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Comics Reading Club: Zob's Thoughts on Marvel Comics THE TRANSFORMERS #13
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Zobovor
Jul 31, 2021, 12:07:11 PM7/31/21
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THE TRANSFORMERS issue #13 has a cover date of February 1986. The story is entitled "Shooting Star!" and written, of course, by Bob Budiansky. The front cover is quite striking, with a human hand carrying a firearm with a Decepticon badge displayed prominently on its side, clearly identifying this as Megatron in gun mode. Our mystery human is pointing it towards a chaotic scene in which police officers, army soldiers with tanks, and random citizens appear to have succumbed to Megatron's wrath. "The Menace of Megatron!" the cover promises. Buildings have been destroyed! The road is in ruins! But who is the mystery human who is seemingly worthy of wielding the mighty Decepticon leader? Who, indeed? Is that a partial reflection of his face, visible in the glass of the gun sights? So mysterious! So enticing! What a great cover!
Don Perlin handled the pencils this issue, with Al Gordon doing the inks. Janice Chiang was our letterer. I don't mention Nel Yomtov very often, since it's a given that he did the colors. He colored pretty much the entire Marvel run in the USA.
So, we meet our protagonist on the opening splash page. He's a down-on-his-luck small-time gangster named Joey Slick, and he's kind of a loser. He's running through a trash-filled river bed, being chased by two thugs with guns named Whitey and Marko. It seems Joey took a risky chance, "borrowing" some money from his boss, Jake Lomax, and tried to make some fash cash by betting on a horse race. The gambit failed, and now Lomax has sent his goons to collect from Joey.
Joey stumbles and falls, noticing what appears to be a pistol partially submerged in the river. In desperation, he pulls the gun on the thugs. It doesn't work. The thugs not only start taunting Joey, but taunting the gun as well, laughing and daring it to shoot them. Quite inexplicably, the mystery gun does as it's told. Joey expresses total surprise as it goes off in his hands, inadvertantly saving him from an ill-timed fate as the thugs are knocked cold with a stun blast.
Joey Slick absconds to an abandoned barn to work things out. He continues talking to the gun, demanding to know what it is or where it came from. The gun once again obeys, leaping out of his hands and transforming into Megatron's robot mode. (The last time we saw Megatron in issue #8, Ratchet had knocked him off a ledge and he disappeared into the snow. He folded up into gun mode just before he landed, remember? Bob Budiansky was planning this story many months in advance!)
We get the standard "we were at war on Cybertron before we came to Earth" shpeil, and Megatron also explains that his higher brain functions must have been knocked offline during the fall. Incapable of thinking for himself, he can only do as others instruct him. Joey is mulling this over, and you can practically see the gears turning in his brain. Perhaps his bad luck is about to change.
I'm going to say as an aside that the first time I ever saw this issue of the comic book was when it was laying on a table in the waiting room of a kids' barber shop. I was waiting to get my hair cut and I thumbed through the pages of this issue. I was familiar with the cartoon by this point, of course, and I found myself wondering why there were so few Transformers in the story, or why Megatron was such an idiot in this story. This was nothing at all like the television show that I'd grown to known and love! It was issues like this one that had convinced me that Marvel Comics was not worth my time, and it was quite a few years until I ever gave it another chance.
Elsewhere, Jake Lomax is none too pleased that his cronies managed to let Joey Slick escape. His estate includes a swimming pool, and we get a prerequisite panel with a scantily-clad lady friend of Lomax's climbing out of the pool. (It adds nothing to the story, of course, but neither did Jessie's ballet class. In both cases, it was clearly included only to add sex appeal to the comic book.) The chick is named Charlene, incidentally—the first in a very long line of incidental characters who share that name. It's very likely that Budiansky was naming at least some of his characters after personal acquaitances or co-workers (it's well-known that Donnie Finkelberg was named after Marvel editor Danny Fingeroth, for example). He clearly knew somebody named Charlene, given how many times he returned to this name for his female characters.
Joey Slick takes a stroll through his neighborhood, taking the time to accept a free apple from Mr. Kim, an Asian street vendor who speaks in stereotypically stilted English, and throwing a football back and forth with the neighborhood kids. See, he's not such a bad guy. He likes kids and foreigners! But he's still stuck in a bind. He arrives at his single-room apartment, He's such a loser that he's got a pistol right in his hand, and yet the worst thing he can think to do is smash a mirror with it. Good thing he didn't find a hammer in the river. He'd probably try to shoot himself with it.
