Big Bot Books: Transformers Generation One More Than Meets The Eye Official Guidebook Vol. 1 & 2

WHEN I first began collecting Transformers in 1984, the thing that fascinated me the most was those short bios on the back of the Generation 1 (G1) packages. Not only did the bios include a function (Beachcomber was a geologist and Doublecross was a supply procurer) and a motto (Optimus Prime: “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.”).

Add to that the cool tech specs, which initially could only be read with a special decoder (it was a red plastic strip). The bios made every TF a true individual and made Cybertron seem like a huge place teeming with diversity—and the mind-blowing idea of robots with personality problems. This is important because the G1 TFs are the rock stars of the entire TF line. All the succeeding series had something to offer, but for me, the G1 TFs are the OG TFs. If anything, the only real criticism I had of the bios/tech specs was that they were too short.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Hasbro had hired Marvel Comics writer Bud Budiansky to write much longer bios for each character and Hasbro had actually shortened them to fit on the back of the packages.

Big Bot Books: The Transformers 30th Anniversary Collection HC

This is the first installment of Big Bot Books, a series of pretty comprehensive articles which will look at the very specialized books related to the Transformers toy line and comic book continuity, but are not new individual issues belonging to ongoing series. We begin with the 2013 “The Transformers 30th Anniversary Collection!” While 2014 represents the grand 30th anniversary of Hasbro’s Transformers toyline, it also represents the epic 30th anniversary of the Transformers Generation 1 comic book continuity, which began in 1984 with Marvel Comics and continues today with IDW Publishing. What better way to commemorate those three decades of graphic adventures than with a hardcover highlighting that entire progression of transformative panel sequences?

Beyond Dark Cybertron: The Comics Transformed

This is an epic time to be a Generation 1 Transformers fan—if you read the comic books.

The 30^th anniversary year for the Transformers, 2014 has already seen one important run end. The original Marvel Comics continuity, begun in 1984 by writer Bud Budiansky, originally finished in 1991 with issue # 80—not bad for what began as a four-issue limited series.  That run was picked up by IDW Publishing in 2012, written by the last writer on the Marvel run, Simon Furman, and ran from # 81 to # 100, finishing the series as Furman had originally envisioned it more than two decades before.  The Marvel UK run, which existed in its own continuity, ended in 1992.

There are various other splinter continuities that either continues very slowly or abruptly ended, the most obvious one is the eye candy but overly dense plotting of the Dreamwave comics. (We have of course left out things like the movie universe, the animated universe and the Prime reality).