The project for this week hit some snags and I don’t have time to do a full article going over those snags. A plan for next time perhaps or maybe I’ll just move on to something worthwhile. So to make up the time I’ve reworked an old article from my other site for the more casual crowd I expect comes to this site versus that one..
For those of you who don’t read that site or haven’t seen me talk about it here, Transformers Armada is based on the toyline in which the Autobots and Decepticons were joined…quite literally…by, or rather to, a third faction called the Mini-Con. If you only know them from the recent Robots In Disguise series it’s a modified version of the original concept. By connecting to certain “hardpoints” on the larger figures the Mini-Con would activate hidden weapons and such, but on the “dead points” kids could pretend they were giving them a huge burst of power, which extended for the next few toylines until the 2010s RID. (Interestingly a couple of toys from the 2000s RID, which came from Car Robot, were able to accept Mini-Cons due to the molding.) To me the gimmick was never fully showcased however.
I wrote about the little Transformers and my love of them in a previous report, where I noted that these were small Transformers who turned into vehicles that had things like headlights or little jets. (And as we’ve seen in Rescue Bots and Rescue Bots Academy headlights can double as water cannons, but since they’re headLIGHTS you could argue they’d make for good lasers.) Some of them not only turned into weapon-bearing vehicles but the toy itself may have launching projectiles. The helicopters had spinning blades. One Mini-Con team had a gimmick that they turned into mounted or hand-held weapons, but the only ones anyone following the media would know are the ones that combined into the superpowerful weapons like the Star Saber, Requiem Blaster, and Skyboom Shield. There was so much more play and fight scene potential in the Mini-Cons that was never realized, nor was their non-weapon potential realized outside of being referred to as “smart tools” in the cartoon. This has constantly bothered me but with the gimmick altered after Power Core Combiners (which didn’t even have a non-toy appearance) to what it became in Robots In Disguise and the related toyline (which was these disks fired by launchers or little robots that turn into weapons) it’s just more wasted potential. It’s a sore spot for me because I really love the classic Mini-Con toys and wish we could see the full extent of the gimmick beyond robo-steroids.
Enough about that though, because this getting too long intro hasn’t even touched on UK comics. I’m not from the UK and I’ve only seen a small number of comics from the UK but they don’t appear to come in the traditional comic size but in more of a magazine format. Someone actually from the UK can correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not sure how because my memory is only slightly less damaged than Sam Beckett but I ended up with the first issue of Panini Comics’ Transformers Armada, a comic adapting the toys into comics for the UK rather than simply reprinting the US comics from Dreamwave. And it does appear to be a magazine, as you’ll see from the cover. There are a few character profiles and an activities section that includes how to draw Megatron. Not that this is the artist I would choose to draw Megatron but I’ll get to that. I’ll be focusing on the comic story, which makes four versions of the origin of the Mini-Cons on Earth I own, along with the Dreamwave comic, the cartoon, and a junior novel. Also, this is Simon Furman’s chance to do his own telling of the origin since he came in during the second story arc of the US comic. Readers of the other site know my issues with Furman’s writing style and his darker take on Transformers but his Dreamwave run, including the Armada comic, was quite good. How well did he do here?
Transformers Armada #1
Panini Comics (May, 2003)
“First Encounter”
WRITER: Simon Furman
PENCILER: Jon Mitchell
INKER: Bambos Georgiou, and Martin Griffiths
LETTERER: Neil Porter
Oddly there is no coloring (or in this case colouring) credit despite the whole magazine being in full color.
Another Case For Physical Media (reposted BW article)
January 29, 2023
ShadowWing Tronix comics clutter, Comics, commentary, digital media vs physical media Leave a comment
I’ve mentioned my other website, BW Media Spotlight, in the past here at the Clutter Reports and even used a few reviews as filler posts, since reviews are part of what I do here and these reviews are things I own and considering whether to remove or not. The books I reviewed here were also reviewed over there, only the book reviews here are an overview while the other site goes over them a chapter at a time. Even the times I’ve shown off new art supplies and my art desk were things I use to make logos and comics for my other site.
I’ve defended keeping physical media in the past, music in that case, how while going all digital sounds good on paper (pun intended) there are negatives that don’t always work. There’s nothing wrong with a comic, novel, video game, CD/cassette/record, or home video library if they are things you actually plan to read, play, or watch. Recent events with popular digital comic site ComiXology are another example. I want to get rid of the comics I don’t want to read anymore, making a digital archive for my website’s purposes (it will easier to look them up and get the panels I need) but having that comic in my hands and knowing it stays mine is a good thing. What follows is my look at the changes ComiXology went through after being bought by Amazon, the recent huge layoff alert, and why the paper stuff is still a good option. I’ve made a few changes if I thought the more casual fans that would stumble on this site would find something hard to follow or don’t follow my other site. Here’s the original post if you’re curious. And now….the repost:
I have no idea what’s going on with ComiXology these days. Just recently I posted a BW Ramble v-log about how they finally fixed the Guided View feature, which reformatted the normal comic page for cleaner viewing on smartphone and tablet screens, and even the larger computer monitor, a feature they dropped when Amazon bought the digital comics service and decided to integrate it into Kindle. Now they’re cutting a huge chunk of their workforce. Almost 75% according to Bounding Into Comics. Yes, with people being allowed into that area of space we call “outside”, which I vaguely remember visiting once or twice, demand for at-home media has gone down. Streaming services are not making as much money as they were during the lockdowns and that’s only partly blamed on some…questionable decisions by streaming services that a Clutter Report version of this article would be out of place going on about. Part of it can also be blamed on our current economic issues and I won’t go into a political rant here because, again, I’m reformatting this article for a decluttering blog and I don’t even like doing those kind of rants on the storytelling discussion site.
Even people currently working at ComiXology are complaining about the layoffs, not to mention high ranking types who are already hitting the job sites for work. That’s certainly bad news in this climate and I wish them all the best of luck, but BW Media Spotlight and The Clutter Reports aren’t business sites, it’s a storytelling or clutter organizing site. Digital comics, for some, have replaced physical comics because they take up less floor space and are a bit cheaper since there isn’t printing costs to deal with…I mean, in theory they’re cheaper. However, with such a huge drop in people running the site this is a format of comics that may take a hit of its own, and frankly just pushes my belief that physical comics are still superior in the end.
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