E J Su

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

There's a bit of a gap between Infiltration and Devastation-- apparently some kind of escalation has taken place. Still, I was able to follow things well enough. Furman is really good at throwing the reader right into the action but also filling in everything the reader needs to know in the meantime. The Autobots are fighting both the Decepticons (Megatron has called in Sixshot, the living weapon usually reserved for phase show more 6 of the infiltration protocol even though it's only phase 3) and the Machination, a human conspiracy to reverse-engineer Transformer technology (they've captured one of the Autobots as well as their human ally, Hunter; this will later become important in All Hail Megatron).

Devastation follows a somewhat predictable format: action, reprieve, action, reprieve. The Autobots are attacked on their spaceship, escape, and then on the ground. Hot Rod and Wheeljack fight the Machination Headmasters on the streets, and then in a junk yard. But Furman and Su pull this format off very well. Basically, the tension keeps going up as the Autobots barely scrape through again and again, and the reader is aware of the bigger picture in the background, but the characters are too focused on staying alive to have to time to even notice. Furman dribbles out information at exactly the right rate to keep the reader intrigued.

Some of the plotlines I do have to withhold judgment on: Hunter being forced to become a Headmaster is a little more grotesque than I'd prefer from a Transformers comics, and I know where that goes in All Hail Megatron, but I also know that wasn't Furman's original plan for the character. There's also some stuff about the Dead Universe and about some weird alien horde that comes to Earth recruit Sixshot, and I'm not really sure how that fits into anything here. On the other hand, I do appreciate that Furman portrays the Decepticons as characters-- ones that stammer, and connive, and get sad when their friends die-- instead of unfeeling monsters.

If Devastation falls down anywhere, it's that it's clearly a small part of a larger whole. Optimus Prime decides to pull Autobot resources off Earth at the end, apparently in response to something that happened in another book, and there were two volumes where Furman paid off some of his plots (Revelation and Maximum Dinobots) that came between this and All Hail Megatron. At least, I hope he did, because I know many were cut short by All Hail Megatron. So what comes at the end of this is clearly not an ending, just a transition to a new phase. But if you're willing to accept that (and as a comic book reader, I've long gotten used to that kind of thing), this holds together pretty well.

The Transformers by IDW: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence » show less

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Though it takes place between The Transformers Spotlight and All Hail Megatron, I actually read this IDW Transformers comic much later, because the Humble Bundle it was included in didn't come out until October 2016; by the time I read this I'd already read All Hail Megatron, For All Mankind, Last Stand of the Wreckers, and Infestation. It's a shame I didn't read it earlier, because it's really quite good, probably the best show more part of the IDW Transformers continuity I'd read up to this point, except for Last Stand.

Simon Furman has written for The Transformers since the 1980s, but this is, I'm pretty sure, his first time writing for them from the beginning, getting to design his own Transformers universe from the ground up. I see two different inspirations here: "Man of Iron," the first UK Transformers story, and "Rose," the first episode of Russell T Davies's Doctor Who. Like "Rose," Infiltration introduces us to the extraordinary through the eyes of the ordinary, starting with human beings in their world, whose normal lives are disrupted by something they've never seen before. Like "Man of Iron," Infiltration depicts the Transformers as strange, mysterious beings, emphasizing their size and their otherness. There are a lot of scenes with silent, mysterious Decepticon jets flying overhead and destroying things, just like in "Man of Iron." A Transformer does speak to the human protagonists in the first issue, but only in the form of a holomatter avatar; the humans don't talk to a robot as as a robot until the very end of the second issue.

But it's not all mystery and scares; Furman does a good job of slowly initiating the human characters, Verity, Hunter, and Jimmy, to the Transformers world. They meet Ratchet, the Autobots' medic, then they go to the Autobot base and meet a few more Transformers, then they end up helping Ratchet and Bumblebee investigate a mysterious, abandoned Decepticon base. Optimus Prime doesn't show up until the very last page. The Decepticons are frightening, Megatron especially because of how Verity encounters him: he's so large and so focused that she's beneath his notice, an insect he shouldn't even waste time with. This is probably the best portrayal I've seen of Megatron outside Beast Wars/Beast Machines.

Compare this to the ridiculous way Bill Mantlo and Ralph Macchio introduced the original Transformers line-up, by having twenty-nine different characters just say their names and give personality-based one-liners, and this is loads more interesting and sophisticated. We don't know a lot of the Transformers characters by the end of this, but the ones we do know we know very well. E. J. Su's artwork is strong, too, able to handle both the legion of robot characters and the few human ones with equal dexterity. Transformers comics can look very posed at time, but Su is great at keeping things natural and (forgive the word choice) organic.

This book came out a year before the first Michael Bay Transformers film, and it seems to me that it accomplished what that film tried to do much better. Though, unlike a film, this isn't a self-contained story but a set-up for more adventures: Furman plants many seeds for what is to come, but I'm especially intrigued by the Decepticon infiltration protocol. I like the way he's given new life to the "robots in disguise" concept by making it so that both the Autobots and the Decepticons are limited by rules of engagement that mean they must do their work on Earth in secret, and that Earth is but one of many worlds where they are in conflict across the galaxy. It's a clever reinvention of the basics of the Transformers concepts-- different, but also the same, hitting the right balance between nostalgia and reinvention. There's stuff here to please new and old Transformers fans alike.

The Transformers by IDW: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence » show less

It's surprising, but setting your story amid two warring factions of all-male robots who have been killing each other for 4 million years tends to filter out most of the comic book misogyny instead of amplifying it.

The "holomatter" fake drivers thing is cute and just makes sense. And Simon Furman is definitely the guy I'd have build my transformers continuity from the ground up, given the choice. But . . . it feels a little stilted? The ideas are good, but his ideas were always better than his dialogue. Interestingly, it's the "modern-era" update, which I'd have thought I'd be in favour of, that comes off badly. I guess the Transformers concept is just intrinsically '80s. Maybe because the '80s were show more the decade of awesome, and Transformers are awesome. Now, it's like, robotics and space and hard-rock anthems for kids have been replaced by computers and biotech and "Yo Gabba Gabba". (And computers and biotech and "Yo Gabba Gabba" sounds like an amazing recipe for children's-programming magic. Hypothesis confirmed!) show less