best interests to allow Tarn and Vos to destroy each other.
The story concludes with Megatron back in front of a crowded audience - the survivors of Vos and Tarn, each destroyed when the other launched "Cybertron's 'ultimate deterrant'.", and now united as refugees. Convincing them that Iacon could have stopped the war, he's pleased to learn that some in the crowd actually believe Iacon started the war. He declares that they are no longer Autobots, and shall henceforth be known as Decepticons... and, as he leaves the auditorium, the crowds are once again chanting his name.
While I like that this story if framed within two different audiences chanting Megatron's name, there's no sense at the end that their devotion has been earned. Megatron plays such a small role in what's going on, there's no demonstration of his brilliant tactical mind, nor of his charisma or his ability to lead. Aside from his brutal fights at the start, there's precious little to demonstrate his strength or skill. Meanwhile Optimus Prime doesn't exactly come across as a character who will evolve into a wise, compassionate leader for the Autobots. Both of them come across as petulant thugs - perhaps ideal for gladiators, but not so great for future leaders.
Then there's the idea that both Megatron and Optimus Prime are gladiators. Not only that, but Optimus Prime is "Iacon's chief athlete". One would think that an annual with so little actual content would at least have a consistent idea of who its main characters are yet, just 15 pages earlier, Prime is described as abandoning his plans to be a medic to enlist in the army. And then, if Optimus Prime is just another gladiator in this story, how is he allowed to bring a handgun into the arena? Hardly seems sporting.
The whole setup of the story - the lazy, corrupt, ancient elites ruling Cybertron; the idea of gladiatorial combat where representatives of each city state fight to the death, as a means of bringing the world's citizens together - just doesn't work for me. It's a basis for the war that has been revisited several times over the years, but here, it lacks both depth and nuance. The idea that the Decepticons grew out of the discontent of a marginalised group of 'lower class' citizens isn't a bad idea, per se, but the way it's presented here fails to convince. Perhaps it's down to the limited word count, but Hill doesn't seem to understand his characters, or the politics of the situation he's trying to portray. Megatron simply has a grand dream (ahem) of building a power base in Iacon, turning the entire planet into a battle-station, and then using it "to establish a galaxy-wide empire." as if the simple acquisition of power was the sum total of his motivation. He's not even ruthless enough to shoot the Autobot Overlord and claim he was killed in an attack - Megatron simply walks away, and allows his batteries to fail. Conversely, if this is the aspect of the Autobots that Optimus Prime represents, he's clearly no hero. It's not quite a Shattered Glass analogue, but a conflict between two equally bad factions of Cybertronians isn't exactly satisfying.
I'm a little curious about the lack of continuity with the first Annual in the name - 'A Tale From Cybertron' being the prefix to the title, rather than 'Tales From Cybertron', almost as if they'd forgotten the naming convention in the intervening year... But that's a relatively minor point, really. There are some curious narrative choices to this one, beginning with this so-called Autobot Overlord - a title rather than a name, it seems, but his actual name is never revealed. Going by the roughly-sketched background character in the story's first painting, he's kind of a cross between Soundwave and one of the Seekers, but that doesn't match with the final picture in the story. Nevertheless, his train of thought indicates that "for thousands of years, natural death had been an alien concept to [Cybertronians]" and that the creation of new TransFormer life was "continuing unabated", leading to the current energy crisis. This seems completely illogical for a mechanical race and there is no explanation of how or why the creation of new life hadn't been slowed or stopped, considering the existing citizens seem to be functionally immortal. It just seems to have been decided upon by the writer, for the purpose of explaining the energy crisis.
There are also a couple of lazy shortcuts, where the story seems to break from its own narrative to simply inform the reader of a specific event. For example, during the sabotage scene, the Vos agents' plan is explained, and the followed by "But it was a plan that failed to account for a solitary Autobot engineer strolling into the generator room."
However, perhaps the most egregious plot hole is that the security team apparently don't respond to an alert without first querying it and, in the absence of a response from the now incapacitated engineer, presume all is well, thus allowing the saboteurs to escape, and the bombs to destroy the power station.
I found this story to be a real slog, with very little actually happening across its five and a half pages worth of text. There are certainly plenty of events, but nothing feels significant in the way it's told. Its characters are poorly defined and lacking any compelling qualities, while the setting is so loosely described, it makes very little sense. I also had to read it a couple of times, because it was so unmemorable. Megatron and Optimus Prime teaming up to escort the Overlord to Iacon presented the ideal opportunity to flesh out their ideological differences, and for Megatron to fully express his conflict with the status quo, as represented by the Overlord. As an idea for a longer story, 'State Games' has some potential... but it's sorely lacking in this form.
