And now... "Man of Iron", the most difficult one to fit. Unlike the other three, this one occupies its own little bubble, with all scenes set in Stansham, England and no sign or even mention of the Ark, and with a very limited cast of Autobots (Optimus, Jazz, Mirage, Trailbreaker, and Bluestreak) and Decepticons (the three Seekers, Laserbeak, and Buzzsaw). What's more, this story got printed in the original US run, between "Used Autobots" and "Child's Play", with a note saying that it is set at some point when Optimus is still the Autobot leader (at this point in the US run, Optimus had already committed suicide over a video game). While one could easily just ignore this story and move on without thinking about when it take place, the Transformers '84 one-shot from 2019 went and
doubled-down on this story's canonicity in the the US comics continuity, insisting that it
has to take place somewhere.
In this story, the Transformers are still relatively new to Earth and don't seem to have reached the level of common knowledge on a global scale just yet. Optimus also says that the Autobots are "few" in number, implying that this story is set before their ranks are joined by the likes of Jetfire and the 1985 Autobot Cars, both of whom formally join the team in "Rock and Roll-Out!", so it would be most ideal to place it before that story.
Placing it during the four-issue limited series like the other three isn't as doable as it was for those three. While it could, theoretically, slot in between the end of "Raiders of the Last Ark" and the beginning of the flashback of "Decepticon Dam-Busters!", there are three things to consider:
- The Autobots are so desperately low on fuel during the first four US issues that it feels really hard to believe that they could just take a shuttle to go galavanting off over to jolly old England half a world away. That's a lot of fuel for them to use up for the trip there and back to Oregon.
- Trailbreaker gets blown up but good in "Man of Iron", yet is seen among the Autobots defending Sherman Dam from the Decepticons in "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" The four-issue limited series makes it clear that the Autobots are very limited on resources, so either we have to assume that Ratchet was able to repair Trailbreaker between issues by some miracle, or we have to simply write off Trailbreaker's appearance in "Decepticon Dam-Busters!" as an error and pretend he isn't actually there. The latter even has some weight to it when one considers he only appears during the same shot that shows Inferno to be there as well, when he isn't supposed to be there either.
- From a US continuity perspective, when trying to place "Man of Iron" alone during the same stopgap in "The Last Stand" that I used for the other three UK stories, it doesn't work the same way it did for them. The stopping point I chose was intended to lead directly into "The Enemy Within!". Take out that story and the other two, and you have one scene where Megatron starts walking back to the Decepticon base, and then the next scene suddenly cuts to Stansham, England for no rhyme or reason.
Now, you might be wondering why the last point would matter if I'm looking at all of this from the perspective of the UK continuity. Well, I'm actually looking at it from the perspectives of both the UK continuity
and the US continuity, which are not the same continuity. While they share many of the same stories, the UK continuity has all of its original stories that the US continuity does not have (save for this lone exception, "Man of Iron!"), while the US continuity has the G.I. Joe crossover that sees Bumblebee get rebuilt into Goldbug (which the UK continuity replaced with its own original stories) and "
The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas", which came out between "Rock and Roll-Out!" and "I, Robot-Master!" Dialogue was even rewritten for certain US issues when they were printed in the UK, changing the context of scenes to better match up with the events of certain related UK-original issues.
And then there's the more recent continuity of Regeneration One and Transformers '84: Secrets & Lies, which deliberately omitted the UK stories, only borrowing certain elements from them without the actual events they came from. So we're looking at at least two US-only continuities that aren't the same as the UK continuity.
With that said, I wanted to find a place for "Man of Iron" to go that would fit for
both the UK and US continuities. Since all three Seekers were in "Man of Iron", I had to look for some place the story could go that was set before the events of "Command Performances!", since that was the issue when Omega Supreme took all three Seekers out of commission for a while in both the US and UK continuities. With that as the cut off point, I decided to reread every single US and UK issue from the beginning of the comics up to "Command Performances!". But it wasn't just a simple matter of looking for a point where the overarching story could take a break to let "Man of Iron" slip in between issues. Rather, there was one more factor that made things even more difficult. "Man of Iron" establishes its setting as taking place at the end of Summer just as Autumn is beginning, which places the story during the month of September. This, alone, ruined so many possible placements for the story because of when several other issues were set.
