Minifigures - The Fantastic Four

Before Disney took over Marvel the House of Ideas didn't have the funding for their own "Cinematic Universe" (stop sniggering) and instead sold the rights off to other people. The result is that three of their biggest properties in the form of Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic 4 were farmed out, which at least means their own films have given more of a focus to the Avengers and other properties that wouldn't have got a look-in otherwise. Of the three the F4 have arguably suffered the most; there were a couple of crude films from 20th Century Fox a decade ago, directed by Tim Story. These received a moderately warm reception at the time but are now poorly thought of, especially compared to the CGI-and-banter saturated Whedonfests Disney churn out every summer. However, the rights for the properties only revert back to Marvel after a certain time without production and Fox decided to effectively cockblock them a year or so ago by rebooting the F4 films, just as Sony did with Spider-Man. Josh Trank's take on Marvel's first family served a double purpose; not only was there a chance for it to make Fox money but it kept the rights out of Disney's hands and took a competing property out of the running - likely for the next ten years.

Trank - a highly talented director whose Chronicle is one of the better superhero films of the recent explosion of the things - turned out a film that was obviously tampered with but also suffered from severe miscasting. The result was panned by critics and did poorly at the box office; Marvel however sealed the deal by doing every little thing they could to undermine it - while Fox owned the film rights Marvel owned basically everything else and were effectively able to block any F4 merchandise at the time of the film to avoid it competing with stuff they owned 100%. This even led to the long-running comic book series being placed on hiatus while Lego were obviously leant on to make sure no F4 characters appeared in their ongoing Marvel Superheroes line.

As ever where there's such a gap in the market there are Chinese bootleggers. Copies of Lego's superhero minifigures are abundant and great fun; most are near-perfect copies of those available in sets, usually for around £2 a piece. But if you're a bootlegger with access to moulds and tampographing equipment it's probably easy enough to design your own and the gap in the market for F4 toys gave several (naturally elusive, considering the copyright violation) companies inspiration. There have been sets of both the classic costumes and the white ones seen in the film; after a little trial and error I've managed to put together a set that I like - or two sets, as there are options out there to do a 'casual' and 'action' set.

MISTER FANTASTIC

There are two or three Reeds out there; a stretched version with elongated legs and arms, both lifted from the licenced Minifigure of Woody from Toy Story, is the most common and is available in both the blue classic and white uniforms. It's actually a decent enough way of representing his power in hard plastic while also meaning you can actually do stuff with him. There's a neat version of the swept-back hair complete with greying temples that really adds to the personality as well. 

The only 'standard' Minifigure I've yet come across for Reed is an underwhelming little thing with a silly face design and a much less impressive hairpiece (though it does still have grey on the temples). Really, the most sensible option was to buy a second 'stretched' figure and swap in standard sized arms and legs, which were easy enough to find. Accessories-wise I think the gun came with the stretched version and I have no idea where the other little bit of machinery the smaller one is holding is from; the fun thing is that with 30+ years of space-themed Lego there are lots of fun bits of kit that go nicely as one of Reed's gadgets.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

There are again two or three versions of Sue, though these are closer and more consistent that the different Reeds. Again, there's blue, white and powered up. The latter is one of my favourite Minifigs outright; there's something very, very cool about the transparent plastic all over while the little detail paint apps really pop out even if they're slightly illogical. The uniform seems to correlate more with the white version but not by enough to bother me and as you can gather I'm pretty particular about this sort of thing. Perhaps as a reflection of how cool it is this is one of the slightly harder to find off-brand figures, but not to the point where you'll spend a fortune.

The 'standard' version is available in blue or white. The blue version is more refined than the similar Reed and complements the 'invisible' version nicely, with the same hair and facial features, though the uniform doesn't quite line up. And the fun thing is that if you want a representation of Sue's forcefield power basically any shaped clear part that can clip to the Minifigure's hand will do.

THE HUMAN TORCH

There have been several versions of Johnny in both flame on and standard. For the 'action' one there are three 'classic' versions - a solid version with dark red plastic, a transparent version and a transparent version with the '4' logo. The second is the more accurate no doubt but I eventually settled on the latter for the entirely selfish reason that it means the one without the logo can be repurposed as the original Human Torch. More obscure is a version based on the most recent live action movie where the character was played by Michael B Jordan; as a result the Minifigure head was brown (even through Jordan's skin colour can't be seen when he's flaming) and the uniform and wavy flame hair are yellow; this is often labelled as Pyro due to its' broad similarities to the Brotherhood member but it's got a 4 logo. Very odd.

