More Than Meets The Eye

Quote of the day: "'You're by far quite the worst pirate I've ever heard of.'
'Ah, but you have heard of me....'" - Jack Davenport and Johnny Depp, Pirates
of the Carribean.

Song of the day: "She will be loved." - Maroon 5



For those of you that have been following this blog, I must seem like a bit of a geek. Well, todays post is going to confirm that once and for all, as I talk about an obsession of mine that has been with me since I was four years old, and has at times been more important to me than Star Wars (but still not more important than the wife!).

I remember being at a newsagents near my nan's in September of 1984, and seeing the first issue of a comic that I would still be collecting these 20 years later.

Transformers.

Now, I know immediately people will be crying things like 'sad bastard,' and I hold my hand up to that, but even more so than Star Wars, I am obsessed with Transformers. When I was ten, I went to Italy with my Mum. She wanted to see a country she'd been dying to go to since she was a girl. I wanted to buy Transformers I couldn't get in England (and I did, about 80 quids worth!). When I was eleven, I had a letter printed in the Transformers comic, and showed it off proudly for months.

During the mid-90's the craze of Transformers had been replaced with the likes of the Turtles, or other such nonsense, and the comics and cartoons ended, and eventually the figures died off too, and I began to think that I would have to forget my obsession with the Robots in Disguise.

And then I discovered the internet.

To my amazement, there were hundreds of websites keeping the craze alive, with fan fiction, fan comics, fan art, conventions and more. I then discovered that Hasbro, who make Transformers, were doing a toy line called Beast Wars, which was a futuristic off-shoot of Transformers, which spawned an award winning CGI TV series.

With all this, the fans' obsession of the original series (or Generation One, as it is now known) kept things alive so much that, in late 2001, a Canadian comics company called Dreamwave aquired the rights from Hasbro to produce new Transformers comics. Now, nearly three years after their first comic came out, they are producing about three our four different Transformers comics a month, and have already released almost as many as Marvel did in their entire 7-year reign with the title in the 80's. Add to this the fact that a live-action Transformers movie is in production, and that Hasbro are rereleasing the original transformers toys in dribs and drabs, then its fair to say that this fan's obsession is pretty much sated these days. As long as Optimus Prime is around to utter the immortal words "Transform, and roll out!" I'll be there to see it.

And yeah, I think that's pretty much all of my obsessions now.....