Transformers UK — the comic that (nearly) cheated death
This is the story of the comic that never was. Or, more accurately, the comic that nearly was.
The British Transformers comic, or TFUK as it’s affectionately known, launched in September 1984 and ended in January 1992, making it one of Marvel UK’s longest-running titles.
Over the course of its 332 issues, it reprinted all of the stories from the American Transformers comic, along with hundreds of pages of all-new UK material. It started as a fortnightly, switched to weekly on its first anniversary, and then — for its final nine months — went fortnightly again while it burned through the last of the US issues.
And then, just before the end, something unexpected happened. The editorial in TFUK #330, published in December 1991, announced that the comic was going monthly. Not only that, but — for the first time in over a year — it would be publishing new UK stories. All of which meant that, contrary to expectations, Transformers would continue, outliving its US counterpart. Issue #333, we were told, would hit the stands in February 1992.
But it was not to be. A few weeks later, in the final issue — #332 — readers were informed that, alas, the monthly was no more and that TFUK was, in effect, dead. Long-time readers were left to wonder what had changed, and what might have been.
Now, thirty years on, we can try to answer both those questions.
As a kid in the late 70s and early 80s, you were either Team Tiswas or Team Swap Shop. The former, on ITV, was raucous and irreverent, while the latter, being on the BBC, was friendly but slightly ‘safer’ and less anarchic. There was a parallel in the world of British ‘boys adventure’ comics: in the mid-to-late 80s, you either read IPC’s 2000AD or Marvel UK’s Transformers.
Throughout 1986, the two titles were neck and neck, vying for the top spot, both selling around 104,000 copies each week. Some weeks, 2000AD would pull ahead, some weeks TFUK. Contemporary sales data suggested that a single issue of a comic was read by an average of 2.5 people, meaning that IPC and Marvel could, with some confidence, tell advertisers that their flagship titles had readerships of over a quarter of a million.
The rivalry was heated but short-lived: in 1987, 2000AD would pull ahead, hitting a circulation peak of 112,000 in late 1988, while TFUK would suffer a gradual but irreversible decline in readership until its cancellation in January 1992, seven and a half years after its launch.
Three decades later, TFUK remains one of the most beloved British comics, and unquestionably the most popular of the run of so-called ‘toy titles’ that began — with TFUK, in fact — in 1984. The secret of its success? Well, the massively popular toy line helped, as did TV advertising bankrolled by Hasbro (from September 1984 to as late as October 1987, TFUK was being promoted via 10-second adverts on ITV). But by 1988, four years in, Transformers no longer ruled the toy shelves, the cartoon was no longer in production (and had no presence on terrestrial UK TV anyway), and merchandising had all but dried up, with licensees looking to newer, hotter properties.
By this point, what kept TFUK alive were the new UK stories, the first of which (‘Man Of Iron’ by Steve Parkhouse) had appeared in 1985. Drawn by a variety of artists but nearly all written by Simon Furman, they began as a buffer to buy time between reprints of the American material but soon took on a life of their own, telling epic adventures about time travel, gods and monsters.
It was common for readers of a toy-based comic to stick with it for a while then defect to a rival toy line, or decide they were too old for toys (or comics) altogether. But while TFUK was far from immune, it managed to retain a hardcore readership which kept it afloat far longer than was the norm. During its swansong, it would print letters from 15 and 16 year olds who made a point of saying they’d been there since the beginning.
The enduring affection that comic fans feel for TFUK — and the resurgence in popularity of Transformers generally — explains why questions about its demise are still being asked today. As this essay hopefully proves, there is a strong argument that had Marvel UK not changed their minds and TFUK monthly had gone ahead, it would have lasted for a couple of years — perhaps even until the end of Marvel UK, which was folded into Panini (itself part of Marvel Europe) in 1995.
This argument — that TFUK Monthly had a decent future — rests on two sets of facts, both of which deserve close consideration. The first relates to the continued publication of Transformers specials, the second to the launch of the short-lived Transformers: Generation 2 toy line.
Let’s look at the specials first. In the early 90s, it was common for Marvel UK to publish holiday specials when an ongoing title (especially those based on a licensed property) ceased ongoing publication. Comprised entirely of reprint material, these specials catered for a small but evidently (just about) profitable audience of die-hard fans (and perhaps a smattering of latecomers) who had been fond of the parent comic and the franchise on which it was based, even if by this point — with the toys no longer on the shelves and the shows no longer on the air — the franchise itself had very little purchase on the public’s imagination. Holiday specials enabled Marvel UK to generate a modest return on a license that was otherwise dormant and therefore practically worthless.
