The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 365: The Transformers #1, September 1984

Okay, before I get into today's comic, can we just bask in that cover a bit? This, coupled with Sienkiewicz's Starriors covers from the same year, grace what could have simply been a silly toy comic with a real elegance.

Welcome to the completion of my first year of The 40 Years of Comics Project! Before beginning this project, I was notoriously bad at maintaining my various blogs, but having set myself the manageable goal of a single comic a day, I've felt re-invigorated toward my public writing. Thanks to anyone who's read even only one or two posts. I am humbled by any attention my writing might command. To celebrate the first year, I'm going to post a bit of a retrospective, musing on the good and the bad, but to cap the completion of Year One, I'm going to talk a bit about a comic that has been in my collection almost longer than any other.

If we're to stick to the notion that a comic is released three months before the date on the cover, this particular issue came out in June or July of 1984. I was ten years old. This jibes with my memories of buying the comic, as it would have been while living in Mississauga, and was probably amongst my first solo forays to the variety store (a Hasty Market, I think) about half a kilometer from our house. This store became my first source of comics, only supplanted when my Mum recognized my love for the medium, and started taking me to specialty stores. What this all boils down to is that this comic has been a part of my collection for over 30 years, never having been sold, traded, lost, or replaced. This is the same comic that, in many ways, kick-started my passion for the medium.

Of course, when I bought it, it was because it was based on an awesome series of toys, most of which were far too expensive for my meager allowance. But if I could experience the adventures of these titanic robots, even without playing with them myself, that was fine. In all, I collected The Transformers for about 5 years, only ceasing in the late 80s when I discovered sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and left comics behind for a little while.

Nostalgia and memory aside, however, is it a good comic? Yes and no. One of the things that pushed me away from this series was the trend it stumbled into, fairly early in the run, of introducing new characters almost every issue, in order to keep up with the toy line. This first issue does have moments that read much like advertisements. There are two particular spreads in which both the Decepticons and the Autobots perform a roll call of sorts. Ostensibly, within the story, this is to make sure that all members of each team have survived the crash of the Ark, but really the dialogue and captions read like they've come straight from the backs of the toy boxes, outlining personalities and weapons in a decidedly awkward manner. Much like the G.I. Joe series that preceded it, the impetus to sell toys is not far from the surface of the series. That said, we're still reading a comic by three relatively experienced and expert creators, and though one of the uses of the series was to sell toys, another was to tell an interesting, and engaging, story. Which this comic does. The history of the Cybertronian war is excellent, and reading it now, I would be far more interested in a series depicting that conflict than the one on Earth. The notion of "naturally occurring gears, levers and pulleys" is also pretty fantastic, and speaks to the idea of infinite variation in an infinite cosmos. There is an entire culture built on Cybertron in the first few issues that teases a myriad of fascinating stories.

We don't, however, get much of that. The real delight of this first issue is the Autobots' assumption that mechanical devices are the dominant life form on the planet, and their subsequent discovery otherwise. As Prowl notes on the second last page of the issue, what they "are seeing is non-machine life, as hard as that may be to accept." That caveat to the statement, the difficulty of accepting life that is so unlike their own conception of it, provides a profound depth to the characterization of what are ostensibly representations of plastic toys. This isn't just a comic used as advertisement, but a tale of first contact between life forms that are in some ways completely foreign to one another, and in others remarkably similar. The surface action story aside, this subtext is really rather remarkably hopeful.

Sadly, as I note above, this subtext is lost in the rush to advertise. Only later in the series, when the toy line was waning, and writer Simon Furman takes over, do the characters once again attain, on a regular basis rather than only occasionally, the depth that is teased in this first issue. I'll get there eventually.

I can't promise I'll read the next issue tomorrow. I might have to find something equally as important in my collection to kick of Year Two. Tune in, and find out. Onward!