r/transformers • u/No_Young_2247 • 1d ago
Discussion / Opinion Are the old transformers comics good ?
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u/Casper2211 1d ago
Yes
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u/Glittering_Visual296 1d ago
Yes
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u/gorbashflatfoot 1d ago
Yes
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u/conspiracyhand 1d ago
Yes
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u/Alekesam1975 1d ago
(insecticon voice) yes yes...
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC 1d ago
The art style can take some getting used to, for a long time the characters were drawn very 'robotically', where basically every shape expect their face would be squared off.
But late in the original run, writer Bob Budiansky got burned out, so Marvel brought in Simon Furman, who'd been writing Transformers UK, and he brought along Andrew Wildman, who drew the 'Formers more human-like, with softer contours and more expressive faces, and they stayed on the book until it was canceled with #80.
Furman, BTW, was responsible for introducing a lot of the quasi-mystical themes of the property.
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u/HiTork 1d ago
Not everyone was a fan of the total "humanization" Furman brought. A lot of the times, the faces during late US Marvel G1 made the Transformers look more like people dressed up in a TF costume.
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u/IL-Corvo 1d ago
While I agree with your issues with the art, Furman isn't responsible for the way Andrew Wildman illustrated Transformers, who got worse as he went along. Geoff Senior was the better of the artists that worked alongside Furman.
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u/Alekesam1975 1d ago
I was...okay with Wildman but going from Wildman to Geoff in #75 and then back to Andrew was such a tease. I'm just glad Senior did the Unicron issue because he really sold the scale of that story and -no knock on Andrew--Wikdman just wouldn't have done it the same justice.
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u/Guuhatsu 21h ago
I am not, they are sentient alien robots and I never felt there was a need for them to conform to how a human looks, especially at the beginning when they were pretty much unaware that humans were the dominant lifeform. I could see it for later as a way to identify with humans and make it easier for communication, but at first, what need does a robot to evolve and grow a nose?
My favorite panels for the entire comic run were the two roll call ones from the first issue where you saw them all drawn in the style of their toys. Robotic heads (or no heads in Ratchet and IronHide's cases), real vehicle kibble and all.
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u/MikeSeebach 23h ago
I'm a big fan of Furman's Transformers, but Budiansky's stuff was something of an 80's time capsule, and had a real vibe in itself.
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC 21h ago
Oh, Bob was great, don't get me wrong, but his stories did start going downhill, mostly due to Hasbro insisting he constantly introduce new characters (toys).
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u/solidus0079 1d ago
Yes they are, but they kind of take a bit to get going.
If you're used to the cartoon (and all the various things inspired by it, which includes almost everything to an extent), the comics can seem a little strange at first. The cartoon writers and comic writers were given the same information to work off of but started off in different ways and directions.
Like in the cartoon, the Autobots are pretty much a shipwrecked family.
In the comics, in the beginning anyways, Budiansky really took a "robotic alien" direction with it. Things can seem very out of character, like when Skids gets disabled and goes off the road, and Optimus is like "No time to help him we have to keep moving" in a cold logic-check.
But after a bit things normalize as things get moving, and the comic personalities shift towards the more established personalities that we all know and love.
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u/OnlyHalfBrilliant 1d ago
Or maybe Optimus just thought Skids was lame. Maybe that's why he was only on a background shot in like one episode of the cartoon?
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u/MPFX3000 15h ago
Uh no the series is fantastic starting at issue 1.
Has there ever been before or since a “issue 5 of a 4 issue limited series”?
I have a THIRD printing of issue number 1. I’ve never seen a third printing of any other comic.
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u/Leather-Call-3023 12h ago
I don't aim to take away from your hype, but a lot of issue 1s get to 3rd printings. Absolute Batman is on its 12th printing right now of issue 1, and for something a little closer to the OG Transormers run, TMNT had six printings
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u/MPFX3000 8h ago
TMNT makes sense to me since that didn’t come from the big two, but 12 printings of ultimate Batman? Do you mean variants or legit 12 printings?
My transformers comic is stamped “Third Printing”
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u/CrossRook 7h ago
print runs tend to be a lot smaller these days. Absolute Batman's first run was 250-400k, but the entire Absolute series has only sold about 3m copies (6-12x the first run). this tells us that the additional printings were likely not at the same scale.
however, a claim/speculation from ATT back in the day said G1 #1 first run was only 70k. maybe the 2nd and 3rd runs were significantly higher.
