A "More Than..." Unexpected Anniversary

[krpalmer]

Amidst a certain amount of contemplation towards an approaching tenth anniversary, I happened to notice on incisivis's journal that today, the 8th of May, appears to be the date in 1984 that the first issue of the Transformers comic went on sale, and started trying to figure out if I could say anything about a twenty-fifth anniversary before the day ran out...

The comic specifically getting mentioned got my attention, because while I did try to watch the cartoon whenever I could, I started buying the Transformers comic from the second issue and managed to keep up with it much better than I had with the Star Wars comics. (I did eventually find that a friend had the first issue, and when I asked if I could have it he gave it to me.) The comic may well have shaped my "personal image" of how the franchise "looks" and perhaps even "feels" as compared to the cartoon itself, although all those issues where the good guys kept winding up in miserable shape just may have made me something of that stereotypical Transformers fan where the very first years of the story count for the most.

When I first went online, I discovered there were still plenty of people interested in all aspects of the Transformers, and yet perhaps by that point my own interests had altered to where I could think that the characters were archetypical to the point where that appealed to many, but just not have that resonate quite as much with me... or, perhaps, I was starting to watch anime with "mecha anime" a regular feature at the showings, picking up a thread I might have first found not that long after Transformers first started where it was at least theoretically possible for humans to defend themselves in those shows. Right around the time that years of "computer animation" changed to "imported anime," I seemed to lose close touch with the new stories and new "Transformers universes" cropping up, and yet every so often I do go through small waves of picking up Transformers toys, and I'm definitely contemplating ordering the new release of the original cartoon. The story's not quite over yet...