HOME...FEATURES...CONVENTIONS
By Matt Marshall, Guest Writer
Whilst the US gets BotCon, the UK gets a slightly smaller affair, namely Transforce. Transforce is an unofficial, non-profit event run yearly by Paul Cannon, and it serves as a meeting place for Transfans from all over the country. Of course it is 2002 that also sees the beginning of BotCon Europe which is to be held in November (as not to clash with Transforce). BotCon may look to be a grander event with its toy exclusives, but Transforce, being a staple of UK Transfandom for many years, has the advantage of being a more homely affair.
This year's event was held in Fairfield Hall, Croydon on Saturday, August 10th. The main reason for the venue and date was to ensure an easily accessible location for all convention-goers. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond the control of the organizers, the transport links became infamously bad, with Virgin trains lack of being able to run a straight service to London reaching the national news, and Victoria Street Station, the last link which everyone had to pass through for the train to Croydon being so packed with people as to make getting a ticket almost impossible.
Thankfully the convention itself was run as smoothly as possible. Two rooms were in use at Fairfield Hall -- the main convention room itself which was centered around chairs in front of a stage where the guests sat. Plenty of dealers tables were arranged around the outside and back of the hall, offering a massive variety of Transformers from all generations including Armada which sold out before most people were able to arrive.
There were three main Transforce exclusives this year -- a poster by Steve White, the Target: 2006 hardback and Alignment, the exclusive Transforce story by Simon Furman. The Target: 2006 volume was a gorgeous affair, with masses of text and images about the UK comic which made the purchase of the book worthwhile in itself rather than relying off poor quality scans from the internet. It also included the Target: 2006 prelude strip, since some rumors had arisen that it would begin from part one.
Unfortunately, the volume was marred by a printing error whereby the last four pages had been transposed and moved to the very back of the book. Titan will have the fixed run available in three weeks however, and those who want to exchange their copy for a perfect one can. The fact that most people got theirs signed by Simon Furman and the rest of the guests at Transforce, combined with the fact that the only way to get hold of the fixed copy is to exchange the erroneous one, means that the perfect hardback could be very, very hard to come by on the secondary market. The Transforce site will not be selling copies of Target: 2006, and any not sold on the day of the convention were shipped back to Titan for disposal.
Luckily, Alignment had no such problems. While the cover had been previously criticized, the final product looks much better than the internet previews, mainly due to the fact of the surprisingly small size it is -- roughly A6. [Ed. note: A6 is roughly 4.25" x 6.75" or 11 cm x 17.5 cm.] Written by Simon Furman and illustrated by Andrew Wildman, Geoff Senior, Kev Hopgood, Lee Sullivan and Jeff Anderson, with a bonus Robo-Capers strip by UK Comics veteran Lew Stringer, Alignment is a typical Furman tale of gods and popular characters casually killed off. For what it is, a 72 page novella, it is pretty good, if not perfect.
The video room ran throughout the day, showing episodes from the forthcoming DVD release of "Headmasters", selected episodes of "Transformers: Robots In Disguise" -- including the ones not shown on US television -- and the final three episodes of "Beast Wars".
At 11am was the "Question And Answer" session with Simon Furman, Geoff Senior, Kev Hopgood, Steve White and Lew Stringer. Andy Wildman was delayed in traffic and arrived nearer to 3pm. In addition to the usual questions about continuity and "How would you make a new series?", the following interesting tidbits of information came up:
Maverick, the company releasing Transformers episodes on DVD in the UK, also had a table advertising both the forthcoming "Headmasters" DVD set (which contains the first six dubbed episodes of the Japanese " Headmasters" series) and the "Generation 1" first season boxset. The UK set will be different from the US release (from Rhino). It will not use unfinished prints, which many US fans complained about with the Rhino release. Maverick also showed a preview of the extras CD, which includes labeled and ordered bumpers from every series, a fan art gallery, and episodes of "Five Faces of Darkness" and "Rebirth" (both of which will be available on DVD in full in October). The promised Transforce featurette will not materialize, though, as Maverick was let down at the last minute with no time to sort out alternate recording equipment.
The "Transformers: Takara" disc (the "Headmasters" series) is a release to test the waters, much like the Generation 2 release. Whilst the G2 DVD got more orders than the original series one that followed it (this is probably because they contained near enough the same episodes) it also generated more complaints, so another one seems unlikely. More Japanese releases may occur though -- Maverick was seemingly unaware of the unavailability of them on DVD in the US and so import orders may be high. They are also looking into subtitling the Japanese series.
At 3pm, we saw an entertaining fans vs guests quiz. Unsurprisingly the guests lost to the fanboys.
After that, the short presentation of a sneak peak into Furman and Wildman's "The Engine" part three, and the raffle for charity which included an Armada Prime, the convention wound down until 5pm when the halls were shut. That wasn't the end though, since all those of legal drinking age decamped to CRO, a local bar where Paul Cannon forced Geoff Senior to draw Death's Head all night long.
(Remember - only drink if you are of the legal drinking age, and always drink responsibly.)
A few more random snippets of information found their way to me during the event, namely that Transforce won't be having toy exclusives for the dual reasons that they're expensive, and Paul Cannon isn't too keen on repaints. The BotCon Europe exclusives will be something new, not just BotCon US overstock.
Thanks go out from all to Paul Cannon for making Transforce such an enjoyable convention, and we can only hope that next years is bigger, better, and with less transportation problems.
Matt Marshall is the genius (or crackpot) behind Hot Shot's fascination with jAm. Read all about it at http://www.jagaroth.freeserve.co.uk. (Warning! Slight mature content. ASM is not responsible for content of offsite websites.) He also invites you to visit Transmasters UK at http://www.warwithoutend.com.