So when did those first four Marvel G1 comics come out anyway? (was: G1 Comic musings: Fuel and Organics)
crazysteve
release dates of each issue of Marvel's original 4 issue limited
Transformers series weren't well researched or accurate. I was basing
my guesses on a single shipping list from one issue of Marvel Age
magazine and trying to extrapolate from there. Since Marvel Age ran
shipping lists on a monthly basis, what I really needed was to find
all the Marvel Age books that definitively stated what week each issue
of the first four Transformers comics came out. Well, I went to ebay
and found the first thirty-nine issues of Marvel Age. The Transformers
comic began shipping when Marvel Age was in it's teens, so that lot
was sure to have the issues with the information I wanted. Hoping to
finally get some definitive answers about the "birthdays" of the early
Marvel Transformers comics, I won the auction.
It turns out I was half right. Marvel Age issue 24 states that
Transformers #4 went on sale December 4th, 1984 and Marvel Age issue
21 states Transformers #3 came out on October 2nd, 1984. Unfortunately
the specific weeks that issues 1 and 2 went on sale are not given in
earlier issues of Marvel Age but that doesn't mean they can't be
deduced with a little bit of work. Before I explain my calculations,
the conclusion I came to is that TF issue 2 came out July 31st, 1984
and issue 1 came out May 29th, 1984. These dates are not 100%
infallible but they're the best estimates I could come up with short
of eyewitness testimony from former comic shop employees.
In order to understand how I came to my conclusions I have to explain
the different ways release dates were given in Marvel Age. First
there's the "Coming Attractions" section that listed chronologically
by week of release all the comics with a particular cover date. (Cover
dates were the month printed near the issue number on each comic's
cover. Cover date did not match the actual month of release for the
Transformers comic. The cover date on a TF comic was approximately
three to four months later than the month the book actually hit the
racks.) The second kind of release information was the checklist that
ran in the majority of Marvel comics every month. Most every Marvel
comic ran a "Bullpen Bulletins" page which was basically news, notes
or editorials from the Marvel staff with a checklist of the comics
coming out that month at the bottom of the page. Although the Bullpen
Bulletins checklist didn't give dates of release, it did list the
comics consecutively in shipping order. So it was possible to discern
when a certain book would be coming by paying attention to which group
of comics popped up on the racks. I used to do this as a kid and I
could predict approximately when Transformers would come out even
without buying a copy of Marvel Age.
Transformers #2 had a November cover date and in the Bullpen Bulletins
November checklist it was listed just before Fantastic Four Annual
#18. FF Annual 18 was listed in the "Coming Attractions" section of
Marvel Age 19 as being released the week of July 31st. I can say I'm
pretty certain that July 31st then was the date that Transformers #2
came out. I was able to notice a pattern with the date I came up with
for #2 and the release dates listed for #3 and #4 from later issues of
Marvel Age. It seemed that Transformers shipped the second week of the
shipping cycle. "Shipping cycle" is a term I use to describe the 4
weeks that comics with a given cover date would hit the racks. Comics
with a given cover date wouldn't ship all on the same calendar month.
They'd usually start on the third week of the month and continue until
the second week of the next month. I noticed the first four issues of
the Transformers would ship bi-monthly on the second week of the
shipping cycle, usually the last week of the month or the first week
of the next one depending on how many days there were. This is
important because figuring out issue #1's shipping date would be a lot
harder.
The problem with issue 1 is that the article in Marvel Age 17 about
the Transformers comic ( http://tfarchive.com/comics/misc/preview/ )
ends by stating that issue 1 would ship in April. In fact, the Bullpen
Bulletins April checklists do indeed list Transformers issue #1
alongside comics like Ka-Zar the Savage #33. The problem is that issue
1 of the Transformers has a September cover date and April comics like
Ka-Zar #33 had August cover dates. The week of May 22nd was the
earliest that September cover books hit the racks. To top it off,
first printings of the Transformers #1 don't have Bullpen Bulletins
pages at all. It's as if Marvel didn't know when TF #1 was coming out
so they just didn't print any month's checklist in it. (Second
printings of issues #1-3 have the December checklist from issue 4.) So
either TF #1 was an anomaly September cover that shipped with the
August covers, or it was delayed beyond the intended release date and
the early info printed in Marvel Age 17 and the Bullpen Bulletins
monthly April checklist was wrong. I think #1 was late or delayed and
in keeping with the "second week of the shipping cycle" pattern, that
puts the street date for issue #1 at May 29th.
So in closing,
Transformers #1-May 29, 1984
Transformers #2-Jul 31, 1984
Transformers #3-Oct 02, 1984
Transformers #4-Dec 04, 1984
Maybe Bob Budiansky could shed some light on the April/May release of
#1 mystery, but it's such a small detail that I doubt he'd remember
and it'd probably take me 900 words to even set up the question.
Zobovor
wrote:
> So in closing,
> Transformers #1-May 29, 1984
> Transformers #2-Jul 31, 1984
> Transformers #3-Oct 02, 1984
> Transformers #4-Dec 04, 1984
That's some phenomenal research, crazysteve. You truly have mad
skillz. Ell oh ell.
Zob
FortMax
wrote:
After adding these dates to Teletraan-I, I was informed that issue one
could not have been released on May 29th, as there was a review posted
on net.comics on May 22 1984, 12:07 am.
FortMax
And for a time compairson, Google gives the time of this post as 2:40
pm
crazysteve
> one could not have been released on May 29th, as there was a review
> posted on net.comics on May 22 1984, 12:07 am.
Thanks! That's one more piece of the puzzle. I wouldn't add anything I
write to Teletraan since it's all mostly guesses.
crazysteve
> skillz. Ell oh ell.
Phenomenally wrong maybe, and mostly skilled at making an idiot of
myself to large internet communities.
Zobovor
wrote:
> Phenomenally wrong maybe, and mostly skilled at making an idiot of
> myself to large internet communities.
Don't be so hard on yourself. The lengths you went to in order to
determine these release dates is still impressive.
Zob
Chad Rushing
wrote:
>
> Phenomenally wrong maybe, and mostly skilled at making an idiot of
> myself to large internet communities.
Ha, in that case, join the club! I am a founding member who has
posted gobs of stuff online that is sure to come back to haunt me
years from now. The epitaph on my tombstone should probably be, "If I
had only known then what I know now ...," because I find myself
thinking that to myself on more occasions than I care to count.
- Chad