IDW Comics recommendations?

I picked up the TPB of Last Stand of the Wreckers the other day, which was definitely a great read, but I haven't been following this continuity very closely at all (I think I've leafed through the Infiltration TPB and some of the spotlight TPBs before, but I own nothing), so the story loses me slightly in terms of how it connects to the overarching plot.

I've also leafed through a few issues of the current Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye ongoings, and I definitely like what I see, with their colourful, ragtag casts, and the blurring of moral lines between the factions and such. I really like when series play with past conventions and really start to make you question the nature of things you might have taken for granted in past iterations.

I mean, it's pretty obvious that if I want to get the full experience, I should just bite the bullet and buy all the big hardcover "IDW Collection" books.

But if I were to be more budget conscious, what's skippable? Hearts of Steel? Infestation? Maximum Dinobots? All Hail Megatron? Stormbringer? Or are they all necessary for telling the complete story, minor continuity snarls aside?

Or, to put it another way, if I were a complete layman with no prior experience to Transformers (thus, with no preconceived notions about any of the characters that could at least help me fill in some blanks), what would I need to buy/read to grasp the whole scope of the story that IDW's telling? It would be nice to be able to lend the books out to friends afterward as well, so if I'm left with big gaps in the storytelling, then that's no good.

lol

U got one of the books already.

Last Stand of the Wreckers is good.

Megatron Origins is good.

Then u have ongoing MTME and RID which are good as well, MTME is excellent.

Most of the prior ongoing to that is a butchered mess and contradicts itself.

If u want it find the trades used or 1/2 off or something.

my advise, get everything but the ongoing from last year. you could start with more then meets the eye and robots in disguise and then you can slowly get the rest of them, when ever you get around to it. one day, when you got everything and want more, you could always get marvel and dreamwave. and when your desperate, you can finally get ongoing, heart of darkness, and chaos

You're so nearly right, you forgot about Chaos Theory, Issues 22 and 23 of the on-going, being essentials too

Storm Bringer was good, A lot of people bash All Hail Megatron but that was the arc that brought me into to IDW. So I'm immune to all the whining about continuity issue preceding it.

But I did eventually go back to collect the "ation" novels (Infiltration, Escalation, Devastation, etc.) which were all great.

Infestation and Heart of Darkness were both crap, that and most of Mike Casta's run in Ongoing represent darker times so feel free to skip it. Heart of Steal was just okay. Autocracy was good, Megatron Origin was good.

What's even better is that you can buy most of this stuff dirt cheap on Amazon now.

To be honest, pretty much everything, bar some total standalones like Cliffjumper and Mirage's Spotlights, is referred to by something else. But if you really wanted a bare minimum overview of IDW's story, you could go:

Infiltration, Escalation, Devastation, Revelation, Maximum Dinobots, AHM, ongoing, The Death of Optimus Prime (which is in MTMTE Vol. 1) and then MTMTE and RID.

However, you'd probably have to use the wiki to get the brief on plot points that were introduced in Spotlights or other side-stories before becoming relevant to the main plot, and to be honest, some of the side-story material is actually more interesting than the slow-as-molasses-paced AHM and ongoing.

In terms of stuff that's relevant to the current IDW output, the Drift miniseries is drawn upon in MTMTE, especially the Annual, and Chaos Theory (#22 and #23 of the ongoing) are required reading for MTMTE's Shadowplay story. Ongoing #31 and Spotlight Wheelie are both picked up upon in RID, so are worth reading too. If you want, Megatron Origin and Autocracy follow on from Shadowplay's flashback scenario, but I wouldn't call either a must-read masterpiece.

I want to get into these as well and don't know where to start

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I got all of it, and personally love almost all of it. I wouldnt skip anthing except maybe a few spotlights, like Mirage and Cliffjumper.

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those are the worst spotlights? Not hardly.

Not the worst, just the ones that are completely standalone and not required to understand anything else.