The Mission:
It's often said that a writer has to grab their audience's attention with the first sentences of their story, and the last prose entry in this annual certainly does that, if only because it's so vastly different from the others: "It was a monochrome world. The onset of the Alaskan winter had clapped the wild land in irons, squeezing the colour from the mountains and the sky. The black-toothed peaks chewed at grey clouds, swollen with snow." It's a real treat to find such evocative language in any short story, let alone one published in a 1980s TransFormers annual. That very first sentence almost feels like a stylistic tribute to the opening of William Gibson's iconic 1984 novel, Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel".
The story opens with Jazz driving through this icy landscape, chasing Hoist's signal after something has gone wrong with their assigned mission of observing, and potentially sabotaging, whatever the Constructicons are up to. Jazz observes that Hoist has been a decent scout, despite being "a workshop machine" and "too methodical for fieldwork". While in transit, Jazz received a signal from Hoist "on the Autobots' Urgent Distress Frequency", and he can only hope that Hoist hadn't chosen to face off against the Constructicons by himself.
At this point, the story briefly shifts to Hoist's point of view, where... he's stuck in a hole. He had been tracking the Constructicons as they were mining and tunneling, essentially dropping into stasis for three days while his scanners kept running. When they became invisible to his sensors, he decided to risk getting closer. Sneaking closer on foot, keeping low and regularly taking cover, he'd got within half a mile of the Constructicons' location before falling into a vertical shaft and finding himself wedged in place. With his head and shoulders visible above the rim of the pit, he risked the emergency transmission that brought Jazz to his aid.
Jazz, now in his robot mode, tracks the distress signal and the location of the Constructicons. He briefly considers sabotaging their work, but determines that rescuing Hoist has to be his priority. When he first identifies Hoist's position, he presumes his comrade has been destroyed, and his parts left either as a warning or as bait. Hoist reacts to his presence, which startles Jazz, causing him to open fire on the Constructicons. Realising that he's jeopardised the rescue of his comrade, let alone the wider mission, he sets to work... er... hoisting Hoist out of his hole.
Trying to diffuse the tension, Jazz points out the irony of Hoist falling into a gold mine having got through the Alaskan wilderness without problems, but that only leads Hoist to query why humans would endure such conditions for "a useless metal", with Jazz then lamenting that this was not the ideal time to give him a cultural history lesson on the Klondike Gold Rushes.
But, just then, a flash of light indicates that the Constructicons have noticed them, and have started to fire at them. Jazz is hit, Hoist returns fire and assesses the damage to his compatriot, determining that his "sensory and logistical circuits" have been destroyed. With the Constructicons closing in, Hoist drags and shoves Jazz to safety through the surrounding mountains, eventually approaching the cover of a forest... But not before the 'logistically'-impaired Autobot second-in-command starts juggling with snowballs. Inappropriate though this behaviour is, Hoist is pleased that Jazz has at least retained his coordination.
Through the forest, they reach a river, with the Constructicons - now combined into Devastator - close in. Hoist identifies that they have emerged close to a hydroelectric dam, and quickly fells some trees in the hope of building a makeshift raft for himself and Jazz. As Devastator bursts out of the forest, Hoist realises that Jazz is oblivious, pondering instead the wrongness of the dam's existence in this ecosystem. Attempting to shove Jazz out of the way as Devastator opens fire, Hoist avoids the blast, but identifies that it has weakened the dam. In a last-ditch effort to escape, he unceremoniously puts Jazz into stasis, throws him across the felled tree trunks and jumps on top just as the dam bursts.
As the torrent of water spills through, the Constructicons panic, separate, and are swept away. Hoist assesses their situation and, while the mission wasn't a complete failure, Jazz will need Ratchet's attention before they can return to fighting the Decepticons.
The story ends with the attendant at a petrol station just south of the Canadian border noticing the passing of a towtruck dragging a battered Porsche... and realising that the truck had no driver...
Marvel/Grandreams absolutely saved the best till last in this annual. This story, written by Jamie Delano, might well be the finest piece of
TransFormers fiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading. On the face of it,
the story of Jazz searching for Hoist in the wilds of the Alaskan winter,
after the latter goes missing on a spying mission, of all things, sounds
pretty straightforward, not to say a little nonsensical... I mean, Hoist - the
Autobots' maintenance engineer - deployed as a spy?
And yet, where most other stories would just treat this as business as usual -
any random selection of 'bots chucked into any bonkers situation one could
imagine tends to be pretty much the order of the day - 'The Mission' actually
takes a few lines to explain why this has happened. More than that, though, it ascribes thoughts, impressions, sensations and feelings to the protagonists in ways that none of the other authors ever bothered to explore. It pauses for humour a couple of times, but not in a way that breaks the gravity of the situation the mismatched pair of Autobots are in and, while acknowledging that Jazz is the one suited to this sort of mission, Jamie Delano nevertheless allowed Hoist to shine as the unlikely hero of the day.
