The British Robo Machine line, before the god-awful Challenge of the Gobots cartoon began to seep across, had its' own comic strip, in the pages of the relaunched Eagle comic. The talent involved is Tom Tully, who was one of the main writers for Valiant's 'Steel Claw' back in the 1960s, and 2000AD artist Kim Raymond - Mario Capaldi, a Marvel UK stalwart, draws the first batch of episodes, but disappears after the sixth installment. Thankfully...

This was pretty different to Gobots, though character names were retained at this time (with a couple of changes... for instance, Twin Spin is named Carry-All, something which carried over from the toyline, while Road Ranger becomes Truck for no readily apparent reason). The backstory is quite substantially different. It can be a little jarring even for someone like me who despises the cartoon to see Zod as a genius, or Cy-Kill as an underling, but overall I found what I've read so far to be the best 'Gobots' media. Despite the odd shoddy moment, it's pretty good - surprisingly violent, too. Considering it was produced around the same time as the first few Transformers stories by both Bob Budiansky and Simon Furman, it stands the comparison pretty well - though it has the usual Fleetway mentality of pace and action over characterisation, a necessity of the three-page format. The different set-up actually distances it from Transformers (at least much more than the cartoon ever managed to do). Only two stories were made, the second having rather a sudden (and very odd) ending. The license was instead sold to World Distributors, who produced some not-so-good annuals and story books based more closely on the cartoon.