FINALLY, after nearly twenty-five years of collecting, I have completed the Marvel Transformers comics . I have scoured through various boxes of comics, haggled over other comic books and pushed the other Marvel comics off to the side – just to obtain my goal of collecting every Transformers comic book that Marvel put out in the 80’s and 90’s.
My adventure begins with Transformers going all the way back to the Fall of ’85 or perhaps very early of ’86. I got Transformers #12 , perhaps it was a gift or a birthday present, I am way too young to remember. The one thing that I can remember about this comic was a single panel of a decapitated head of Optimus Prime sinking down into a pink pool.
I was only about five at the time when Transformers was really getting popular, and I unfortunately didn’t find out most of the cooler things in the franchise until I was older. I had a few of the toys and owned one of the old VHS tapes so that I could always watch the Dinobots getting destructive. But for some reason or another, the single panel of that Marvel Comic was forever etched into my memory.
It took me a few years before I got into comic books, and it soon became a new fascination that I wanted to learn as much as I could about. With the advent of the theatrical films of Batman and Dick Tracy coming out in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I wanted to know everything possible about comic books, from their stories to their value. I had a little red briefcase that would hold up to one hundred of them, which I collected with my friend Sean Detweiler – but it was only a matter of time before that briefcase blew up.
Transformers Marvel Comics in Highland Comic Shop
When I was about ten years old, I would start to avidly visit comic shops and flea markets. I used to collect comics for their collector value, but I would soon look towards the attractive artwork and storylines. This was when I came across my friendly neighborhood comic shop in Highland, NY. I can’t recall the name of the shop, but it moved at least three times during my teen years all around the Hudson Valley, and would eventually settle in New Paltz as October Country . I remember one of my earliest times there, I discovered a box of “kids comics” on the floor all the way in the back of the shop. They attracted me with their “Five for a Dollar” sign, and it wasn’t too long before I came across a massive stack of Marvel Comics’ Transformers.
I instantly flashed back to my times of reading previous Marvel Comics -in particular that single panel of Optimus Prime’s sinking head. I gave the Comic Book Guy (yes with typical tied back ponytail and stretched out/grease stained super hero t-shirt) two dollars and I rushed back home to start flying through the first couple of issues of the Marvel Comics run.
This became a repeating pattern of whenever my parents would take me to the comic shop, as it was fairly close by to the video rental store and Grand Union (our grocery store) for a quick geek fix. I would save up my money here and there from chores to buy these five for a dollar Transformers comics. Unfortunately it was only a matter of time before I bought up the first thirty to forty issues of the Marvel Comics run, and I couldn’t find any more at the shop.
Every summer my family would have road trips up and down the East coast. We would typically stop at flea markets for everyone to find their treasures of their lost childhood days. I would crawl on the dirty floors of flea markets and haggle with the toothless comic geeks as I continued to scrounge down the remaining run of Marvel Comics Transformers (which I was about half way through)
Luckily, I got sidetracked collecting those treasures when I came across a newsstand in the Poughkeepsie Galleria and I saw the cover of a G.I. Joe comic book which had the legendary Transformers comics villain: Megatron, holding the nefarious Cobra Commander in the palm of his hand. I had to get the issue and nearly every other G.I. Joe comic thereafter to find out about this thing being called Transformers Generation 2.
When I was about twelve to thirteen, I was able to cash in and take advantage of the Transformers craze that I missed out on when I was too young to remember the older toys in the series. Soon thereafter, the toys got reissued , the original animated series re aired with annoying Cybertron cube transitions and a brand new Marvel Comics series came out.
Transformers Generation 2 was the first, and nearly only subscription that I ever got from Marvel Comics. Every month I anxiously awaited to get the semi rolled up comic book in my mailbox and would then immediately read it. It was quite depressing to see the c omic line only lasted twelve issues , so Marvel Comics comped me a few issues of G.I. Joe until my yearly subscription ran out.
Transformers Comics in the Internet Era
The older that I got, it became harder and harder to find issues of the Marvel Comics run of Transformers to complete my collection. With the advent of the internet, I was re-introduced to Transformers lure, found out things that I never heard about in the franchise, and got connected with other fans to help me complete my collection.