Following their cancellation, TFUK’s one-time stablemates Action Force (later rebranded G.I. Joe), Thundercats and Real Ghostbusters all enjoyed an afterlife in the form of the holiday special. Repeats of the cartoons, either on terrestrial TV or on Sky, helped fan fandom’s flame while the toys started to disappear from stores: Kenner’s Ghostbusters range stopped after 1990, while Rainbow Toys’ Thundercats action figures appeared, albeit in dribs and drabs, until 1992.
Although G.I. Joe toys appeared in UK shops until 1994, the comic managed only a short run of holiday specials: one in late 1991, continuing a storyline left hanging when the Joes were dropped from TFUK, and two more, in Spring and Summer 1992. After Thundercats ended in January 1991 it was succeeded by five specials, the last published in April 1994. Fans of Real Ghostbusters got seven specials after their comic was cancelled in September 1992. The last one — a Halloween Special, appropriately enough — appeared in 1995.
Starting in July 1992, six months after TFUK’s cancellation, Marvel UK would go on to publish no fewer than eight Transformers specials, at the rate of three a year — usually in April, July and December, to coincide with the Easter, Summer and Christmas school holidays.
Obviously, the publication of a special indicated that its predecessor had sold well enough to justify another one. The final TFUK special was published in December 1994. Clearly, throughout 1992, 1993 and 1994 there was a large enough and dedicated enough fanbase to make at least the occasional release financially worthwhile. It’s likely that the people buying the specials were TFUK fans rather than newcomers, but as Hasbro was still producing new toys throughout this period it’s possible that some newer, younger fans were on board too.
Did 1994’s Winter Special put the final nail in TFUK’s coffin by selling so poorly that another special (which would most likely have been scheduled for April 1995) could not be justified? Maybe not — and this is where Generation 2 comes in.
When TFUK was cancelled, all concerned, both here and in the US, thought that Transformers, as a franchise, was on the way out. In the US, Hasbro had ended the toy range in 1990 and considered it permanently discontinued. And while Hasbro Europe planned to produce their own Transformers for four more years (as reported in the pages of TFUK, in response to a reader bemoaning the ‘inevitable’ end of the comic), the franchise was not expected to last much beyond that. In a letter to readers published in July 1991, in the final issue of the American Transformers series, Furman had said that the chances of the franchise being revived were essentially non-existent.
No one was to know that, within a year of his pessimistic if understandable prediction, Hasbro US would start making plans for Transformers: Generation 2 — inspired, ironically enough, by the success of the 1991 European toy range. On 5th October 1992, less than nine months after the end of TFUK, a Hasbro press release would announce plans for a multi-million-dollar Transformers relaunch. The first Generation 2 toys appeared in the US the following month. Most surprisingly of all, September 1993 saw the launch of a new, ongoing Marvel (US) comic of the same name. A continuation of the original storyline, with Furman returning as writer, it was preceded by a four-part crossover story starting in G.I. Joe #139, published a few months earlier.
Marvel’s Generation 2 would only last 12 issues. But even as the last issue was being published in the US in August 1994, plans were underway to launch a ‘G2’ comic in Britain. And this time, Marvel UK would not be involved.
In 1987, IPC had fenced off its comics division, renamed it Fleetway, and sold it to Robert Maxwell. Inspired by the success TFUK (and M.A.S.K., which it had inherited from IPC), Fleetway would go on to launch several licensed titles between 1987 and 1993, some successful (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Red Dwarf Smegazine, Thunderbirds, Sonic the Comic), some not (Supernaturals, Ring Raiders, Toxic Crusaders).
We don’t know whether Marvel UK was offered the opportunity to publish Transformers: Generation 2 and turned it down, prompting Hasbro to go to Fleetway, or whether Fleetway was the favoured licensee from the outset. What we do know is that Fleetway’s G2 launched in September 1994, two months before the publication of the final Marvel UK Transformers special. It’s likely that the terms of Marvel UK’s license allowed it to continue publishing Transformers comics until the end of the year but not beyond.
(The cover to Fleetway’s G2 #1 boasts the intriguing strapline, ‘The end was just the beginning’. Given that the toy range had not ended, it seems that Fleetway was explicitly targeting TFUK readers who had stuck with the title to the very end.)
