Like many I've seen around here I have no interest in all these corporate crossovers for the Transformers comics. As a result it's actually made Optimus Prime (a comic I already had lost a lot of interest in) nigh unreadable because they keep referencing things with GI Joes, getting attacked by earth and a ton of characters I haven't seen including several transformers that are just up and missing suddenly on crossovers with Rom or the visionaries. With the series ending soon I will be sticking this comic out till the end but I can't help but be uninterested and confused reading Prime because I haven't read ANY First Strike save for the transformers issue (which again, was really confusing to read) or any of the crossover comics. For example I had no idea that Skywarp was a Gi Joe now, Kup is dead, who the hell Action Man is or why people are waving around signs of "Free GI Joe." I don't need a complete summary, just if somebody could help a fan out here and just give me the bullet points from First Strike, and the crossovers so I can bloody understand what's going on. Really appreciated thanks. On an aside: I've been absent a long time on the forums but man do I feel that Optimus Prime is a complete train wreck of a comic at this point. It just feels like moving from two to three issue story arcs with new villains being created and defeated at the drop of a hat all for the sake of crossovers and "big events" but with absolutely no cohesion. The rest of the time it's just reading about humans and bots griping about their tenuous relationship which frankly hasn't seemed to have changed at all in the past 18 issues.
First Strike - Transformers Wiki Seriously, it's a couple paragraphs or so long, it's all you need to know if that.
The comics from other franchises do not affect Optimus Prime, you're not required to read them to understand Optimus Prime. Skywarp being a member of GI Joe and Kup dying in other comics are not important in Optimus Prime so this does not affect his reading of Optimus Prime. Action Man was one of the protagonists of Revolutionaries that is practically a comic of Transformers why of the four characters main characters three are characters of Transformers ex-RID,and also two are Transformers (and the writer is Jon Barber). Almost all members of GI Joe in Optimus Prime are members of EDC's ex-RID, just changed the name of the organization and they have GI Joe stickers on some of the military vehicles, and of the two new human characters that appear in the comic, one is Marissa's father and the other is practically an extra and they do not appear in GI Joe comics, they apens appear in Optimus Prime so you can understand everything reading just Optimus Prime. First Strike is not required to read to understand Optimus Prime, practially all you need to know is said in the Optimus Prime comic. Although I would say Revolution and First Strike are the two best events of IDW's Transformers comics. A crossover overview of First Strike copied from tfwiki is as follows:
Thanks. Though oddly this reminded me that I forgot there was another event I skipped in that I didn't read revolution either which just confounded the damn issue. Optimus Prime is can be followed but it is troublesome to me when they keep referencing points and characters show up I haven't seen before and everyone treats it as if they were there the whole time. Of note is that I was completely caught unawares that Ore 13 was suddenly relevant again - that apparently part of Cybertron isn't mechanical anymore - that Cybertron lost a lot of energon and that Unicron received some sort of message (I thought his first appearance was in the free comic book day issue). It wasn't helping that some of these characters were particularly unusual (Centurion) and kept having a bigger role in Optimus Prime for a few issues.
First Strike? Well, it's basically here only so IDW can say "a wizard did it" in the end. But yeah, "you don't need to read crossovers" my backplate. Or simply a lie. Sure one doesn't need them... If they like not knowing what's what and who's who in their ongoing of choice. If IDW does the same fallacy for their own continuity then I hope that relaunch will not help and their TF books will keep bombing untill the publisher drops the licence.
Yeah, the effects of First Strike on Optimus Prime are "Earth joins the Council of Worlds but the ceremony got interrupted by an invasion attempt", which is also shown in Optimus Prime #11, and "Cybertron is left with severe energon depletion", which is recapped in Optimus Prime #13. The only other thing from First Strike that matters for the Transformers-only books is Unicron being awakened, and IDW posted that entire four-page epilogue online for free. Not to say that editorial hasn't made some really stupid decisions - killing Kup in Visionaries, for one thing - but "you're totally 100% forced to read First Strike if you want to know what's going on" isn't one of them. Unlike First Strike, there is an argument to be made that Revolutionaries is a bit more essential for the Optimus Prime series, but that doesn't seem unreasonable to me considering that it's by the same writer and its main cast is three ex-RID characters plus Action Man...
