THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

TRANSFORMERS TITLES FROM TITAN BOOKS / MAGAZINES

Titan Transformers Universe #22
Reviewed by Inflatable Dalek

After last month's slightly disappointing bridging issue we see a return to form here with some lovely art by the mightily-monikered Cosmo White. It’s nice to have Optimus going straight to the source of the problem and rescuing Mikaela in a no-nonsense way with no faffing about.

The big revelation of Starscream’s haunting is an interesting one, with thankfully very little technobabble to slow things down. It also leads to a couple of nice moments for Swindle and Crankcase, letting the red shirts get a chance to shine.

With the comic now clearly building up to a big climax there’s a real sense of momentum building here that will hopefully carry into the next storyline.


The title is taken from the rather good Roger Moore doppelganger movie The Man Who Haunted Himself. If we take Megatron’s return literally the title is a misnomer as Starscream is in fact being haunted by another Decepticon. However, there’s always a chance he’s completely insane and Megatron is just a hallucination. The Allspark download thingy mentioned here wasn’t seen back in issue 13, though there’s nothing to say it didn’t happen, even if it is a rather forced retcon.

As a nice side effect of all this we now have an explanation for all the strained “Starscream expositioning all his plans when no one else is in the room” moments we’ve had over the last year. The idea of someone being “haunted” by either a real or imagined old enemy is a common one in SF TV, notable examples including John Crichton having Scorpius in his head in Farscape and Gul Dukat hallucinating just about everyone during the Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode Waltz.

Mikaela’s been mind-controlled since issue 18. The Autobots having a means to destroy the control suggests they’ll be dealing with President Allen soon.

From this issue the title is renamed Transformers Universe, using the logo from that toyline. The copyright note at the bottom of the contents page continues to refer to it as just Transformers though.


The recap still describes Starscream as ruling Earth when he doesn’t.

The Mega Drive competition talks about 80’s nostalgia when the console was in fact from the 90’s.

They’re reprinting Megatron: Origin.


A Fold Out Space Notepad!!


Competition for the “80’s” best of Mega Drive game and a X Box 360 to play it;
A cover based poster;
Longrack Profile;
Way Past Cool computer game reviews (does this remind anyone else of the feature the Marvel UK comic ran in the early days talking about random robots to pad out space?);
Top Gear has competitions for Universe Galvatron and some teen books;
Artobots;
Starscreams has yet more Arcee’s Soulmates.

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