This is "My Name It is Nothin'," a look at when comic books guest star celebrities, but their names are changed so as to avoid any legal problems.

Going into the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen was already one of the most popular musicians in the country. He had multiple albums that had sole in the millions. However, upon the release of his 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen took thing to a whole other level. It basically tripled the sales of his next closest record (and since his next closest record sold over 5 million copies, that's saying a lot) and it made Springsteen one of the most recognizable musicians in the world, up there with people like Michael Jackson and Madonna.

It was one of those crazy albums where there were top ten singles released from in all throughout 1984 AND 1985, so at the start of 1986, Springsteen was close to the peak of his popularity (he has remained very popular ever since, but nothing quite matches how big he was during that 1984-1986 period).

So it makes sense that if Marvel was thinking about working in a stand-in of a celebrity, that Springsteen would be one of the go-to choices at the time.

Sure enough, he appeared on the cover of Transformers #14, with a cover by Bob Budiansky and Mike Esposito (Budianasky was the writer on the series but he was also a talented artist in his own right)...

The story was drawn by Don Perlin and Al Gordon. The conceit of the issue is that a whole new batch of Autobots were introduced and Bumblebee was put in charge of taking them on a training mission as they get acclimated to Earth...

They are not meant to engage with the Decipticons on this training mission, but no one knows what the future holds. They are tracking a source of sonic energy. When they discover that there is a concert that is going on, they wonder if perhaps that is the cause of the sonic energy. So they go to investigate. The problem is that they don't know that you have to pay to park at the concert stadium where the concert is.

The concert begins and it is Brick Springhorn and the Tenth Avenue Band, singing their hit tune, "Born in America"!

Do you think that the Transfomers enjoyed the music?

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='How do robots know if they like a song?']

Sure enough, the Transformers' sensors note that they enjoy the music...

It turns out, though, that the concert noise have hidden the actual Decipticon mission and so when the Decipticons showed up, they were able to escape, especially tried to kill the band and an Autobot had to save Springhorn's life...

In the end, they shut the threat down for now and they just get to entertain the crowd with what LOOKS to be a light show!

The new Autobots passed their first test well, but they are all particularly impressed with Springhorn's playing career.

Okay, people, there are obviously TONS of great examples of this sort of thing in comic book history, so get thy selves to thine e-mail and send in suggestions for future editions of My Name It is Nothin' to brianc@cbr.com!