It’s impossible to say whether there would have been further TFUK specials in 1995 had Fleetway not acquired the Transformers license. In any case, Fleetway’s G2 comic did not last long, its final issue arriving in January 1995.
***
While the decision-makers at Marvel UK could not have known in late 1991 that Generation 2 was on the horizon, TFUK was nonetheless selling enough at the time of its demise to warrant continued investment in the license in the form of the aforementioned holiday specials.
To gauge the health of TFUK circa 1991 and thus better understand the reasoning behind the initial decision to go monthly, the prospects of the title’s medium-term survival, and the u-turn that led to its cancellation, it is worth examining the fate of its sister titles, Thundercats and Real Ghostbusters. Both owed their creation to TFUK, which had proved to Marvel UK that licensed titles could be lucrative. Although aimed at slightly younger children, they both — Thundercats in particular, especially in its early days — featured scripts, pencils and covers by creators associated with TFUK.
Thundercats’ trajectory was unusual. Launched as a weekly and briefly edited by Furman (before he was recalled to TFUK to replace Ian Rimmer as editor), with its 79th issue (September 1988) it merged with the extremely short-lived Galaxy Rangers comic, before dumping its new co-stars and becoming a fortnightly a mere five issues later. From issue #95, published April 1989, it went monthly, upping its page count to 28 by reprinting some older stories.
The last all-new British story, presumably commissioned before the decision was taken to go monthly, appeared in Thundercats #98 (July 1989), while the last American story (a reprint, but new to UK readers) featured in issue #100 (September 1989). From #101 onwards, Thundercats was comprised entirely of old reprints, the letters page was dropped, and the editorial tone changed in a way that suggested the title was now aimed at younger readers. Something must have worked, however, because — in a highly unusual move — the title reverted to fortnightly with issue #105 in February 1990 (something that doesn’t seem to have happened to any other title, Marvel UK or otherwise). Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall, and Thundercats managed 24 more issues before quietly bowing out with issue #129 in January 1991, nearly four years after its first issue.
Despite being a lot more successful, Real Ghostbusters enjoyed only a slightly longer shelf life. Not long after launching in 1988, it usurped TFUK as Marvel UK’s bestselling ‘boys’ comic and, like TFUK in 1985, went from fortnightly to weekly. But after its 1989/90 peak, the decline in readers was sharper, and the need to cut costs arose sooner: only a few months after its 150th issue (April 1991), it dropped its story-rich text features. From #172 (September 1991) it stopped producing new comic strips and become a reprint-only title, recycling US and UK material that had featured in earlier issues.
Strikingly, every scrap of editorial content was stripped away too: there was no letters page, no ‘next issue’ blurb, and even the editorial page, traditionally used to welcome readers and promote the issue’s contents, was replaced by a pin-up (the same one each issue) and a cover artist credit. The cutbacks weren’t enough to prevent a price increase, however: with issue #178 it changed from 55p a week (the same as TFUK) to 65p. Issue #185, dated 28th December 1991, was the last weekly issue, with the cover to #186 — dated February 92 — announcing that the title was ‘Now monthly with extra pages!’
It’s notable that Real Ghostbusters jumped from weekly to monthly, skipping the then-traditional fortnightly phase; but of more interest is the fact that the first monthly issue came out at the same time as TFUK #333 was expected to arrive, and shared the same (36 page) format, too. It seems that Marvel UK planned for its two last-standing licensed titles (excluding Doctor Who Magazine, which was aimed at older readers, and the magazines aimed at pre-schoolers) to become monthlies simultaneously.
Something else changed when Real Ghostbusters went monthly, something which presumably would have differentiated it from a TFUK monthly. The title was reclassified as a nursery comic, and started to feature adverts for the likes of Care Bears and Thomas the Tank Engine. It lasted eight reprint-only issues in its new format, ending with issue #193 (September 1992).
Thundercats printed nothing but recycled material for the last 15 months (28 issues) of its life. For Real Ghostbusters, this was 12 months (22 issues). It’s striking that while in its later years TFUK would occasionally reprint old British strips, every one of its 332 issues contained at least one story that UK readers had never seen before. The last Brit-strip appeared in #289 (September 1990), with issues #290 to #332 reprinting the final 17 issues of the US comic.
In 1991, with news of the American Transformers comic coming to an end, Marvel UK had to make a decision about TFUK’s future before the supply of US material was exhausted. They had three choices: cancel the comic; or continue the comic, make it a monthly, and either go reprint-only (as was the norm) or commission all-new stories.
