The first Transformers continuity created by IDW comics is regarded by many as the best Transformer comics that have ever been made. Kicking off in 2005, it ran for an impressive 13 years with hundreds of issues and took the G1’esque universe to places it had never been before, culminating in a climatic battle against Unicron himself.
In 2019 IDW rebooted the Transformers comic universe and it was….. not well received. Many fans had become very attached to the universe of old, especially the adventures of the Lost Light which introduced genuine comedy into the franchise, something it was sorely lacking. One could argue that the first continuity had done so much there was nothing left to do so a reboot was required, but many fans still mourned it’s loss.
But can the fact that the 2019 reboot was not well loved be solely attributed to the affection fans felt for the old universe? Personally I didn’t know as at that stage I had ‘comic fatigue’ and was not up to investing myself into a new series, especially after I read the first few issues. The new series only lasted 3 years, as opposed to the 13 of its predecessor, and perhaps was a hundred issues give or take all together.
Over the past 3 weeks I have binge-read the entirety of the IDW 2019 Transformers continuity. Below are my thoughts on what was good, what was bad, and why ultimately it failed.
The Bad
First and foremost – it started too slooooow.
There is some good action to be found in the 2019 universe, but it takes so many issues to get to it. The majority of the first dozen issues are characters walking down hallways talking to one another. And the banter is boring. Yes, they were trying to establish that this was a pre-great war Cybertron, and show Orion Pax and Megatron travelling inevitably towards their fates, but Transformers fans don’t primarily read comics for the political discourse – they want to see giant, shape-changing alien robots fighting each other! There was so much blah-blah-blah that when they finally got to the good stuff a lot of fans had tuned out and were no longer interested.
The characters lack character
Lets use Sixshot as a comparison. When introduced into the 2005 continuity it showed him destroying a whole civilisation single handed! And he showed all 6 of his modes in his very first issue! He has a rich backstory of being a one-percenter that gets augmented to become a phase-sixer and after arriving on Earth, it took the combined firepower of Optimus and a whole squad of Autobots to even slow him down. In the 2019 continuity, even after 3 years he still hasn’t used all of his modes, he spends more time talking that fighting, and the first battle between him and Windblade is frighteningly dull. That’s right, they managed to make a fight that involved Sixshot boring.
Sixshot is just one example. Megatron never does much except plot and has a total of one brief punch up with Optimus over the entire 3 years – he doesn’t even rant that well. Swindle is always grumpy and talking about percentages rather than being the cheery swindler we all love. The banter between Strongarm and Sideswipe is supposed to evoke their love-hate relationship from the RID2015 continuity but falls flat. None of the characters really evolve or change or grow and their personalities are the same from the first issue they show up in to the last. Very few characters ever display any real passion or panic about anything. I’ll have to note there are a few exceptions such as Flamewar, who is at least goofy enough to be mildly entertaining, as is Skywarp.
Cybertron is artistically dull
Cybertron is a robot alien world, full of wonders and marvels, created from the body of Primus himself. So why does it seem to consist of nothing but corridors and barren landscapes? The background always seems to be mutely coloured in shades of tan and bronze, the buildings are very basic rectangles and nothing pops. There are no interesting details to note, there is not a lot of anything really. Even when huge events happen like an orbital tether collapsing so that a giant cable cuts a swath of destruction across all of Iacon, its unimpressive. As is when the Titan’s fall from the sky. It’s Titan’s falling out of the sky and crashing into Cybertron, and it still looks boring, just rectangular brick looking things hitting empty ground. Given the rather less than awed response from the observing bots, they were not impressed either.
The robots also look dull
The artist Angel Hernandez was obviously not a fan of strong colours as even the bots look washed out. There is the occasional pop of colour such as at Swindle’s casino, but not much. The bots are often as blocky as the landscape, with detail only ever given to some of the more major characters such as Bumblebee’s face or Orion’s body. Not a lot of size difference either, everyone is roughly similar heights and shapes, even the Micromasters, with just the odd detail like wings and faces to differentiate them. If you don’t know the characters already, you are hard pressed to tell with many who is male and who is female. Yes, I know that we are all supposed to be ‘blind to gender’ now, but would it really be insulting to let the female characters look female? I had to look up if the character Glyph was male or female as I couldn’t tell from the art, and the likes of Road Rage are only able to be identified as female when you see they have slightly fuller lips. With blocky bodies and little to set them apart from muted colour schemes and a bit of altmode kibble, the alien mechanoid populace of Cybertron have rarely looked so boring. The Wreckers mini-series set on Velocitron is worthy of mention for being the exception to this.
