Monday, September 26, 2022

TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA

Years ago, I had sort of an annual tradition where every Fall, I would do a series of Transformers posts. It started in the blog's first two years, with the full run of TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE in September/October/November of 2013 and 2014. In the Autumns of 2015 and 2016, it was Dreamwave's TRANSFORMERS: GENERATION ONE and WAR WITHIN comics. Then in 2017, it was all the G.I. JOE/TRANSFORMERS crossovers by Devil's Due Publishing.

After that, the tradition sort of faded away as I ran out of "limited run" Transformers series that piqued my interest. But that's changed! Here we are, five years after my last Fall Transformers project, and I've got something new. This will probably be the shortest of all the Transformers review series I've run here, but it's something I've had some interest in for a long time: TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA.

Now that's not what this stuff was originally called when it was published in Japan in the eighties; rather this is the umbrella title given to all the various Transformers manga that was published back then, as collected in three lovely hardcover volumes by the good people at Viz. I've known about this material for a long time, but never had a way to read it until recently. This stuff spans all of the "Generation One" era, starting with a tie-in to the original animated series (known in Japan as SUPER ROBOT LIFEFORM: TRANSFORMERS) all the way up through various Japanese-exclusive continuities. I honestly have little idea of what to expect here. Beyond TRANSFORMERS: HEADMASTERS, I know little about the Japanese stuff that came after the 1984-87 cartoon.

So hopefully you'll join me, starting next Monday, for the next little while as I take a look at this stuff. Overall, this will take the next five weeks -- two posts apiece for the first two books, and one single post for the final volume. And then after this brief diversion, it's back to the Marvel Universe for one of my favorite runs that I've never read!


Available on Amazon:
TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA vol. 1: Hardcover | Digital
TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA vol. 2: Hardcover | Digital
TRANSFORMERS: THE MANGA vol. 3: Hardcover | Digital

2 comments:

  1. I'm a "Transformers" fan, so of course I'll tune in. :)

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  2. Unabashed fan of Transformers Victory (the last of the Japanese anime series of that era) so I'm definitely here for this.

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