Unusually — in fact, very possibly uniquely — TFUK readers knew that the comic’s days were probably numbered.
Because TFUK had admitted a few years earlier that its stories were a mixture of American reprints and British originals, older readers would have realised that since the UK strips had stopped, the comic was now entirely reliant on imported material. In issue #319 (July 1991), a reader reported that the US comic had been cancelled and deduced that TFUK would soon follow suit. “Since Marvel US revealed that they would be canning Transformers in the States,” replied ‘Blaster’ [presumably editor Harry Papadopoulos — a longstanding TFUK convention being that editors or editorial assistants answered letters in the guise of Transformers], “we’ve received a great many letters from worried readers deeply concerned that [TFUK] faces imminent disaster… We have enough Yankee material to last at least until the end of the 1991. After that? You know what they say: ‘Never stop fighting until the fight is done.”
The last line is interesting in hindsight. In 1991 Marvel UK had a new Editor in Chief, Paul Neary, who had been tasked with revitalising the company. As we shall see, the writing was on the wall for several of the licensed titles, TFUK quite possibly among them. Perhaps the behind-the-scenes push-and-pull over the comic’s future began much earlier than the mixed messages in its final issues suggested.
In issue #319, it’s interesting that Blaster felt confident enough to assure readers that TFUK would continue for the rest of the year. At this point, the comic’s average weekly circulation had dropped to 19,839 — a far cry from its heyday. But after shedding an average of 10,000 readers every six months since January 1988, there were, by now, signs of welcome stabilisation: in the 12 months from July 1990, only 4,025 readers had jumped ship.
We don’t know precisely when the plateauing began, but it’s possible that long-term readers were encouraged to stick around by the switch back to full colour in October 1990 (following the end of the black and white UK strips) and by the decision, made possible by the comic becoming a fortnightly again, to revert to TFUK’s ‘classic’ format (with a full 10 pages of lead story at the start of the comic). The latter happened under Papadopoulos, successor to Euan Peters, who would remain with the title until the end.
Papadopoulos recognised that with the toy-line being on the wane, he couldn’t rely on attracting new, young fans. Instead, TFUK’s future depended on holding onto existing readers, many of whom were by now in their early teens. To that end, encouraged by Furman’s grown-up Unicron War storyline, he commissioned more dynamic, painterly — some might even say pretentious — covers, a departure from the norm that he acknowledged in an editorial at the time.
Issue #301’s cover by John Marshall, Stewart Johnson and Robin Bouttell riffed on the iconic photograph ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’; issue #306, by Johnson and Bouttell, was a homage to Rodin’s The Thinker (complete with a quote from Tacitus); and issue #309 led with a nightmarish close-up of a fused and screaming Megatron and Ratchet — an exercise in German expressionism with a strapline (“21st Century Schizoid!”) which suggested that Johnson and Bouttell were echoing the sleeve of King Crimson’s 1969 album In the Court of the Crimson King, which contained the song ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’. It was all a far cry from the bright and jokey covers from late ‘89/early ’90, full of puns and speech balloons, that often sat closer to Real Ghostbusters than Action Force.
Although successful in appealing to TFUK’s older readers, Papadopoulos could do nothing to stop the US comic being cancelled with issue #80 — although it’s worth noting that for a time, thanks to Furman and the likes of UK artists Geoff Senior, Andrew Wildman and Stephen Baskerville, it looked like TFUS might enjoy a longer run than anticipated. It’s all but certain that had it survived, TFUK would have continued too, the two destined to be coterminous.
British readers got an update on TFUK’s fate in #324 (September 1991), at which point it looked like the comic might be turning into a reprint-only title à la Thundercats. “Whatever happens to Transformers in future,” wrote Blaster, “there can be little doubt there will be no new stories… However, depending on our situation on reaching 332 [NB: this was the first time the last issue had been given a number], things may not be as bleak as they seem. More on that in the future…” Eight weeks later, in issue #328 (November 1991), Blaster again assured readers that “it’s by no means certain that the comic will go into retirement…”
Scattered across the UK, a handful of readers had reason to be optimistic. Transmasters UK was a small, unofficial fan club established in 1990, practically all of its members having grown up on TFUK. November 1991’s Trans Talk, the fan club newsletter, led with a bulletin entitled ‘Transformers #333’. The brief article described how, earlier that month, a member of Transmasters UK, favouring the direct approach, had telephoned Marvel UK’s offices to ask after the fate of the comic. Presumably speaking to a (very candid) Papadopoulos, they’d been told that the comic was going monthly, and that it would include brand new stories set on Cybertron. “Congratulations to everyone who wrote to Marvel begging them not to cancel the comic,” the Trans Talk article concluded. “It worked!”