US issue #7, "Warrior School!", is set during Spring, while US issue #18, "The Bridge to Nowhere!" is set during Spring of the following year. Going by the US continuity, there's no way "Man of Iron" can come before "Warrior School!", but could theoretically fit somewhere halfway between "Warrior School!" and "The Bridge to Nowhere!" The middlemost US issues between those two are #12 "Prime Time!" and #13 "Shooting Star!" The former is when Optimus is finally restored to Autobot command after having been a captive of Shockwave for eight issues, while the latter is a side story set away from the main storyline, with Megatron in the hands of a human crook. In theory, one could actually place "Man of Iron" concurrent to the time of "Shooting Star!" since "Man of Iron" spans only three days while "Shooting Star!" spans several weeks.
However, while this placement works for the US continuity, it does not work for the UK continuity because, in the UK continuity, "Prime Time!" is followed immediately by "Christmas Breaker!", "Crisis of Command!", "The Icarus Theory", "Dinobot Hunt!", and
then "Shooting Star!". "Christmas Breaker!" takes place on December 24-25, and "The Icarus Theory" takes place on January 19-25, placing this arc of the comics in Winter while "Man of Iron" is set at the beginning of Autumn. And there can't be a long gap between "Prime Time!" and "Christmas Breaker!" because the latter is set immediately after the former; a newspaper dated to December 24 in the latter has an article about the events of the former, indicating those events to have happened very recently.
And it can't go in the Autumn after "The Bridge to Nowhere!" either because the very next issue after it is "Command Performances!"
So with all these places that "Man of Iron!"
can't go, what was I left to do? Well, since finding a single place for it that fits both the US and UK continuities has proven impossible (unless someone else here has any other ideas I've overlooked), I begrudgingly decided that it seems the only way to fit this story in is to give it TWO different placements, one for the UK continuity and one for the US continuity (which I did
not want to do, but I don't see any other way to make it fit).
- For the US comics, it seems placing it concurrent to "Shooting Star!" is the only viable option, so one can read it either between "Prime Time!" and "Shooting Star!", or between "Shooting Star!" and "Rock and Roll-Out!"
- For the UK comics, well, if one can get past the idea of the Autobots having enough fuel to take a shuttle over to England and back, and get past the issue of Trailbreaker blowing up and then being fine later (or simply saying his appearance is an error), "Man of Iron" can go with the other UK stories in the stopgap of "The Last Stand", between "Raiders of the Last Ark" and "Decepticon Dam-Busters!".
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With all that said, however, there is one more thing to figure out: Ratchet. In "The Last Stand", he drives Sparkplug and Buster to the hospital, and then stays there for the rest of the issue and even into the next one. Yet, he is present with other Autobots in both "The Enemy Within!" and "Decepticon Dam-Busters", the two stories that bookend the entire stopgap. My explanation for this is a simple one: He dropped off Sparkplug and Buster at the hospital, went back to the Ark, and then after the events of "The Enemy Within!", "Raiders of the Last Ark", "Man of Iron", and "Decepticon Dam-Busters!", he returned back to the hospital to check up on Buster and Sparkplug. But since he had to remain in vehicle mode, all he could do was sit outside the building and wait patiently to hear any word of Sparkplug's condition from Buster.
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So in the end, this is my personal reading order for the first four Marvel UK stories in relation to the other issues:
Marvel US continuity
"The Transformers"
"Power Play!"
"Prisoner of War!"
"The Last Stand"
"The New Order"
"The Worse of Two Evils!"
"Warrior School!"
"Repeat Performance!"
"DIS-Integrated Circuits!"
"The Next Best Thing to Being There!"
"Brainstorm!"
"Prime Time!"
"Shooting Star!" /
"Man of Iron"
"Rock and Roll-Out!"
Marvel UK continuity
"The Transformers"
"Power Play!"
"Prisoner of War!"
"The Last Stand" Pages 1-8
"The Enemy Within!"
"Raiders of the Last Ark"
"Man of Iron"
"Decepticon Dam-Busters!" flashback story
"The Last Stand" Pages 9-22
"The New Order"
"The Worse of Two Evils!"
"Warrior School!"
"Repeat Performance!"
"Decepticon Dam-Busters!" present-day wraparound story
"The Wrath of Guardian!"
"The Wrath of Grimlock!"
"DIS-Integrated Circuits!"
"The Next Best Thing to Being There!"
"Brainstorm!"
"Prime Time!"
"Christmas Breaker!"
"Crisis of Command!"
"The Icarus Theory"
"Dinobot Hunt!"
"Shooting Star!"
"Rock and Roll-Out!"