G1 Marvel. I picked up 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12 at an antique shop for a $1 each with my parents. It would be several years before I started to get the rest.

 

Marvel TF #29. I knew vaguely about comics, but didn't really understand they were entertainment units that you could buy every month. Thank Primus for cliffhangers; I had to know how Bumblebee was gonna get free of the Scraplets! Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), this began an obsession with comics that persists to this day.

I was initially a bit put off as stuff was different to the cartoon, but soon thereafter, the comic became the only way to get new Transformers material, so any reluctance I had soon vanished. Didn't miss an issue after that until the bitter end.

 

Marvel Transformers ussues 11-12 (well, the version published in Hungary anyway), the story introducing Jetfire and the end of Prime's temporary and involuntary career as a headmaster  .

 

Within like a week I got two different ones. Issue 3 of the Devil's Due crossover with G.I. Joe, and one of the War Within issues included in a two pack of the WW Titanium Prime and Megatron.

 

My dad bought me the 2 trade of the first dozen G1 Marvel series when I was little during the 80s. I was old enough to read and remember them, but young enough to rip them up through over-use.

 

My first TF comic? Heh heh heh...

 

Got a pack with the Marvel series #1 -3 (but not #4...!) for giftmas of 1984...was hooked until I 'grew' out of them in early 1987.

 

Came over this in a shop in 88, before that I only had a Vortex and had no clue about the story surrounding my "robot helicopter". I was already heavily into dinosaurs and was permanently sold afterwards...each issue collected two American issues, with "Funeral for a Friend!" and "King of the Hill!" serving as my dramatic introduction to the Transformers world:

 

A UK comic with Unicron on the front I found at a library in Bedford. I thought it looked crap and was all wrong so I left it there.
Then much later I randomly discovered DW comics and got TF vs GI Joe #3, the issue with naked Ultra Magnus and a War Within.
I then tried getting everything.

 

You lucky Swede.

They weren't getting sold anymore when I was a kid so I only ever got to read two issues of the Marvel series and I had to buy those from overseas. My parents didn't let me buy any more because it didn't seem worth the expense.

I never got to read the issues with the Dinobots until I was an adult.

 

I was born a couple of years after the G1 cartoon first aired, so it was a good long while before I was old enough to watch it. My only exposure to Transformers was some VHS tapes and I couldn't really find anything else. I ended up looking online and came across images from the comics and I kept seeing things that said that these two issues were really good, so I bought them.... on Amazon.com, which meant they were really expensive. As such, my parents would only ever let me do this once because it didn't seem worth the cost.



So I waited with excitement and then dug into the issues as soon as the package arrived, and I discovered... that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. It didn't help that I still didn't have that good a grasp on English, so I was even more lost. Now, you could argue that I should have bought the first issue so I wouldn't have been completely right, but you see, there's something you have to understand about young me: I was kind of a dumb kid.

 

My first TF comic I found in a waiting room at a hospital. I didn't have time to finish reading it and got to take it home.
It was a Swedish publication containing Marvel US #76 Still Life, #77 Exodus and UK #226 Aspects of Evil: Megatron.

Yes, my first comic started with Optimus lying dying on a dying Cybertron and naming Grimlock the next leader.



Needles to say, 10-ish years old me was very confused but I couldn't get more comics as they stopped publishing them a few years previously.

A decade later I read some Armada and Dreamwave's G1 before finally getting hocked on Transformers with Infiltration. I read everything in IDW's G1 continuity (up to the Hasbro Revolution event). I also ordered the whole Marvel Transformers TPB collection and finally got to read the continuation of that first comic.

 

Marvel #21, the first appearance of the Aerialbots, was my first comic book, found in a magazine rack in some random store while on a family vacation. I recall thinking I was buying some kind of activity book, where there'd be mazes and word searches and so forth. And so I was amazed by what I read, an actual story, that was continuing from a previous issue and continued into the next issue. But because I was out of town at the time, I didn't know where or how to get more of these. It was another year or so before I discovered a local store with a spinner rack, and another year or two before I learned how to acquire back issues.

 

Came in a 3 pack from Hills department store with 8 and 9. I read them over and over and over. Eventually got 5 and 6 and 10 and 11.. I was hooked.

 

DreamWave. The alt covers started confusing the hell out of me trying to determine the timeline and eventually I said F*CK it.

Then came figures, and I basically binged the IDW stuff.

 

Okay, so the first TF comic I EVER read was actually the FCBD 2007 or 2008 adaptation of TF Animated's pilot. I was really into the Archie Sonic comics, and the bundle that came with the FCBD Sonic issue came with that as well. I didn't really get into the comics though until 2016 with RiD15 #1. I read all six issues, then I saw ads in those for MTMTE and Ex-RiD, so I bought the IDW Copendium 1 that fall and read all the comics in collections until September 2017, with Lost Light #1 being the first single issue I got.

 

Oooh boy! For me, it was issue 3 of Dreamwave's Prime Directive series. I was a first grader at the time, and I only knew Transformers from RID2001. To me, Prowl was a car brother and Grimlock was a green construction vehicle. Optimus was a firetruck, and Megatron was a flamboyantly colored tenchanger. So I open this comic, which starts off with the aftermath of an absolute massacre. Autobots, including Prowl, Grimlock, and some guy named Bumblebee were mind-controlled into killing a bunch of humans. You see bloody outlines of bodies on the ground, there's bad language, there's violence, there's body horror as a dude called Lazarus is swallowed up by this techno-goop, and weirdest of all, Megatron is a flat gray color and doesn't even look like he turns into anything! So I was a little freaked out by what Transformers comics could be and it actually turned me off of them for a while, only to really start into them with IDW's Infiltration launch. Good times.

 

This and Marvel Age magazine:

 

I can't recall the exact first comic, but I started with Marvel's US run. My dad is into comics and got my brothers and myself into them as well.
I kept going until I had all 80 issues, plus the Movie adaptation, Headmasters, Universe, and TF vs Gijoe.
I then got the GIJoe issues leading up to Generation 2, as well as the Generation 2 series.
Some of the Devil's Due GIJoe crossovers.
Most of Dreamwave's limited series, plus the Armada, War Within, Dark Ages, etc. I stopped here before Dreamwave went under.

My younger brother started getting the IDW run and I was highly impressed. EJ Su was a highlight. My brother stopped midway through MtMtE.
I went back and bought mostly TPBs of Infiltration, Escalation, Revelation, Devastation, Stormbringer, Spotlights, Maximum Dinobots, Megatron Origins, All Hail Megatron, Regeneration One, Autocracy Trilogy, Wreckers Trilogy, Empire of Stone, ROM Shining Armor, and Stark Trek vs TF.
I'm now getting the new 2019 series.

 

IDW phase two. Started with RID.