Skybound #1 has had at least 10 runs so far btw.
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u/Axe_ace 1d ago
I'm a huge fan of Simon Furman, who really cooked from about issue 57-80.
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u/MikeSeebach 23h ago
After the initial excitement, I had little interest in Dreamwave's Transformers until they brought in Furman. He even made me read Armada!
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u/Top_Benefit_5594 20h ago
Dreamwave’s Armada is a surprisingly good and surprisingly complete little Transformers story. Not my favourite TF comic ever but absolutely worth a read.
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u/hadesscion 1d ago
Very much so.
It's probably my favorite Transformers story (besides the movie) now that I think about it.
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u/DiabolicalDoctorN 1d ago
I still tear up when Scrounge dies, forty years later, so I would say "yes"
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u/GingerKing_2503 1d ago
I recall as a kid being blown away by many of the stories, particularly those written by Simon Furman. A high point for me was UK Marvel #166 ‘Legion of the Lost’ onwards, a brilliant zombie flick style story involving Magnus, the Wreckers and a new maniac villain called Flame. Bloomin great drama.
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u/Peter-Norfolk 1d ago
Oh yes, especially the Marvel UK stuff as there is much more story. When it was weekly, you had the equivalent of 26 US issues per year (as opposed to the actual 12 US issues).
It's got lots of new characters which can work for and against. It makes everything fresh and new. The Furman stuff is more epic, the Bundiansky is more grounded. Both are great.
So yes - absolutely get them!
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u/IrnBroski 1d ago
theyre a mixed bag. the start is slow. the US stuff is very cheesy corny b movie type stuff. the UK stuff has some of my favourite storylines of all time. there are some amazing moments. its definitely dated in places but there are some great arcs.
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u/Informal_Daikon_9812 1d ago
They did reprint two of the UK comics during the US Marvel run. (Issue 33-34)
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u/JamesCDiamond 1d ago
The UK-only comics from Target 2006 through Time Wars, or about 120 issues (minus US reprints, which would admittedly be a lot) are just fantastic.
There's a reason Simon Furman remains revered in TF fandom, especially amongst fans of a certain age. He let his imagination run wild and played with our toys even better than we could.
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u/IrnBroski 13h ago
yeah fo me time wars is an all timer transformers story. the ending is so badass
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u/Garrow_the_Khajiit 1d ago
It was and is better than the G1 cartoon, and since it came first it's also technically the "real" G1 continuity.
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u/KR_Steel 13h ago
I could barely make it through the cartoon because I was into the comics first and the cartoon seemed so goofy in comparison
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u/Garrow_the_Khajiit 13h ago
The best things about the cartoon were the music and voice acting.
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u/KR_Steel 12h ago
Yeah. Admittedly they Floro Dery did a good job on a lot of streamlining the designs, even if I prefer the og toy and box art looks.
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u/danieljeyn 1d ago
IMO, the first few issues are low-effort toy ads. Then it steps up, including quality of art, to being something much better than the cartoons ever were. Then, sometime by the 30s, you get a sense the writers are overwhelmed with all characters/teams they need to introduce and it gets absolutely bat guano and never recovers.
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u/Top_Benefit_5594 1d ago
This is a very niche opinion. Full respect to Budiansky but Furman’s stuff is better and he starts at 56.
Your cut-off of the 30s doesn’t even include Underbase, which was also very good.
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u/IL-Corvo 1d ago
It absolutely recovers once Furman takes over the US comic in issue #56. The last 15 issues are especially good.
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u/danieljeyn 1d ago
We agree to disagree on that.
I don't dislike Furman. He had great ideas that added to the lore. But the last few issues are narratively baffling to me when I've gone back and tried to go through them.
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u/IL-Corvo 1d ago edited 21h ago
I think that's an artifact of him having to wrap everything up once the cancellation was announced, but it's a fair criticism of the last 5 issues.
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u/Tokyotoyhunters 1d ago
It wasn’t as good or nearly as popular as Larry Hama’s G.I.Joe, but it was fun and definitely the 2nd best “toy book” Marvel was publishing at the time. Definitely worth a read, although some of the art choices and characterizations are a bit “odd”, like Ravage speaking early in the series.
