Actually, no one has asked yet! (Forever alone)
I’ll answer in two ways: first for the character and then for the toy.
Favorite Autobot (character): G1 Skids, mostly because of his characterization in the G1 Marvel comics
Favorite Decepticon (character): Any version of Starscream. He’s just always the most fun to watch.
Favorite Autobot (toy): Tie between G1 Grimlock and G1 Bluestreak
Favorite Decepticon (toy): Trypticon. This toy deserves to be in the Louvre.
Transformers #19 Mysteriously Nostalgic Thing No. 2: Smokescreen Shooting Stuff With His Head
During the climactic battle at the Decepticon base, there’s a lot of odd stuff going on in the background. For example, Smokescreen here blasting Devastator with his head-cannons. The thing I take with me is that even though Smokescreen gets almost no characterization in the Marvel comic, he’s been cemented in my mind just by appearing in this scene.
Also, I think it’s a credit to Don Perlin’s skill as a cartoonist that he shows Smokescreen later with his launcher barrels empty and smoking (seen above right). It’s a nice little incidental continuity nod that lesser artists wouldn’t have included.
Transformers #19 Mysteriously Nostalgic Thing No. 1: The Dinobots’ Backs
The Dinobots in issue 19 did only two things: chew out Optimus, then walk away. They did this mostly while standing around in robot mode, with their backs to the readers. In any other comic this would be incidental, but to young Luke, who had never seen a Dinobot before, it was mind-blowing.
Why? Because the Dinobots aren’t shown in their dinosaur modes, but you can see all the dinosaur parts hanging off their backs. So I would spend hours (maybe?) staring at this panel and the one where they’re walking away, trying to figure out what each Dinobot transformed into.
I remember my 5-year-old logic going kinda like this: “All the Dinobots have wings. So that means, if you’re an Autobot, and you have wings, you must be a Dinobot. OMG OMEGA SUPREME IS A DINOBOT”
“Command Performances!” (Marvel Transformers #19)
“That looks like it hurts,” I told the other boy in the children’s section at the Boothbay Harbor Public Library. I pointed at the comic I was reading, something called “The Transformers.” The cover showed a big robot blasting a smaller robot with a laser.
“No, that’s silly,” the other boy replied. “Robots can’t feel pain.”
Months later, the public library gave me their copy of Transformers #19, my first ever run-in with the robots from Cybertron. I had read it cover-to-cover so many times that the cover had given up and fallen off. Soon, I picked up Transformers #77 at our local drugstore - the only issue of the comic I ever saw on shelves. I was in love. By the time my dad rented a VHS copy of “S.O.S. Dinobots,” there was no turning back.
Unfortunately for me, it was 1991 (or so). The original Transformers line was in its death throes. None of the characters I grew to love from the Marvel comic and the Sunbow cartoon could be found in stores any longer. At fleamarkets, toy dealers shook their heads and said, “those toys just aren’t worth any money.”
For the remainder of my childhood, it was a desperate search for evidence that my favorite franchise ever existed at all. “Do you have any Transformers?” I’d ask any kid I met. Any toy that transformed, anything at all, was fair game. Hell, I’d watch episodes of “Challenge of the Go-Bots” just to scratch my transforming itch.
Twenty years later, things aren’t too different. I still scour the world for toys, just not as desperately as Luke, Ages 6-12. Fortunately my hobby didn’t die in 1992.
Which brings me back to Transformers #19. The pages of that comic are concentrated nostalgia: Each panel contains an image that’s burned into my head, each character a collection of shapes and movements that fling back to my childhood. I’m going to discuss a few of those panels and the odd memories they bring, along with toys of the associated characters.
(Complements to my wife for helping me with the photo up there!)
Panel from “The Bridge to Nowhere!” (Marvel Transformers #18)
“Spare me the details, Straxus.” See what Blaster did there? He used words to make Straxus his bitch. While simultaneously murdering him.
The Mighty Spector (Masters of the Universe Classics, Mattel, 2012)
Of course I love Spector. How could I not love one of the most hated MOTU figures this side of Smash Blade He-Man? He is the heroic master of time travel. The guy could visit any of my toylines any time he wants. Oh yes. He will be around for a while. And you just wait until his best friend Sir Laser-Lot gets here.
Panel from “The Bridge to Nowhere!” (Marvel Transformers #18)
This one panel is indicative of everything that will happen to Blaster over the next 30 issues. I.E., it will not get better.
Panel from “The Bridge to Nowhere!” (Marvel Transformers #18)
“Spare me the details!” is my favorite Straxus-ism after the whole mercy-fools-death thing. And it’s great because we’ll see it again at the end of this issue.
Panels from “The Bridge to Nowhere!” (Marvel Transformers #18)
More examples of Straxus being a badass. You gotta love that he was flying tripod-gun before Galvatron made it cool. And instead of yelling at things and then running away, he cuts them with a metal palm tree! How awesome is that?
