If you’ve been here long enough you already know about my love of Transformers. While the Michael Bay films were disappointing, the IDW stories aren’t my cup of tea but not necessarily terrible, and I don’t know what people see in Simon Furman’s Marvel run–especially Generation Two, The Transformers multiverse remains my all-time favorite fiction, and my favorite toys (though I do also throw in the GoBots and any other transforming robot toy of that ilk). There’s just something about the concepts that find enjoyable.
When the shows and comics first started coming out a lot of information was not revealed to the public…because the public didn’t care. We just wanted to play with the toys, watch the shows, read the comics, and in some cases read the books and play the video games. Now we live in the Information Age and are filled with 80s nostalgia, so here’s something that recently came to light. Did you know that Transformers and GoBots almost ended up NOT being the first transforming robots on US shelves? That another property potentially had a comic and cartoon? Knickerbocker’s Mysterians: The Hidden Force is an interesting tale, and could have been the early Transformers, or something called Car And Cable. And this was not an import like their Cybertronian and Gobotronian counterparts. These warriors from Mysterion would have been completely original toys.
Now some of you may be asking why the storytelling review site is focusing on this? It’s barely in qualification for The Clutter Reports, my other site that has featured Transformers and GoBots toy reviews. Well, there’s that whole licensed media aspect. Chris McFeely, the man behind Transformers: The Basics, brought together all the toy and media information and presented it in a virtual panel for the TF Nation online convention (another victim of the death plague quarantine). Learn how both DC messed up their shot, how Marvel Comics and Marvel Productions didn’t get along, how one comic series had their named changed because of the Marvel connection, and one creator’s obsession with dogs, plus how Transformers almost ended up being a CBS Saturday morning show instead of the syndicated series we know and love. And it was all started by a keychain robot train and a fake toy cigarette lighter robot. It’s all quite fascinating.
BW’s Daily Article Link: What Makes A Story “Dark”
I don’t like movies that are dark just to be dark. If the story calls for it, fine, and there darker stories I actually enjoy. However, being dark is not instantly good and when someone praises a movie for how dark it is I want to smack them. So what makes a good dark story? First, we need to understand what a dark story actually is versus what these lovers of “dark” think it is. Author Cheah Kit Sun weighs in on what he thinks it means.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 17, 2020 in Uncategorized and tagged commentary.
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