For standard versions there is again the white and blue. The latter again fits well, though I can never quite decide on a hairpiece that looks good; the blonde spiky one fits the character's personality in lieu of anything much better; the modern side-parting might be a better fit but isn't yet out in any 'fair' colours.

THE THING

The Thing has had probably the most diverse treatment, with three totally different Big Figs and at least one Minifigure out. The former takes three different approaches - one seems to be a heavy retool of the official Hulk Big Fig and is by far the best fit; for added variety this is available in blue, white or red (either a reference to the team briefly having red uniforms or I have half a recollection of him donning these when he briefly left) pants. There's also a brown figure that's a notably different sculpt featuring a large cylindrical Minifigure-style ehad; the style doesn't really work even if the colours and detailing are nicer that the orange one. Finally there's a totally different sculpt with seems based on the latest film and looks awful.

Personally I'm always torn on Big Figs; they feel like cheating but they do the job well and some characters just don't look right at a small scale. The Thing is arguably one, though I picked up the small Minifigure as much to line up with the other three 'standard' guys. It's got some nice detailing but does look underwhelming at the same height (though it's worth nothing the Thing was illustrated as roughly human style in the first two films).

Toy Review: Machine Robo Series 02 - Rod Drill / Gobots Masterpiece Screw Head

The second in Action Toys' Machine Robo Series is a logical choice given that its' licence is based on the Revenge of Cronos anime. Drill Robo was released originally in the series as a standard figure but was chosen by Ashi Productions and Bandai as one of the leads, being renamed Rod Drill. Along with Rom and Leina Stol, Blue Jet and Triple Jim he featured in every episode; a Chara DX non-transforming figure was made to complement a reissue of the original. Rom, Leina and Blue Jet have since received updates for Soul of Chogokin and EM Gokin so Rod was an obvious one to be on the list, especially as everyone hated and still hates Triple Jim. 

It's a good choice because Rod, with his happy-go-lucky personality and perennial hunger was the Patrick Star of the anime and a much needed bit of fun in a po-faced series. In the West the figure was sold as the Renegade Screw Head among the small figures and was retired fairly early on, with the character in the Challenge of the Gobots cartoon being a surly but otherwise generic heavy who appeared in a handful of episodes. The character served as the inspiration for a key figure in Machine Robo Rescue as well.
 
The robot mode is a very good likeness of the anime character model, a nicely-featured robot with a strong colour scheme and largely sensible proportions sculpted by Lu K. of Awaken Studio. One interesting quirk is the use of a very dark blue for most of it rather than actual black, likely a nod to cartoon colour palettes. It's actually done nicely enough that it doesn't look weird. All the details are spot on, with the drill head done at just the right height and the distinctive system of caterpillar tracks retained on the legs. Rod is one of the shorter figures in the line to date at around 4" tall, which is an oddity as the character was of standard height.

There is a lot of diecast on the toy, making up the bulk of the legs and the torso - which might go some way to explaining the diminutive stature. It makes for a dense and solid toy and gives Rod superb balance. Articulation is superb; while the lower legs restrict the ankles slightly but the feet being made up of two parts and the thoughtful use of a moving waist panel. And unlike Bike Robo the head moves freely - the soft rubber unit is ball mounted and unrestricted; the collar doesn't move with it but doesn't get in the way either. Accessories come in the form of a pair of bladed gauntlet/gunpod-type things that clip to his hands; these are really more to hide the arms in vehicle mode but they don't look bad in place. Naturally they can be removed for a cleaner anime-accurate look.

Transforming him is a largely neat process; there's one bit of "3P" silliness where you have to get the feet angled out of the way to get the legs in place but aside from that it's fun and very much in the spirit of the original. The arms especially are all but lifted, just with additional joints. The other accessory included is a longer hard plastic drill which can be switched in place of the head, making for a longer drillbit and also meaning he doesn't have the face visible underneath. I actually prefer to leave the head one in place for convenience and because it doesn't look bad but it's an additional feature that does no harm and at least makes more sense than Bike Robo's axe or Mixer Robo's twin knives.