When he hears footsteps down the hall, he slips out the window an instant before four more goons show up to finish what Whitey and Marko couldn't. Joey escapes, planning to spend the night in a motel, but he doesn't even have enough cash to cover one night's stay. (The motel attendant is reading a newspaper with the headline "ROBOTS LEAVE PLANE PLANT," which tells us that in Shockwave's absence, the Decepticons have finally pulled out of Blackrock Aerospace Plant Number One.)
In desperation, Joey robs the local convenience store using Megatron. In the aftermath, when he finds the police hot on his tail, he uses Megatron to utterly destroy the road, causing the police cruiser to crash. He demolishes an overpass to stop a second cop car.
Well, it's not long until Joey figures out that he's basically unbeatable as long as he's got Megatron under his power. Newspapers dub him the "Super Shooter." Armored cars, banks, gold shipments, jewelry stores, they're all his for the taking. He even gets himself some new duds, and transforms himself into a dapper mobster on par with Jake Lomax himself. Even when the National Guard meets him outside after one of his robberies, he single-handedly takes them out. He's unbeatable, and he knows it.
Joey seems to have everything he's ever wanted. Now, he's got his own cronies at his beck and call, he's got a luxurious penthouse suite, and he's got more money than he knows what to do with. But, for all his newfound wealth and fame, his life feels just as empty as before. He recognizes the only reason he's got "friends" at all now is because of his wealth. In truth, the only one he can really trust is Megatron, which isn't saying much, since the Decepticon leader is still little more than a mindless automaton.
Joey pays a visit to his old neighborhood, but his reputation precedes him. Mr. Kim is terrified of him, while the kids have given up on sports and are positively enamored with the idea that he's a big-time bank-robbing criminal with a super gun. It's interesting how many people are affected, peripherally, by his newfound power. Eventually, Joey heads for Jake Lomax's estate. Naturally, Lomax sends snipers to intercept him, but Joey makes quick work of them.
He confronts Lomax, prepared to end things once and for all, but Megatron's trigger still doesn't work. He discards the gun, dropping it on the ground (and it spits out a bullet that's apparently been lodged in there a while). He realizes he doesn't need to hide behind Megatron any longer. Joey deals with Lomax the old-fashioned way, socking him in the jaw. He also takes the time to pay back the money he borrowed. Satisfied their business is settled, Joey turns to leave when he sees a very large shadow looming over him.
It's Megatron, of course. The *real* Megatron, this time, as whatever brain circuits were knocked offline seem to have been restored. Odd that a high-tech robot from outer space would be so fragile, but whatever. Enraged, Megatron threatens to do his worst, but Joey Slick stands tall. He managed to confront Lomax and beat him, he explains, so he's not afraid of Megatron.
Impressed, Megatron allows Joey Slick to live... on the contingency that he never tries to give the Decepticon leader orders again. The police arrive and handcuff a cooperative Joey Slick, who is coy about precisely what kind of gigantic mechanical being is heading off into the distance. "It used to be mine," he says, "but then I found out it wasn't my style."
I've never cared for Transformers stories that are almost entirely about humans, with the robots themselves serving as guest-stars in their own franchise. I recognize on some level that humans are absolutely necessary on some level, in a story about robots that can turn into Earth cars and Earth planes and such. At the same time, though, reducing Megatron to a complete buffoon, even with the given explanation of his malfunction, just doesn't make for a particularly epic Transformers tale.
It's an interesting story about people, certainly, and I can appreciate it now for what it is (Budiansky trying to do something different, other than giant space robots just shooting each other all the time). It's arguably the first serious Marvel story about Transformers, since I've gotten the impression in a lot of these issues that the writers and production staff thought a comic book about robot toys was goofy and dumb. Their feelings about it seem to constantly slip out in the little irreverant jokes made by side characters (like the Ferdy and Gabe Comedy Hour, for example). There's a real absence of that in this story. It's a sign that Transformers has matured.
Of course, in the next issue, the Decepticons try to steal music and the Autobots have to save rock and roll. So, maybe we're right back to a comic about silly robot toys again. Sigh.