Papadopoulos delivered the news publicly in issue #330, published 21 December 1991, devoting the entire editorial to the big announcement: “The BIG NEWS! From the mail, we know that you’ve all been a little glum about where Transformers has been going — into the trashcan seems to be the generally accepted view. Well, surprise, surprise! As of issue 333, Transformers will get a bright, polished new look. You’ll be getting a 36-page monthly [making it identical in size/feel to the most recent Transformers holiday special, Collected Comics 19] containing 10 pages of newly coloured Transformers classic adventures, 11 pages that feature the return of G I Joe… plus five originated new pages of Transformers that will continue the saga of the relentless war between the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons! What better way to kick off 1992?!”
The fact that there was to be 10 pages of recoloured strips tells us that Papadopoulos planned for every monthly issue to feature two of the (originally black and white) strips that had run from issue #215 to #289 — a very canny (re)use of old material: reprints, but with a new lick of paint.
Of those 74 B&W strips, six had already appeared (in colour) in July’s Transformers Annual, leaving a bank of 68 — except that issues #330 and #331 contained the ‘The Big Shutdown!’ (from #230 and #231), newly coloured by ex-editor and professional colourist Euan Peters. These would have been the first fruits of the ‘restoration’ project, and something of a dry run for the recoloured monthly strip (perhaps they were even intended to show a sceptical Paul Neary what to expect). ‘The Big Shutdown!’ was the earliest B&W two-parter, suggesting that Papadopoulos was reaching as far back as he could so that the story would seem ‘new’ to the largest number of readers.
At first glance, the return of G I Joe was surprising. TFUK had dropped the long-running G I Joe back-up strip with issue #305, bidding the Joes good riddance rather than farewell: “We’ve kept our New Year’s resolution to dump the squaddies,” sniffed the editorial at the time, adding for good measure that the current storyline was a damp squib. At the same time, bringing Snake Eyes and Co back for the monthly made sense: one, their return might win back a few readers who’d left after #305; two, it would keep Hasbro happy; and three — most important of all — it was free content.
But the most unexpected (and exciting) piece of news in issue #330’s editorial was of course the promise of new material. Papadopoulos must have determined that never-before-seen stories were essential if TFUK was going to survive. Comics like Real Ghostbusters and Thundercats (and ‘pure’ nursery titles like Care Bears) managed to exist as reprint titles (for a while, at least) because their fans tended to be younger and grew out of the comic quicker, meaning that their readerships had a quicker turnover: new readers would replace old, and for those new arrivals, the reprints would be fresh. Not so with TFUK, whose readers, many of whom had seen it all before and expected something new.
Obviously, producing five new pages (in colour) every month would have carried a cost — one greater, per issue, than that incurred in 1989/90, when the comic was running B&W stories. This, plus the expense of colouring 10 pages and producing a new cover (there being no more US covers to reuse), would have meant that each issue of TFUK Monthly would have cost significantly more to produce than any since issue #214. (At least the monthly would have a repository of ‘new’ Transformer profiles it could use for free, there being over 60 leftover from Marvel US’s unpublished Transformers Universe Volume 2.)
There was another cost in addition to the new comic strips, colouring, and covers: Combat Colin. Although not mentioned in the editorial, there were plans for Lew Stringer’s much-loved comic strip — which was already due to end in spectacular fashion in #332 — to appear in the monthly.
“Marvel UK asked me to continue Combat Colin,” says Stringer, “but as the budget was limited, they only wanted it as a half page. As I’d effectively ‘killed off’ Colin in the last fortnightly issue, I was going to do a series called Untold Tales of Combat Colin. As it was to be monthly, they’d probably have been self-contained slapstick strips like the very early Combat Colins. I only got as far as thinking up ideas before they decided against launching the monthly.”
If long-time readers were walking on air after issue #330, they were brought crashing back down to Earth with a month later. Written in a different, larger font, the editorial in #332 was immediately conspicuous: it looked as if it was a last-minute replacement, written in haste, complete with poor grammar. The editorial ‘voice’ was different, too. “Alas poor readers!” it began. “We have some bad news for you. Contrary to popular belief (Transformers #330), issue #333 will not materialise. This is just as devastating for us as it is for you, our loyal readers.”
