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Underground > Comic Books >

Transformers - All Fall Down

15:40 / 14.08.01

Is out.

I stopped getting the comic before it finished, so missed this story entirely. Is it just the nostalgia talking, or is this brilliant stuff? Epic plot, solid characterisation. Transformers always had its own distinct style that set it apart from the usual superhero comics.

The only downer is that Titan currently seem to have no plans to release anything but this final story arc. The second part comes out in November. I ask you all to buy this one now in the hope that they'll collect the UK stories (my old issues are fairly tattered and torn now).

Also, fans of Simon Furman should keep their eyes on www.whorunstheengine.net .

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:53 / 14.08.01

Yeah, it's great stuff: at that stage, the comic was basically going down the pan as I understand it, but Furman was now writing the main (American) title, so he was given carte blanche...

What does this collect, Randy? I'll be buying it anyway, but just so I know...

16:05 / 14.08.01

and simon furman is now the big senior editor at titan, so he may not need much convincing to get the uk transformers stuff out-- the problem will be that they were created for marvel uk which is now owned by pannini...

No real spoilers but you might not want to read this anyway...

I was still getting transformers us all the way up to issue 75 which was fantastically apocalyptic...... unfortunately the comic carried on for five issues after that and when i read those five issues recently on one of the many transformers websites they were pretty disappointing. I mean *really* dissapointing. total cop out. read up to issue 75 (halfway through the second trade) and pretend the rest didn't happen.

00:16 / 15.08.01

This one contains issues 69-74 of the US comic.

The last issue of the UK comic I bought was one where the Ark is wedged in some snowy place, with the Autobots all (even Ratchet, IIRC) deciding to unite behind Grimlock and attack the Decepticons head-on. Ended with them all streaming out of the Ark. I've no idea how much time passed between this and the issues collected in All Fall Down (or if the latter even appeared in UK form).

Care to fill me in?

00:21 / 15.08.01

Is this the storyline where... there's some transformer called Wheelybot, who turns into (duh) a wheel, and gets thrown into a big pit of molten metal by the Decepticons, who've taken over the home planet? I hope so - that's one of my formulative comics memories - it really upset me! But I was well wee...

00:31 / 15.08.01

No, that's an earlier one. This is the very final story arc.

00:37 / 15.08.01

Oh well. They should reprint that one! (Is parents throwing out comics sufficient grounds for divorcing them?)

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:48 / 15.08.01

quote:Originally posted by sleazenation:
I was still getting transformers us all the way up to issue 75 which was fantastically apocalyptic...... unfortunately the comic carried on for five issues after that and when i read those five issues recently on one of the many transformers websites they were pretty disappointing. I mean *really* dissapointing. total cop out. read up to issue 75 (halfway through the second trade) and pretend the rest didn't happen.

That's the US numbering then? The UK one was up to about 300 and something but then then it was weekly/fortnightly... As I remember it, those last few stories were fucked because there was some confusion as to whether the comic was being cancelled or not... First it was, then it wasn't, then all of a sudden it was again.

*SPOILERS*

*GEEK WARNING*

I quite liked the post-big-battle stuff with everyone arguing (why did anyone ever put Grimlock in charge of anything, for fuck's sake?), and Cybertron falling to bits; and I also have top confess that I did like the stuff with Spike Witwicky/Fortress Maximus fighting Galvatron on earth - but that bollocks with "the Last Autobot" was, er, utter bollocks.

*EXTRA GEEK WARNING*

Did anyone read the G2 series and want to tell me the awful truth about what happened next? Did it pick up all the loose ends? Where does Beast Wars fit into it all? Has anyone else seen stuff somewhere about a new cartoon? Should I seek help?

10:48 / 15.08.01

I had every issue of the US Transformers but sold them a while back. I regret it now. (Of course I say that about every comic I sell. I'm fucked up.)

The comic fell apart at the end. Totally lost direction and left a lot of loose ends. So did Marvel's GI Joe. And Marvel's Star Wars now that I think about it.

I was under the impression that Beast Wars and G2 and all that crap had pretty much nothing to do with the old Transformer comics and cartoons other than a few characters with the same names.

10:58 / 15.08.01

I'm going to post this link for the fourth time, because it always makes somebody happy.

Autobots, roll out!

11:31 / 15.08.01

Transformers Generation 2 Archive

13:11 / 15.08.01

Lee, Randy...

Thanks. From the bottom of a heart that thought it would never know transformey happiness again...

Don't ya just love the internet?

14:55 / 15.08.01

Thinking back, I have some pretty twisted memories of reading what I presume must have been the final UK TRansformers comics aged about 8/9/10...

I can remember some freaky Gaimanesque type gnostic stuff about the void giving birth to the first transformer, or unicorn being born out of darkness or some whacko stuff like that - y'know, whole pages oof white & black, that kinda thing..

Then I remember a big battle on earth with every single transformer (by that time they all seemed to be 2nd or 3rd generation ones) fighting, and some sort of Transformer angel(?) turning up and taking them all back to Cybertron..

