Disrespectful comics

 People quite often find this blog by searching for details of when Thundercats was broadcast on British TV, and stumbling across an old and rather lacking in details post of mine. I really should write a better one, with dates and everything, some time. I mean, I've researched them extensively over the years, primarily so my brother and I can celebrate the anniversaries of the classic episodes. I'll write it up tomorrow, maybe. But today, you see, is the 35th anniversary of "The Astral Prison" being shown for the first time on the BBC, and we need to celebrate the debut of the Astral Moat Monster!

I never had the toy of the Astral Moat Monster - that picture is stolen from the excellent Toy Archive website. But it was a strange kind of toy - the first range of Thundercats had action figures, vehicles... and also this one weird big monster, big enough to come in a box rather than on a card. It didn't seem to fit with the rest at all, it looked downright weird, and it also didn't show up in the cartoons and comics that first showed up in Britain in early 1987.

Until, that is, "The Astral Prison", in which Lion-O travels to the astral world, and confronts the monster that lives in the moat around the villain's castle! It was very exciting! And the monster, as befits an episode of the cartoon whose primary reason for existing was to persuade people to buy the toys, is extremely cool and threatening! Its peculiar appearance is minimised by focusing on its big sharp teeth and claws. It probably did boost the sales, with Christmas coming up!

But also available at around this time was the Thundercats Annual from Marvel UK. It will have been on the shelves from September 1987, but of course annuals were something you got for Christmas and so not many people will have read the text story in it yet (and for that matter, most people probably never did - nobody read the text stories in annuals). But in between the reprinted comic stories (the early American comics that were printed in the first four issues of the weekly UK comic) there was a text story that also featured the Astral Moat Monster!

The credits attribute the plot to Simon Furman, Marvel UK's head writer, but credit the story to "Steve Alan" - a quick bit of internet research tells me that was a pseudonym for John Tomlinson. Obviously written without any knowledge of the cartoon episode (annuals notoriously had to be produced ridiculously far in advance of publication) and just based on being given this weird-looking toy and told to write a story featuring it, the story takes the decidedly un-commercial approach of making the poor Astral Moat Monster into a comical figure.

"The Astral Moat Monster was in a particularly bad mood. This was partly because there was no Astral Moat to guard anymore, which left him at rather a loss for something to do. But the root cause of the Astral Moat Monster's ill humour could be traced back much further - thousands of years in fact - to when he was grown in the Chemical Pits of Grizquetr. An incompetent spellbinder had left him in the life-giving fluids just a fraction too long, bloating his ducklike blue body out of proportion, gifting him with a pair of ridiculous (and quite useless) red wings, and speckling his huge slack mouth with teeth like ill-fitting dagger rocks.

The Astral Moat Monster's pride and joy had been the Astral Moat, which he guarded fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that it fell into total disuse, soaking into the earth to be overgrown by a limp grey pondweed. The Moat Monster continued to march up and down looking peevish and dangerous for a few years after that, but a lot of the fun had gone out of it."

The Thundercats can't help laughing at how stupid he looks. The story, which doesn't make so much as a token effort to explain the adjective "Astral", ends with the moat monster going back in time to when his moat was still new, and making friends with his own past self.

That's really not the way to encourage people to buy the toys. But then, Marvel UK always seemed to miss that memo, and instead write stories to entertain the readers rather than sell them things. It probably worked out best in the long run. The Thundercats comic, a bit later on, produced an equally mocking fact file for Mongor - who in the cartoon was a terrifying foe - portraying him as an entirely failed attempt by Mumm-Ra to summon a fearsome monster, turning out to be meek and inoffensive and fond of gardening. It probably had a rather negative effect on sales, so the writers should be glad the people responsible for marketing the toys never bothered to read the comics.

I would be tempted to blame "Steve Alan" for this disrespect towards cool characters, but there's no denying that even the great Simon Furman could be guilty of that kind of thing too. Take a look at Transformers No. 96, dated 17 January 1987 (meaning that when this comic was in the newsagents', "The Slaves of Castle Plun-Darr", the fourth Thundercats episode, was the one on Thursday afternoon). Probably written around the same time as that annual, thanks to the aforementioned lead times, it continues the ongoing plotlines (fitted in neatly between issues of the American comic as usual), by using Motormaster as the unfortunate pathetic figure who gets on the wrong end of Megatron's temper.

The thing is, Motormaster was still a relatively new toy! The Special Teams (of one of which Motormaster was the leader) had been introduced with great fanfare in the early summer of 1986. The UK comic, for once, was ordered to feature them immediately and make them out to be extremely cool - which, since the American comics in which they were created weren't available yet, forced Simon Furman to write it as a prophetic dream of the future). But now, just a few months later, the Teams weren't so special any more, the peering oversight of Hasbro had turned away, and poor Motormaster is reduced to this kind of snivelling cameo.

It annoyed me rather, at the time. Not that I particularly wanted the toy of Motormaster, which was rather unimpressive compared to some of the others on the toy shelves, but his whole personality as described in his fact files and tech specs was along the lines of 'his only weakness is the fact that he's so darn awesome, everyone else hates and fears him', and I sort of expected that to be reflected in the comics.

But no, this story focuses on introducing the Predacons - who were extraordinarily cool, and everyone wanted the toys, but nobody in Britain was going to get them because they weren't available over here. And they're introduced by a bit more bullying of Motormaster...

The toy of Shockwave also wasn't available in Britain. The Transformers comic always did tend to make the unavailable toys seem the coolest. I can't help thinking there might have been people who got Motormaster for Christmas (not many, maybe - the movie toys were the real must-haves at Christmas 1986) and were sadly disappointed by this comic in January.

Much as I admire Simon Furman, I think someone needs to unleash the Moat Monster, Mongor and Motormaster on him to have a word about their portrayal in the comics!