Happy Birthday, Transformers

[Cybersnark]

It's May 08!

On this day 40 years ago, the very first issue of The Transformers hit newsstands, and nothing was ever the same since.

 

[Blot]

 

[Donocropolis]

I wasn't a comic reader (well, buyer I guess. I had a medium stack of my dad's old silver age comics that I would read repeatedly) as a kid, so I never even knew that there WERE Transformers comics until I got back into the brand as a young adult.

But agreed, Happy Birthday, Transformers!

 

[Sciflyer]

I wouldn't say that I was religious about comic books, especially in 1984. I went in and out of stories and would pick up issues that I liked here and there. I started to enjoy drawing around this time, and would mainly choose Transformers comics with cool-looking art that I could attempt to replicate.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

I've told the story here before...

I got into TF via the cartoons, but I did check out the comic with one of those grocery store 3-packs that had 13, 14, and 15.

They were alright. Some characters looked kinda funny, and it was weird that the humans like RAAT were so staunchly anti-Autobot to me. Made them seem stupid to my young mind. One issue didn't even have any Autobots (or barely)! But there wasn't enough compelling me to keep reading.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and I see this:

Well, I was sold! So I asked my dad to get me the comic, as he knew a place where he worked out of town.

Instead, he brought me #29. Still some art strangeness, like Blaster having a visor of some kind and Goldbug being all of two colors, but I was intrigued, and the end had me wondering what happened next. I got the next one, and the one after that, and so on.

It'd take me a few years before I ever got to read Headmasters, though.

But eventually, I tracked down everything. I had all 80 issues of the main series, Headmasters, The Movie, Universe, G2, and even both G.I. Joe crossovers.

And then, years later, in 2011... they were all thrown out.

 

[Big Show]

I can't believe how big our baby has gotten!

 

[wonko the sane?]

My earliest memory is a big red truck that became a big red robot. What a long and twisted ride it's been.

 

[Andrusi]

It's May 08!

On this day 40 years ago, the very first issue of The Transformers hit newsstands, and nothing was ever the same since.

...forever ruining Transformers.

 

[Superomegaprime]

The earliest memory of TF is getting Seaspray, I think, or it might of been seeing Fire in the Sky, not sure which came first but those are my earliest memories of TF, which is kind of why, Seaspray & Skyfire are two characters dear to my heart, thou I don't own the original G1 verisons, never actually owned G1 Jetfire, but I did have Seaspray and Beachcomber as a kid along with Hot Rod & Ultra Magnus, thou I use to call Magnus by a different name, Laildon, at least that is what I thought the inner white robot was called back then, not sure where I exactly got that name from, as its been like thirty five or seven years since then!

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

“In the beginning, The Transformers was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

 

[Sabrblade]

...forever ruining Transformers.

“In the beginning, The Transformers was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

So what I'm getting out of all this is that GoBots was the greatest thing to have ever happened to Transformers in its entire existence.

 

[Donocropolis]

Pfft. All you Johnny-come-latelys. I'VE thought Transformers was ruined since Diaclone/Microman!

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Lousy Transformers. They ruined Transformers!

 

[Superomegaprime]

“In the beginning, The Transformers was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

What do you think this is? H2G2?

 

[DefaultOption]

My first exposure to TF comics was when a kid on the school bus was showing off one of the early Marvel issues (#4 or #5, I think, but after forty years it's a but fuzzy), and I was hooked instantly. We didn't have cable when I was a kid, and we couldn't get the UHF stations that ran the cartoon in weekday syndication with the terrestrial antenna, so the comics and the one episode a week that a local ABC affiliate ran before the network's Saturday morning cartoon block were about it for my consumption of TF media in those early days.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

So what I'm getting out of all this is that GoBots was the greatest thing to have ever happened to Transformers in its entire existence.

GoBots drew fire so that Transformers could break through relatively unscathed.