The Transformers

Part 1

Issue 1, 20 September 1984.

Written by:Bill Mantlo (plot), Ralph Macchio (script).
Art by: Frank Springer (pencils), Kim DeMulder (inks).
Colours by: Originally coloured by Nel Yomtov.
Letters by: Higgins & Parker.
Cover art: Jerry Paris.

Reprinted from US issue 1.

Plot: Over in Alpha Centauri, there's a planet called Cybertron. Or at least there is until a war blows it out of orbit. The war has been started by a conquest-hungry faction of the planet's inhabitants called Decepticons (led by Megatron), who are now at war with the 'peaceful' Autobots (led by Optimus Prime). As Cybertron spins through space, it comes an asteroid belt. The Autobots build a large spacecraft, the Ark, to blow a path through the belt for Cybertron. The Decepticons attack once the Ark has finished its task, eventually leading to it crashing with its contigents of both Autobots and Decepticons on the third planet of that solar system with the belt - Earth. Four million years later - 1984 - the volcano the Ark crashed into erupts, causing the Ark to try to revive those aboard.

Naff dialogue: Sadly, none of the dialogue in this issue is particularly fantastic, but there's a few shockers that stand out nonetheless.
After Megatron has compliment Ravage on a mission well performed, and Ravage has thanked him, Megs adds, 'See that you never waver, master of stealth. All too often, the nature of the spy is to weigh his loyalties and switch when the time is right.' Umm...what? Never mind that Ravage seemed to be one of the original three Decepticons... Never mind that it's a bloody stupid thing to say in the first place...

Technobabble: 'Naturally occurring gears, levers and pulleys' would be pretty shocking, except that Simon Furman even manages to explain this one later on. Wow.

Britishisms: When Starscream decides to give us his potted profile, what was once the word 'maneuverable' has in the UK had its spelling corrected to 'manoeuverable'.

First appearances: Ravage, Megatron, Soundwave, Optimus Prime, Rumble, Thundercracker, Ironhide, Starscream, Frenzy, Prowl, Laserbeak, Jazz, Shockwave, Skywarp, Buzzsaw.

Strange cliffju-- er, hangers: Well, as the Decepticons fly off, it really does look as though the caption is making a big deal of the fact that Transformers can, well, transform.

Awkward Self-Introductions: Prowl doesn't actually do it himself, but it was sure nice of Optimus Prime to remind him in the middle of a fight that he was the most trusted of his advisors.
At the end of the issue, the Decepticons all begin the trend in earnest - when Megatron asks if everyone's accounted for, everyone not only refers to themselves in the third person (as one does in casual conversation), but give selected highlights from their tech specs.

Miserable glitches: The text implies that the Decepticons went and had to fit themselves out for transformation, then goes and says that the Autobots could already do it. (Maybe that's why the Decepticons revolted. They were sick of being second-class citizens.)
There's too many to go into precise detail, but the Decepticons and Autobots duking it out on the Ark hardly ever seem to resemble those whom end up waking up on Earth next issue (future issues will establish that being reconstructed for an Earth mode tends not to drastically affect a Transformer's robot mode).
Before Prime sets the Ark to crash, Prowl informs him defeat is imminent. And they just stand there and have this conversation. Maybe defeat would be less likely if, oh, I don't know, two of their best warriors weren't standing around having a natter instead of fighting?
And speaking of that scene, why doesn't Optimus want to hear what Prowl suggests? He just goes and makes the Ark crash, citing it as the only option. I guess Prowl's his most trusted advisor, just he gives crap advice...
Thanks to a misplaced speech-bubble, Optimus Prime finishes a speech Megatron starts, about the Autobots being groggy just out of stasis. The worst part is, with the general stilted and explicatory nature of the dialogue, it doesn't even look that out of place...
When the Decepticons transform to leave the Ark, Starscream and Skywarp assume their alternate modes and lift off...as does Soundwave. The flying tape player. Uh-huh.
In the edition of this stuff I'm using at least, there's a lot of colouring errors, but I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt as 'repaints' living on Cybertron. But Optimus Prime is definitely miscoloured twice during the attack on the Ark.
There will be a lot of errors later as future issues contradict this one.

Back-up strip: Machine Man - Byte of the Binary Bug.

Notes: I'm not using the original edition of this issue - rather I have a volume of some sort that was released in Australia that contains the comic content of the first three US issues. So there could be things out of whack.
Optimus Prime's Cybertronian mode is a combat vehicle (but compare him here with the flashback sequence in The Underbase Saga in a couple hundred issues' time).
The artist seemed to be running out of inspiration for what machines to draw here. When we see the Ark's repair-robots, they look just like head of the Combat Deck section of the original Optimus Prime toy. And there is a cannon fixed to the Ark as it travels through the asteroid belt that is obviously derived from the back-carriage part of Ironhide or Ratchet's toy.
As Liam Kavanagh wondered to me, why is Optimus facing off that weird-lookin' Soundwave on the cover?
This issue (or at least its US source material) would later, unsurprisingly, become on the most reprinted Transformers comic stories from any age and from any company. It would turn up in The Complete Works Vol 1, in a collected and edited edition that would go on sale in Australia (material from issues 1-4 (mostly), and a lot of 5-8, edited down to remove the stuff that would go into later plots and to give the story a 'happy ending') in 1985, as part of a digest edition from Marvel US (I think, anyway), and in Beginnings from Titan Books in 2003.
Oh, and I have to say this here, because so many people have asked me about it: No, the Ralph Macchio who wrote this issue is not the guy from the Karate Kid movies. Thank you. (Though Larry 'wrote GI Joe' Hama was in M*A*S*H. Seriously!)

Comments: I don't really find this to be the greatest of beginnings. If you've only read later material, and you're looking here for the great and bold story that starts the Transformers saga, then you won't find it. Quite frankly, the TV series' More Than Meets the Eye is a lot better, for both plot and character. In fact, if you want character, quite frankly a lot of the activity books do a better job (even if they are almost all about Bumblebee). Some may say that it's not fair to judge this first effort against later, more experienced works, but even taking that into account, it's pretty sketchy. Few characters are identifiable, and those that are barely do enough for us to attach ourselves to them. The dialogue is more illustrative and denotative, as characters mostly describe situations or plot points.
An interesting aside, though, in that despite all that above, Transformers, as a comic, never apparently felt the need to revisit its origins as so many other comics have done. Even after twenty years, there hasn't been a Transformers: Year One-style retelling of the start of the story in comics, and for the most part, not even many flashbacks to the events.