The Energon Pub

I went and picked up RID volumes 1-5 and Im enjoying them quite a bit. But I hate picking stuff up in the middle. Were do I even begin to get into these comics? The IDW G1 Continuity started around 2005-ish, right? So how many comics do I need to buy? I don't think my local comic book store's stock goes back that far, and even then, were to begin? Im genuinely interested, I just want to know were to start, and wich comics would probably be harder to get for one reason or another.

Copy aaaand paste. Have fun.


I. The Beginning…
1. Megatron Origin
2. Spotlight - Orion Pax
3. Spotlight – Blur (All Hail Megatron Vol. 3 p. 4)
4. Autocracy
5. Monstrosity
6. Primacy in 2014
7. Spotlight - Thundercracker

II. The Spotlights
8. Spotlight – Shockwave (Spotlight Vol. 1 p. 9)
9. Spotlight – Cliffjumper (All Hail Megatron Vol. 3 p. 52)
10. Spotlight – Soundwave (Spotlight Vol. 2 p. 9)
11. Spotlight – Wheelie (Spotlight Vol. 3 p. 100)
12. Spotlight - Hot Rod (Spotlight Vol. 1. p. 50)
13. Spotlight – Sixshot (Spotlight Vol. 1 p. 73)
14. Spotlight -- Ultra Magnus (Spotlight Vol. 1 p. 96)

III. Present Day Earth
15. Infiltration #0-3 (through p. 86)
16. Stormbringer #1-3
17. Infiltration #4-5 (p. 87-132)
18. Stormbringer #4 (Full page panel of Thunderwing in jet mode)
19. Infiltration #6 (p. 133 to end)
20. Spotlight – Kup (Spotlight Vol. 2 p. 28)
21. Escalation #1-2 (through p. 46)
22. Spotlight – Nightbeat (Spotlight Vol. 1 p. 27)
23. Escalation #3-6 (p. 47 to end)
24. Spotlight – Ramjet (Spotlight Vol. 2 p. 100)
25. Spotlight - Optimus Prime (Spotlight Vol. 2 p. 76)
26. Spotlight – Galvatron (Spotlight Vol. 2 p. 52)
27. Devastation #1-4 (pages unnumbered; Chapter 4 ends with close-up of Starscream talking to Astrotrain)
28. Spotlight – Blaster (Spotlight Vol. 3 p. 4)
29. Spotlight – Arcee (Spotlight Vol. 3 p. 28)
30. Devastation #5-6 (pages unnumbered; Chapter 5 begins with “Cybertron-The Past”)
31. Spotlight – Mirage (Spotlight Vol. 3 p. 76)
32. Spotlight – Grimlock (Spotlight Vol. 3 p. 52)
33. Spotlight Volume 4 – Revelation
34. Maximum Dinobots

IV. All Hail Megatron!
35. All Hail Megatron Vol. 2 Chapter 2 p. 1
36. All Hail Megatron Vol. 2 Chapter 1 p. 3-13, 17-19
37. All Hail Megatron Volume 4: “Everything In Its Right Place”
38. Spotlight – Drift (All Hail Megatron Vol. 3 p. 76)
39. Spotlight – Metroplex (All Hail Megatron Vol. 3 p. 100)
40. All Hail Megatron Volume 4: “Lost And Found”
41. Spotlight- Jazz (All Hail Megatron Vol. 3 p. 28)
42. All Hail Megatron Volume 1-2 in full
(Note: All Hail Megatron Volume 4 has #43-#48)
43. “Old Ways” Optimus/Ironhide
44. “Uneasy Lies The Head” Starscream
45. “Replay” Sunstreaker
46. “Rebirth” Galvatron/Cyclonus/Scourge
47. “The Man Of Steel” Spike
48. “Hidden” Bumblebee

V. Three Years Later (Note: #50-#58, #68-#72 are located in Last Stand Of The Wreckers Hardcover)
49. Spotlight- Prowl (Ongoing Vol. 6)
50. Autobot File: Rotorstorm p. 130
51. Autobot File: Pyro p. 131
52. Autobot File: Guzzle p. 132
53. Autobot File: Ironfist p. 133
54. Autobot File: Impactor p. 134
55. Decepticon File: Snare p. 135
56. Decepticon File: Overlord p. 136
57. Squadron X p. 161
58. BULLETS/OUT OF BULLETS: Deleted Scenes p. 116 - 128 except ‘Nine Months Later’
59. Last Stand Of The Wreckers #1
60. Ongoing Vol. 1 For All Mankind #1
61. Last Stand Of The Wreckers 2-3
62. Ongoing Vol. 1 #2
63. Last Stand Of The Wreckers 4
64. Ongoing Vol. 1 #3-4
65. Bumblebee paperback
66. Ongoing Vol. 1 #5-6
67. Last Stand Of The Wreckers 5
68. ESCAPE p. 162
69. ZERO POINT p. 170
70. IN WORD AND DEED p. 175
71. BULLETS: Nine Months Later p. 125
72. Wreckers Mosaic Dead Man’s Boots p. 129
73. Ironhide paperback
74. Drift paperback
75. Ongoing Vol. 2 International Incident (#7-#8)
76. Ongoing Vol. 4 Heart Of Darkness.“The Road To CHAOS”. Infestation occurs towards end of #4. End of #4 lines up with end of Ongoing #20 in Ongoing Vol. 5: Chaos Theory.
77. Infestation Transformers 1-2
80. Ongoing Vol. 2 #9 to #12
81. Ongoing Vol. 3 Revenge of the Decepticons #13
82. Spotlight - Megatron
83. Ongoing Vol. 3 remainder of Revenge Of The Decepticons
84. Ongoing Vol. 5 Chaos Theory through end of Police Action: Prolog
85. Spotlight - Bumblebee
86. Ongoing Vol. 6 Police Action
87. Ongoing Vol. 5 remainder of Chaos Theory
88. Ongoing Vol. 7 CHAOS
89. Death Of Optimus Prime (More Than Meets The Eye Vol. 1)

