“We Dinobots ain’t much for talkin’. We like action!”
So here’s how I think it went down. I don’t have anything resembling proof, but I want to believe it went a little something like this.
Bob Budiansky is leaning back in his chair, giving himself a pat on the back for a job well done. His boss, Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, has just tapped him with coming up with some ideas for the new Transformers comic that Marvel plans to publish to help promote Hasbro’s line of shape-changing toys. Shooter and Denny O’Neil had already hashed out some of the basics, like coming up with a name for Optimus Prime, but it was then left to Budiansky to come up with a compelling backstory for the Transformers that explained how a bunch of alien robots ended up on Earth with the ability to transform into Earth cars, planes, boomboxes, and so forth.
After hours of sussing out the details, he finally comes up with the perfect explanation: it was all a big mistake! The shipwrecked and inactive Transformers were reshaped by an automated repair system that, like the Transformers themselves, had no concept of organic life, and so it had no way of recognizing humans and other carbon-based life forms when it scanned our planet in search of intelligent life. And so, when it came time to adapt the Transformers for survival in this alien environment, the ship’s reactivated computer gave them the forms of cars, planes, and other machines that it mistook as Earth’s dominant life forms.
“Bob, you’ve done it again,” I imagine him thinking to himself as he leans back in his chair and clasps his hands behind his head to savor his moment of trium–
“The Dinobots,” Shooter says as he pops his head back into Bob’s office.
“Excuse me?” says Bob.
“Yeah, I forgot to mention that Hasbro has a bunch of Dinobot toys they want us to promote in the comic. So remember to include those characters in one of our stories.”
At which point Bob looks down at his notes and thinks to himself, “Well, [bleep] me.”
| “Repeat Performance” The Transformers #8 September 1985 Cover Art: M.D. Bright and Brad Joyce
CREDITS |
ROLL CALL Autobots Dinobots (Grimlock, Slag, Sludge, Snarl, Swoop); Bumblebee (cameo); Gears (cameo); Optimus Prime; Ratchet Decepticons |
Like I said, I have no idea if that’s what really happened, but I like to think it went something like that. Because honestly, dinosaurs…? Sure, there’s no real mystery behind why Hasbro created the Dinobots as part of their first wave of Transformers toys — kids love dinosaurs as much as they love fighting robots — but how the heck do you explain robots that showed up on Earth four million years ago that take the shape of massive animals that died out 65 million years ago?
Pretty easily, as it turned out. “Repeat Performance” picks up shortly after the events of last issue, with Ratchet flying by shuttle to the Savage Land. His mission: to locate the Dinobots who battled Shockwave shortly after the Ark crashed on Earth four million years ago. After locating their metallic forms in a tar pit, he uses a memory probe to view their battle and subsequent immersion in the goop. (Long story short: when Shockwave made his way to Earth shortly after the Ark’s crash landing, the Ark’s computer reactivated five Autobots to go after him, and gave them dinosaur forms because those creatures were still present in the Savage Land. Got all that? Good.) Slag awakens and, after he recognizes Ratchet as a fellow Autobot, agrees to help finish the job they had started four million years earlier.
Meanwhile… Shockwave checks in on Megatron, who has been left to guard the Ark by himself and prepared the head of Optimus Prime for transport to the aerospace plant captured by the Decepticons in the previous issue. Shockwave is pleased by Megatron’s newfound team spirit and suggests he might have to revise his calculated odds of having to destroy the former Deception leader — but you know, leopards, spots, etc. (“I obey your order, Commander,” Megatron says, before thinking to himself, “and advise you to cherish it… if all goes according to plan, it may be the last order you ever give me!”) He returns to the plant with Optimus Prime’s head (effortlessly defeating an Army force surrounding the plant) and prepares to begin the construction of a new generation of Decepticons with the help of the Matrix program within Prime.
While that’s happening, Ratchet contacts Megatron and shows him the video footage he found of the Dinobots defeating Shockwave (allowing Megatron to assume that battle from millions of years ago had just occurred). Megatron, who expected Ratchet to run off and save his own skin (so to speak), admits he’s surprised the medic came through. They agree to meet on a nearby mountain to complete their bargain… but of course Megatron has no intention of keeping up his end and threatens to kill him. That’s the Dinobots’ cue to rise up out of the snow This breaks the bargain… and the hidden Dinobots burst forth from the snow. Ratchet figured Megatron wouldn’t hold up his end of the Rite of Oneness (that’s the problem with being a bad guy who’s predictable in his badness), and so he gambled on Megatron’s betrayal to release him from the rite.