The drill tank mode itself is all present and correct, a neat compact thing that strongly resembles the original. The clear point of reference here is the Mole from Thunderbirds; Gerry Anderson's sixties puppet shows made quite an impression on the Japanese and the influence on sci-fi design is still felt there today, though the original Drill Robo was oddly placed in the middle of the original run of Machine Robo, coming out at a time when most of the toys were based on real-world vehicles. The 15+ age banding means Action Toys can also give Rod an actual pointed drill bit rather than the original's understandable but silly rounded one. Sadly at this size moving caterpillar tracks are an impossibility; a pair of small rolling wheels do that instead but let's be honest you're not going to be whizzing him around a table-top anyway.

Of the six figures so far released Rod Drill is probably the strongest overall considering the three main areas of robot mode look, vehicle mode look and transformation, with the very slight qualifier that I adore the character and the original figure because you can't go wrong with a cheerful drill tank. At ~£45 a throw you'll probably need some sort of attraction to him to get real satisfaction but overall he's a success, a faithful update that still functions as a strong 21st century premium toy in its' own right.

Toy Review: Machine Robo Series 01 - Bike Robo / Gobots Masterpiece Cy-Kill

With the ever-increasing number of 3rd party toys and their ever-increasing range it was perhaps not totally unforeseeable that someone would have a look at updating a couple of Gobots as the line is gradually rehabilitated. What was perhaps more surprising was that the licence would be officially picked up by Action Toys, a small premium outfit from Hong Kong. They seem to have specifically licenced the 1986 Revenge of Cronos anime which bundled most of the classic Machine Robo toys in with a few newly repurposed figures and was a small success - it's enjoyed a few premium market figures in recent years, most famously the Soul of Chogokin Baifanku but also including the EM Gokin version of Blue Jet, also by Action Toys. However, the Action Toys interpretation seem to be made at least partly with an eye on being a backdoor Masterpiece Gobots line; for those not in the know Hasbro actually own all the Gobots trademarks (such as the character names) via their takeover of Tonka but not the physical likenesses or toy moulds, which were only loaned by Bandai.

The tail end of 2016 saw two batches of three figures released in the series - the first consisted Bike Robo, Rod Drill and Eagle Robo. Bike Robo was perhaps inevitably one of the earliest; the original version was the first Machine Robo toy released by Popy back in 1982, was one of the few to be revisited within the line's life with a Big Machine Robo mould and in the West became Renegade leader Cy-Kill - a major factor with the export market for this sort of toy. The character also had a moderate supporting role in the Revenge of Cronos anime, where all the Machine Robo were good guys.

The resulting figure is largely a success, capturing the look of the original with mild stylisation (designed by Awaken Studio), a pleasant relief considering the exaggerated look of the actual anime model and its' overtly phallic helmet. The design actually does a good job of drawing the disparate looks of the original toy and the animated version together. There's not much influence from Cy-Kill unsurprisingly but it looks as much like him as the original toy did and really Hanna-Barbera's cartoony face would not blend well with the toy. So the robot mode retains the clean, neat red/white/blue colour scheme that always seemed far too heroic for a bad guy anyway. The only shame is that silvery-grey has replaced chrome on the limbs - inevitable perhaps to keep the costs down and probably for simple reasons of durability. That said, there's a nice solid hunk of diecast for the upper torso which really adds to the feel of quality.

Articulation and detail are all to Masterpiece standard or thereabouts. The arms are nicely dynamic with good movement at the shoulders, elbows and wrists while the legs move nicely at the hip and knee. Foot movement is variable due to the legs slightly overlapping them but overall the figure has decent balance while there's also a simple rotating waist. The only weak point is sadly the neck - the rear cowl of the head overhangs just by enough to limit movement, meaning that Bike Robo can only really look to a few degrees either side and down to his chest. This sadly the number of practical display poses he can achieve without looking weird. The figure also comes with a battle axe for some strange reason; I don't really recall him using one in the anime and there wasn't one with any of the previous toys so it seems to just be bunged in to look cool. It's harmless but a harbinger for Action Toys' apparent decision to do one really weird thing for each figure.