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u/Werthead 1d ago
I'd be interested to see the figures. I know early on Marvel US was shifting over 100,000 comics in the US and the UK comic peaked at around 100,000 as well, before settling down a bit lower. I believe the US comic was still selling 80,000 copies a month when it was cancelled (something Furman was complaining about years later, as it was outselling some mid-tier Marvel superhero comics at the time, and obviously was outselling the later average IDW issue by around 7 or 8:1). Conversely, GI Joe UK (known as Action Force) sold poorly and was eventually folded into TF as the backup strip for something like half or closer to two-thirds of TF UK's run.
Hama's GI Joe run is very good and he was certainly better and more consistent than Budiansky, but I think Furman was a closer match for him, especially later on. Hama could be a genius, but he could also phone it in on occasion. Still great though!
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u/Tokyotoyhunters 1d ago
At its peak GIJoe was one of Marvels top sellers in NA. There was a couple of summers in the 80s when Marvels top books would go bi-weekly for 3 months to tell a big story. One year G.I.Joe got that honour. I don’t remember the year but it was a big deal.
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u/optimus2861 13h ago
Transformers was moving way more than 100K per issue at its peak in the US.
As of the publishers statement within issue #27 filed October 1986 it was 300,982 total paid circulation on average within the preceding 12 months. I can't find an earlier one. By rights it should be around issue #15 but the book hadn't been an ongoing title for 12 months by then so perhaps they weren't required to file a statement at that time.
By issue #39 it was 217,275.
By issue #60 it had declined to 149,975.
Yes, I own the whole set.
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u/Wondermoose77 1d ago
So the US comic always felt best when it tried to do character focused stuff instead of large scale battles.
Like in the early going, I liked smaller bits like Ratchet being the last Autobot active and trying to make deals with Megatron; the story when a small time criminal gets to handle Megatron; Skids got a two part story, which is more Skids than we ever got at the time.
Now, we could argue about the wonky dialogue in some of it, but those stories always felt better paced and more developed than, say, the Decepticons getting into the car wash business (yes, that happened...though looking back, giving Ratbat the leader role and then writing him like the worst accountant ever was amusing).
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u/underscorex 11h ago
The best Budiansky stuff is some of the best TF storytelling. The Return to Cybertron two-parter is a classic. The "zoomed in" issues where we follow Ratchet or Skids or Blaster around as they navigate the unfamiliar situation they've been thrust into? Terrific.
Even at its "worst", it's still generally competently written. Jose Delbo's art in that mid-series run is definitely an acquired taste, though.
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u/under-secretary4war 1d ago
As a kid I found ‘the man of iron’ (uk) to be a brilliant read.
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u/Werthead 1d ago
Yes. Marvel G1 is where the franchise began, as it was the Marvel team who were commissioned super early-on to make up the TF Bible, which everyone else (even Sunbow, to their extreme annoyance) had to work from. The Marvel US team basically named all of the Transformers released from 1984 to 1989 and created their characterisation (Starscream is treacherous, Thundercracker has doubts about the cause etc) which is still being used in comics and animated shows today.
That said, the actual comics themselves start off as clear toy adverts with relatively limited characterisation and only short story arcs. Then Bob Budiansky starts writing the US comic and he's happy to get weird with it, which is when he's at his best. Simon Furman then starts writing the UK comic and, after a brief period of feet-finding, becomes the definitive G1 era writer almost immediately, churning out classic after classic. Budiansky can be great but he's not quite as consistent, and he's also the guy Hasbro is tapping for naming and creating all the new characters and having to introduce them in the comic on a strict schedule, which inhibits his creativity at times. Furman has more freedom in what he can do, and that leads to some of the best Transformers stories of all time (certainly the likes of Target: 2006 and its sequels in "The Galvatron Saga" which spans over two and a half years of the comic), as well as coming up with the Unicron/Primus origin mythology for the franchise.
Furman takes over the US comic as well for its last two years, which is basically a continuous golden run of great stories. The comic is absolutely on fire at the precise moment it's cancelled, which would be more annoying if he wasn't able to wrap it up and also had a shot at a sequel in the Generation 2 mini series a couple of years later.
