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So far, Marvel UK's The Transformers has been on a nice upward trajectory: that comes to an end with this volume. It does get off to a nice start with the sequence of stories about Rodimus Prime of 2007 hiring a bounty hunter to kill Galvatron, who ends up tracking him to Earth of 1987 ("Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive!"/"Burning Sky!"/"Hunters!"/"Fire on High!"/"Vicious Circle!"). The bounty hunter is Death's Head, who will be the character who connects Transformers to Doctor Who Magazine in the long run. You can see why Death's Head went on to get his own spin-off: he's a fun, expressive, dynamic character, and the four-way collision we get here between Death's Head, Galvatron, the Autobots of 1987, and the Autobots of 2007 is kind of explosive stuff Furman excels at. Big, fast-paced action, with enjoyable characters. I liked the IDW Ultra Magnus, and I am quickly coming to appreciate the Marvel UK Ultra Magnus as well, even though he's a very different character. (I am not sure why it is taking him months to locate the Ark, though!)

After that, though, it's a bit of a mix. There's "Ancient Relics!", a crossover with Action Force (the UK equivalent of G. I. Joe) that is mostly just tedious, uninteresting action sequences, with none of Furman's character flare. There's "Worlds Apart!", a really uninteresting tale of some Headmasters on Nebulos, apparently slotting in during an issue of the US Headmasters miniseries that hadn't even been reprinted in the UK mag yet at the time it came out. And there's the UK retelling of the Headmasters series, and what can I say about the Headmaster concept except that I just really really hate it, because it overloads an already overloaded series with uninteresting characters.

But there is some decent stuff here, even if it doesn't rise to the high points of volume three. "Kup's Story" (a flashback of how Kup met Rodimus) is fun, as is "Ark Duty" (a flashback of Kup and Rodimus in the period leading up to Transformers: The Movie). The return of the Dinobots in "Grudge Match" was kind of silly (I liked the Dinobots throwing down the Predacons, but I didn't buy that they would let them off so easy), though I did like the "What's in a Name?" lead-in story that revealed Swoop's secret shame over "losing" his name. The "Ladies' Night" story, uniting three female characters from across the UK run, might have been more successful if the artists here were more skilled at drawing humans, not robots, but it was fine.

I did have to love "Stargazing," where a human boy teaches Starscream-- Starscream!-- the true meaning of Christmas. He thinks he's succeeded, but Starscream just wants to get one up on an Autobot.

And Death's Head reappears in "Headhunt," which gives us our first glimpse of a 21st-century storyline not tied to the 20th-century one. I am curious to see how that is going forward, and how Furman pulls all the strands-- of which there are a lot at this point-- together. But this volume itself felt more like a chore than any previous one.

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