TFtember: A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court

"A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court", the Transformers, October 24, 1985

Warpath and Hoist are duking it out with Starscream, Rumble, Ravage, and Ramjet. The 'cons flee and duck into a nearby cave. This isn't an ordinary cave, however, as the bots end up 543 AD, somewhere in England. 

They run into Sir Wigend, who takes them to be fellow knights. Starscream and Ramjet are roughly twenty stories tall, so Sir Wigend is a bit dim. 

The two Autobots, plus Spike, follow them into the past. Once arrived, they end up meeting Sir Wigend's rival, Sir Aetheling the Red. Spike is taken with the man's daughter. He tries to fight for her hand, but Rumble proves to be better at jousting,

Starscream, now utterly sick of the whole code of honor nonsense, just up and kidnaps Nimue (the aforementioned daughter). An army is assembled but Starscream introduces them to a nifty new invention-gunpowder. 

With a dragon prowling around, can our heroes succeed?

Pretty good, even if the 'heroes end up in the past' had been done before a few times by now. 

TFtember: Transformers#40

"Pretender to the Throne!" the Transformers#40 (May 1988) with credits to Bob Budiansky (script), Jose Delbo (pencils), Dave Hunt (inks), Nel Yomtov (colors), Bill Oakley (letters), and Don Daley (editor)

So we end the look back at the comics for right now, and with the first Transformers comic I ever bought, plus the first one I saw advertised on TV.

Say, remember Optimus Prime? And Ethan Zachery?

Well, Optimus is alive! Sort of! Ethan keep a backup of Prime's brain and uses it to play video games. Prime thinks and talks but he is convinced he is a very smart computer program, nothing more. 

Ethan tries calling Buster but gets Sparkplug instead. He also gets Sparkplug's full opinion on all transformers up to this point, and TLDR-not a fan.

Luckily for them, Spike has a tap on his dad's phone and hears the news. Optimistic, he, Goldbug and Brainstorm head back to Earth to figure out if Ethan is on the level. 

The guys are convinced but Prime isn't. Figuring a mission might snap him out of it, they have Prime infiltrate a Decepticon computer, where he finds files on something called 'pretender shells'. Prime gets the info back to the 'bots but his theft is noticed. 

The Decepticon Pretenders attack, but they are driven back by the Autobot Pretenders. Prime is still convinced he is a program though. 

Interesting change to the status quo, and the first time Optimus gets brought back from the dead. 

TFtember: Astrotrain

 Astrotrain 

The last figure of the season, and we're ending things with Generation One, Series 2. Astrotrain the figure was a first for the line, in that he was a Triple Changer. He could go from robot to JNR Class D51 steam locomotive to a space shuttle. 

His color scheme changed a bit from his preview photos to the finished model but overall he stayed the same. His file card is interesting even if none of it holds up. He's obsessed with creating chaos, but I fail to see how going from a shuttle to a train is going to cause that much chaos. How many locomotives does one really encounter? Or space shuttles for that matter?

In the comic he showed up in #29, whereas he is promptly infected with scraplets. After that he pretty much acted as a cargo hauler before he got blown up by Starscream in #50.

For the cartoon, he was voiced by Jack Angel. He also acted pretty much the same in the show as he did in the comic, i.e. acting mostly as the guy who hauled stuff. He did get to crown Starscream in the Movie, for whatever that was worth. 

He showed up in later episodes but never as a focus. He did get smacked by Galvatron, but at that was pretty much it. 

TFtember: Blaster Blues

 "Blaster Blues", the Transformers, October 23, 1985

Spike, Carly, and Blaster are enjoying a date at a local rock concert. Blaster enjoys it so much that at Spike's prompting he decides to share it with the rest of the Autobots. Mostly by blasting said music over their radios.

Well, Jazz likes it at least. 

Professor Haley, meanwhile, is trying to contact alien life. Apparently the Transformers don't count. He succeeds, after a fashion. His work gets him noticed by Starscream at least. 

The professor's Mcguffin gets taken by the Decepticons and installed in their Moon base, where it is used to blackout the Earth. 

Can the Autobots save the day? Will Blaster get to finish playing his song?

...yeah. Not the worst episode but boy. Scale all over the place, a plan that makes no sense, plus Trailbreaker changes his name to Trailblazer (or else we have a new character) at random times. Blaster's radio mode is also the same size as Spike, which kind of defeats the purpose of disguise, doesn't it?

TFtember: Transformers#39

   "The Desert Island of Space!" the Transformers#39 (April 1988) with credits to Bob Budiansky (script), Jose Delbo (pencils), Dave Hunt (inks), Nel Yomtov (colors), Bill Oakley (letters), and Don Daley (editor)

Buster finally wakes up, and quickly wishes he hadn't. He's at the mercy of Ratbat and Shockwave. The latter is in favor of keeping Buster alive, as it would deter the human fleet assembling off the coast of their new base. 

Spike, meanwhile, has come back to his dad's place and informs him of being a newly minted Headmaster. He picks up a phone call from Triple I and lets him know about Buster. From there the Autobots attack the Decepticons base, but it's a trap. 

Yeah, turns out this wasn't an uncharted desert island, but rather a decidedly large rocket. Can the Autobots stop the Decepticon's escape?

Ok, but it does seem a bit of a hard sell to clear the deck of the old toys and shill the new ones coming out, but we'll get to that in the next and last issue for this month. 

TFtember: Windcharger

 Windcharger

And with this we end the last figure ever released in the first series of the Transformers. A mini vehicle, Windcharger started as part of the Mysterians line from Knickerbocker like Brawn before Takara released him as a part of their Micro Change line. 

The file card has him as very fast and also has the ability to manipulate magnetic fields but often burns himself out. 

As far as the comic, well, he was there. His most notable acts were getting shot by the Decepticon powered Optimus and generally being laid up when he wasn't in crowd shots. 

He fared slightly better in the cartoon. Voiced by John Stephenson and sometimes Terry McGovern, he showed up quite a bit in the early episodes and even DID things! Sometimes even helpful things too!

Then he got shot off camera during the Movie and his corpse tossed outside. 

All in all, disappointing but I suppose it could have been worse. 

TFtember: Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2

 "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2", the Transformers, October 22, 1985

Picking up from last time, Spike and Carly popped through the Space Bridge and find themselves on Cybertron.

Staring down Shockwave's arm cannon too, so that's not good.

They manage to avoid capture and even sabotage the Decepticon's computer, thus breaking the Space Bridge! And also stranding them on an alien planet. 

Sneaking into Wheeljack's old lab they radio Earth. They talk to Sparkplug but they are interrupted by none othe than Swoop!

Yeah, Swoop. It seems the rest of the Dinobots got captured, but Swoop managed to escape. The trio head into the bowels of the planet, discovering some info on the Great War along the way, activating some old defense systems, and rescuing the Dinobots. 

Can our heroes survive?

This would be the last major use of the Dinobots until the Movie. Not bad overall but honestly I think could easily be one part instead of two. The Dinobots rebel and learn their lesson, until next time.