Zob (gonna spend all day today helping my wife clean out her parents' house that's filled with thirty years' worth of junk)
Don Perlin handled the pencils this issue, with Al Gordon doing the inks. Janice Chiang was our letterer. I don't mention Nel Yomtov very often, since it's a given that he did the colors. He colored pretty much the entire Marvel run in the USA.
So, we meet our protagonist on the opening splash page. He's a down-on-his-luck small-time gangster named Joey Slick, and he's kind of a loser. He's running through a trash-filled river bed, being chased by two thugs with guns named Whitey and Marko. It seems Joey took a risky chance, "borrowing" some money from his boss, Jake Lomax, and tried to make some fash cash by betting on a horse race. The gambit failed, and now Lomax has sent his goons to collect from Joey.
Joey stumbles and falls, noticing what appears to be a pistol partially submerged in the river. In desperation, he pulls the gun on the thugs. It doesn't work. The thugs not only start taunting Joey, but taunting the gun as well, laughing and daring it to shoot them. Quite inexplicably, the mystery gun does as it's told. Joey expresses total surprise as it goes off in his hands, inadvertantly saving him from an ill-timed fate as the thugs are knocked cold with a stun blast.
Joey Slick absconds to an abandoned barn to work things out. He continues talking to the gun, demanding to know what it is or where it came from. The gun once again obeys, leaping out of his hands and transforming into Megatron's robot mode. (The last time we saw Megatron in issue #8, Ratchet had knocked him off a ledge and he disappeared into the snow. He folded up into gun mode just before he landed, remember? Bob Budiansky was planning this story many months in advance!)
We get the standard "we were at war on Cybertron before we came to Earth" shpeil, and Megatron also explains that his higher brain functions must have been knocked offline during the fall. Incapable of thinking for himself, he can only do as others instruct him. Joey is mulling this over, and you can practically see the gears turning in his brain. Perhaps his bad luck is about to change.
I'm going to say as an aside that the first time I ever saw this issue of the comic book was when it was laying on a table in the waiting room of a kids' barber shop. I was waiting to get my hair cut and I thumbed through the pages of this issue. I was familiar with the cartoon by this point, of course, and I found myself wondering why there were so few Transformers in the story, or why Megatron was such an idiot in this story. This was nothing at all like the television show that I'd grown to known and love! It was issues like this one that had convinced me that Marvel Comics was not worth my time, and it was quite a few years until I ever gave it another chance.
Elsewhere, Jake Lomax is none too pleased that his cronies managed to let Joey Slick escape. His estate includes a swimming pool, and we get a prerequisite panel with a scantily-clad lady friend of Lomax's climbing out of the pool. (It adds nothing to the story, of course, but neither did Jessie's ballet class. In both cases, it was clearly included only to add sex appeal to the comic book.) The chick is named Charlene, incidentally—the first in a very long line of incidental characters who share that name. It's very likely that Budiansky was naming at least some of his characters after personal acquaitances or co-workers (it's well-known that Donnie Finkelberg was named after Marvel editor Danny Fingeroth, for example). He clearly knew somebody named Charlene, given how many times he returned to this name for his female characters.
Joey Slick takes a stroll through his neighborhood, taking the time to accept a free apple from Mr. Kim, an Asian street vendor who speaks in stereotypically stilted English, and throwing a football back and forth with the neighborhood kids. See, he's not such a bad guy. He likes kids and foreigners! But he's still stuck in a bind. He arrives at his single-room apartment, He's such a loser that he's got a pistol right in his hand, and yet the worst thing he can think to do is smash a mirror with it. Good thing he didn't find a hammer in the river. He'd probably try to shoot himself with it.
When he hears footsteps down the hall, he slips out the window an instant before four more goons show up to finish what Whitey and Marko couldn't. Joey escapes, planning to spend the night in a motel, but he doesn't even have enough cash to cover one night's stay. (The motel attendant is reading a newspaper with the headline "ROBOTS LEAVE PLANE PLANT," which tells us that in Shockwave's absence, the Decepticons have finally pulled out of Blackrock Aerospace Plant Number One.)
In desperation, Joey robs the local convenience store using Megatron. In the aftermath, when he finds the police hot on his tail, he uses Megatron to utterly destroy the road, causing the police cruiser to crash. He demolishes an overpass to stop a second cop car.
