Transformers Collected Comics

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Collected Comics was published by Marvel UK as a companion series to the UK Generation 1 comic. Its purpose was to reprint entire stories from the comic (hence the name), in many ways a precursor of the modern trade paperback.

They were published on a semi-regular basis alongside the UK comic, usually as Summer or Winter specials. The name ‘Collected Comics’ wasn’t actually used until volume two of the series however.

Marvel US would also publish two volumes - in total, collecting the first six issues of the US comic - under the title.

Stories reprinted

The majority of the stories reprinted as part of the Collected Comics series were UK exclusives; however Collected Comics 1 and 2 were reprints of the original four-issue miniseries from the US series, retaining the regular ending featuring Shockwave rather than the alternate ending later published in The Complete Works Part 2 (also by Marvel UK).

"I was so much more atmospheric in black and white!"

While the original single issue printings of the early UK stories (such as "Man of Iron") only featured the uncolored black and white lineart for some pages as a cost-cutting measure, the reprints featured in Collected Comics had those pages colored as well, which was then used as the basis for all subsequent reprints of those stories.

Occasionally, corrections to the original stories' printing would be applied to reprints. A character naming error was corrected in the reprinting of "Second Generation!", and the colors for one of the opening splash pages in "Time Wars" were corrected from their original printing.

Some volumes contained multiple stories, a main story along with a short back-up story to bring up the page count. Especially long UK stories would be split across multiple volumes.

In February 1990 Collected Comics 15 reprinted the first 3 issues of the incredibly popular "Target: 2006". Unfortunately the master copies for the remaining issues were lost in the post meaning that the remainder of the story was never published in the Collected Comics series. Rather cheekily however Collected Comics 16 used a "Target: 2006" cover.

Collected Comics 17 saw the reprinting of the first 3 parts of "Space Pirates!". This ended with a 'To be continued…' caption at the end. Collected Comics 18 however saw the first 3 parts of "Time Wars" being published instead, no explanation for this was ever given, with parts 4 & 5 reprinted in 19. Time Wars itself was also never completed, as due to falling sales, the UK comic ceased publication and the Collected Comics series went into a decline, with its output becoming ever more random.

The UK Annual story "Victory!" was reprinted twice, once in Collected Comics 14 and once in the 1992 Summer Special. On both occasions the first, eighth, ninth & tenth pages of the story were omitted, although this did not affect the story's readability.

The covers of the first three issues were a reprint of an earlier UK comic cover. This practice was also adopted for Collected Comics 7 and continuously from Collected Comics 13. This would usually be one of the original covers from the story contained within, although in later Collected Comics this was not always the case. Collected Comics 3-6 & 8-12 had newly drawn covers.

Format

The publication format of the series changed over time. The first two issues were in a prestige format (with a high price) with approximately fifty pages and cardboard covers, similar to other Marvel specials from 1985. From the third issue the series moved to paper covers, with the number of pages fluctuating between 24 and 48 until issue #8 when they settled on 36 pages, which all subsequent issues have. The price fluctuated depending on the format and length.

Other specials

In 1986 Marvel reprinted the US Transformers: The Movie adaptation in a single style volume. This was not sold as part of the Collected Comics series but simply as a Winter Special in a prestige format with a cardboard cover.

Another one-off special published was "Plague of the Insecticons!", which reprinted both "Plague of the Insecticons!" and "And There Shall Come...a Leader!" from the Transformers Annual 1985. It was not issued as part of the Collected Comics series but was instead put out in a prestige format with a cardboard cover and a higher price.

Survival

Following the demise of the UK comic in 1992 the Collected Comics series continued to be published for a further 2 years (a non-uncommon occurrence for comic specials^[1]), although the Collected Comics moniker was dropped after volume 19. An additional 8 volumes were published in this period with the final volume being published in the winter of 1994, over 9 years since the first volume in the series and a year longer than the comic series that spawned it.