Extras/Games
Given that this only is the second Marvel/Grandreams TransFormers annual, the idea that the Autobot and Decepticon leaders needed to have their bios printed in its pages seems a little redundant, like they had two pages to fill, and no time to think of anything worthwhile to add. Prime's bio at least tries to add something new, claiming the Optimus Prime enlisted in the Autobot army as a medical officer - surely one of the least common origins for the character - though how this would have allowed him to prove himself as a potential leader isn't really explained... He's simply put in charge of the Elite Flying Corps (who knew there was such a thing? Perhaps it's just an attempt to justify his change of heart regarding the Aerialbots), and then being bumped up to field commander of the entire Autobot army, albeit under the control of the Council of Autobot Elders. His dissatisfaction with this arrangement leads him to take unsanctioned actions against the Decepticons, which doesn't quite paint the usual picture of the Autobot leader. The rest of the backstory is cherry-picked from established canon (mostly the Marvel comics), and then his abilities and weaknesses are just an expanded version of Bob Budiansky's original character bio.
The TransFormers 'Threeplay Quiz' (a dubious choice of name which prompted my girlfriend to point out that foreplay is always preferable) seems needlessly complicated. Each question - A to H - has three parts, with the score for correct answers increasing each time - 10 points for part 1, 20 for part 2, 30 for part 3, for a maximum of 60 points per question. However, you're expected to check your answer to each part before moving on to the next or, if you don't know the answer, simply move on to the next set of questions, while the formatting makes it all too easy to accidentally see the answers to future questions. There is one major error in the quiz, in that Question F parts 2 and 3 both refer the reader to illustration F, and the image intended for part 3 isn't present, with illustrations D and G both correctly applying to the appropriate question. The answers would be pretty easy for anyone who had been reading the comics over the preceding couple of years, but I have to admit there were a couple I couldn't answer quickly, and one or two where my recollection wasn't precisely as documented... nevertheless, I'd say they were close enough to give me top marks.
The final extras in this Annual are the Who's Who charts for the Autobots and Decepticons, seemingly intended only to cover the toys introduced by the end of 1985, but it only covers 1984's Mini Autobots and omits quite a few characters from 1985's selection. Adding insult to injury, Swoop was never released in the UK, despite appearing in both the TV show and the Marvel comics, and the Aerialbots don't appear in the chart, despite being key characters in one of the Annual's stories... Possibly because they came out in 1986. I'd also argue that some of the information given is inaccurate, for example, listing Mirage as "Military Intelligence Officer", when his Tech Specs describe him simply as a spy (perhaps they'd planned to make Mirage into a James Bond-style character? If so, I don't think that idea ever got off the ground). Also, given that a lot of the characters listed do not appear within any of the stories, they really should have been omitted in favour of those who do.
However bad the Autobot Who's Who is, it is at least complete... where the Decepticon chart is cut off about halfway down, seemingly because its opening half was placed on a righthand page rather than a lefthand page, suggesting that someone wasn't paying attention the the flatplan, and allowed one of the stories to overrun by a page. It also seems only to reference a small selection toys from 1984/85, not least in that it includes only Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp, when Dirge, Ramjet and Thrust would have been around in 1985. It seems as though there might have been more crammed in on the second page, had it appeared, since many of the entries in the chart don't have as much text as those in the Autobots's chart.
Of course, the most frustrating aspect of this annual is that it features the Constructicons at all... since they weren't available in the UK. They reportedly arrived - in a non-combinable form - during Generation 2, but both the original, combining green/purple and the later yellow/purple versions were only made available in Continental Europe.
After a decent, if scrappy first Annual, Marvel/Grandreams second collaboration under the TransFormers brand feels rather more focussed on stories, but also tends toward those that are presented as mainly text. It's a safe bet that they're cheaper, since comic book panels require a writer, artist, inker, colourist and letterer to be paid, while the text stories just have a writer for the bulk of it, and then a single artists for the handful of images. The overall effect, particularly coupled with the rather uninspiring comic book stories, is of a significantly lower-effort book this time round, and it's really only Jamie Delano's story that's worth the effort of reading. The quirky artwork provided by Will Simpson in To A Power Unknown is probably among the better offerings in these annuals, but the less said about Geoff Senior's organic, yet excessively angular style, the better...
Overall, and in spite of it featuring the best TransFormers prose story I've ever read and a more structured approach to its content, this annual is very much a case of diminishing returns. It feels wasteful of its sixty inner pages, the inconsistencies between the characters in their bios versus the stories they appear in (Optimus Prime was apparently a medic and a gladiator on Cybertron) suggest that the Editorial team didn't really care, while the production error in the Decepticon Who's Who is as disappointing as it is surprising. However, it should be noted that subsequent annuals were produced by Marvel alone, which led to a significant change in the nature of their content... For better or worse.
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