The Transformers: Regeneration One, Volume 1

It's amazing how much more assured Simon Furman's writing is with this volume, and it's very fulfilling to see the promise of his earlier Transformers work brought to fruition. This is great stuff; deeper characterization than before with some amazing plotting.

In Furman and Wildman's hands the Transformers went from this cynical toy tie-in to characters you could identify with and root for, even while somehow still off-puttingly stodgy and sexless (I mean, you don't want them to be sexy either, so I guess sexless is fine). This takes us through the search for the Matrix, Unicron, the unexpected return of the series 20 years later to tie up the loose ends that didn't get tied before, and then builds into a perfectly timed "Marvel big event"-style epic conflag, with everyone getting their moments and the perfect timing and sense of consequence and careful calibration to avoid brutalizing you that those stories have when they are good. This one is surprisingly great.

Now, I don't know what Simon Furman's run on the original Transformers comic was like, but this feels much more like a comic of the 2010s than one of the 1980s, with its bloated, decompressed storyline, and unrelenting grimness. Peace has been declared, Optimus Prime has grown old and depressed, and the Decepticons are plotting their return to power. Say what you will about Marvel's Transformers comics (and I have), but under Bob Budianksy, at least, they were always fun. This story here-- where we learn, among other things, that the population of Earth is dead, including most of the human cast of the 1980s comic-- doesn't really capture the spirit of the tales it's supposedly a follow-up to. I'm not opposed to darkness in Transformers; show more some of the IDW stuff I've read so far gets quite dark, but this is darkness without nuance or interest, the sort of adolescent grimness you get if you watch the first two seasons of Torchwood.

I admit that I'm probably not the target audience for this (I've never read a Simon Furman Transformers comic before, though on the other hand, I do love Kup), but I didn't find much to enjoy here. show less