TFW2005 member CyberstormSM pans our optics to SyFy Wire’s sneak peek of a title on your pull list for next week, Transformers ’84 #0, which features insights on the process of revisiting “Man of Iron” from writer Simon Furman.
“Daunting because, as we found with Regeneration One, some fans prefer their founding Transformers untrammeled by retroactive tinkering. It’s almost treading on sacred ground. But exciting because that very first issue of Marvel’s Transformers covers such a big span of time in its opening few pages. Massive game-changing events happen in a single panel. There had to be stuff we didn’t see. Stuff we didn’t know.”
Creators: (W) Simon Furman (A/CA) Guido Guidi
Check out the mirrored pages below, then sound off on the 2005 boards!
Jalaguy
No further issues have been announced at this time.
That being said, the series wasn't really a "prequel" in the sense that the end of issue #4 leads into the start of Marvel. It's more like "the secret history of Marvel Transformers", telling stories that take place during the early issues and recontextualise them with new twists and turns.
TickTockGoesTheClock
I believe thats it as it's meant to be a short prequel to the original comics.
JohnStartop
Not sure if this has already been asked, but are there more issues planned or is #4 what leads right into the Marvel UK comic?
What you're describing is a prequel. There's a bit of an overlap, but it shows Optimus' rationalization of crashing the Ark, how Shockwave and the Dinobots ended up in the Savage Lands, and more about the conflict surrounding the Man of Iron. All of these events are alluded to in the original comic, but they take place chronologically before the events of #1. If the comic ends as it did now, then it's definitely a prequel.
Grimlock528
My understanding was that when the movie characters came out, Bob asked Hasbro if he had to follow suit and move to the future and they said he didn’t have to. My guess the whole property was so successful they gave him leeway. By the time the Headmasters came, the cartoon ended and popularity was waining. Again guessing that Hasbro wanted the comic to push those toys.
Nova Maximus
Well characters like Ratchet were never phased out when they're toys were, and Prime was always intended to come back in the Marvel comics. So they probably got more leeway than the cartoon did.
artiepants
lol. you have to figure too, with Prime dying in the movie there was pressure to off him in the comics too:
although it's kinda weird that the 86 "leader types" (Magnus & Rodimus) were pretty much non-factors in the US run.
especially with how much play the 85s (Grimlock/Blaster) and 87/88s (Fort Max/PM Prime) got.
Bass X0
Eh. It was the 1980s. I doubt any big name comic book survived the 80s without having a few seriously dumb storylines like that.
Nemesisprime1975
Thoroughly enjoyable
TickTockGoesTheClock
Finally read the final issues of this. Overall very good! I personally love prime's Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few mentality especially with the ark.
At the end of the day though, I think most of us can agree that it's a gorgeous set of comics
Whatthechuck3
Oh yeah no, I’m firmly in the belief that the game storyline was one of the dumbest thing the comics ever did. And I love the dumb stuff. I’m just saying you could argue that it helps a bit.
Nova Maximus
I think this should cause him to begin to reflect on his actions, not outright suicide. Especially when the new context shows that he thinks that Megatron still being in command is such a worst case scenario he's willing to kill everyone on the Ark to kill him. So I still think it was a idiotic way to kill Prime even with the intention of bringing him back, with even Budiansky saying it may have been to much.
Whatthechuck3
I can see that take. At the end of the day, his suicide in the game is because he took the lives of innocents. The Autobots on the Ark were not innocents, they were warriors who were already prepared to die at any point during the war. It is dark, yes, and it’s up to the individual to fill in any inconsistencies to make it fit or not (that’s called comics lol), but I argue that it does potentially strengthen Marvel Primes character in the game. To the casual reader his suicide seems idiotic. But from this perspective he’s already seen that he’s willing to sacrifice his own men, but when he sees that he’s capable of putting innocent civilians in the line of fire, even in a hypothetical situation, he realizes he’s gone too far.
Max Rawhide
In Marvel it was never an accident that they crashed on Earth. Optimus pushed the button to crash them with intent, ensuring that they and the Ark didn't fall into the Decepticon hands and that if they died, they would take the Decepticons with them. But it was always pre-planned since he comments that an attack by the Decepticons and an Autobot defeat was something he had taken into consideration. The crash was his answer to this, already programmed into the navigational computers.
(This likely played a part in Optimus' eventual suicide. The guilt over having brought the war to Earth, the suffering of the humans because of it, all the Autobot casualties that happened because of it… it all became too much. And then in the game he caused the death of more innocent creatures.)
The only difference is that now it was always his plan to crash the Ark and kill them all. Not so much saving Cybertron from the threat of destruction but from the civil war. A way to take Megatron out of the battle. Hoping that without him the Decepticons would break apart and the Autobots would have a chance to defeat them and end the war.
A very noble cause, except that he willingly sacrificed his troops. He always did this in Marvel, but now it no longer was the result of the attack. It was the plan from the start. Instead of crashing the Ark and taking them all to the grave in a pre-planned last desperate act, it now was the real intent of the Ark launch. (And that makes Optimus his guilt over having brought to war to Earth even more an issue.)
G.B. Blackrock
Definitely not my favored interpretation, to be sure, but Furman always DID prefer his Optimuses deeeply flawed.
Nova Maximus
I could see IDW Optimus when Furman was writing him do it if push really came to shove.
supernova222
It’s more to me that it’s just a very dark motivation and reveal on OPs part, I don’t think idw optimus would even pull that
jamarmiller
my thoughts exactly
artiepants
we've got 4 million years of space to fill with Star Saber, Fort Max and Perceptor/Blaster fighting Straxus/Bludgeon/Scorponock/Thunderwing… sounds a hell of a lot more interesting then whatever the crap has (or more accurately hasn't) been going on in the 2.0 Ongoing….
G.B. Blackrock
This is very much one of those instances where I'm happy to read the new stuff, but I still tend to consider such retcons as in a different (but similar) continuity from the one I knew back in the 80s.