Is Rubble drawn to have a baby-face by design? Looks weird.
I am guessing this will all lead up to the civil war, but so far it\'s hard to see why Megs would even start it, when Cybertron seems to be a pretty peaceful place.
Ascenticons... LOL. Megs needs to work on his names

 

Frankly, I'm starting to miss the days of G1 Megatron just getting angry and shooting stuff, in either order. I miss the gladiator, I miss the conqueror, I miss the madness.

 

I agree. I don't envy kids today, with comics - not just IDW - escheving the classic hero vs villain stories. Everything has to be SW prequels politically complex. Back in the 80ies/90ies, the Hulk fought bad guys with the Avengers... nowadays the Hulk gets shot into space by some illuminati cabal of superheroes and villains.
I am thinking it has to be some mandate beyond comic publishers that forces them to be "safe" and not deal with war. Maybe for the same reasons most US presidents try to stay clear of even mentioning wars in their election programs... But this misses the point that much of what defines the Transformers IS their 4-million-year-old war. You don't keep a conflict going for that long without good reason. It's like the schism between surface elves and drow, or the Blood War between demons and devils in D&D. It kinda defines the combatants.
I lost interest in IDW around the time they arbitrarily decided to end the war for good. MTMTE kept me reading for a while but eventually I stopped caring about it, but RID and its follow-up was boring from the start, with all the politics and speeches and machinations that led nowhere.

I guess we can be glad they aren't brothers like in Bayformers.  

 

I have faith IDW know what they\'re doing, and the art looks pretty neat. Looking forward to new Transformer comics. Hoping some little used characters will get the spotlight this time. Like Swerve, who was my first ever toy, did last time.

 

This comment is a Unicron-sized truth. Well said.

 

Honestly as much as I don't care for the reboot yet again reusing the same backstory for Optimus and MEgatron and the political thing they've been having since the Aligned days or further then that I don't know I also don't want to see them go back to just reusing the classic 80's formula because that too will only get you so far before it eventually gets boring quick. To me that's just trading one extreme for just another extreme and as much as I wanted IDW to try to do something different, I also don't want them to do so at the cost of getting rid of substance and depth along with doing things that haven't been done before political or not. I'm just hoping this series will find a way to balance the two aspects well so that way people can get the classic hero vs villain moment they want but at the same time still give us depth and substance along so that it doesn't feel paper thin.

 

I really dig the art! The dialogue is okay. I like how it builds anticipation for Megs speech. The question is: What are the big differences that Megatron has with the Autobot’s that make him so hostile towards Optimus?

I’ll be there for a few issues and see how it pans out. I like that the setting is pre-war without any clear cut open hostilities. It like the idea of seeing how the Decepticons actually formed into a group.

 

You do something different, everyone complains it's not like it used to be.

You retread the same plotlines, everyone complains it's stale.

So, you walk the tightrope of a fresh angle on the same stories and end up with both sets of complaints.

It's almost like there is literally nothing IDW can do here.

 

So prime and Megatron are senators? Could you guys imagine any career politicians becoming leaders and war heroes?

For whatever reason that’s making this whole plot point very unbelievable to me

 

I don't know, looks okay but we've seen this before with Megatron fighting against a corrupt government and Optimus being his passive buddy. You know a little off topic, in retrospect the whole idea of functionism in Transformers doesn't work for me when nearly all of the cartoons and films show Transformers scanning a new alt mode at will. Did the IDW continuity ever take that into consideration at all? I can't remember.

 

A lot of people jumping to conclusions. We have no idea whats happening in this book yet.

 

I'm looking forward to it.

I never got chance to get into the idw comics before. So this reboot will be an ideal starting point for me  

 

Drumming the old beat so closely has gotten, well, old.

If they wanted a drastically new take on Transformers, take the Axiom Nexus concept but make it the result of Optimus and Megatron,close friends, working together. Then have them deal with threats of schemeing underlings (Starscream, Prowl) miltaristic malcontents (Overlord? Deathsaurus?) and external threats (Quintessons, Unicron). You could have a whole story about Megatron being captured, mutilated and brainwashed into being Galvatron who then faces off against his old (dead?) friend\'s apprentice Rodimus. Drama and excitement, without retreading old ground.

 

If Bumblebee is telling the whole truth, then the Golden Age IS a utopia. And THAT is something we have never had.

I'm going to wait and see more.

 

I hope this looks more into why megs becomes the tyrant he was in g1. And it would make sense because here he is trying to be reasonable and do things politically and it would be interesting to see him fall into becoming an unreasonable tyrant who thinks tyranny is the only way to achieve peace. 

I grew up with comics from the 80s and 90s and honestly? Theres only so much you can read of stupid villainous plots with little or no reason just setting up a fight scene. So let em set the scene for you before yall get all angry about them doing stuff.

I of course wish they just stuck with the previous universe but cest la ve

 

Being somewhat cynical and having a lifelong love of DC Comics (which does the same thing), a part of me thinks:

- Reboots/revamps change meaningless details to try to flail into attracting a new audience. Which is fine by me if you have an image of who that audience IS (like maybe playing up fembots or maybe working some Afro-futurist sci-fi in like Black Panther did). But sometimes I think they change things with NO audience in mind except DIFFERENT. Chromia being a cop, I’m down with because Prowl having a police partner makes sense in that Prowl already reflects earth police and Chromia has no real backstory. I can understand trans or gay Transformers to attract those readers. The larger political stuff seems more rudderless. I’m not sure who needed Orion Pax to be an establishment politician; I liked him better in Prime as a clerk who was a Megatron fanboy until Megatron started crossing lines.

- I think there is a sense that denying people things makes them hungrier. So when is the last time the founding Justice League from their first comics appearance was ALL on the team together? The 70s? Morrison came closest by putting the standardbearers together. Likewise, Star Wars’ new trilogy made sure NEVER to have the OT main cast together. I’m not sure you ever see more than a third together, ever. By extension here, I feel like maybe there’s some “giveth and taketh away” with the franchise instead of just serving up the best of the best.

 

I have a feeling Rubble will become Rumble.

 

Really? I see Marvel as being about as different from Sunbow as Armada is, in all but character models.

Sunbow was modeled on industrial uprising. No gods. No space religion. Virtually no secret ancient Titans. No multiverse. No flowery descriptions of vast, predatory birds. Virtually the only palace intrigue regarding faction mutiny centered on Starscream. Just character-driven modern day cyberpunk.

 

Not really what I suggested. The 'Empire', in Star Wars and every other story, usually has an evil agenda from the start. I'm saying: retain Megatron as the guy who starts off with noble goals and goes bad, but make his noble goals anti-populist for once.

You could take any one of the above approaches and do a good or bad job with them. The way to do it right would be to make sure that what's new is good-new and what's kept the same is not something already completely exhausted.

 

okay... I don't hate this but must we render every 5mm port and screw hole and *THE SLOTS FOR THE MUSHROOM PEGS*? this is a bit... excessively faithful to the toys.