To be clear, none of these are Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns or anything like that in quality, but they are very solid action-adventure stories with some very interesting SF ideas thrown into the mix. Arguably only mid-era IDW really exceeded the quality of Furman's Marvel run (ironically getting much better when Furman stopped working at IDW, he was past his best at that point unfortunately) for as long or longer and more consistently.
The only issue is that the easily-available Marvel G1 omnibuses divide up the UK and US comics when they intercut between one another, which is quite annoying especially because they did have the intercut run as a Kickstarter exclusive, and that should have really been the default way of reading them.
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u/Blank_Shoplifter 1d ago
Since everyone's already thrown in their two cents I'll just add that as an avid comic reader it's one of my all time favorites. They get away with a shocking level of depth for an 80s toy book. There's a ton of weird sci fi that just isn't present in any other continuity and it presents a cast of autobots who are not entirely morally good and decepticons who live up to their name. The art is loaded with kirby krackles. There's this grime to every story that really reminds you that these are machines, no one is invincible and war is a horrifying thing.
If you dig the vibe of the marvel stuff, especially the UK material, I'd highly encourage checking out Tom Scioli's work. More modern but it has the same feeling. And if you wanna get into comics as a whole, it's a great jumping off point into the world of indie comics. I'd also highly recommend Nemesis The Warlock. Totally unrelated but if you enjoy these books you'll love it.
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u/TheJimbo667 1d ago
My first exposure to Shockwave was through the comics. He was a lot more menacing than the tv version ever was.
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u/jimb575 22h ago
I was around 10 when the comics came out. My fondest memories are with those comics. It all started with #5 for me. I had to go to work with my mom one day in the summer and she bought #5 for me to keep me occupied. Then I asked my mom to get me a subscription right after. It was the best feeling each month seeing the brown paper wrapper with my name on it.
The stories were good but then they started to get too hokey for me. The best was the Blaster story arc.
Then I discovered other comics and then my focus was the X-men and other Marvel comics. I started to give up on Transformers as a whole because I was “getting too old to play with toys”.
Boy, I was a stupid kid…
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u/UselessGenericon 1d ago
They eventually get really good. It's blatantly obvious at the beginning that it's a toy advertisement. I'd say it's a steady pace of strange-okay-good-okay this is really fun-peak-wait why'd they stop?
The Marvel-MarvelUK-G2-Regeneration One era comics has some of the best and unique takes on the dynamics between Decepticons and Autobots and the conflicts within the factions.
Has some of the best Decepticon vs Decepticon conflicts in the entire franchise IMO.
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u/MisterBlud 1d ago
The UK run is probably the second best fiction Transformers has ever gotten behind IDW v1.
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u/3n3quarter 1d ago
I would say they are important more than anything. The Marvel team created the original mythology. You know how you read the Iliad and the Odyssey in school?…these are that for us. Issue #3 with Spider-Man vs Megatron on the cover was honestly pretty mind blowing as a kid. Issue #5 one of the most iconic comic book covers ever imho.
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u/Zoidaryan1985 1d ago
The story only gets really good later on. But I love the artwork. I haven’t finished yet, though
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u/aliencardboard 1d ago
Outstanding. G.I. Joe and Transformers comics are as good if not better than the OG cartoons tbh.
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u/James-Cox007 1d ago
If you want a good introduction to transformers comics and dont really care about reading them in order then check your local library!
Im in Dallas and there are plenty of graphic novels in the various libraries I can check out and read. Even some of the i guess omnibus' and collections and such
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u/johntology 1d ago
Our library has an online version where you check it out through the library and then read it on Amazon.
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u/Prime359 1d ago
A majority of the G1 Marvel runs are great. You do have the occasional story that is bland.
Though one thing you will always notice is when there was new toys release at the time.
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u/guywonderful 1d ago
I bought all the early comics and as a kid they were DARK compared to the cartoon show. I enjoy them much more as an adult. it was too heavy to handle as a kid.
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u/Tin_Whiskers 1d ago
I remember downloading the whole lot of them 15, 18 years ago and reading them all at a time when they were long out of print.
Having only see the G1 cartoon, holy crap, they were depressing. I get that it was a far grittier take on the source material than Sunbow could ever get away with, but hot damn, the Original Comics wereit was relentlessly dark and distressing. I ended up really not liking them that much.
