The Energon Pub

I need opinions on Infiltration, Escalation, and Devastation. I got out of the comics game in 2005, and never found my place to get back in again. Now that these stories are out in TPBs, I wonder if they turned out to be good. To give reference, I very much enjoyed DW's G1 series back from 2003-05, IIRC. Are these stories similar? I am mainly looking for action and a good over-all story. Not simple 1-issue plots. And would AHM be necessary to go with these? Or any others?

The -ation books are very story orientated and followed a strong overarching story line with multiple plot threads (kinda like X-Men in the 80s) with some being resolved while bringing up new ones at the end of each story arc. In order to get the full experience from them you will also need the Spotlight series, since those often expanded upon the series or added to it, Stormbringer, and Maximum Dinobots.
While there is action in it, it's not the main focus and in the early issues it's mostly done in alt-mode.
It's similar to the DW stuff, just a little more quiet at times with a little more character building interaction.
However, the original plot line was not properly resolved, ie cramming about 12 -16 issues into a 4 part series. This was done by idw in favour of the much more action orientated AHM series.
AHM is not necessary to understand the ation series since it ignore most of what happened in it and even contradicts large portions of it.

Due to this you might just waist your time and money reading/buying these due to not getting a real ending to it all. Again, like DW.

AHM is much more action orientated with a thin action movie plot to get from one action scene to the next. The series does have it's high points but it ended up boring me completely due to the story being thin and spread out even thinner with useless filler and pacing that was all over the place.

If you want to get into the idw Transformers comics, don't know if you're reading the current run, just start with the two new titles Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the eyes. Those are done by a different creative team, a more competent one than the one from the past three years, and judging by the last two changes in creative teams, the previous material will be largely ignored or not very important.

Hope that helped.

DM wrote:Hope that helped.

Yeah, thanks. I got Maximum Dinobots a few weeks ago, and I was disappointed. The action was OK, but the story was weak.

Rodimus Prime wrote:

DM wrote:Hope that helped.

Yeah, thanks. I got Maximum Dinobots a few weeks ago, and I was disappointed. The action was OK, but the story was weak.

Well it was the last of the ation line and was meant to tie up a few loose ends and therefore does not have much of a story itself, it's kinda like watching the last half hour of Lord of he Rings 3 and trying to form an opinion about the whole trilogy from what little you experienced.

But if you enjoyed AHM and thought it was a good story, you won't like -ation.

IDW's -ation series are probably some of the best TF comic work I've ever seen, and about the only thing wrong with them is the company's desire to pretty much chuck it all away in 2008, in favor of printing three years of (nearly)* long, boring crap.

Dead Metal's got the right idea. If you want to get back into TF comics, wait till Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye start. As he says, the creative time behind them are responsible for some of IDW's better offerings of late (the DOTM movie comics; Last Stand of the Wreckers) and, as he also says, it'll be a fresh start, considering IDW's habit of ignoring plot points of previous series.

Get the -ation books if you can find them. Infiltration and Escalation were incredible. Devastation had potential but lost its focus trying to shoehorn in other storylines out of the blue and featured two fill-in artists (who were very good, but I hate fill-ins as a rule). Also, EJ Su is one of, if not THE best TF artist ever. He stayed true to the original G1 designs while making them work in the real world. Only Don Figueroa is in the same league in my book.

Last Stand of the Wreckers is also highly recommended as are the issues James Roberts wrote in the current ongoing series. Be sure to pick up his new ongoing in January. Looks like he could end up being the Alan Moore of TFs.