Transformers are way better than Gobots

[Ronnie]

I've been intending to mention this for the past few weeks since getting my ticket but kept on forgetting ... There's a TFNation Mini-Con taking place in Manchester on March 22. The guest is James Roberts.

I think that @air_raid is local fella. And @Chris B is a massive fan of Roberts, so might be interested in a day out and catch-up with an old mate.

Is anybody of this parish tempted to go?

[davertfnewman]

I go to TFN in Birmingham, have never bothered with the Mini-Con events. Mainly because of distance, I have mates in the Reading area who have been to the one down there. I imagine they're alright as long as you have some decent sellers in and one or two guests worth attending the panel of. These days the convention is a backdrop for a social gathering of my mates and I.

[BigJag]

It's been ages since I've been to a Transformers convention. I remember going to a couple in the East London area. Unfortunately TFN Birmingham tends to clash with other commitments. Getting to Birmingham would be very simple. I must really try and get to it this year. All the reports suggest that it's a lot of fun. The smaller satellite events receive similar praise. 

@Ronnie have fun at TFN Manchester and please do let us know how it went.

[air_raid]

13 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I think that @air_raid is local fella. And @Chris B is a massive fan of Roberts, so might be interested in a day out and catch-up with an old mate.

Is anybody of this parish tempted to go?

Timing falls rotten for expenditure otherwise might have been tempted. Haven’t been to a con since 2006 where I got my 20th anniversary Japanese reissue Predaking.

[Ronnie]

On 2/24/2025 at 6:12 AM, BigJag said:

@Ronnie have fun at TFN Manchester and please do let us know how it went.

Very well, thank you! I sat in four of the five presentations, all of which were interesting topics and well-delivered by likeable people. They weren't mic'ed, though, which is a bit of downer given that the contributors by nature aren't bombastic people, and so most spoke at normal volume in reply to their interviewers rather than projecting their voices to the back of a 100-seater lecture theatre. This would have been doubly helpful considering that there were grown adults in there who just had to unbox their new purchases and play with them: click-click-click. (Don't get me started on the one who had to run his vehicle backwards and forwards over the desk, or the lady directly behind me frantically sketching (scratch-scratch-scratch) and frequently dropping a pen onto the table whenever she'd switch between them, swishing her drink about, and dropping it noisily whenever she'd had a swig.)

Here's a bit on the talks:

• A fella called David (no idea of his surname) gave a funny and insightful talk about Dreamwave Productions, the company which brought back the Transformers comic franchise in the early 2000s after a lull of several years: famously they went out of business within a few years, having not paid the contributors for work done. This was an excellect presentation by a quick-witted, knowledgable and charismatic bloke, and the only person who didn't come close to needing a microphone. The talk was well-researched, very informative, and eye-opening: David was able to demonstrate (although he underlined that it was speculation on his part) that Dreamwave went out of business through a series of bad business decisions: Transformers was the cash cow funding vanity productions which came about because the staff's “research” at their luxurious headquarters was sitting around playing on the GameCube, leading to them procuring the rights for titles which never sold and went out of business shortly. There was plenty more to it than just that, and the plug seems to have come from (again, speculation, although backed up with figures) Hasbro exercising a clause in their contract because they were owed half a million dollars. (Oh, it's just come back to me: when the Hasbro logo appeared on the screen there were a handful of jeers, causing somebody else to rebut: “No, we owe them everything!”)
• An interview with Jack Lawrence (the artist of Lost Light), who gave us an insight into what his job involves. It went from a description of a two-page spread to his outline art, then the detailed pencil work, all the way to the lined inkwork. (That was followed by seeing the entire published spread, although he was very clear to underline that he doesn't do the colours.) Absolutely amazing to see the transitions, and I regret not photographing them as they appeared on screen to share with you.
• For the first time, Marvel UK artist Lee Sullivan was at one of these events. You'll know his art if you were from that time:

  

• I admire his straightforward honesty: he said that his approach was to copy Geoff Senior's art! I quite enjoyed seeing the glee in his reminiscing about trips to the pub with the team, plus working with William Shatner, who was nothing like as he is usually portrayed; Sullivan had to ask other people to confirm what he's really like because he hadn't seen anything negative, and they gave the same answer: they'd heard of his reputation but he had always treated them with great respect. 
• James Roberts being interviewed about Chaos Theory, his first stand-alone work for IDW. Fluent, detailed, witty. He admitted a touch of embarrassment at the thought that his best work may actually be his first one; that's not the way things are supposed to go!

There were two halls with traders, artists taking commissions, and Roberts selling copies of his personal notebooks: 

He also launched a new book, a narrative of the creation of his debut solo work, including emails sent to pitch it and the scripts:

Gushing-fanboy moment: he addressed mine to: The suavest man here ... Although with his handwriting, that might be Swerve-est. He did call me the suavest man here earlier, though, so I'm taking it. I would've loved to mine him for info but the queue was massive and I would've felt guilty holding people up, so we just swapped a couple of jokes, and that was it.

There were tonnes of opportunities for socialising (the venue was strewn with sofas), a restaurant, and so on. That was all wasted on me but everybody else seemed to really enjoy it.

The event was professionally put together and featured genuinely enjoyable presentations. Some of the people there were irritating but I'd have probably said that even if I'd had the place to myself. I can see myself popping along again.

