I thought I'd written about this in my blog before now, but it looks like I didn't. So, with at least 90% certainty I'm not repeating myself, I present this for a wider audience than anyone who's read an email I sent to my brother in 2013.
It begins today, as we could see on page 17 of the 86th issue of the Transformers comic released by Marvel UK, dated 8th Nov.86. I've written before about how this era was a high point of comics history for ten-year-old me, and this is another part of the epic Target: 2006 story that thrilled us all in the autumn of 1986! The backup strip wasn't of any great interest to Transformers fans, but they tried to whip up some enthusiasm on the first page - probably a futile attempt, since the Transformers story before it was eleven glorious pages of Ultra Magnus and Galvatron beating seven bells out of each other, and who could care about some backup strip after that?
Backup strips in Transformers had a simple rule - they could use any filler material they could find in Marvel USA's output, as long as it featured a robot or something that looked like a robot. Spitfire (a suit of armour) fitted the bill perfectly as a replacement for Hercules (the limited series in which he had a robot sidekick). As described here, it was part of the "New Universe" range of comics launched by the American Marvel in 1986, and Tom Brevoort is going to be writing about the spectacularly unsuccessful titles on his always-entertaining blog - so be sure to check it out if you want to see some real writing about comics. Here, though, I'll limit myself to just one page.
Spitfire and the Troubleshooters ran from number 86 to number 98 (31st Jan.87) of the Transformers comic - chopped into five or six pages per issue, that covered the first three issues of the American Spitfire comic. And it came to an end like this...
"Well, I've got the laser disk that might contain evidence against the bad guy Krotze. [strange indecipherable black blots]." THE END.
Okay, that's an unusual way to conclude a story. Reading it at the time, I don't recall even noticing it - I didn't ever pay much attention to Spitfire. Or perhaps I've just blanked out the whole incomprehensible thought bubble - my brother says he was enormously intrigued and confused by it and gave it a lot of deep thought!
Spitfire and the Troubleshooters was, I'm sorry to say, not a good comic. But it probably wasn't abruptly axed from Transformers on quality grounds - at the start of 1987, Hasbro had decided to push Action Force toys in a big way - the American "G.I. Joe" action figures had been available in Britain under the more comprehensible name "Action Force" before, but released by a different company and generally flying under the radar of British kids. But now, Hasbro had taken it back under the wing of their main toy lines, and there was going to be a comic and video releases of the American cartoon (all fascinatingly edited to change "G.I. Joe" to "Action Force" and "A Real American Hero" to "International Heroes" in order to make it make sense to us limeys). And so part of that was giving the Transformers backup slot for four weeks over to an unusually robot-free story from the American G.I. Joe comic, introducing the new characters who appeared in Hasbro's debut range.
And there's a Lew Stringer Robo-Capers about the free sticker that came free with this issue too!
"That's the plus side..." And then there was one more panel completing the thought, and three-quarters of a page setting up the next storyline, which Transformers readers never got to see:
So what's with the black blots in the Transformers comic? Were they intending to remove the thought bubble entirely? Or rewrite it to make it a bit less open-ended? I suppose we'll never know. I mean, I didn't care about it at the time, but I did at least investigate and buy the American comic in 2013 when I finally noticed it again, so in a sense, this backup strip did generate one more (second-hand) sale for Marvel! The New Universe is a success!
