Writer: Simon Furman
Pencils: Andrew Wildman
Inks: Stephen Baskerville
Price: $19.99/£14.99
Publisher: Titan Books
ISBN: 1-84023-300-1

Way back in 1983, when I was a mere two years old, a line of Japanese toys was introduced into the Western market. Fairly innovative toys, too - by means of some cunning jiggery-pokery, you could turn it from one perfectly good toy into another, completely different one. These were the Transformers, and they sold incredibly well. The period in which they were popular lasted up until around 1990 (depending on who you ask), which is quite an achievement for any toy line.

As was the norm in the mid-1980s, any successful toy line was accompanied by a comic book. Transformers were no exception, and in 1984 a four issue miniseries was commissioned. The series was so popular that it became an ongoing series, and finally wound down 7 years later at issue #80. Up until around issue #60 or so, the stories were nothing special. Sure, they were passable - it's hard to make a story about giant robots smashing the hell out of each other boring, at least for kids - but they weren't any great feat of literature. In England, however, Marvel UK was reprinting the American comics in short stints, every week, in a large format disposable comic containing about 9 pages of American strip and reprinted material from other American comics. And by publishing them weekly, Marvel UK was reprinting material faster than the US could provide it.

Enter Simon Furman. Furman started writing some pretty decent stories, and in fact his work outshone the US material. To any kid who was reading these things at the time, it was like manna from heaven. Well-written stories involving giant robots, with optional smashing-the-hell-out-of-each-other action? Too good to be true. The amount of people I know who fondly remember these comics, or started reading comics as a direct result of them, is phenomenal.

Eventually, Marvel US cottoned on to the fact that these stories were a lot better than the stuff they'd been publishing, and thus Furman's material was also printed in the American series. He kept the series running until issue #80, when a lack of interest in the series - possibly a readership that considered itself to have outgrown such things - forced it to be cancelled. A halfhearted attempt at a revival came a year or so later, but received little critical acclaim or financial success. The UK edition managed to hold on for dozen or so more issues, but eventually also fell victim to cancellation.

ALL FALL DOWN is a collection encompassing the first half of the final storyline of the US edition, issues 69 through 74. As the material goes, it's very probably the best of the lot - by this point Furman was under the editorial radar, and could do whatever he liked, including killing off swathes of characters toward the end of the series and sneaking in some surprisingly graphic violence.

The plot is this: The Transformers live on a metallic planet called Cybertron. Another metallic planet known as Unicron (actually a planet-sized Transformer) is on route to Cybertron, whereupon Unicron will eat it. The Autobots have a sacred relic called 'The Creation Matrix' that could possibly save them but is, unfortunately, lost. So, still on Earth, Optimus Prime (leader of the Autobots - the good guys) is attempting to arrange a truce between the two warring armies of Autobots and Decepticons (the bad guys), so that they can stop the planet-eater somehow. This is rendered difficult by the fact that Starscream and Shockwave, two of the Decepticons, are currently starting a civil war with another faction of Decepticons.

Now, that's all pretty cool in my book. Violence! War! Politics! Robots! All essential ingredients for a perfect story. But how well does it come off? Well, it's not a perfect story, and it's certainly not for everyone. The dialogue tends toward the melodramatic a little often, and is sometimes a trifle wordy for its own good. Some of the reasons for throwing a concept or two into the mix are a little baffling - given the choice, I could have done without the inclusion of the 'Neoknights' (a quartet of superpowered humans), as they really don't serve the plot much at all and, to be quite frank, look a bit stupid.

And let's face it - if you don't dig on the concept of giant transforming robots having a big scrap, then ALL FALL DOWN is probably not situated entirely up your alley. However, if you do dig on the concept, there's really nothing better for your money. The art is gorgeous, dated colouring aside - Andrew Wildman's clean lines and dynamic figures show off the sheer scale of the characters very well indeed. The attention to detail, too, is superb. Andrew Wildman is widely regarded (along with Geoff Senior) as the best artist ever to work on TRANSFORMERS.

If you can overlook the brazen use of extreme melodrama in the writing, then you'll probably not have too many problems with that, either. The characters are extremely well rounded, especially considering just how many of them there are. Also of note is the actual plotting - surprisingly sophisticated for what started out as a children's toy tie-in. There are some great noble and conflicted scenes when Optimus Prime has to decide whether or not to kill two Transformers (Ratchet, an Autobot, and Megatron, former Decepticon leader) that have been rather unfortunately fused together into a rampaging monster via a teleporter accident. There's even a bit of theological philosophy, when Primus - the Transformers' god - starts getting a bit free and frisky with the lives of his subjects, concerning Optimus Prime just a touch.

One of the problems with ALL FALL DOWN is continuity. Now, I know all the continuity that goes before the collection, because I've still got a big stack of issues. But there are a lot of references to things that have gone before, and if you come in expecting to know all the characters having just seen a few episodes of the cartoon series, you're in for a surprise. But there is a short explanation at the beginning, and none of it really affects the story too adversely - it's best to just enjoy the ride.

As this trade is quite far along in the series, it seems pretty clear that Titan UK has reprinted the very best of the material and will follow it up with the earlier stuff if demand shows. As ALL FALL DOWN came in at the 11th best selling on the list of TPBs and OGNs for August, it should come as no surprise that there are five more collections rumoured to be on their way, one every three months until November 2002. However, I'm forced to balk a little at the price point - twenty dollars seems high for five issues of reprinted material plus a few negligible extras, even considering the admittedly high production values.

I've read a lot of articles and retrospectives about this series in the past, and one phrase that gets bandied about quite a lot is 'mythological archetypes'. Sure, this is a story about giant robots having a scrap. But it's also the story of a race attempting to heal the divide in its ranks that has caused war for millions of years, all the while trying to escape from the devil, who is unstoppably approaching their homeland. Heroes posture nobly, villains plot and scheme nefariously, that sort of thing.

At the end of the day, it's a fun collection of stories that, if you can get into the basic concept, you'll probably enjoy. The art is extremely good for the time in which it was produced, and the writing is fun, if a little over-written at times. There's certainly a big nostalgia factor in the equation - Transformers were huge back in the mid-to-late 80s, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a kid who doesn't remember them. But when you think about it, there has to be a reason for that, right?

Nick Locking is the award-winning co-creator of THE ATROCITY, and the writer of the forthcoming ROBOCOP: SIMPLE MACHINES.

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