1984 was a huge year for pop culture icons. Especially those beginning with T or G, for some reason; amongst other massive franchises, The Terminator, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters and Gremlins all emerged in 1984, and all endure to this day, four decades on.

Of course, so too did another property beginning with T: Transformers. A repackaging of a couple of different Japanese toy lines, Hasbro brought the Transformers to the West, and tasked Marvel with naming the characters and creating the lore to bring the disparate characters together.

Often derided as simply extended ads to sell the toys, the Transformers animated series nonetheless became hugely popular, and has been expanded and rebooted many, many times over the years since, with varying levels of success.

The same is true of the Marvel comic book series, which kicked off with what was supposed to be a four issue limited series, but ended up being so successful that it ran for 80 issues (the cover of the final issue even jokingly declared that it was ’80 in a 4 issue limited series’!). Marvel UK published their own Transformers stories, which spun off into its own continuity, and numerous publishers have created their own stories since, building on or revising aspects of the crucial groundwork laid down by Marvel in those initial series.

This particular comic reprints the entire first issue of Transformers, and while it can’t be said to be particularly good, certainly by modern standards, it does cover an awful lot of ground and brings numerous familiar concepts to readers for the first time, with an impressively large (if over ambitious) cast of characters.

We’re introduced to Cybertron in the opening pages; a mechanical planet on which Autobots live in peace and harmony. However, a robot named Megatron seeks to take control of the world, and forms the Decepticons, who flock to his side and begin a war against the Autobots that’s so devastating that it knocks the planet out of its orbit, sending it soaring through space.

In danger of colliding with asteroids, brave Autobot Optimus Prime leads a mission to clear a safe path for Cybertron, but is thwarted by Decepticons who board the Autobot ship.

To stop the ship falling into Decepticon hands, Optimus sets it on a collision course with an uninhabited planet, where they crash and all seemingly perish.

That planet, however, is Earth; four million years later, in the year 1984, with life blossoming around it, the ship itself is awakened by volcanic activity, and resurrects its inhabitants. Scanning local mechanical ‘life’, it bestows new shapes and forms upon the Autobots and Decepticons, the latter of whom immediately attempt to conquer the new world they find themselves on.

It’s a massively ambitious and somewhat convoluted opening issue that tries to fit in way too much, with far too big a cast to properly introduce on both sides of the Cybertronian struggle.

Yet writer Ralph Macchio (with ‘plot’ credited to Bill Mantlo) tries anyway, with a couple of hilariously bad pages that have the Transformers introduce themselves one by one with some dreadfully clunky expository dialogue.

It does no one any favours, and Frank Springer’s perfectly functional art is drowned out by endless speech bubbles in some of the worst pages I’ve ever seen in a comic. Seriously, check out this page where the Decepticons introduce themselves one by one:

Ouch. If that’s not bad enough, we get the Autobot version on the very next page though at least theirs occurs across a double page spread:

It’s awful, and it shows just how far comics have come; the IDW and, currently, Skybound/Image run of Transformers allows time for the characters and concepts to breathe, though that’s a general evolution of how comic stories are now told, as well as there now being more familiarity in general with the Transformers themselves. It’s clunky, yes, but getting every toy from the initial line into this comic means that no matter which Transformer you clutched as you eagerly read this issue, you could be sure to get a quick rundown of their personality and abilities right here!

So, like the animated show (which follows a broadly similar story, but is definitely not the same), the comic does come across as little more than a toy commercial at times.

Characters such as the Witwickys also make their first appearances here, with a conflict occurring at a drive-in cinema; it’s amusing how unfazed the humans are at vehicles suddenly battling each other, or turning into giant robots!

The cover, by renowned comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz, is a gorgeous piece of art, even if (Optimus Prime aside) it bears no resemblance to any characters or events that happen within the issue!

In terms of the interior art, the characters are rendered to look almost exactly like their toy counterparts, which was something the cartoon series did a great job of avoiding, settling on simplified looks for the Autobots and Decepticons that didn’t slavishly replicate every aspect of the toys. This is something the comics did slowly move away from, bringing the look of the animated characters to the page as the series developed.

So it’s a very clunky start, but bear in mind that this would have been aimed at kids just discovering the toys for the first time. It covers a lot for a first issue, and even though things like character motivation are paper thin (Megatron’s reason for creating the Decepticons and desire to ruin the tranquility of Cybertron are non-existent), it does manage to set up a present day conflict on Earth, involving more relatable human characters, by the end of the issue.

It is absolutely fascinating to see where the saga began, however, and it’s fun to see what elements stuck and which were revised or dropped altogether as the series evolved, was rebooted or was, ahem, transformed.