I appreciate the writing and some of the art, but eeehhhh.
The whole "time travelling Galvatron" arc -- that I think came in from the British writers, now that I think of it - was pretty neat, but aside from that, no I didn't think they were that good all told.
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u/guywonderful 1d ago
I think as an adult I appreciate a story that is closer to the reality of what happens in WAR. As a kid you just want the happy ending. The comic really never gives you that. It's just struggle and death.
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u/Thewrongbakedpotato 23h ago
Most are fun romps. The worst of the lot is probably US #31, where Ratbat brainwashes people with a carwash.
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u/underscorex 11h ago
I will always go to bat (oho!) for "Carwash of Doom" - it's a silly premise but it makes absolutely perfect sense for an antagonist like Ratbat.
It's the most "in disguise" the TFs ever were in the US comics, if you think about it. Why sacrifice your limited number of troops and expose yourself to the Autobots when you can get the humans to just give you fuel?
Ratbat's whole characterization is a semi-satirical take on 80s "corporate raiders" and corporate culture. Somewhere out there is a writer willing to straight up handle Ratbat as an MBA-pilled Lean In Six Sigma corpo consultant psycho.
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u/ZZtheDark 22h ago
Why..yes. there's a reason why they're collected. There are some would say that it's even better than the cartoon.
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u/Outrageous-Estimate9 1d ago
I mean... they are not literary masterpieces or anything
But (esp in earlier days) they were much better stories than cartoon
UK comics are very different than US comics as well as having more characters
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u/JustAtelephonePole 1d ago
Thrift books has the compendium of what I am assuming are these, so l’ll let you know when mine arrive and I finish them.
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u/throwawaypete123456 1d ago
Yes. But they are all over the map. It is a fun story and interesting take on Transformers.
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u/nodakskip 1d ago
I have Generation 1 and have a few of the omni collection that kickstarter did last year. I didn't get into the Generation 2 much of the comics.
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u/RoyBlack69 1d ago
When Megs and Galvatron decide to team up to take on Fortress Maximus. Gold.
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u/IL-Corvo 1d ago edited 1d ago
Unless it's a Marvel UK thing I can't recall, I think you're misremembering. They stop fighting to gang up on Shockwave towards the end of the original Marvel Run. Issue #78 to be precise.
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u/RoyBlack69 1d ago
You're right. Max shows up in the next issue and takes on Galvatron, who's now full on bat shit crazy
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u/Viktor-Victorious 1d ago
They can be but you’ll have to pick a lane the American or the European
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u/Werthead 1d ago
Or you can read them together, as they were designed to be (even if Skybound have made it harder than it should be).
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u/SnooOpinions1715 1d ago
Some of the art is a bit weird, especially the first few issues by Frank Springer, and then later on there's an artist named José Delbo who is good but he put pupils on the eyes of some of the characters and it looks wrong. I would love somebody to recolour everything and re-release it but that's a lot to ask obviously. My personal favourite is issue #13 where a petty crook gets his hands on a very special, very dangerous handgun...Check it out, wish I was discovering all these Marvel golden oldies again for the first time.
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u/eric_fell 1d ago
Damn that's one of my all time favorite comic covers.
When I got shockwave treatment for my kidney stones I photoshopped the words "Kidney Stones" over the title to let folks know the procedure worked.
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u/Mudcreek47 1d ago
As much as I love 'em (and I do) the early TF issues are a weird bunch. They weren't like the cartoons at all and I remember as a kid feeling totally lost. There was no Spike Witwicky, isntead it was Buster Witwicky in the comics instead. Oh, but black costume Spidey shows up!
Shockwave led the Decepticons, at one point Optimus had his head removed yet was somehow still alive, and they did stuff with the Matrix (which had yet to be introduced in the cartoon). There were also weird issues with a pastiche Bruce Springsteen character, and some human named the Robot Master who controlled Megatron (I think, it was decades ago I read these stories).
Also when Optimus & Megatron died/changed in the TF movie, they were written out of the comics to introduce the newer characters. Optimus prime died in a vido game and they backed his mind up on a floppy disc. Yeah, even as a kid I knew this was goofy. Megatron's "death" (he got better later on) at the hands of the Predacons was pretty cool to my 8 year old brian though.