My parents were a big help as well. For several Christmases and Birthday surprises, they would ask me for what issues that I was missing and they would hunt them down for me. I remember one year that I must have gotten about twenty in one shot, but I also knew that several more fans for fighting over the few remaining issues of the series. I started to display my collection on the walls of my bedroom, I would leave gaps for the missing issues and pin them up with excitement whenever I filled in the space .
In the late 80’s and early 90’s when the Transformers comics (and the franchise in itself) was running out of steam, Marvel Comics started to produce fewer and fewer runs of the last twenty or so issues . The final issue alone can go for about over a hundred dollars on Ebay, so you could imagine my geek filled face when I got it buried within a box of clothes when I was in my early 20’s (Thanks Mom and Dad for always supporting my geekiness)!
Collecting Transformers Comics during my College Years
I was very fortunate enough to go to school in New York City. My college had a comic book design major, which I didn’t partake in, but it’s connections to the industry were well felt. One such class I got to take was with Jack C. Harris , who got my class a tour of the DC Comics building by legendary comic writer, Denny O’Neil. Rumor has it, that Denny was the one who came up with the name Optimus Prime for the leader of the Autobots back when he was an editor at Marvel Comics.
While spending time in Manhattan, I came across a comic shop called Cosmic Comics . I had been out of the comic scene for about ten years, but I had a classmate who got me back into it. Cosmic also had a great deal of spending one hundred dollars, you would get twenty dollars back in credit. This was where I stumbled across very nice collections of Transformers Marvel Comics U.K.
The U.K. Transformers were written by now legendary Transformers writer, Simon Furman. The book over seas was weekly, so it would imprint the American Marvel Comics, but also came up with original material that would eventually surpass the mythology and storylines of the American run, so Marvel Comics got Simon Furman to wrap up the American series as well.
Also during my college years I would frequently travel much more independently to yard sales and flea markets. I was now not just hunting down the Marvel run of Transformers comics, but anything with Transformers in it or on it. There came an interest for 80’s nostalgia, so the original animated film was getting re-released for its 20th Anniversary, the comics were collected in trade paperbacks, the toys were getting remolded -it was an age of rebirth.
Shortly after college, I moved down South with my family. It had been a while since I found any Marvel Comics run of Transformers, as I had just a few left over within the last ten issues of the book’s run. I did come across a great comic shop down here, Apocalypse Comics , which had mini-series that I never heard of.
Transformers 3-D and How to Draw Transformers were two small series by Blackthorne publishing in the mid to late 80’s. From what I gather, these are pretty rare and I am still trying to hunt down the last 3-D issue and about the last two or three of the How to Draw set.
Also during this time, I tried to collect the current run of Transformers comics from IDW and Dreamwave. On television at this time, Transformers animated series such as Robots in Disguise and Energon, were imports from Japanese series. They were very comical and they helped produce a steady line of Transformers toys again, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I had quite a few of the comics, but I got to the point of I was like, “what am I doing with my life?” So I stopped collecting the Transformers comics, and ended up primarily focusing on a career within education.
Transformers Marvel Comics (Complete)
My story of Transformers comic collecting has pretty much come to an end within the past few months or so. I was at XCon in Myrtle Beach where I saw one of the Transformers Marvel comics in the 70’s on display. I wasn’t too sure if I had it or not, so I ran home, checked my now four long boxes of comics and noticed that I was missing that issue.
I contacted Mario of Mario’s Comics , and he said he would hold it for me. I figured that I would just jot down the last remaining ones on my iPhone’s notes to always keep the list handy. From my purchase of #72 from Mario, he told me to email him if I was missing any other ones. But from there it kinda propelled out of control.
On some sites for comic shops, they claim some of their latter run of Marvel Comics of Transformers can run for well over one hundred dollars. But after doing a final bit of research through Ebay and comic shops such as Mario’s, I hunted down the final five issues of my collection.
Final Thoughts on Transformers
I have had a lifelong obsession and fascination with Transformers and I was SO excited to finally find a means to an end with my Marvel Comics line. I would still like to find some of these missing BlackThorne comic books and I think I would like to now concentrate on the Marvel Comics run of G.I. Joe (since I have about half of the comic books already). Be sure to check out my blog post on Transformers which includes photos of my collection and a Transformers YouTube video of me showing off my stuff. I have also written a few Yahoo! Voices articles on Transformers, including a poem based on the 1986 animated film and film reviews for all three live action blockbusters directed by Michael Bay.