Transforming the figure to bike mode is a slightly convoluted process, partly due to the incorporation of the engine into the sequence. On the original small figure it was a removable part that had to be put somewhere safe when in robot mode and on the larger one it rotated around to the back to form a giant clumsy backpack with the wheels as well, greatly detracting from the final look even if it meant there was no chance of anything getting lost. Here the unit is split in half and secreted inside the lower legs; it's a nice solution but combined with the need to fold the feet away, get the exhausts in just the right place and remember to pop one of the wheels in between leads to a slightly fiddly piece of work. It's not a complex puzzle exactly but neither is it a fantastic amount of fun; while the rest of the transformation isn't bad Bike Robo's change is probably the worst of the six released so far if nothing else. The wheels are fair game as removable parts as this allows them to neatly be placed on the robot's shoulders to complete the look but the handlebars are also additional parts; they can be stored on the back of the feet in robot mode if you don't want to remove them completely.

The resulting bike isn't the best either; again I'd say it's arguably the weakest of the line with the caveat that the line has been very good so far. It's recognisable immediately for what it is but the problem is the original looked - more than a little intentionally as the whole 'robots in disguise' thing wasn't part of Popy's original ethos - like a crouching robot gripping a couple of motorcycle. The more curved proportions of the update make this just a little more obvious especially the tops of the legs towards the back. And it's a shame, considering they worked it in for Mixer Robo, that the race can't be rotated away - there's nostalgia value in having the character's face not particularly well hidden just behind the front wheel but a cleaner fix would have been nice. The mode also gets a removable kick-stand for display.

All of which sounds like a lot of griping. And it is; the problem is that Bike Robo's a difficult character to get right with his unrealistic alt mode and extreme simplicity of the original figure are something which wouldn't necessarily translate well to this style of toy. It's to Action Toys' credit that they've stayed faithful to the original despite the restrictions but the result feels very much like the first toy in a line with a few problems that need addressing. Bike Robo is a good figure but not a great one and at £45 I'd think twice; I got mine at £25 from Kapow! Toys and that's about right compared to, say, the RRP of the deeply flawed Transformers Titan Returns line. It's just a shame as due to Cy-Kill's profile and the simple dint of being the first released Bike Robo is likely to attract some attention and he's not the greatest ambassador for the series. 

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Comic Review - Red Rover Charlie

PUBLISHER: AVATAR, 2014
WRITER: GARTH ENNIS
ART: MICHAEL DIPASCALE

Garth Ennis takes a dog's eye view of the apocalypse. The main catastrophe is apparently covered in another of his series, Crossed, which I have yet to read but it doesn't hurt Red Rover Charlie. In fact the abstract and incomplete perspective on man's seemingly total downfall as everyone is turned into psychotic zombies actually works in its' favour, adding an unpredictability and elliptical quality that adds to the confusion - there are various occasions when events are simply beyond the dogs' comprehension and that's where they're left.

That is one of the book's great strengths; there's a determined attempt to think everything through from the point of view of the three dogs we follow - Red, Rover and Charlie. They all have scant knowledge of anything they haven't seen in person, relying only on the fragmented word of mouth picked up from other dogs they've met in their largely urban lives. This extends to vocabulary, with the dogs speaking only the words they'd have picked up from day to day and frequently suffering headaches as they try to comprehend their lives being turned upside down.

Characterisation is the other big strength; the lead trio are quickly fleshed out and make for an engaging if imperfect trio, leading to a fantastic character arc for former helper dog Charlie as he gradually realises humans aren't perfect and shouldn't be the end goal for their quest. The dogs they meet on their travels are well-mapped as well and there are a few glimpses of other species too, notably some absolute bastard of a cat.

It all sounds a little silly written down but this isn't a kids' story; Ennis puts a considerable amount of gore in naturally and in his typically unflinching fashion canines aren't spared just because they're the good species in the book. But overall it's a mature and fascinating read, maybe perhaps undone by an ending which runs against the grain of the flashback narration from Charlie.

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Comic Review - Transformers: Generation 2 - the UK series

Grammar.

PUBLISHER: FLEETWAY, 1994-1995WRITER: SIMON FURMAN
ARTISTS: ROBIN SMITH, MANNY GALAN, DEREK YANIGER

1994 and Transformers was back for Generation 2. Except in the UK, where it had never gone away. While the last of the various Micromasters and Actionmasters that made up the final underwhelming American series of what is now known as Generation 1 was being clearanced across the Atlantic European toystores were stiĺl receiving fresh product, ranging from new moulds to botched Japanese imports to unused prototypes, most of which have cropped up in James Roberts' work since. It was an odd period with Europe getting cool stuff like Overlord, the Turbomasters and two thirds of Breastforce without Breastmasters or even names.