Although #332 bore evidence of cost-cutting (the back-up strip was a reprint of #250’s Christmas strip, ‘The Greatest Gift Of All’, but in the original black and white), as a final issue it landed well. Furman tied up the US storyline in fitting fashion, Blaster said his goodbyes, and Combat Colin was given a double-length finale — albeit one that was somewhat bittersweet, given that in one panel Colin holds up a newspaper with the headline ‘Transformers Goes Monthly’.
So why the last-minute change of plan (which clearly came as a surprise to Papadopoulos)? The simplest explanation is that despite earlier signs of stabilisation, sales figures for July to December 1991 — when reported early in 1992 — were worse than expected, and Marvel UK decided that the cost of TFUK monthly — new strips and all — simply could not be justified. However, this explanation depends on those sales figures being available mere days into 1992, which seems unlikely.
The other explanation is that Paul Neary, having originally (and, perhaps, reluctantly) greenlit the switch to monthly, changed his mind.
“Any decision on the future of TFUK would have been made by Paul,” confirms John Freeman, editor of Doctor Who Monthly at the time. “Plus [Marvel UK] CEO Vincent Conran and, possibly, Jim Galton of Marvel US. After his arrival [in April 1991], Paul certainly moved away from a reliance on licensed comics, especially after Robert Sutherland [Marvel UK’s managing director, and the person responsible for steering the company towards licensed brands, including Transformers] took many of the most lucrative titles like Thomas the Tank Engine with him to Redan.”
Neary was certainly determined to take a ‘new broom’ approach. In a candid interview with UK newsstand magazine Comics World in October 1992, Neary had described his first impressions of Marvel UK in 1991. “In general, everything was looking ten years out of date,” he said. “The ideas had gone stale, people were on tickover, and there were very cosy little groups of editors and artists, none of whom were really calling each other on the ordinariness of what they were doing. Everything needed re-routing.” Elsewhere in the article, he explains his decision to overhaul of the character of Death’s Head, Marvel UK’s breakout character, and it is here we get the closest to an insight into why he might have ultimately pulled the plug on TFUK: “I didn’t think,” he says, “there was much future in Transformers-based robots.”
Freeman picks up the story 30 years later: “I’m speculating, but [axing TFUK] would definitely have been an opportunity for Paul to have highlighted the dangers of Marvel UK’s success being reliant on continued licensing of others’ IP — which, with Fleetway sniffing to compete, could see a title disappear overnight to another publisher when a licensing contract was up for renewal. Hand in hand with the move away from reliance on licensed titles, Marvel US saw Marvel UK as a possible means to knock sales of emergent Image Comics, creating a range of titles under the Marvel brand that retailers would favour over the independents.”
The end of TFUK came very shortly after the sudden and unexpected decommissioning of Marvel UK’s ‘Boys Department’, who over the years had been responsible for the creation of Transformers, Spider-Man & Zoids, Action Force, Real Ghostbusters and more.
“If I remember correctly,” Freeman continues, “Harry Papadopoulos, Euan Peters and Steve White, and perhaps John Tomlinson, too, were all let go at the same time. The ‘Boys Department’ was gutted in one fell swoop after Paul presented [Conran, Galton et al with] his assessment of the company’s titles. It was a horrible day when people I’d worked alongside went in one go like that, and unsettling, too. Doctor Who Magazine was one of the few titles Paul was positive about at the time, and I was moved from that title to Group Editor of many Genesis core titles, and made editor of, initially, Havoc and Meltdown, then Overkill.”
Simon Furman had left Marvel UK in late 1988 to become a freelancer. “I was several degrees of removed from TFUK at the time of its demise,” he says today. “I hadn’t been directly involved since the end of the black and white five pagers, and at the time I was living up in Cumbria — so not even in and around the office as much, so I wasn’t privy to whatever the editorial situation/decision-making process was when it came to TFUK. In fact, I think I only became aware of its cancellation after the event.
“Did Harry ask me to write for the monthly? No, to my knowledge no one ever approached me about continuing the story after US #80, other than the Another Time and Place prose story in the 1991 Annual. It was a weird time and everything was very much in flux. My gut feeling is that lots of stuff was already in motion [when Neary arrived], like the Death’s Head series and maybe plans for the newly-coloured TF material, and it just got axed by Neary after he took the helm. His focus was wholly on a kind of Image-style art makeover that would appeal to the US market, though a few of the licensed A4 titles that were bringing in money still kept rolling.
