What’s interesting about these books is that they were illustrated by comics legend Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man and creator of Doctor Strange. It’s hard to believe now that someone like him would do art for a kid’s book about a second-rate transforming robot franchise, but comics artists and writers at the time held no rights to their work, and worship at the altar of pop culture was not a mainstream pursuit. Illustrators had to knock out an endless amount of pages to make a living. From a New York Post article from 2012:
To this day, Ditko has probably made very little off his billion-dollar co-creation [Spider-Man]. He has no ownership of the character and was paid a modest per-page rate at the time. He does collect royalties each time the comics are reprinted, but he says he has not earned anything off the films, despite his name appearing in the credits.
The covers of both books are illustrated by Jeffrey Oh and written by longtime Ditko collaborator and champion Robin Snyder.
(Images via eBay, Beer and Robots, and Life with Fandom)
2 Warps to Neptune 