Edited March 23, 2025 by Ronnie

[davertfnewman]

Glad you enjoyed your experience. Some of your thoughts remind me of the first one I went to, Auto Assembly in 2008, where you basically had to listen in close to some soft voices in a cramped hall, although TFN in Brum has people good to go on the technical front. From what I saw on social media, I do like the lecture theatre setting, although it's obviously dependent on the location and which rooms they have.

Likewise, there were people there the first time I went who couldn't resist opening their purchases. For instance, a "bless his heart" sort who had opened up the original Masterpiece Megatron and dropped a particularly fragile part on the floor that was destined to be stamped on, so I told my mate to tell him he'd dropped one and would benefit from picking it up. There are a lot of people who go to these events who that's possibly the only outing they have other than going to spot trains or something where a responsible adult accompanies them, so you have to grin and bear it a bit.

David, if he's a fat Geordie, would be convention organiser David Wallace. Fancies himself a bit of a "personality" with a Sarah Millican-esque wife who's far more charming than him or the original. Does know his stuff, though, and is knowledgeable.

Jack Lawrence is a nice guy. A little bit of an "issues" champion, but his work is good and he's a stalwart of the community. I've got a few of his prints and books and always try to get more.

Lee Sullivan is a legend. I emailed him one time many years ago to ask a question about a comic he worked on and how it had been composed, which led to a conversation about how hard it was to get comics in my local area, which then led to the realisation that he was playing a gig at a local club in my area imminently with his Roxy Music tribute band (Roxy Magic, with a very impressive Bryan Ferry lookalike), so went to see them and meet him and have a chat. Haven't seen him since then, but would love to again at a convention.

James Roberts is another guy very much like Jack Lawrence. He and Nick Roche did a podcast recently about Last Stand of the Wreckers, where the same admission was basically made.

You do have to balance not taking someone's time while also making sure you get a good amount of time with the person you're meeting or getting stuff signed by. Unfortunately, as you'll have probably experienced with the box openers and picture drawers, that's not something that's always observed by the ones without social etiquette. A mate of mine got stuck with someone who wanted to do impersonations for him; I had to jump ship and "go to the loo", but he was far more diplomatic and said "Why don't you save them for the voice actor you're going to say hello to in a minute?".

[Ronnie]

Oh, I forgot the two most important bits: 

1) Yesterday was Simon Furman's birthday, 

2) At the end of the day, David Wallace presented a missing (/completed) Dreamwave issue, having spoken to the people concerned, who all gave him permission to share it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11KKiKF2jwFJdWdrJK92L0-NHCWxp2WUq/view

[air_raid]

I’m on holiday in that Poland and in a Woolworth (yes) I’ve seen numerous “Auto Roboter” KOs including one each of Scrapper, Mixmaster, Scavenger, Long Haul, 3 Bonecrushers and… sadly, not Hook. The packaging implies they combine into Devvy, good job there was no Hook or that would have been quite the argument between Mrs raid and me, and I’d still have ended up buying none of them. Dobranoc.

[BigJag]

I wonder who makes that set. A number of these 3rd party efforts are of pretty decent quality. It looks like they've made a pretty good effort there, packaging seems to be of a high standard. Do you remember how much they were?

[air_raid]

3 hours ago, BigJag said:

Do you remember how much they were?

9zł each so roughly speaking a whole Devastator would set me back £10.80.

[Ronnie]

Of course I'm getting the entire US and UK series in four swanky volumes. (Decepticon, of course.)

This is an initiative on Kickstarter by Skybound, who currently have the licence for Transformers comics. The whole set which I've ordered is $300, although shipping is required too, which puts it to about £277 by my calculations. There are smaller packages available, for those who prefer only UK or US.

A few stretch goals have been unlocked already. I'm not sure what value reprints of issues are when you're getting the whole set but they're not the only add-ons: there is custom artwork, too, tech-specs, ribbons, and so on. It seems as though it's going to be possible to buy them individually in trade paperback form, too, although you won't be saving much money by doing so.

I shouldn't be doing this: I have no space left and I already own:

• The Titan Books reissues from the early 2000s,
• The IDW Classics reissues,
• The 100-volume Hachette series (which I really regret but they suckered me in by making it 60 volumes and then continually expanding it with fodder when they knew that I wouldn't be able to stop once I'd started).

I have no need of a fourth set but I am an idiot who never learns. It's too late for me.

If you're one of the people who don't already own a complete set of reissues and might quite like to have one, then this doesn't look bad at all: Transformers Compendium Set on Kickstarter.

[Chris B]

Is there much difference between this and the Titan ones?

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, Chris B said:

Is there much difference between this and the Titan ones?

I'm not aware of any bonus content. It's just the US run across two volumes, and the same for the UK. One thing to bear in mind is that these volumes are all the same size, which means that the UK stories will have been shrunk down.

 

They're probably worth getting if you want to reminisce but you can already do that with your Titan collection. In your case, I suppose it depends on how much you value having a luxury version of something you already had. (Or you could look at selling the Titan collection, I suppose. They're numerous and hard to get hold of, so there may be money in it.)

[Onyx2]

Genuinely had nostalgic goosebumps looking at some of those covers @Ronnie. 

[DavidB6937]

Currently making my way through this set. Really nice build. Definitely making me want to revisit the cartoon or the comics after.