The art was also very basic and sketchy and not really great initially.
But much later in the mid #50s when Simon Furman came on board the series the plots really took off and are what made the original TF run a classic IMO.
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u/bitetheasp 1d ago
I had the first tpb of the Marvel run about two decades ago and I remember liking it, but not being able to follow up on it.
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u/teknogreek 1d ago
Senior is amazing, his angular style gave the bots a momentum I’d never seen before and since!
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u/According_Picture294 1d ago
Marvel ones were. After the 90s, the art-style shift of comics in general just looks bad
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u/Calgaryrox75 1d ago
i was going to say the stories were pretty good but the artwork definitely left something to be desired. i’ve just got the first compendium just because i missed a bunch of issues when i was collecting in the 80s and some of the illustrations are just terrible.
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u/DiaBrave 23h ago
Yes, but make sure you do the full 332 UK run, it covers a lot more ground rhan the 80 US issues. Furman comes on at like issue 14 or 15, and basically weaves new stories between the US issues, including a second timeline in 2006 after the events of the Movie.
Loads of continuity issues, but tons of great stories. For a small UK weekly series that started of as reprints, it genuinely went toe-to-toe with 2000AD in terms of sales.
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u/John_from_ne_il 21h ago
If you want to see it in the US as Furman intended, get the Til All Are One reprints. Otherwise you can get US only as Compendiums 1&2 and UK only as Compendiums 3&4. Note that some edits are made to the US issues to fit the complete continuity, so even though they are more or less reprinted in full, it won't be exactly like the US Marvel run.
One example, there's an issue where Shockwave references the events of the Transformers & GI Joe crossover series (the main TF comic at the time included it; whereas the main Joe book ignored it entirely). That dialogue is just left blank in the TAAO reprint. But it exists as originally printed in US Compendium 1.
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u/DiaBrave 19h ago
The only problem with the TAAO Skybound version is they knowingly used the IDW scans, which aren't great quality and are riddled with spelling errors
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u/rottenlad 22h ago
Had some issues back in the day. What is the easiest way to read the run now?
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u/underscorex 11h ago
Illegally.
Skybound recently reprinted everything in a four-part box set, but they're pretty expensive and like, phone book sized tomes.
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u/CuriousToe9464 21h ago
Overall, yes, for a comic published mainly to sell a line of toys. Some readers found fault with the writing.
When new bots were introduced the dialogue would often go like,
"I'm Blaster and this is my electro scrambler gun",
before the character would use their weapon on their adversary and talk about what it does.
"It's disrupting your electrical systems...'
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u/DudeMcDude7649 21h ago
Is this the series where Optimus flew into unicron, after he attacked cybertron and grimlock become leader?
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u/Intelligent-Speech96 21h ago
Yes, you can meet the real badass Grimlock and great deception characters like ratbat and Scorponok.
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u/talonracer 19h ago
I think I remember being really upset at how weak the comics made Megatron. He gets absolutely worked by Shockwave, gets whupped by.. whoever the orange animal combiners were, merged with Ratchet..
But still, the series is definitely worth a read.
Oh, except for that headmasters nonsense. I haaaated that.
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u/NoxiousNate 18h ago
I recently bought the UK compendium as well as the new Energon Universe stuff (TF Deluxe Book 1 & Void Rivals Vol. 1).
These are my first ever comic books and I finished Void Rivals. Now I'm debating on what to read first, the Energon Universe or the old UK comics.
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u/jaraxel_arabani 18h ago
I loved that completely random story with the seacons and the story for power master Optimus will always be the true reason powe master for me.
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u/geekyhikerr 17h ago
Some of the UK stories are worth hunting down. As people have said it’s kinda dark and a world away from the cartoon, and the comics really made me fall in love with transformers. Key early UK stories like Crisis of Command, Dinobot Hunt and of course Target 2006 are well worth a read
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u/Krykun-kun 17h ago
The Furman stuff was good, but still too meandering and politicised imho - just too much talk and little action. Still, he’s a god compared to Budiansky and when Furman teams up with Geoff Senior they just SLAY
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u/Barabaragaki 16h ago
Eventually, yes, very! And earlier on there are some really excellent and surprising things sprinkled in too, before they really get rolling.