The 1994 Marvel Transformers
Winter Special, which probably
came out right before G2 #1.

It meant when G2 did roll around Hasbro's British wing was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it, the first batch of figures initially coming out as simply the latest wave of the original line. However once it became clear their American cohorts were putting money into relaunching the line with media support in the former of a new comic and obnoxiously edited episodes of the eighties they decided to switch to the new branding. The cartoon was effectively lost in the British television system of the time (little space on the four terrestrial channels and satellite having a tiny penetration) so it was down to the comic. The local branch of Marvel had handled it in the eighties until cancellation in 1992 after 332 issues, largely due to running out of material to run when the American book was axed. Since then they'd slung out a few low profile specials, right up until 1994. However the UK branch was by then hurtling towards destruction after overreaching themselves trying to convince people to like a stable of poor titles like Death's Head II and Motormouth & Killpower and had no time for the thing.

The first issue of Marvel
USA's G2 comic.

Hasbro looked elsewhere and threw in their lot with Fleetway, who had long ruled the British comic scene from King's Reach Tower alongside DC Thompson with their arsenal of weeklies like Eagle, Lion, Valiant, Battle and 2000AD. Many of these had gone - ironically as licenced titles like Transformers had eaten into the market - but Tharg was still overseeing things in 2000AD and The Beano remained a huge seller. Hasbro ensured they would have the rights to Marvel USA's new original material and with a monthly format chosen it all seemed simple.

Title just rolls off your tongue.

But it wasn't as a chunk of the early material was deemed unusable. This is occasionally blamed on the violent content but while Fleetway's eventual material showed they were pitching at a younger audience than the Marvel book across the ocean but as they later ran arguably the series' goriest moment (Red Alert getting shot down to his skeleton) it probably wasn't. More of a concern was that Hasbro had very sensibly asked Marvel to ease the Transformers back into print via a guest-spot in their still-running licenced G.I.Joe, to the distress of Joe fans who felt the appearance of the robots undermined the realism of their comic about ninjas and a terrorist organisation who were ignored by America's huge conventional military.

The end of Marvel UK's efforts to
push G.I.Joe - The Action Force.

Problem was that despite repeated efforts including three rebrands and a Marvel comic which included many of the same staff (and Grant Morrison) that had made Transformers such a success G.I.Joe had simply never caught on in the UK. Marvel tried a weekly then a monthly and then making the strip a back-up in Transformers itself, all to apathetic and occasionally hostile readers; it was dropped after G.I.Joe #74 was reprinted in Transformers #305, followed by a special which briefly tied up the Cobra civil war plot; the Transformers crossover ran through #133-142 and in the intervening sixty issues a mixture of Hasbro's demands and Larry Hama's dreary soap opera about how awesome Snake-Eyes is rendered it unrecognisable.

Hot Spot versus Cobra in the
American material.

It's actually debatable how much harm just ignoring the crossover issues and running the Transformers material would actually have been; G.I.Joe and Cobra's role in the actual Transformers issues is fairly minimal and a text box could probably have explained things briefly - that Megatron and Starscream had reappeared on Earth, destroyed the Autobot team sent to stop them and were now facing off against G.I.Joe would have handled things. That the first issue of the American title didn't actually include any references to the crossover would even have meant they wouldn't have had to launch with something fudged like that anyway.

Regardless, Fleetway decided to launch with some original material to lead into the reprints which were planned to make up the bulk of the title. The 24-page large format comic was priced at £1.50, with between half and two-thirds of the issue being strip and the rest made up of profiles, feature pages and the odd advert here and there, meaning that in theory there was the best part of two years' worth of material from the US book. However, to smooth the launch the first two issues contained new strips intended to dovetail into the reprints while working around the G.I.Joe crossover.

UK G2 #1 splash page.

Simon Furman was apparently the writer for these two strips but this is somewhat questionable. Furman was of course writing the American book and had done transatlantic double duty before and was a logical choice. However he claimed they weren't his work on the convention circuit in the late nineties before saying otherwise in a TPB reprint of the American material and can sometimes be a little disingenuous or at least eager to please; if the earlier denial was in a context of deriding the two UK stories an off-the-cuff disowning would have got a laugh from the room while the later reclamation might have been to claim any reprint money or simple poor memory.

