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Written by Josepha Sherman
Illustrated by Brad Joyce

This book was published by Marvel Books with a copyright of 1986. ISBN 0-87135-101-3.

The scans!

View the scans as... a single web page, a CBZ archive, or a PDF.

These scans were made by Derik Smith, except the rear cover which I scanned myself.

Summary:

Galvatron is pacing at his headquarters when he suddenly decides his army is running low on fuel. He takes his troops to Oil Valley, where a large number of oil wells are set up. At the same time, Hot Rod and Daniel are out joyriding, and are admiring the same valley.

When the Decepticons arrive, Hot Rod and Daniel had back towards Autobot City (with the Decepticons in pursuit) to get help, which they find in the form of the Dinobots. The Dinos head to the Valley while Hot Rod goes into the city to alert Ultra Magnus.

Magnus and a bunch of 1984 characters (including some who died in TF:TM) roll out to help the Dinobots, who are already engaged in battle. During the commotion, Galvatron tries to slip away to return to the oil field to get some oil for himself, but Grimlock follows and they engage in a one-on-one fight. Before long, Galvatron orders a retreat, and the human oil workers line up to cheer the Autobots as they drive home.

The front cover calls this book simply Battle at Oil Valley, but the title page inside prefaces this with a The. I'm sticking with the cover's title.

General observations:

Regarding 1986 stories: Although '86 art is usually pretty standardized, the setting is often ambiguous, taking place in a strange continuity based on the 84-85 seasons of the cartoon and the 86 toy bios, where Galvatron and Ultra Magnus were framed as "city commanders". They seem to have been written either without full knowledge of the story in Transformers: The Movie or with a deliberate attempt to avoid spoiling it. These stories sometimes feel like they take place "in the middle" of TF:TM after Optimus and Megatron have died but before Hot Rod is upgraded to Rodimus Prime, leaving Magnus in charge of the Autobots. Also, sometimes Bumblebee is around (instead of stationed on a moon base) and Starscream isn't dead yet. If you insist on shoehorning these stories into TF:TM, then they take place after the battle of Autobot City and the creation of Galvatron and co., but before Galvatron interrupts Starscream's coronation ceremony. Despite the large number of cartoon-centric conceits in these books, it's probably better to think of them as taking place in a universe where the events of TF:TM do not occur at all, and these characters reached their current status (existence, leadership role, etc.) through unknown other events.

More specifically with this book: Galvatron and Ultra Magnus are the faction leaders, and we simultaneously have Hot Rod, Cyclonus, and Starscream all alive in those forms. If you insist on forcing it into the cartoon+movie timeline, you would need Galvatron to arrive at Starscream's coronation and take command, but before killing Starscream they all go back to Earth for this adventure, and then later the coronation resumes and Starscream is disintegrated. That does produce some conflicts such as the Autobots in TF:TM not yet knowing Galvatron when he arrives for the second attack on Autobot City. Maybe it all takes place somewhere in Season 3 at a time that Starscream's ghost has become corporeal yet again AND Rodimus has temporarily lost the Matrix.

Artwork seems to be based on standard cartoon/comic models, but there is a lot of distortion in the relative sizes of parts, and occasionally they look incredibly odd. There are also frequent perspective problems where characters are drawn small, but appear to be in the foreground. Even though the characters are mostly on-model (aside from their fluctuating proportions), I still find it one of the funnier coloring books to look at. In some, the art is just sort of bad without being amusing. This one makes me smile.

Specific notes:

• On page 19 Soundwave is supposedly just listening really hard, but to me it looks like he's volunteering to become a Headmaster.
• On page 20, Starscream and Dirge are especially badly-rendered with very "blobby" proportions.
• In the same picture, Buzzsaw looks pretty OK but appears to be about the same size as the jets because the perspective isn't communicated clearly enough.







• Autobot City looks like a completely generic sci-fi city, clearly drawn without any visual reference to what it would look like in TF:TM. I especially like the hexagonal section sticking out of the side of a tower. The small city picture at the end of the maze is also great.
• On page 29 Starscream "drops a missile" on Slag, which is funny on its own (and reminiscent of Swoop's attack in Big Looker book Decepticon Hijack), but the picture shows Slag simply being zapped by a very distorted jet.
• Galvatron's altmode is named as being a fusion cannon.
• On page 44, Grimlock looks like he's just carrying an oil tower around, and Galvatron is scolding him, or dancing, or something.
• Cyclonus is referred to as "Galvatron's ship". He's shown as normal-sized in robot mode, but as a jet he's large enough for Galvatron to enter and ride in, much like one brief scene in the movie.
• On the final page, the celebrating oil workers look like giants.