Daily Comic Book Mission #014: Transformers #1 (Marvel Comics)

Are you ready to transform and roll out? I hope so, because today’s Daily Comic Book Mission is to read issue number one of the Transformers from September of 1984, the month that changed the universe when Hasbro released a marketing blitz to promote their new toys that gave us Transformers, the cartoon show, and Transformers the four-issue limited series comic book that’s still running today in one form or another.

I suspect they didn’t realize how well it would sell and how captivating Transformers would be. But I ask you, how much do you think you know about the Transformers, right? Like, okay, they’re these giant robots that fight each other. They come from Cybertron, and I don’t know. The human characters were always stupid and annoying. Okay, all of that is true, but issue number one from Marvel goes into great detail, and it’s been a long time since I’ve read this. I read this comic like a thousand times, judging by the quality of it here. It’s like falling apart in my hands. This is like the most detailed explanation of the Transformers backstory that I’ve seen anywhere. And the cover is remarkable.

This is just an unmistakable book because nowhere else does Optimus Prime look like he looks… like he does on the cover. Nowhere else does Optimus look like he does. Yes, that’s how you say that. On the cover of Transformers issue number one. And the artwork is done by Bill Sienkiewicz, who just had a very unique style all his own. It’s just a really weird portrayal of Optimus, and I love it. And you know what else I love is that when I open up the first issue here, on the inside of the back cover, is an ad for one of my favorite movies and probably one of your favorite movies, The Last Starfighter.

This issue is very dense, rich with text, lots of detail, and the artwork is really good too. Marvel clearly pulled out all the stops on this one. I always get this guy confused with Herb Trimpe. Frank Springer does the pencils on this one. Bill Mantlo is the plot, and Bob Budiansky is the editor. But the first couple pages just really go into great detail on the history of Cybertron.

"And the Autobots, whereas life elsewhere in the cosmos usually evolved through carbon bonding, here it was the interaction of naturally occurring gears, levers, and pulleys that miraculously brought forth sentient beings. They created a mechanical paradise."

But of course, a mechanical paradise by itself would make for a super-duper boring TV show, right? And nobody would want to read the comic books if they were just all hanging out and being like, “yo, what’s up? I like your gears and pulleys."

Now, Introduce Megatron. I love the Transformer, the Decepticon, that gets the first line of dialogue in the entire Marvel Comics Transformer series. Can you guess who it is? Who gets the first line of dialogue?

I can’t hear you. Ravage! “Look at them below, contented fools ripe for our conquest." You tell them, Ravage.

Well, the Autobots and Decepticons are at war, and they fight so fiercely they knock Cybertron out of its orbit, and it goes flying through space. And the Transformers, like the Autobots, fly out ahead to clear a path through the asteroid field or whatever. And that’s when the Decepticons attack them and it crash lands on Earth for four million years. It’s like the opening, the opening action scenes here actually look a lot like they do from Transformers: The Movie, one of my favorite movies. Probably also one of your favorite movies if you’re listening to this. And Transformers: The Movie versus The Last Starfighter... it’s not a question of which one is better. It’s a question of in which order, in which order do you watch them both? Both awesome movies.

Then the Ark wakes up and sends out a drone. It knows what weapons and boom boxes are Decepticons. Cars are Autobots. And we meet for the first time in 1984, the G1 Transformers, as I guess they’re known. I never call them G1, I just call them the Transformers. I remember when these were new. My first Transformer was Mirage.

They were really expensive back then, so I didn’t have a whole lot of them. I was actually more into Star Wars and G.I. Joe at the time, which were generally more affordable. I had, let’s see, who did I have? Mirage was the first one I got. A couple of smaller ones, I forget their names, and the one, of course, that I remember, well, there’s two I remember the most: Soundwave, because Soundwave was frickin’ awesome, and Shockwave, equally awesome. I did not have Megatron or Optimus, but I did have Shockwave, and then later I got a bunch of other ones. I forget which Predacon, but I had a Predacon I liked a lot. And probably some other ones, they were most likely blown up by the G.I. Tomahawk and the Great Battle of 1987 or whatever.

Each Transformer introduces themselves with a fairly lengthy word balloon, like here’s Sunstreaker. "Well, Sunstreaker isn’t leaving until the rest of this world gets a look at the sleekest Autobot in the bunch. And if any Decepticon dares to mess with the finish, he’ll get two ground-to-air missiles stuffed straight up his ass." Wait, no, I’m sorry, I read that wrong. My glasses aren’t... "stuffed where he won’t want them." I guess I’m assuming the Decepticon does not want missiles shoved up his ass. That could be incorrect. You never know how the Decepticons roll. And the issue just keeps going.

The Autobots go off and explore, and there’s this great scene where it’s not Spike, it’s Buster Witwicky. He’s hooking up in a car at a drive-in theater, and then Bumblebee crashes into him, ruining his evening’s plans. And then there’s a battle, and it’s like, this is just the first issue. It’s a huge first issue. I don’t think it’s an oversized issue. It just feels enormous. And the first couple issues of Transformers are weird because I’m sure that they had no idea how huge this would be.

And like by issue three, they bring in Spider-Man, and I always felt like why... like you didn’t need Spider-Man, but they didn’t know that. They didn’t know that the Transformers could carry their own. And then after the four-issue limited series it just picked up with issue five, the one with Shockwave on the cover. And issue one is awesome. You can get this in a whole bunch of collections. I’m sure you can find it at your library in one of the collections. And it’s just a great read, especially if you love Transformers. Read it again, I think that you’ll be surprised at how much detail is in this first one.

So check it out on ComicBook.beer, your daily comic book mission. And don’t forget to check out the brand new ComicBook.beer podcast I recorded earlier in the week, talking about just the beginning, the website, and the show, and what all, you know, what this is all about; comics, toys and beer, because who doesn’t love all those things? So see you next time.