Optimus moping.

A more compelling case for Furman not being the author is that they make a hugely complicated job of bringing things up to speed. The natural thing for the writer to do would be to trim the US scripts down - eliminate G.I.Joe or simply turn them into generic army troopers and simplify the thread about the destruction of the Ark while reintroducing Megatron in his old body. When you consider out of the first three American issues Derek Yanniger's workrate problems meant there had already been two fill-in issues largely unrelated to the main plot - promo comic reprint "Ghosts" and Manny Galan-drawn "Distant Thunder"-remake "Primal Fear" the most obvious thing to do would have been to trim down the script for the first issue and then provide a bridge tidying up the Earth material ahead of the arrival of Bludgeon and the Warworld. However, a lot of the dialogue - especially Optimus' guilt-ridden recap of Earth's place in the war - does ring pretty true.

Tornado displaying deep complex
Decepticon characterisation.

Instead the writer came up with a totally different script. One possible factor is the behest of Hasbro; the G2 comic is moderately famous for not actually featuring many G2 toys for various reasons. Aside from Megatron - the new line's centrepiece - and a few revised colour schemes (some of which, such as those for Optimus Prime, Starscream, Grimlock and Jazz, are easy to pass without particularly noticing) there was only an occasional attempt to showcase new wares in the US comic. The UK material however throws in the Skyscorchers, the Stormtroopers, Rotor Force and the Laser Rods plus has everyone involved overtly in their G2 schemes - notably the Dinobots, only released in brightly coloured variants in the UK whereas the American book got away with the grey versions. This might suggest that the plot problems came from this mandate but really if they were going to redraw it there was little harm in simply substuting some of these guys for any other Decepticon muscle.

Watch out Prime, he's
got a new toy!

Whoever the author the art was unmistakably the work of Robin Smith, a 2000AD stalwart who had a couple of short spells on the Transformers UK weekly to his credit. His blocky designs aren't to all tastes but combined with some bright colours from Gill Whelan it's not bad if a bit bright and cheerful, especially compared to the sinews and fluids the American material was providing. Dated October 1994 (and probably out then, the UK industry never having got into the silliness the American one did), the first issue's story was called "War Without End" (exactly the same as the first issue of the American book to keep things nice and simple...) and concerned Bludgeon's troops - entirely made up of new G2 toys without chaps like Octopunch and Stranglehold - attacking Earth (he's worked his way to London) as in the US book to draw out Optimus Prime and nick the Matrix (that he's already got the new troops he would use it to activate in the US book is something best not to think about). The ploy works - Prime arrives with Sideswipe, Jazz and Skram - hoping to also meet up with Grimlock - and battle is joined before being swiftly interrupted by the new and improved Megatron just after Bludgeon's been decked. As well as lots of new toys mentioning their names and showing their gimmicks (Sideswipe's drawn with his huge water blaster on his car roof) there's time to shoehorn in Optimus' apocalyptic visions foreshadowing the Swarm; so far so good if a bit weird.

G2 #2 splash page.

The second issue strip was called "War Zone", which might sound unimaginative but at least hadn't been used on the American comic. It's basically a fight issue - Optimus versus Megatron's shiny new toy, Megatron versus Bludgeon's shiny new toy army (skullface himself keeps a lot profile after Optimus smacked him down in three frames) and then the shiny new Dinobots versus the Decepticons, and ends with the bad guys running off their separate ways. Which is odd, because it basically resets the Decepticons - Bludgeon still has the main army and the Warworld, Megatron is still skulking around Earth with Starscream. The logical thing would have been to have Megatron kill Bludgeon here and take command of the army. Grimlock meanwhile gives Optimus the update on the Cybertronian Empire, more or less compacting the events of the first issue into a few frames. Again while weird and not especially good there's nothing outright wrong with the issue in itself.

G2 #3 poster.

Where the title got really weird was when it picked up the US reprints, starting with the third issue. This re-ran "Devices and Desires" from US #4; the main storyline of Grimlock setting out for satisfaction on the Cybertronian Empire is a fair follow-up to the flashback in the previous issue and works alright as an introduction to Jhiaxus for British readers but the strip starts off by covering the apocalyptic visions Prime mentioned in the first issue; not an error per se but certainly redundant. 

