The sister title in the UK, this series ran for 332 issues, as well as spawning 7 annuals and 28 specials. It was a weekly publication that spliced original stories into the continuity of the reprinted US issues, and was mostly written by Simon Furman. At the start, it had a more serious science fiction approach. Because of the weekly approach, the UK comic was able to flesh out characters and ideas more; in the US comic, the Aerialbots and Stunticons are first shown having just been built and being given life by the Creation Matrix program, whereas the UK comic fleshed it out more and showed the two teams as being created out of new technology created by Shockwave after scanning Buster Witwicky while he had the Matrix downloaded into his brain. Furman also tried to maintain continuity with "", and wrote several stories set in the future after the movie's ending, as well as bringing characters from the future (i.e. Galvatron) into the present day. Due to his epic and mythological approach, he was highly praised and succeeded Bob Budiansky on the US title at issue 56. The mythic tone continued to influence Furman's work on the Dreamwave and IDW comics.