THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers: The Animated Movie #2 (of 4)
Reviewed by Inflatable Dalek

Well, at least this time the speech bubbles all point to the right people. Other than that this is probably the least interesting Transformers comic since... ohhh, the original Marvel US GI Joe crossover. It's been suggested that this is a deliberately retro comic, if so then I'd argue that this shows perfectly why no one makes them like this any more. The random cutting of all the best lines (but the leaving in of stuff like "...and his Armada") is hardly compensated for by the much-hyped "new bit", which has less point to it than the bulk of the cut material. Read this and bemoan the trees that died for it.


One of the great recurring questions of Transformers fandom — right up there with what colour is Rumble? — is who became Scourge and who became Cyclonus? Don's answer in this adaptation —and I say Don rather than Bob because this comic seems to have been written the Roy Walker way, "watch the Movie and say what you see" — is: Thundercracker becomes Scourge, Bombshell becomes Cyclonus, Kickback and Shrapnel are the Sweeps and Skywarp becomes the near-legendary Armada.

Galvatron is in his animation "purple fruit pastel" colour scheme as opposed to his Marvel comics "Charles Grey" scheme.

Movie scriptwriter Ron Friedman is still uncredited (nor was he on the original Marvel adaptation, but at in that case Ralph Macchio was credited as "adaptor" rather than "writer".)

Though the publicity for this comic promised "extra scenes and little touches", Budiansky has admitted in interview that the end of this issue is the only major addition —l; this consists of just one page showing the Autobot shuttle crashing and Hot Rod being thrown clear into the water.

The other changes in this adaptation are:

The dialogue in Megatron's first meeting with Unicron has been moved about so that now the Planet offers his terms (a new body, new troops ect...) as Megatron is being transformed. This means we loose the "And?" / "And nothing!" exchange and "I belong to nobody!" (as with "I'll crush you with my bare hands" last issue this removes part of the effort to emphasise Megs and Galvy are one-and-the-same. Oddly Galvatron's repeating of this line is left intact later in the issue.)

The coronation scene is shortened, we no longer have musical Constructicons and Galvatron's "will anyone else attempt to fill his shoes?" line is replaced with the less catchy "and my name is now Galvatron!"

Spike and Bumblebee no longer try to blow up Moonbase Two, and are eaten on the planet rather than sucked in on a shuttle afterwards. This of course, deletes the swearing (to the disappointment of all eight-year-olds.)

It looks as though Armada gets blown up over Autobot City whilst Ultra Magnus is ordering Hot Rod to get the Dinobots on the Shuttle. [This has been confirmed by the artist. —Denyer]

Kup doesn't get chance to start his war story, nor does Hot Rod fight the training droid. Kup's attempts to recall how to invert the polarity is gone as well.


[Again, this refers just to new oddities in this comic rather than flaws with the film as a whole.]

Page Four has a * box that doesn't lead on from anything (The one that starts "*Starscream is referring...")