Does a robot die a little each time it’s rebooted? When “The Transformers” first appeared in the eighties in its comic book and cartoon series incarnations, words like “brand”, “franchise” and “reboot” were seldom applied outside the slick, knife-edged world of corporate business. But capitalism has come a long, long way since then. In these times of ratings chasers, bean counters and brand shouters, beloved character-centric storylines have been price-tagged and bagged.

In 1988 Hasbro released a sub-group of Mini-Autobots called the “Sparkabots”. At the same time, Marvel UK introduced the team as the “Sparkler Mini-Bots”. Something didn’t quite add up.

In 1986, Marvel UK published two hardcover “Complete Works” books that reprinted the first four issues of Marvel US’s Transformers. Only this time, that Autobot double-page spread was included… with one major difference: Yes, they replaced two entire panels!

Double-page spreads are something of a rarity in Transformers comics. They pose tremendous amounts of difficulty in production (particularly if a comic features mid-story advertising) in both the pre-press and printing stages.

The Hub puts forth the testimony provided by an alien tape recorder and how its insidious brainwashing convinced an entire generation to hate a Saturday morning cartoon show.

Stephen Baskerville lent his inking (and sometimes penciling) talents to many Marvel UK and US Transformers comics in the 1980s/90s. The Hub invites Stephen to share his experiences.

How much do you know about Transformers? How much do you really know? In all honesty, I don’t know that much, but I know a user-updated wiki site that does! That site is TFWiki.net.

Just what is it that gets kidults excited about Dinosaurs? Huge, hulking, fearsome beasts that would either swallow you up whole or trample over you to get to a bamboo shoot. Of course, that’s a rather shallow generalisation since dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes. But it’s the really big ones that seem to capture the imagination.