That stupid looking robot with the big hands

 I'm sorry this blog has been a little neglected of late - I've got a new job which (touch wood) I'm even kind of enjoying at the moment. I'm sure it won't last, but it's keeping me occupied, anyway.

I'll think of something not involving old comics to write about here at some point, but for now, please enjoy the classic saga of the stupid looking robot with the big hands, which ran through the Transformers comic in early 1986!

This is Transformers №43, dated 11th Jan '86. The Trans-Formation page on the inside front cover told us every week what was happening in the Transformers adventure, the back-up strip, or anything else relevant to the comic. And it was enlivened by Lew Stringer's Robo-Capers strip at the bottom of the page!

So, before turning to the Transformers story itself (a fill-in adventure by James Hill rather than regular writer Simon Furman, in which the smallest and weakest Autobot, Bumblebee, goes off on his own and gets victimised by the evil Decepticons), we can laugh at the capers of the aliens and their robots. The running, very loose, storyline of Robo-Capers involved the king of the aliens and his inventor, trying to come up with new and deadly killer robots, but most episodes were stories like this one which just involved comical interludes with a robotic theme (often not with the aliens at all).

A follow-up to this story appears in №51, dated 8th Mar. Or partially appears, anyway...

It somehow got printed without the black, just leaving bright colourful splodges at the bottom of the page!

Obviously, a lot of people noticed and wrote in to the letters page (which was hosted in character by the Decepticon Soundwave - or while not exactly "in character" to the way he acted in the comics, then in a wonderful bantering and chatty evil way that everyone really loved!) and in №58, 26th Apr, we got an apology and a corrected Robo-Capers!

 One hopes Lew Stringer got paid twice for this one. And it's kind of appropriate that the corrected second strip now appears before the reprinted American Transformers story in this issue, a fill-in adventure by Len Kaminski rather than regular writer Bob Budiansky, in which the smallest and weakest Autobot, Bumblebee, goes off on his own and gets victimised by the evil Decepticons.

The editorial also promises that Soundwave will take care of the people responsible for the mess-up, a promise that Soundwave himself reiterates on the letters page, And sure enough, in №59, 3rd May, we get "a somewhat satisfactory epilogue" to finish off this strange saga!

I love it when something strange like a printing error has a knock-on effect on the contents of future stories!