Gets better with Furman and Cybertronian settings. ( )

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IDW has collected the first few years of the UK Transformers strip in a series of volumes with commentary and interviews by More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light scribe James Roberts. They are out of print and horrendously expensive, but you can get them off comiXology for pretty reasonable prices. This volume collects issues #9-21, 29-32, and 41-44 of the UK comic (the other issues were reprints of US material), along with the 1985 Annual; the stories take place in between the US stories collected in vol. 1 of IDW's The Transformers Classics. Someday I'd like to read the US and UK stories in an integrated order, but for now, I'm just depending on my memories of the US comic, plus Roberts's helpful editorial commentary.As a result, it's something of an odd read-- no cohesive story, and because the stories are the work of four different writers, no cohesive vision, either, though near the end of the collected stories, one begins to emerge. First, Steve Parkhouse (writer of the Doctor Who strip during the fourth, fifth, and sixth Doctor eras) gives us "Man of Iron," a grim and serious tale of the Transformers coming to an English village; I've previously reviewed it as part of The Transformers Classics, Vol. 3 (the US comic reprinted it as a flashback story).

"Man of Iron" sets a very distinct tone for a Transformers story, with the Transformers themselves often silent and mysterious, the way robots in disguise might seem to human beings. None of the other UK stories do that, being more in tune with the US style, but there is a more character focus than I remember from Bob Budiansky's US tales. This makes sense: the big events of the ongoing narrative being driven by what was happening in the US issues, the area the UK comic could really work was in expanding character moments. So we get stories that focus on Brawn, Starscream, Ravage, Grimlock and the Dinobots, Ratchet, Bumblebee, Circuit Breaker, and even Optimus Prime himself.

They're all pretty solid (with the exception of "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" and the two by James Hill), but the standout character for me here was Ravage, someone I hadn't really given much thought to before (though I think he did get a nice issue somewhere in James Barber's Transformers run). In some continuities (including, I think, Marvel US), Ravage is silent, but that's not true here, where he pursues his own agenda-- one of utterly ruthless loyalty to Megatron. I liked the straightforwardness of his duplicity: he will do anything except betray his leader.

Plus there's a great bit where Grimlock tests a replacement hand by punching out Ratchet.

The art is interesting-- based more often on the actual toys or their package art than the character models used by the US comic. In the case of some characters, this means they have the spindly look of cheap toys; supposedly strong Brawn looks like you could break him in half. But I did like the comic's weird, unique look for Optimus. And Circuit Breaker looks a lot more curvaceous than I remember! There's real talent here, of course: John Ridgway, Mike Collins (of Darkstars fame), Mark Farmer (who later worked on Alan Davis's Killraven). I hadn't even known that Barry Kitson (whose work on L.E.G.I.O.N. and Legion was excellent) was British, much less that he'd started out here! I don't think anyone would call this his best work, but still.

There are also some nice pieces of backstory, like "And There Shall Come... a Leader!", which delves into Optimus's life on Cybertron. In these days, "Prime" isn't a title, but just part of his name. I also really enjoyed "Plague of the Insecticons!", where the Autobots attempt to reach out to President Reagan, but things go terribly wrong.

On its own, this is a weird set of stories, maybe, but I can see how it will be the foundation for the UK's own distinct take on the Transformers mythos, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

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