I haven't read first strike or revolutionaries and i dont feel at all lost in Optimus Prime. As Jalaguy said anything required is covered (admittedly very breifly) in OP. The only reason i didnt read them is that i didnt think they'd be tied in with the main books and honestly at the time.. 3 ongoings was more than enough to read without a further two more books each month. It was too much, when i dont have that much cash to throw around.
I do feel like First Strike and its aftermath are kind of... you know, "doing it wrong". Derailing the crossover to pimp Visionaries, killing off Kup, bringing Centurion into OP with little explanation, and having a G.I. Joe focused crossover where all the repercussions only affected the Transformers... bad ideas. For the first year, though? All the stories were entirely self-contained. The only impact Revolution had on OP was "the EDC got replaced by GI Joe, so now Marissa's dad is here", and TAAO/Lost Light got left entirely alone. The fact that First Strike later buggered it up doesn't change that.
I feel like this one is less due to First Strike and more "Revolutionaries got cancelled and Barber wants to continue to use and tie in these characters" especially considering the next "real" issue of OP formally bridged those characters in, even outside of the crossover. Agreed with the rest though.
As far as we're aware, Revolutionaries was always going to be eight-ish issues long - after all, it would've been weird to still have "Revolutionaries" when Revolution was no longer the most recent event. Barber basically did with Revolutionaries what Furman did with the Spotlights, and used the side series to introduce material relating to the big "mytharc" (Centurion and his connection to Onyx Prime in Revolutionaries, Nova Prime and the Dead Universe in the Spotlights) ahead of it becoming relevant in the main comic!
That's a much better way of putting what I was trying to say, yeah. Revolutionaries exists in this odd space where it IS necessary and is actually meant to be read to get the most out of one of the main books. Which is what people complain about all of the Hasbro books but is rarely true. At the same time, OP takes a HUGE amount of time re-explaining everything that happens there and it's the exact kind of stuff that someone enjoying Barber's other books would also enjoy.
I think this is a case of 'curse of knowledge'. It might look like the crossovers and side-books have little relevance if you've actually read them and know that the references to events that took place in them are mostly throwaway. The trouble is that if you *haven't* read them, and a character in Optimus Prime says something about a planetary invasion by humans, you have to work out: what is this? Something I've missed in *this* comic? Something that bears on the conversation these two are having? A detail I should pay attention to, or conversational filler? Then they might reference something else that *isn't* in the crossover and is meant to be foreshadowing, or a new plot thread, but you don't know if it's just something else that's already happened elsewhere. For example, I think I've picked up from these forums that the relationship between Prime and Windblade is slightly fraught now because Prime went against her direct orders in First Strike. This is an aspect of their relationship that's presumably being hinted at in every exchange, but the context for it is in the crossover comic. Lots of little things like that add up to a pretty disorderly experience.
I feel like explicit references to events elsewhere usually get editor's notes telling you where it's from? I definitely remember the first issue of OP after First Strike having a bunch. That's a fair point about character dynamic type stuff, though, I'll admit. I definitely remember seeing one or two people comment that it was weird how terse Windblade was being with Prime at the start of The Falling. There's definitely been a shift over time in the quality of how editorial handles the logistics of the shared universe, and First Strike feels like a turning point at which things started to get pretty messy in some places.
Recap pages in every issue explicitly tell you what happened too. I didn't read Revolution until last week and still have not finished First Strike and I was able to follow OP just fine. But if they didn't have recap pages I probably wouldn't be saying the same thing Oh definitly to the detriment of itself. But it was tossed into two issues of entirely exposition and continuity porn. Barber just got Ramondelli to draw two entire issues of cliffs notes for the last 15 years of stories in between arcs where characters actually did things and had emotions. And I kinda love that approach? Just quarantine all exposition.
