Transformers: The Manga Coming This Winter From Viz

Via Twitter, Viz Media has announced that they will begin publishing Transformers: The Manga. This will collect comic stories originally printed in TV Magazine in Japan starting in 1985, which have never before been officially translated or published in English. Via fan-translations, some of the plot elements have gained a degree of notoriety within the fan community, for things like the Decepticons murdering a puppy because it contained secrets of their super-science. or maybe they just really don't like dogs. The Decepticons are evil, after all, so it'd track that they just don't like dogs.

Viz is proclaiming this winter's release as "Volume 1", giving hopes that we'll be seeing more than just a collection of the stories that ran alongside the original cartoon. The TV Magazine Transformers manga went on to include stories based on each of the Japanese G1 series. Hopefully these collections will also include the story pages associated with each series. Especially for the tail end installments like Zone and Battlestars, most of the actual story and background information was contained in the story pages, with the actual manga portions being much reduced compared to earlier series. Given this, their inclusion would be hugely valuable to the complete narrative.