SATURDAY 8th APRiL 1989
It was an exciting week as a Transformers reader this week in 1989, which John Stokes’ cover sums up perfectly. Meanwhile, the perfect pairing of Andy Lanning and Dave Harwood worked their funny magic with The Real Ghostbusters.
My friends who were long-time Transformers readers weren’t too enamoured with the new three-story format in the newly-retitled Transformers and Visionaries. We now had a pair of five-or-six-page Transformers stories (and the same size of back up) every week but they preferred the previous 11-page strip and found it hard to adjust. I was used to Fleetway’s action comics though, so this felt like an upgrade over the previous format, even if it took a while before the UK strips were written for the new format.
Visionaries was yet another reprint of the origin tale (to give the American G.I. Joe comic time to get ahead again) but that didn’t dampen things for me as a teen. Although, now I think a reprint of an early G.I. Joe from years before may have been better, as many readers would’ve read this back up strip just the previous Christmas! As a whole it all felt fresh, new and exciting though, and would lead to what would eventually become my favourite period of time with the comic. It also kicked things off with the superbly titled, “Guess Who the Mecannibals Are Having for Dinner?” Great fun.
Obviously, this issue was going to take the top spot on the checklist. It was a mammoth change to such a long-running comic. Yes, it was to save money down the road amid rising production costs. By changing to this format they could churn out the British strips in black and white and run some reprints while still having new strips for the readers, but young me wasn’t aware of all of that and it deserved this fanfare regardless.
Alongside The Real Ghostbusters are the same editions of Marvel UK’s monthly Action Force and Thundercats as last week but we did have some brand spanking new comics adverts. Cartoon Time was essentially the Flinstones and Friends comic from earlier checklists in all but name. That had made it to 24 issues before cancellation and was basically rebranded as Cartoon Time, each issue’s main title relating to a different Hanna Barbera character with the “Cartoon Time” banner off to the side or top.
It certainly proved popular, running for 40 fortnightly issues before turning monthly. This would normally signal the beginning of the end for a comic but Cartoon Time continued for another 38 monthly issues after that, so fair play. Our other advert is for a Doctor Who graphic novel collecting a strip from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, starring Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Frobisher, his penguin companion. No, really.
In reality (well, you know what I mean) Frobisher could take on any form but for some reason preferred to be a talking penguin, and he and the Doctor found themselves on a Death Ship falling off the edge of the universe. The 80s TV show couldn’t have brought this to the screen! It sounds wonderfully inventive and I’m aware it stands in high regard with fans even today.
There are new issues of some top Marvel UK monthlies in next week’s checklist and a whole host of Spring Specials in the ads to jog your memories. See you then!
Come and join in the checklists conversation here or on:
Bluesky
Instagram
Facebook
TRANSFORMERS 213 (Instagram)
OiNK Blog 