“As for why he cancelled TFUK, it’s probably that TF just wasn’t making much, if any, money, and even five pages per month of originated material would have been judged as throwing good money after bad. In many ways, it had run its course — it’s not like it ended with issue #79 or anything — and that may have been the natural point to kill it.”
Neary chose not to be interviewed for this piece, explaining that he didn’t have much to relate about Transformers and concluding that this was down to the editor at the time handling the title very ably — even though it’s possible, given Freeman’s account of the end of the Boys Department, that Papadopoulos was let go prior to #332 hitting the stands.
The question of precisely when TFUK’s fate was sealed will probably remain forever unknown. The last original British cover was for #330, which also contained the first of the recoloured B&W strips, and the news of the monthly: all indicators that the future was rosy. But another new cover would also have been needed for #331 (the cover to TFUS #80 being more appropriate for #332), and there’s no evidence that this was ever commissioned — instead, in a sign that costs were being heavily cut, that issue’s cover was simply a repurposed splash page from TFUS #80.
The extent to which key creators were kept in the loop also suggests a muddled chain of events: Lew Stringer thought the comic was going monthly but that he wouldn’t be involved, so killed off Combat Colin — only to be offered a half-page Combat Colin strip in #333.
Most telling of all, Furman says he was never approached about writing new stories. If a new story was due to appear in February 1992, it would typically have needed a lead-in time of well over two months [Furman’s script for #230’s ‘The Big Shutdown’, published 5th August 1989, indicate that pencils were due on the 29th May and inks on the 5th of June]; but Marvel UK should have been in talks with Furman even before that, in case he said no and they needed to find someone else.
Transmasters was told in mid-November 1991 that new stories were planned… so why were no creators being sounded out at that time? Stringer offers one possible answer, saying that “as far as I recall, the monthly was going to launch a few months after the weekly ended,” but this seems unlikely: it would have been very unusual for an ongoing comic to go on hiatus, especially when the numbering was set to continue, and especially when the issue prior to the hiatus would have read like a finale and thus made for a dangerously tempting jumping-off point.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. And maybe — as Furman suggests — it’s better that TFUK bowed out when it did — certainly if the alternative, contrary to the promises made in issue #330, was an all-reprint title which might have one day, without warning or explanation, quietly disappeared from the shelves. And even if the monthly had gone ahead as intended, with new stories set in the same continuity, there is a risk that — arriving in five-page instalments, once a month — they would have been anticlimactic after the epic sweep of Furman’s final TFUS issues.
Nonetheless, 30 years on it is fun — if frustrating — to imagine what might have been, especially knowing what came next for Transformers as a brand. The Real Ghostbusters monthly, launched at the same time, cost 95p, but it’s likely that TFUK monthly would have been more expensive, given the new material within. The Transformers holiday special published in July 1992 cost 99p; three months later, the autumn special was £1.25. Perhaps a jump from 55p to £1.25 in February 1992 would have driven some readers away and, in turn, driven the comic to cancellation. But TFUK would have needed to survive for only 18 months — until #350 in July 1993 (at which point, lest we forget, Marvel UK was still regularly publishing Transformers holiday specials) — before being in a position to drop the expensive five-page UK stories and tap into a supply of new, free material in the form of the Marvel US Transformers: Generation 2 stories, starting with the G I Joe crossover.
Such material would have been plentiful enough, if reprinted in roughly 11-page bursts, to sustain TFUK for one last stretch, with the final G2 story being reproduced , in full, in TFUK #375. Fittingly, its publication in Autumn 1995 would have been mere months before the end of Marvel UK itself.
***
With thanks to John Freeman, Simon Furman, John Barber, Lew Stringer, Paul Neary, Graham Kibble-White, Ryan Frost (who wrote the encyclopaedic guide to G1, ‘Transform And Roll Out’, from which the TFUK sales data is taken) and most of all Graham Thomson, who is responsible for the speculative TFUK covers.
Graham’s also responsible for the fantastic TFUK Guide, which takes a close look, every month, at five or six issues of Transformers UK. You can find out more by following the Guide on Twitter @TheTFUKGuide and by visiting his Patreon page.
Be sure to check out John Freeman’s indispensable guide to British comics and pop culture, Down The Tubes.