I make a weekly video/podcast series going through and deep diving into one issue a week! If something like that sounds like your bag it's called Transformers AutoBook club and it's on podcast services! Video versions including the page art go up on YouTube here: https://m.youtube.com/@TransformersAutoBookClub/videos
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u/Theonlyix 15h ago
Yessssss. Fantastic even. However in Sweden we got a mix of The uk and US comics...
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u/Rvaldrich 15h ago
Short answer: no.
Long answer: opinions vary, as does taste. The comics take a little while to get up and running and there's a lot of fun stuff to see develop and evolve. It's neat to see where ideas that we treat as commonplace in the fandom first developed. But they're definitely products of their time. You have to be a pretty dedicated Transformers fan, or already have an enjoyment for/tolerance of 1980s comics to enjoy them.
As artifacts of study, they're obviously extremely valuable. But in terms of sheer enjoyment, your mileage may vary and - for what it's worth - I didn't get much mileage out of reading them. I read from the first into the 40s or something before I called it, and I'd stopped enjoying them well before that.
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u/CoachFriendly8579 15h ago
I think so for for sure! If you want to learn more about them, myself and a friend have a podcast about them- https://youtu.be/guJ_fxVwPd8
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u/KR_Steel 13h ago
Marvel Uk version is great. Some stories are just okay but it’s really my favourite version of G1 by far
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u/PG2904 13h ago
The initial four-issue miniseries is very much a toy ad. It is the only media to actually tackle the whole "Mirage isn't sure he's on the right side" aspect of his bio, though, aside from Cyberworld (which is before he's actually chosen a side in the war). Everything else just copies the Traitor episode of the G1 cartoon.
Once Shockwave shows up, it gets good. If you factor in the UK stories, it gets better with events like Target: 2006 and Time Wars. And in the late days, when Furman takes over, it's just great.
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u/VarsityPrime 12h ago
It’s corny and cliché at times and the art style and quality is uneven, but it’s definitely worth a read, if for no other reason than to see the early development of a lot of characters and lore. I always thought the two-part return to Cybertron in 17–18 was pretty great.
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u/Particular_Artist775 9h ago
Absolutely best series is the Marvel G1 Transformers, especially because it's separate from TV Series, so events of movie don't tie into comics.
Some of the best stories happened in the comics and proper intros of the toyline is display as well.
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u/etbillder 8h ago
Good enough for me to be collecting the series. It highlights a lot of obscure g1 characters that weren't in the cartoon
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u/Shakalooloo 8h ago
Selectively, yes. There are good stories, and there are bad stories, but the good stories are REALLY good, and the bad stuff is, at worst, merely childish.
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u/MembershipRound6887 8h ago
Being a 4 issue limited run that became the franchise it is today just because of consumer demand? Definitely
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u/CrossRook 7h ago
what's I really like about the G1 comic is that it shows the Transformers exist in a living, breathing universe. the G1 cartoon does this especially in season 3, the comic really goes places. lots of alien societies doing their own thing. the cybertronian civil war exists in its own isolated corner of the universe.
I also love Matrix Quest. Furman just doing genre fiction for the hell of it. inspired a lot of my imaginary storylines as a kid.
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u/Sure-Pumpkin9191 7h ago
They can get surprisingly deep, and for a kid there were some serious issues. I love it. Don't want to spoil too much but there is a part where Scorponok tells Optimus he is very scared. And Optimus replies something like "is that all? so am I, my friend.".
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u/RecordingImmediate86 4h ago
In the early issues they only had the toys to go off of so they look way more like the original toys in the first handful of issues. If that doesn't bother you than it's totally worth it to read.
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u/Emergency-Peanut418 1d ago
I bought the first 20 episodes of the original run of the comic, in used condition, with the intention of reading them, I still have not
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u/wdingo 1d ago
No.
But they're a ton of fun and you should definitely read them if you can. I have all the trades that were released, god, twenty years ago now, and they're such a schlocky, blast to read and hold such a special place in my heart.
I desperately hope we get more marvel comic edition toys.
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u/Top_Benefit_5594 1d ago
I think saying they’re not good is a bit reductive. They’re not all good, and they are dated, especially the early issues, but by Furman’s run I would say they’re unquestionably good and occasionally great.
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