By Simon Furman & various (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-647-7
The shape-changing Transformers took the world by storm in the 1980’s and a monthly US Marvel comic book was a smash hit. Marvel’s UK branch produced their own weekly comic reprinting the American material but the scheduling disparity quickly necessitated the creation of original material.
After a truly colossal series of interlocking tales – previously collected as Transformers: Target 2006 (ISBN: 1-84023-510-1), Fallen Angel (ISBN: 1-84023-511-X), Legacy of Unicron (ISBN: 1-84023-578-0) and Space Pirates (ISBN: 1-84023-619-1), the epic time-busting saga of paradox and predestination exploded to a climax in this volume reprinting material from issues #130-131, #189 and #199-205 of the weekly Transformers comic, plus two tales from the 1988 Transformers Annual.
In the animated film Transformers: The Movie (released in 1985) Optimus Prime and Megatron fall in a climactic battle to be replaced by the heroic Ultra Magnus and the devilish Galvatron. Set in 2005 (remember, this was set 20 years in the future at that time…) the Autobots were almost completely defeated by the Decepticons when a huge new horror threatened to destroy all the robots and even the Earth itself. A giant sentient planet-eating robot, Unicron is pure evil, and saves the fallen Megatron for his own sinister purposes.
Spinning off from the film’s dramatic conclusion, in the comic series Galvatron travels back twenty years from 2006 with his two cohorts Cyclonus and Scourge to unmake his own unwanted reality and free himself from bondage to Unicron by judiciously altering events, but once here he finds that the Autobots are not the only alien shape-changing robots that want to stop him.
The time-tossed Transformers encounter spirited resistance from friend and foe alike and by the time of this concluding volume the very fabric of time itself is unravelling, threatening to unmake the universe. In 2009 the surviving Autobots and Decepticons decide to risk everything by sending rescue parties back to the 1980s in hope of saving reality – and producing a timeline more favourable to their particular needs.
Fast-paced and furious in intensity, this cosmic drama for all ages still carries a punch today and the early work of contemporary luminaries Robin Smith, Will Simpson, Lee Sullivan, Andrew Wildman and especially Dan Reed is a distinct pleasure for modern fans to see.
Good, solid action and a great starter for kids thinking of picking up the comic bug.
© 2002 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved.