Don Figueroa

This volume didn't move me much either way. It introduces a new, post-All Hail Megatron status quo: the Autobots are on Earth, protecting humanity from the scattered Decepticons abandoned there during the Decepticon retreat after Megatron was defeated by Optimus. Only the Autobots are perceived as being as much of a threat as the Decepticons are, so the Autobots have to protect the humans while staying hidden from them, causing some moral dilemmas for them. Albeit, not very interesting ones; show more this is the sort of overly angsty Optimus Prime that doesn't do much for me. Like a lot of these comics, I think it partially suffered from me not knowing the characters: what's Ironhide to him, or he to Ironhide, that he would weep for him?

What did work was a subplot about Hot Rod deciding that this whole conflict was bogus and working together with a group of Autobots and Decepticons to just be rid of the whole thing. Thanks to the manipulations of the Decepticon Swindle, he begins to see himself as a savior of an independent group-- hearkening back to his original stance in the Great War as the leader of a local community that just wanted to stay out of it all, as per Autocracy. Swindle begins calling him "Rodimus Prime," a very different origin story than in the Generation One cartoon! I felt Costa pulled back from the potential here, though, as in the end Swindle is just, well, swindling Hot Rod. But the seeds sown here would bear fruit in More than Meets the Eye, by which Hot Rod is legitimately called Rodimus, and more idealistic than ever.

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A decent shift into a post-war continuity. I admit, I really dislike Figueroa's shift to Bayverse-style character designs, but he still does a better job with such translations than the movies ever did.

The series is a bit slow but issue 6 is a solid payoff that establishes a lot in terms of developing Bumblebee, Rodimus and Optimus. These "peace-time" changes in their thinking goes a long way towards developing the runs of Barber and Roberts to come down the road.

There's some really interesting ideas in here and some good character work, but at the end of the day I was hoping for more of a look at the early days of the war. I was hoping for something more political, while this was basically just a big adventure in the early days of the war. Good, just not what I wanted.

A nice idea but one delivered like it was being phoned in.