The Transformers: Headmasters #2

History

The Headmasters miniseries was conceived specifically to serve Hasbro's 1987 product line: because so many of that year's new toys lacked Earth-vehicle alternate modes, writer Bob Budiansky — already the primary architect of the Marvel US Transformers continuity — was tasked with setting their origin story on an alien world, solving the problem of how to plausibly introduce non-terrestrial alt-modes. Budiansky wrote all four issues of the bi-monthly series, with Frank Springer — who had also penciled the original 1984 Transformers four-issue miniseries — returning as artist, inked by Ian Akin and Brian Garvey, with Nel Yomtov handling colors and Don Daley as editor under editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco. Springer faced an extraordinary production challenge: the TF Wiki documents that he had to manage approximately 62 new character designs across the series, totaling roughly 132 distinct pieces of reference art when robot and alternate modes are counted separately, which contributed to a number of well-documented coloring and model errors throughout issue #2 specifically.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Issue title: 'Broken Glass!' — the second chapter of the four-issue bi-monthly miniseries, published September 1987 by Marvel Comics.
• Written by Bob Budiansky; penciled by Frank Springer; inked by Ian Akin and Brian Garvey; colored by Nel Yomtov; edited by Don Daley; editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco.
• First comic-page appearance of the completed Headmaster process: Nebulan bio-engineer Arcana invents the binary-bonding procedure under siege conditions, creating the first five Autobot Headmasters — Fortress Maximus (bonded to Galen), Brainstorm (bonded to Arcana), Hardhead (bonded to Duros), Chromedome (bonded to Stylor), and Highbrow (bonded to Gort).
• First comic appearances of several Nebulan Headmaster partners and Decepticon characters in this issue's roster, including Arcana, Grax, Spasma, Vorath, and Krunk, who had previously existed only as toy accessories.
• The story's central conflict: Scorponok's Decepticons lay siege to the Nebulan capital Koraja to force the planet to surrender the five captive Autobots, prompting Galen to authorize the emergency Headmaster procedure rather than break his peace agreement with the Autobots directly.
• The issue contains numerous documented art errors, including Fortress Maximus switching head designs between panels on the same page, Mindwipe misdrawn as a Nebulan partner, and Cyclonus depicted as an oversized version of his future Targetmaster Nightstick — errors the Marvel UK reprint partially corrected with dialogue changes.
• The Headmasters miniseries as a whole was reprinted in the Marvel UK Transformers weekly comic as a back-up strip across 16 installments, and later collected in Titan Books' trade paperback 'Transformers: Trial by Fire' (2004) and IDW Publishing's 'Transformers Classics, Vol. 7' (2014).
• The Marvel Universe characters listed in the catalog index (Bruce Banner, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Hulk, Janet Van Dyne, Jennifer Walters, Logan, Mary Jane Watson-Parker, Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards, She-Hulk, Spider-Man, Steve Rogers, Stephen Strange, Wasp, Wolverine) do NOT appear in this issue; by 1987 the Transformers comic operated in a separate continuity from the main Marvel Universe, and these characters are indexed in the database from other issues or the shared catalog — their presence here appears to be a catalog cross-listing artifact.

Cast · 40 characters

Full credits

Key issues in The Transformers: Headmasters

Variants (1)