Barely a Transformation
To be fair this is an issue I had with the 2005 continuity as well. Transformers are supposed to, well, transform. But they hardly ever do it! The Seekers showcase the ability the most in order to go into battle, but most other characters, even major ones, either hardly ever transform or never transform at all!. And even when they do, most of the time its just to get from point A to point B, they don’t really use their altmodes for anything but transport. Way to remove a quintessential concept from a franchise. One must wonder if perhaps this is done on purpose as despite Earth never being visited, there are plenty of characters with Earth vehicle modes occasionally on show (based on the then current Siege toyline) – the artists obviously not bothering to come up with Cybertronian modes for them – so the less the audience saw of the altmodes the less they would say ‘Hang on a sec…’
The Good
(yes there is some!)
As mentioned, the 2019 continuity eventually does come into its own. Whilst many of the negatives above such as bland landscapes and characters that rarely show strong emotions persist, the storyline starts to move faster, disparate story arcs begin to overlap and intertwine, and we even get a few interesting battles. These are not the only positives:
Overlooked characters getting their shot.
The Lost Light comic series set a great precedent, elevating minor characters to places of prominence, and giving characters who have barely appeared over the last 30 years a chance to briefly shine. The 2019 continuity may not do it as well, but it does do it. Chainclaw works security, Howlback works infiltration, Hydrahead and Rage use their liquid weapons to try and assassinate the Insecticons, Redwing leads Seeker attacks. It’s always interesting to see someone different from the main cast get their turn upon the page.
Action Masters are cool!
It’s nice to see the Action Masters done right! At the time the most reviled of the G1 toys – Transformers who couldn’t transform – Action Masters now experience the same love of much of the old toyline simply due to being G1. In this series they haven’t been retroactively been given altmodes like in others, they are all mode locked and yes, like the original storyline from the G1 toys its due to overuse of Nucleon. The best part is that many seem to come with their accessories: the likes of Axer and Circuit drive their vehicles, whilst characters like Treadshot and Charger have their animal sidekicks. And Charger with Fire Beast – talk about including obscure characters!
Interesting-ish Subplots
Oh, if only the characters were given some more, er, character and the graphics a bit of oomph, these could have been great. We see interesting subplots explore the origins of the Constructicons and the Insecticons, how they came to be and where they are going. The Constructicons are, not officially, banished from Cybertron because the populace fears the power of Devastator, and the Insecticons go from walking garbage disposals to cannibals who feast on organics and fellow bots alike. Both these early story lines have a profound affect at the series conclusion, particularly the Insecticons.
Characters actually fulfilling their tech spec functions.
With so many characters, Transformers comic writers often ignore what they are supposed to do and simply make them one of a multitude of soldiers, especially on the Decepticon side. Not so with this continuity. Sparkstalker for the first time in his existence is actually functioning as a hacker instead of simply breathing fire. Bumblebee is working espionage instead of smiling and being the Transformers poster boy. For a Transformers geek like me, this was a level of detail greatly appreciated.
No Earth, No Humans!
Well, nearly. The only Humans that appear are in the King Grimlock miniseries, a shoutout to the G1 episode Madman’s Paradise. Even then it’s not on Earth so they get a pass.
Too little, too late
So yes, there were positives to be found in the IDW 2019 Transformers Continuity. Unfortunately for them, the first year was so lackluster that most fans (myself included) had tuned out and were no longer buying by the time it started to get halfway decent. Having binged the entire continuity over the last 3 weeks I can say it turned out not as bad as I thought, but it’s nothing I will revisit and am glad I saved my pennies by reading them online rather than purchasing the comics themselves. How did IDW go from making the best Transformers comics ever to the worst? Was it a case of the new writers and artists making bad decisions, them not caring, or did perhaps IDW feel it was done with the franchise and therefore organised a lackluster effort to get them out of their contract with Hasbro? Who knows. But like the cartoon series –Transformers Robots in Disguise 2015 – it seems destined to forever be referred to by fans in the tone of ‘meh, bits were ok, but it was never really that great’.