G2 #4 cover.

The fourth issue was there things started to really strain - reprinting the first two "Tales of Earth" back-ups from US #4 & 5 (the two-strip format being the eventual solution to Yaniger's tardiness for the American book). The story deals with Bludgeon attacking Earth to draw out Optimus Prime so he can steal the Matrix but instead riling Megatron and getting killed. With naturally absolutely no mention of why he's doing this when he did it an issue ago with broadly similar results, or why he's suddenly hanging with the gang of late-line figures from the tail end of the Marvel comics rather than his new minions seen in the first two British issues. Oh, my. There's not even any attempt to modify the dialogue or anything and to readers at the time without the benefit of knowing the US storyline it must have been baffling and once again renders a key element of the UK original material utterly redundant. It makes you wonder if Fleetway were planning to do more in-house strips and the money ran out or if they simply thought the US material was going to be more episodic than it ended up being and just decided to grasp the nettle.

Apart from it being the end.

Either way the title wasn't grabbing readers and the fifth issue was published with the knowledge it would be the last. The strip was "The Power and the Glory", featuring Optimus Prime's spiritual journey into Cybertron which laid out assexual budding as a means of Transformers reproduction and introduces the Swarm, which at least doesn't create any new continuity errors. The defiant "NEVER THE END!" scrawled on some poor artwork (lifted from the first issue's poster) on the back page wasn't really fooling anyone; a greater legacy was the generous plug for Matt Dallas' nascent Transmasters UK fanclub on the inside front cover - the group's material would continue the story (from the US book, more widely read in the UK than its' eighties counterpart due to the rising ease of importing comics via specialty stores that had sprang up after the success of the likes of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns); among the many talented fan writers and artists affiliated with the group would be James Roberts and Nick Roche.

Issue #1 freebie stickers.

Aside from the strip the format of the comic was a bit of a mess. It featured gatefold covers and centre pages that folded out into two huge posters, allowing it to proclaim itself a Transformer as well, something made more plausible in the aftermath of Action Master Elites while the thing was padded out with profiles and the like heavily drawn from Hasbro material - though whether this was due to the boys at Newport insisting or Fleetway just slapping in free page fillers is a matter of debate. Notable features for the first issue included some appropriately tacky stickers with that gelled perfectly with early G2's brattish aesthetic ("JAZZ BAD COMPANY") and a toy checklist using the local names for the figures (including Sureshot and Archforce, the hurriedly-created identities for Combat Hero Optimus Prime and Megatron as they were released simultaneously with the larger versions, characters being released at the same time at different price points still being some time away as Hasbro didn't yet believe kids would buy two toys of the same character in such a short space of time) and a few exclusives - including the Sparkabot and Firecon repaints only Europe got and the Lightformers Ironfist and Deftwing, still running from the pre-G2 line.

Sideswipe profile from #4.

The second issue featured more cover-mounted stickers, this time with a Dinobot theme to go  with them appearing prominently in "War Zone", a 'board' game in lieu of a poster in the middle and an admittedly very cool competition to win all 47 G2 figures then available in the UK. The third scales it back due to the reprinted strip being longer than the indigenous stuff but had space for a an unimpressive letters page where vague hints were dropped that the cartoon might be shown but more interestingly openly tackled a question on how the UK material would blend with the American reprints; the reply would rapidly be proven to be false but it showed how times had changed since the Marvel UK book had long kept up the fiction that they produced all the material. The fourth issue was less interesting again, with only a vague wink that someone who wasn't Fleetway might be producing an annual (they were; Grandreams' eventual version turning out to be an abomination that deserves a post of its' own). The final issue was so ropey there wasn't even a proper cover, just a frame of internal art which some staffer had taken to with crayons, a poster clearly traced from other internal art and some readers' pictures.

Naturally this doesn't lend itself to the book being much more than a curio for those whose interests in Transformers comics' history is as high as that in the stories themselves. The original issues are rare but not quite as expensive and collectible as you'd think as fans are largely unwilling to spend much on such slipshod material, though the first two issues are one of the few vintage Transformers strips not to be reprinted anywhere else.

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TRANSFORMERS: GENERATION 2 (UK) #1 - 5

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