I really liked the comic.
The art was fantastic! I love the expressive and human-like forms of the bots.... they look sleak and agile. The colours and inking are wonderful.... there is so much depth to every panel. Its a real treat!

The plot advanced with some good mystery. I think its dark to set the stage and precipitate action by the "big guns". A necessary step in a 20 issue encore.

 

I feel like I'm not sure where Furman is going, unlike 80.5 and 81 where it felt like pieces were snapping perfectly into place.

There were already a LOT of villains running around this universe, so there really wasn't a pressing need to bring the other ones back. It's unclear what's up with the "zombie" Decepticons, but since they still talk and have their special abilities I'm guessing that Megatron resurrected them with Nucleon from the Ark and then lobotomized them. As far as his beef with Starscream, it may refer to his back-talk as early as issue #4, or his re-gained cognizance causing him to surrender to Scorponok in issue #57 (I think). Either way, hardly seems fair for Megatron to come down on him like that, but it's not like he's a forgive-and-forget kind of guy.

I really hope the Autobot abandonment of Earth is dealt with more comprehensively than just Springer's dismissal of Kup's guilt in this issue. I would go as far to say that it's unconscionable. Cybertron has clearly been in contact with Nebulos, so why didn't Earth even rate a phone call? (And I guess a few lobotomized Decepticons are sufficient for taking out Earth's superheroes.   )

Nice to see Nebulos returning to prominence. I'm not sure, again, why bring Scorponok back, from an in-story or out-of-story perspective. However, there might at least be fertile ground for storytelling here, because rather than undoing Scorpo/Zarak's sacrifice against Unicron, we presumably just have the pretty unhinged guy from the Headmasters mini-series back again. Don't think he would have ever become pals with Optimus.

Even the covers were a little off this time, begging the artists' pardon. I like the Wildman cover, but why are Grimlock's eyes blue? And the Guidi cover showcased a dino mode he doesn't have back yet...

 

Armageddon Earth is pretty dark, even for Furman. I'm worried that by the end there might be some kind of time travel nonsense that rolls back what's happened on our planet.

 

I just realized... My digital copy of #81 has all the covers. This just has one...

 

I can only hope. Then the Autobots return to Earth and set up a new series... So we can get another shot at this  

 

I thought that was odd too. I don't have access to it right now, but I believe it just has ellipses where the cover thumbnails would normally be. I can't even see what I'm missing  

 

Honestly, when I first heard about Regeneration One, my very first thought was that IDW and Furman were going to tie G1 and the current IDW stuff together via a J. J. Abrams/Star Trek style time travel reboot. I thought it was brilliantly done in that movie (the prequel comic was really good too), but I'm not sure I want to see that happen here.

 

The Dino cover was done exactly for this reason. It represents Grimlock's quest to get it back.

 

^ That's another thing, why bother? As per the original issues his new body is stronger. He has no reason to be attached to his alt mode, and never really showed a desire to "disguise" and transform himself into anything else.

This especially stands out for me because in the IDW universe they had to damage Grimlock to make him unable to shed his T-rex alt mode for him to even bother keeping it.

 

There is definitely a showdown coming between Prime and Megatron. Furman said one of them would die "for good" apparently.

I think Megatron will come close to killing Prime and then Ratchet will somehow free the zombieformers and they'll destroy him, which will also kill Ratchet. Ratchet will have defeated Megatron a FOURTH time. I can hope.

Then the rest of the story can be fighting against Galvatron, Bludgeon, Scorponok, Jhiaxus, or whoever..

 

Ratchet and the Dino's do have a history of dealing with the big bad..... but it would be nice for this run to have a definitive Prime vs Megs fight where Prime wins.

I don't recall this really happening.

 

His quest is to fix the mess he's made of the Dinobots. Of all of them he's the most functional so his AM form is a constant reminder of his failure. Also if he can undo the effects of Nucleon on himself it shows there's hope for his troops and that matters more than anything. Remember it was Grimlock that tried Nucleon on himself first before trying it on the others so its in keeping with his character.

 

Yeah, but except for the cryptic "Poor Slag" line there's never once been any indication in the story that nucleon has caused anyone any problems. It's only been shown to bring people back from the dead which is a big plus. I guess it showed the people on the native planet of the stuff went nuts, but as far as Transformers go, there's been no side effects besides loss of alt mode.

 

The Transformers exposed to Nucleon were all of the Autobots that fell in #50 (except for Jazz and Bumblebee), Megatron, Ratchet, Shockwave, Starscream, and Galvatron. (the latter three were because when the Ark crashed, there was Nucleon everywhere.. Galvatron was covered in it in #79)

 

Nothing to disagree with here, but there is also an indication (not to mention w.r.t. the cover I was discussing when I brought this up) that Grimlock really wants his alt mode back.

On a side note, I was thinking of posting a topic on the bizarre use of horrific war injuries in this franchise to make Autobots cuter and more marketable. BB in the movie and in Prime lost his voice. Grimlock has his voice mangled in several continuities and has been forced to keep his dino alt mode in one...not to mention that all of the Dinobots in FoC are the result of experimentation on POWs.

 

I hope not. The BSG comic in the 90's did that in the final issue. Pretty much ignored the whole series on TV and the 2 years worth of comics.

Does Galvatron/Galvatron II even exist now? That all was based on Megatron being turned into Galvatron in 2005. Since the comics are set in 2012, I don't think the character exists anymore.

 

Galvatron II is around, Fort Max threw him into a lake.

 

Galvatron exists. The Galvatron that was around in the Marvel US comics was a Galvatron taken from an alternate universe where Megatron DID in fact become Galvatron and was even able to kill Rodimus Prime. He was not the same Megatron from this comic book universe.

 

Grimlock blindly used the nucleon on everyone in the ark. Prowl makes a mention of it in issue #74 I think, so there were decepticons like megatron and the rest in the stasis pods that were exposed to nucleon that they were unaware of.

I always thought that nucleon would react differently to different transformers. If the story had continued back then, I always thought that the action master toys would loose their transform abitliy and others could be zombie-like, like the creature from the planet or many other possibilities on how it affects transformers. With 20 issues, I don't think we will get to explore that.

 

Oh, I just thought of something. Maybe megatron has fortress maximus or even creepier, galvatron strung up by the statue of liberty. An homage to #67 and the similarities of how megatron and galvatron think.