Grimdark is an actual subgenre, though. It started getting tossed around the literary world, at least, for a type of fantasy that blossomed when A Song of Ice & Fire really boomed--Joe Abercrombie-type-stuff that was more about blood and guts and the harsh lives of everyday soldiers than the usual fantasy tropes of a Chosen One. Even has a Wikipedia entry: Grimdark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A lot of fantasy grimdark is quite good, and rather fun in the way it eschews the tropes of fantasy. It just got a silly name by the vagaries of the Internet.

 

I found issue #3 at the local pharmacy and bought it before the cartoon was even a thing. The nature of TFs were different, and I kept that mentality to the point that the Movie was an absolute culture shock. "Wait, they died? Gears was exploded, and he was repaired. This is bull!" Yeah, it also led to my first concept of fanon, as soon as the Underbase saga happened. I just imagined everyone who "died" was rebuilt as one of the Headmasters and later figures. I remember GIJoe went through a similar culling, but that just made me give up on the series.

 

80s UK Kid here. Bought every issue with my pocket money and read it religiously. G1 = comics for me. Never saw the cartoon at the time.

 

I had one issue of the comics growing up - the one where Trypticon comes to earth and Grimlock is crowned leader of the Autobots at the end.

 

I read them all, just a little later than they were released, getting hold of comics in the UK in the 80's was a patchy affair! Hmm, still is at times!  

It was a bit of a double edged sword for me, I really enjoyed the fact that there was more TF to read and consume but I found some of the characters jarring compared to the more kid friendly cartoon. Plus Optimus Prime was my favourite thing ever and he kept dying!! Those scars run deep!!   Now I think about it maybe I was a sensitive child but seeing my childhood heroes get blown up and ripped apart wasn't always easy.

As an interesting note, the IDW stuff is a lot closer to my own head canon than the Marvel comics ever were, which is extremely satisfying!

 

I read the G1 comic back in the day, I didn't have access to a lot of comics, so it was a real treat when I could get issues of Transformers and GI Joe. I had several issues of Transformers and I read them over and over. I now have a full run of the Marvel G1 comics, and I have most of them in trade format too. The series had a lot of high points, but also got a little strange at times. Overall I enjoyed it a lot, but I think the G1 cartoon ended up being the main canon for most people, likely because it reached more people and may have been more easily accessible.

 

If I wanted to read Marvel UK in the IDW collections, will I also need to read the US volumes to follow the story?

 

Trillions of light years ahead.

 

I'm currently reading it, I think it's rather dull.

Also there are some stuff that I found rather silly. For example Circuit Breaker, how the fuck was she able to build a suit that can do all kinds of stuff while she was paralysed (only able to move her hand and her head) in a hospital room? Yeah she had her computer but still. Also Megatron can shrug off military fire like it's nothing but he barely survives falling off a cliff? (only survives because he transforms into gun mode just in time so that the impact of his giant body doesn't kill him).

I mean it's just a comic book but still.

 

Let us know what you think of the Carwash of Doom.  

I grew up reading them. They were okay. Even now, there are some highlights, despite the more silly arcs. Omega Supreme kicking rear in his first appearance in issue 19 was great, the alternate future of issue 67, how well the comic depicted Blaster. The highlights were enough to keep me coming back at the time.

 

I have read some of them before but i am currently reading the entire Marvel UK run.
I am relatively new to the online fandom myself but i think it was mainly "Grimlock" to whom "the real G1" was a question of importance  
I am more emotionally connected to the cartoon cause that was what i knew as a kid, but there are Marvel issues i like and not all of them UK original issues, both Simon and Bob wrote good and terrible issues, but i do feel Bob was the forerunner of the Bayverse "Transformers fiction needs to be mainly about humans and the robots should be sideshow characters so people can relate to the fiction"-thing. Alltough Furman was known to err on that side from time to time - mostly when it came to ladies  

 

From what I read in Marvel UK Vol. 1, I think not. It seems they had to make the stories so, that the main story of the Marvel US comics was not affected by it. I'm currently halfway through Vol. 1. So far it's boring.  

 

Barring Man of Iron, the UK series proper takes a while to get off the ground.

 

Hm :/
In the later collections there are stories I definitely want to read, but I started from the beginning in fear of missing out on something. Maybe I should have started at a later Volume.

 

It really only starts to get good with Target 2006. But there are a couple of interesting bits among the earlier stories.

 

Should have listened to my urge starting with target 2006. Now the IDW sale is over... Argh

 

IDW usually runs a digital sale of 25% to 50% off at least once a year. I tend to make a list, then buy a lot all at once.

So, just have a little patience. Do a little homework on what you think would be decent reading. If you read the synopsis now and make a list, by the time you get to read them chances are good that any of the juicy parts of the various stories will be forgotten by then.

 

Yeah, this. All the post-movie stuff is where it gets great.

 

I think I have the trades of Target: 2006 and Time Wars, and both are completely fucking awesome. Never feels like I needed more early stuff to get into them.

 

What you can no longer find in print, you should be able to still find in digital format. For that, Comixology is your friend. Indeed, with the exception of the first six issues of 'All Hail Megatron', which a friend gave me as a gift in trade paperback some years ago, I have purchased all of my IDW Transformers comics through Comixology. And it has been glorious. So, you should be able to get some of those Marvel UK reprints via Comixology. I can't recommend 'Target: 2006' highly enough, but you may also enjoy 'In the National Interest' and 'Dinobot Hunt', which are some slightly earlier stories.

I grew up with the animated movie and a few episodes of the cartoon on rental and second hand VHS myself. In addition, I had two issues of the UK comic (two parts of 'Space Pirates', to be precise), and three of the annuals ('86, '87, and '88). It was a long time before I even realised that they were two completely separate continuities and it wasn't until around 2002, when I was 16, that I managed to read through the entire comic's run. I began with the Titan Books trade paperbacks, 'All Fall Down' and 'End of the Road', which inspired me to go back and read the whole series from the beginning, which I did by finding scans of the US series online. I enjoyed the book, but I was very puzzled when the 'Space Pirates' arc never showed up. Only later did I learn that this was a UK exclusive story, so I hunted it down along with the other UK stories, and eventually read the entire 332 issue run of the UK book in the right order.

Personally, I prefer the comics. I find the stories and characters more compelling. I prefer ongoing story arcs. And I really enjoyed the way things changed as time went by, with characters being killed or incapacitated, and leaders changing on both sides (especially the Decepticons). I really appreciated that after 4 million years of absence, Megatron was no longer considered supreme Decepticon leader on Cybertron and had to fight to regain his authority (and never quite succeeded). I loved the way Furman skillfully wove his own material into the book along with the US material, and his use of the animated movie cast, which the US book seemed content to ignore in his ongoing time travel story arc. The art was variable, of course, and I found the UK material was usually better drawn (and written), but I'm willing to forgive some of the poor art from back then. After all, many of these artists worked on superhero books, and their skill was in drawing people, not machines. Again, the UK material was better here. Not sure why. Maybe the UK artists just had more experience drawing machines? It would make sense. British comics back then were often war comics, grounded in reality, where attention to detail on the guns, the tanks, ships, and planes was important, so British artists necessarily had more experience doing that kind of virtuoso artwork.

I think I'll re-read the book again soon, actually.