Just got mine, excited to finally read this story! I liked the little letter from the creator, always nice to read these. Ordered it from Amazon, was wondering if anyone else had gotten theirs recently.
Got mine Saturday, it was a great read, enjoyed most of the art. I posted most of my thoughts in the #12 thread.
I picked this up on new comic day, have been waiting to read the whole thing proper instead of dribbling a few pages at a time online. Just my personal preference. As a one-shot "history of Cybertron" series, it's actually competitive with The War Within, and sort of takes that book's place in the history of the IDW universe. Hot Rod's role was...interesting, but let's just say it worked better to read on the page than to read about on the forum or Wiki. I really was a sucker for the cameos, as well as for the sequence when Metroplex took on Megatron head on. It was nice to see both leaders take such an interest in Hot Rod, but the payoff (a virtual re-staging of TFTM) was disappointing and felt a little self-serving. One of my favorite parts was the extremely strong parallel between Zeta Prime and Megatron, the best part being that I doubt Megatron himself would ever be able to see it. One strange aspect for me is that apparently someone went out of their way to repair Swindle at some point in the IDW continuity...but who on earth would bother? Did he owe someone money?
Interesting thought pertaining potential spoilers for the MTMTE comics: Spoiler the nasty weapons cache that Prowl was supposed to destroy-Could they be what was hidden beneath Aequitas? Wouldn't surprise me, given that Prowl was the one who sent them to the place in the first place, and could have used their mission as a distraction, making the Cons think the only thing of value there was the computer. or something like that.
I've had my copy for about a week, finally got a chance to read all of it last night, loved most of the story, but as someone mentioned thought it was an interesting look at Zeta Prime and Megatron...and Megs setting up Orion to actually do the dirty work of overthrowing the senate-the Autocracy. Never thought of Zeta as crazy for power, similar to Megs, but then again, I hadn't read all that much about him before either. As mentioned, loved the "fan letter" that the writer, Chris Metzen wrote...he wants to be Optimus Prime. It was a good page-turner kind of read.
Finally got a hold of a copy. Here are my thoughts: I loved the early stuff with Megatron manipulating Orion into taking on Zeta. I felt that Megatron's betrayal of Orion right after Zeta's death was a bit too fast though. Going by the characterization that Megs had from Robert's background story in Issue #22 of the Ongoing, I always thought that Megatron's transformation from Revolutionary to Tyrant would have been a lot more gradual. I thought that the references to the Animated Movie were a little over the top. It wasn't just the climax scene with Hot Rod jumping in. It was a lot of dialog too, "More than you imagine Optimus Prime", "Decepti-creeps", "Look out and Shout", etc... I used to love Easter Eggs like that, but now it just feels like the guy is writing a fanfic rather than an actual licensed Transformers story. Another thing was that a lot of characters seemed more like their G1 cartoon selves than their IDW selves. Ratbat used to be a Senator, he wouldn't be working as one of Soundwave's minions and be incapable of speech. Thundercracker seemed to be a full on thug with no hint of doubt behind any of his actions. Rumble and Frenzy were colored wrong, which was only the case in the G1 cartoon. And does IDW Hot Rod seem like a Bot that is over 4 millions years old? I always saw him as someone who was born after the war started because of his 'youthful' persona. Hmm... it seems like I only have negative things to say, but really, I did like this series. I thought Ramondelli's art looked much better than it did in Chaos. I really enjoyed the political intrigue in the plot. It was nice to see that Prime wasn't always perfect. Overall it was a pretty solid bit of back story for the IDWverse.
I picked it up, and at first thought that the first 2 or 3 issues were a little boring. Had I been buying it on download, I'd have probably given up. The story as a whole however is a great read, and I'd happily recomend it to anyone looking for the basic history of the Transformers war. Nice that it fits into the other stories in the last ongoing title too.