Despite the Dinobots’ power, it’s not even a match; Megatron beats them all, leaving Ratchet to face him alone once more. Determined to fight like a warrior, Ratchet tries to carry them both over a cliff edge… only to fall backwards when he can’t make Megatron budge an inch. Still, it was enough to weaken the ground beneath Megatron’s feet, and the Decepticon is sent tumbling down, transforming into his gun mode in mid-air in the hopes that his lighter mass will allow him to survive the fall. “Swallowed up by the soft snow, Megatron is seen no more…”
“Good work, Doc! Why’d you need us here?” Grimlock asks. Good question. Not wishing to face a possibly still functioning Megatron again, they head back to the unguarded Ark to rescue the rest of the Autobots. And so we close another chapter on…
….oooh, an epilogue! Those are always fun. “Nighttime in Josie Beller’s hospital room,” and we find the young woman Meanwhile, Josie Beller, has a series of printed circuit strips on her arm; presumably, this is how she can fire an energy bolt at a piece of hospital equipment. “I think I’m ready to check out of here,” she says to herself. Well, I can’t blame her, the food in those places is never really that good…. oh, she means in the “ready to go kick butt” sense. Well, that should be entertaining to watch.
Random Observations:
Make Mine Marvel: The issue begins with an editor’s note telling “veteran Marvel mavens” that Ratchet is mucking about in the Savage Land, and that events in this story precede whatever is going on over in Avengers #257. That’s the story where the giant alien known as Terminus lays waste to the Savage Land before Hercules gets Olympian on his armored ass. (Spoiler: Terminus and the Savage Land both got better.) Readers didn’t know this at the time, but this would be the last direct reference to the wider Marvel universe, though not the last time we’ll see a shout-out to various parts of it.
Hey, we’re 100% Buster-free this issue! Let’s keep it up, people.
“Uhh… I really haven’t the time to find out what you want, tubular, carbon-based life form! Could you please find someone else to talk to?” Heh.
This seems as good a place as any to point out that the editor credited for this issue is Jim Owsley, the birth name of Christopher Priest. He entered the business in 1978 as a Marvel intern and joined the company’s editorial staff in 1979, making him the first Black writer-editor in mainstream comics. He changed his name shortly after he became part of the group of writers and artists that launched Milestone Media, an imprint designed to boost minority representation in the business, in 1993.
And that’s why they call it the ’80s: A quintessential ’80s candy treat, Bonkers! (always written with the exclamation point) were square, chewy fruit-flavored candies that always came with “an extra fruity middle.” Introduced by Nabisco in 1983 to compete with Mars’ Starburst candies, Bonkers! was a hit thanks to a series of TV commercials that featured various uptight-looking folks popping a piece in their mouth and getting knocked flat by giant falling pieces of fruit while laughing maniacally. “Some candy!”
We’re talking about comics written for children starring toys targeting children, so I don’t tend to get hung up on a lot of “gotcha” stuff like tiny continuity errors from one issue to the next, or stories about giant alien robots breaking some law of physics that I didn’t catch in high school on account of extreme dumbness. But two things and I’ll then shut up about them: one, how does any being mechanical or otherwise survive lying in a tar pit for four million years and come out ready to rumble after a light hosing down, and two, so if Megatron is indeed lighter in his transformed mode (which makes sense, considering we’ve also seen other Transformers like Soundwave get picked up by humans) then where does his extra mass go? Either the amount of mass inside him has to be compacted when he shifts into his smaller gun mode (which would cause him to weigh the same either way), or he’s somehow able to shunt that mass somewhere else when he transforms which seems… unlikely. Someone should go get all the scientists working on curing cancer to stop what they’re doing and figure this out for us.
Wait! I just thought of something else. If all the other Transformers were given the shapes of various mechanical objects by a computer that couldn’t recognize Earth’s organic beings as sentient life forms, then how was that same computer able to scan and recognize the Savage Land’s dinosaurs as “the intelligent life forms on this planet”…? Great, now I’m going to be up all night figuring that one out.
Given the build-up the Dinobots got in the series before their big debut here, it’s kind of a bummer that (spoilers) they go away for almost a year before comic readers will get to see them again. But that’s the toy biz for you, there’s always some new product that you’ve got to push out the door.
Next Issue: “Hide your personal computer! Trade in your VCR! No machine is safe from: CIRCUIT BREAKER!”
A Dispensable List of Comic Book Lists 
Thankfully Simon Furman took a liking to the Dinobots, and managed to use their prolonged absence from the US comic to the advantage of the UK title by including them in several popular stories set during various story gaps.