Then somehow every single one of them died and there was a story about this really cool decepticon who looked like a samurai with a skull instead of a face, and he was skulking about on a kind of post-apocalyptic Cybertron where gangs of lower rank Decepticons were going around crucifying Autobots..

Before you ask, I swear I didn't dream this, I remember reading quite clearly in comics I bought from the Spar shop..

Is this the one being reprinted?

Ronald Thomas Clontle

14:59 / 15.08.01

I'm sure this is addressed in the comic somehow, but short of having their programming erased entirely, how does a robot 'die'?

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:07 / 15.08.01

Riz: that's more or less the stuff in these trades.

Flux: pretty flexible, this one. I think unless you squish the right little circuit in their heads, any 'bot can be resurrected, but that seems to rely on someone with particular rebuilding skills (or the Creation Matrix, or some Nucleon, or, er, Action Force) getting round to it. People sit around being 'inactive' a lot. Others just kinda die because they get blown to bits and nobody ever fixes 'em...

Le geek! C'est chic!

15:08 / 15.08.01

I'm not entirely sure that any of them ever died in the sense of death being final. They either got left in Ratchet's lab until he worked out a way to bring them back to life or became lost in the tangled web of storylines (did we ever find out what happened to Skids after he chucked Ravage down that mineshaft? What about the tipper-truck Autobot who got transported to Limbo with Prime when Galvatron made his first appearance in the present day?).

Riz, I think you're talking about the issues collected here, although the Unicron backstory was explained in quite a few of the UK comics, so I'm not 100%.

Damn. Beaten to it.

Geek.

[ 15-08-2001: Message edited by: E. Randy Dupre ]

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:10 / 15.08.01

Although interesting in those G2 comics Furman seems to have started considering this idea that they can't ever really die a bit more deeply...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

15:48 / 15.08.01

Skids spent ages in the void (having been swapped with Galvatron when he time-jumped at the end of the movie) and I think was a cabbage by the time they had that big story around issue 300 which tied up storylines practically all the way back to issue 1. I stopped collecting it soon after.
I always wondered how, if Optimus Prime had the Creation Matrix, did they continue to make Autobots and Decepticons to fight on Cybertron in the interveening 3 million years? Surely they should have been down to one robot on each side hitting each other a la The fast Shows 'Big Fight'?

And Zoids UK was pretty fucking intense too, that last issue with the good guy and Silverman...

06:55 / 16.08.01

Just thought I'd say: I cannot fucking wait to buy this!!

Yay!!!!!

10:42 / 16.08.01

Jesus Christ, you guys know a lot about transformers.

I kind of forgot most of it when I switched to Ninja Turtles.

Which is a shame, as Transformers are so clearly better.

10:49 / 16.08.01

The transformers comics rocked, but the british ones were markedly better than the Amercian stories if my memory serves me correctly. But it is the Zoids stories that I would love to see again, they really had an effect on me back in the day.

11:43 / 16.08.01

ok time for ubergeekery

Transformers UK was great until just after issue 200 when they had their buget slashed so instead of offering 14 pages of new colour material (punctuated by periods when material from the US comics was reprinted) they went down to 7b/w weekly pages of new material.

One of the biggest problems storywise between Transformers UK and US was their approach to time travel. The UK was pretty happy to have stories set 20 years in the future that tied into the chronology of the movie etc. the US comic kind of ignored the move and most of the characters from it on the grounds that they were from the future and they were writing about the present. Where as UK Transformers tales included time travel stories - paradoxes and all.
The last few issues of the american comic pretty much screwed up chronology with the destruction of unicron some 13 years or so before he was supposed to be destroyed and the inclusion of a piss weak alternate timeline galvertron (compared to the uber-violent half crazy UK version).

15:08 / 16.08.01

The thing that most annoyed me about the differences between the UK and US comics was that there seemed to be absolutely no discussion between them about forthcoming plots. So, while Shockwave fell from out of orbit "to his death" in the US strip, the UK editors got their tippex out and he fell "to Earth."

17:17 / 16.08.01

and the problems didn't abate when simon furman (transformers UK writer) took over writing of the US title.

yes megatron was finally brought back in the us strip (long after his re appearance in the UK but ) shockwave's US return was not even touched on.

07:45 / 17.08.01

quote:Originally posted by Cochese:
But it is the Zoids stories that I would love to see again, they really had an effect on me back in the day.

Tell me you love me

Morrison scripts 19; 30-31. More to come, I believe.

[ 17-08-2001: Message edited by: Lee ]

08:17 / 20.08.01

Got a signed copy of All Fall Down on Saturday. Simon Furman was in Bristol doing signings and I was rushing home and he was there. Bought the graphic novel, got it signed, left and thought of a million and one questions I should have asked him!

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:47 / 05.04.05

Strictly for the hardcore:

In defense of Bob Budiansky.

I had forgotten how much of the stuff that he wrote I had enjoyed and mistakenly credited to Furman since.

16:05 / 05.04.05

And you you chanced upon this how flybot?

13:02 / 07.04.05

i was never a fan but am going to check these out of my local library purely on the strength of one of the collections being called Primal Scream and another being called All Fall Down (which is the title of the first Primal Scream single for those of you with lives)