I'll start off by saying that I've bought the full subscription, with the intention of continuing to see this through right to the very end. I currently have a DeAgostini 'Build the Millennium Falcon' subscription that'll be finishing up in December, and this is half the price of that, so it'll fill that gap quite nicely. This means I'm entitled to get the 5 free subscription gifts, and issue #3 free. I started my subscription with issue 1, so I'll be receiving the first of the free subscription gifts with my second delivery.
The contents of my box is follows:
1 copy of volume 6 - Target 2006 (Marvel UK)
1 copy of volume 36 - Stormbringer (IDW)
1 leaflet
I was surprised here, immediately, as I was expecting to get both a book and a magazine for each issue. The book being purely the comics, and an accompanying magazine for each with all the features mentioned in the ad. In actual fact, these features are all contained within the volumes themselves. I'm a little bit mixed in my feelings on this, having them interspersed with the story is a little invasive, but not so invasive that they're placed in the middle of the stories. It also helps that the features are usually tied directly to the main stories as well, so rather than digging out the magazine and then matching volume, it's all in the one place. I do feel that the books would benefit from a contents page however, as it's difficult to find where specific issues and features are within the books, but seeing as this would've required printing numbers on the pages, I can see why they avoided this.
The leaflet details much the same as what was on the website, but with a nice little added bonus which I was not expecting: it folds out into a massive poster of some beautiful painted '84 G1 promo art. The artwork in question is a really interesting a curious piece as it features Bluestreak and the Constructicons in their Diaclone colours, along with a neat little cameo by a police decco Lamborghini, which I assume must be Clamp Down? He's missing the super-charger engine to be police-streaker. At any rate, this picture is a relic in itself of a time very early in the brand's history, before the character models, and toy colours were finalised. I'm going to have a real hard time finding a frame big enough for this bad-boy, but it is definitely going up on the wall.
Onto the books themselves. I'm immediately impressed by the size of them. They're large, thick, hardback volumes much bigger than the glossy, floppy collected edition volumes I'm currently used to collecting. The paper inside is of a nice thick matte finish stock, that has sort of a waxed paper feel to it. The construction of them is definitely of a level of quality that exceeds expectations. This, for me, instantly justifies the price of admission, as it works out at about £10 each, free delivery, for each of these, fortnightly. So £20 a month if you're paying by direct-debit.
The cover art is a little plain, but it's uniform across the volumes. Featuring one character prominently, with faded out image below the title featuring art from the pages of the comics within that particular volume. It definitely helps to tie the volumes together as one coherent set. The wide spines also help deliver the large mural-style artwork shown a bit more coherently as well.
It's important to mention a particular detail of the spines at this point, the numbering system. You won't get Volume 1 first. The books are arranged in order of original printing. That means Getting Target 2006 and Stormbringer for the sake of story and era diversity across the collection gives us Volume 6 & 36 respectively. It also means if you're in it for the long run, you won't see the spine art slowly printed sideways across your shelves, rather, it'll appear in slivers and slowly fill out over the course of 120 weeks.
Moving on to the content. The quality of printing in the books is flawless. I'd wondered if they'd attempt to create a stepped colour print, giving that sort of misaligned layers feel that the colours of the original comics might have had in hand. But no such nostalgia bombs here. Everything is clean and crisp. Incredibly, we not only get the full story advertised on the cover, but we also get bonus issues in the mix. Target 2006 contains the original Marvel UK #78-88 run of that story-line, as well as including Marvel US #21-23. We even get a few of the non-story pages from the original comics, for example 2 full page biographies on Ultra Magnus and Galvatron. Stormbringer collects that miniseries, along with the Spotlight issues for Soundwave, Shockwave, Hot Rod and Nightbeat. This starts to explain a little bit of the thickness.
I must mention that also included are newly coloured stories, which have only ever been printed in black & white before, only, I'm not quite up to scratch with my education in the Marvel comics, so I couldn't tell you which ones these are. I would have thought they'd stick out like a sore thumb, but either, there are none in these 2 volumes, or every effort has been taken by the colourist to make sure that the new inks match the style and tones of the original colourists.
As for original features, Vol. 6 Gives us and introduction with a little information about the goings on behind the scenes at Marvel UK at time of original print and a cover gallery of all the issues contained within. Then we get a few pages of editorial on Transformers the Movie, which actually includes a review written by Grimlock from when he was still running Grim Grams, back in the day. We also get a few brief character profiles of the full original wreckers line-up and finish up with another 3 pages on the history of Marvel UK and a short spotlight on Marvel UK artist Geoff Senior.
Vol. 36 has an introduction written by Simon Furman, an editorial on the creation of the IDW universe, then a whole lot of pages from inside the sketchbook of Don Figueroa, showcasing character models and alt modes he designed for the early IDW run.
There's a lot here. A whole bunch. In terms of what you're getting for your money, these volumes are above and beyond value, and I heartily endorse it to anyone who's on the shelf to at least give the first issue a shot at the trial price.
Final Score:
/
In all honesty I didn't even read through the leaflet, because it just looked lifted 100% from the website, even in terms of page layout.