Well, it's not long until Joey figures out that he's basically unbeatable as long as he's got Megatron under his power. Newspapers dub him the "Super Shooter." Armored cars, banks, gold shipments, jewelry stores, they're all his for the taking. He even gets himself some new duds, and transforms himself into a dapper mobster on par with Jake Lomax himself. Even when the National Guard meets him outside after one of his robberies, he single-handedly takes them out. He's unbeatable, and he knows it.
Joey seems to have everything he's ever wanted. Now, he's got his own cronies at his beck and call, he's got a luxurious penthouse suite, and he's got more money than he knows what to do with. But, for all his newfound wealth and fame, his life feels just as empty as before. He recognizes the only reason he's got "friends" at all now is because of his wealth. In truth, the only one he can really trust is Megatron, which isn't saying much, since the Decepticon leader is still little more than a mindless automaton.
Joey pays a visit to his old neighborhood, but his reputation precedes him. Mr. Kim is terrified of him, while the kids have given up on sports and are positively enamored with the idea that he's a big-time bank-robbing criminal with a super gun. It's interesting how many people are affected, peripherally, by his newfound power. Eventually, Joey heads for Jake Lomax's estate. Naturally, Lomax sends snipers to intercept him, but Joey makes quick work of them.
He confronts Lomax, prepared to end things once and for all, but Megatron's trigger still doesn't work. He discards the gun, dropping it on the ground (and it spits out a bullet that's apparently been lodged in there a while). He realizes he doesn't need to hide behind Megatron any longer. Joey deals with Lomax the old-fashioned way, socking him in the jaw. He also takes the time to pay back the money he borrowed. Satisfied their business is settled, Joey turns to leave when he sees a very large shadow looming over him.
It's Megatron, of course. The *real* Megatron, this time, as whatever brain circuits were knocked offline seem to have been restored. Odd that a high-tech robot from outer space would be so fragile, but whatever. Enraged, Megatron threatens to do his worst, but Joey Slick stands tall. He managed to confront Lomax and beat him, he explains, so he's not afraid of Megatron.
Impressed, Megatron allows Joey Slick to live... on the contingency that he never tries to give the Decepticon leader orders again. The police arrive and handcuff a cooperative Joey Slick, who is coy about precisely what kind of gigantic mechanical being is heading off into the distance. "It used to be mine," he says, "but then I found out it wasn't my style."
I've never cared for Transformers stories that are almost entirely about humans, with the robots themselves serving as guest-stars in their own franchise. I recognize on some level that humans are absolutely necessary on some level, in a story about robots that can turn into Earth cars and Earth planes and such. At the same time, though, reducing Megatron to a complete buffoon, even with the given explanation of his malfunction, just doesn't make for a particularly epic Transformers tale.
It's an interesting story about people, certainly, and I can appreciate it now for what it is (Budiansky trying to do something different, other than giant space robots just shooting each other all the time). It's arguably the first serious Marvel story about Transformers, since I've gotten the impression in a lot of these issues that the writers and production staff thought a comic book about robot toys was goofy and dumb. Their feelings about it seem to constantly slip out in the little irreverant jokes made by side characters (like the Ferdy and Gabe Comedy Hour, for example). There's a real absence of that in this story. It's a sign that Transformers has matured.
Of course, in the next issue, the Decepticons try to steal music and the Autobots have to save rock and roll. So, maybe we're right back to a comic about silly robot toys again. Sigh.
Zob (gonna spend all day today helping my wife clean out her parents' house that's filled with thirty years' worth of junk)
Dan EL
Aug 1, 2021, 3:04:31 AM8/1/21
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https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Justice_League_of_America_Vol_1_8
Budiansky certainly grew up with and most likely remembered the story, since in an old interview, he mentioned still having the first JLA comic, he'd ever gotten, way back then.
Zobovor
Aug 1, 2021, 9:35:54 PM8/1/21
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On Sunday, August 1, 2021 at 1:04:31 AM UTC-6, Dan EL wrote:
> The story seems to bear a slight resemblance to JLA 8, in which a small time crook finds a special gun, which allows him to do whatever he wants.
That's interesting. It definitely could have served as inspiration. Good catch!
> The story seems to bear a slight resemblance to JLA 8, in which a small time crook finds a special gun, which allows him to do whatever he wants.
Zob (has been helping clean out my mother-in-law's house with the understanding that I get to keep the 8-bit NES if I find it)
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