Transformers #80.5

Now don’t get me wrong. I absolutely loved the Transformers comics in the 1980s. In fact, that and GI Joe were a big part of the reason I’m as hooked as I am now. But I think Simon Furman is overestimating how much we all remember about what was happening in this comic 20 years ago.


I seem to remember the Autobots and Decepticons teaming up to take out Unicron. I know a lot of the original characters are dead; for example, wasn’t Bludgeon the main Decepticon leader at the close of the series? And he looked like some skeleton samurai dude!

Wasn’t Prime stuck in some “Power Master” robot-only form? Who was the last Autobot? Wasn’t Megatron merged with Ratchet somehow?

The problem is, after reading this “introductory” issue; I still don’t know what’s happening. Larry Hama filled us in a bit better when he picked up GI Joe, or at least he made everything feel like a fresh start. I’m certain I’ll stick around and buy this comic, but I do wish I had a bit more solid understanding about the status quo.

Andrew Wildman can still draw. His transformers were revolutionary to me, back in the day, and they still look fantastic. There are a ton of good TF artists now, but Wildman’s art still has a classic feel. He always puts the best shiny spots on the ‘bots faces, it really sells the unique feel.

And am I the only one who worries what this series will do to IDW’s ongoing Transformers story? Once you have the original as an option, I sort of lose interest in the “reimagined” universe. That certainly happened to me with IDW’s GI Joe titles.

Fair