VI. The Autobots Divide
90. More Than Meets The Eye Ongoing #1 with Rodimus (Vol. 1)
91. Robots In Disguise Ongoing #1 with Bumblebee (Vol. 1)
92. MTMTE #2-3 (Vol. 1)
93. RID #2-3 (Vol. 1)
94. MTMTE #4-5 (Vol. 2)
95. RID #4-5 (Vol. 1)
96. Spotlight – Trailcutter(Trailbreaker renamed)
97. Spotlight – Hoist
98. More Than Meets the Eye #6 (Vol. 2)
99. More Than Meets the Eye Annual 2012 (Vol. 3)
100. More Than Meets the Eye #7-8 (Vol. 2)
101. Robots in Disguise #6-10 (Vol. 2, 3)
102. More Than Meets the Eye #9-13 (Vol. 3, 4) and text story “A Signal To Noise” (Vol. 4)
103. Robots in Disguise Annual 2012 (Vol. 3)
104. Robots in Disguise #11-16 (Vol. 3, 4)
105. More Than Meets the Eye #14-15 (Vol. 4)
106. Robots in Disguise #17-20 (Vol.5)
107. More Than Meets the Eye #16-21 (Vol. 4, 5) and text story “The Sound Of Breaking Glass” (Vol. 5)
108. Robots in Disguise #21-22 (Vol. 5)
109. More Than Meets the Eye #22 (Vol. 5)

VII. Dark Cybertron
110. Dark Cybertron (Voll. 1-2)

VIII. Dawn of the Autobots
111. Robots in Disguise #28
112. More Than Meets the Eye #28
113. Windblade #1

Though you may want to look into holding out for collections like the Phase One and Two stuff coming soon.

Edit:
Beaten to the punch by Va'al, mostly because the original version of this was filled with even more hate towards AHM and Ongoing.

But to be perfectly honest, you don't really have to, just start with Death of Optimus Prime (included in MTMTE vol1)and read MTMTE and RID from there on. All you really need to know from what came before is brought up in the current series, and expanded upon. That way you also avoid scratching your head at the sh*tty continuity and nature of AHM, and the Ongoing. Plus the very early stuff, the "-tion" stuff, is very different from the current output. It's more like Classic Star Trek, just with Transformers. Sure it's fantastic, but it feels a whole lot different and will disappoint you because idw gave a toss about all that, got rid of Furman and released AHM which didn't really care about what was going on before and needed a lot of extra material to fix it so that it kinda worked. Hell, MTMTE is still patching up the mess that left.

And, oh god, it did all start in 2005, damn I feel sooo old now

Oh, yes, Ongoing can be ignored almost entirely (Chaos Theory is good, and sets up some stuff for Dark Cybertron too). In fact, RID pre-issue 12 resets the story to the same status quo at the end of All Hail Megatron, minus a Constructicon and now on Cybertron rather than Earth.

I'd suggest reading through Megatron: Origin, which also feeds into Chaos Theory and MTMTE's Shadowplay, and Dark Cybertron.

With the new RID setting, though, I wonder whether Police Action, the -ations and Maximum Dinobots may be relevant once more..

So the Phase collections will feature most of what I need to read?

I've been contemplating this myself, so this thread is very helpful.

I have Maximum Dinobots, and I'm not impressed, but thought I might have enjoyed it more if I read what came before.

Yea, you might enjoy it more, since that was a story that was being built to from the beginning and was the payoff of many different plot threads. In order to have it make more sense and really feel good, you need to read the -tion series and the early Spotlights.
But if you do, I warn you, Furman was running multiple plot threads at the same time back then and had to end them prematurely. So he had to compress about two years worth of stories into Maximum Dinobots and Revelations. A lot was cut out and left unresolved due to that. So only about 70% of the stuff that shows up during those comics actually lead to a satisfying ending.

Dead Metal wrote: So only about 70% of the stuff that shows up during those comics actually lead to a satisfying ending.

Still probably a better average than Marvel or DC have managed lately.

I like how IDW prints the Transformers stories in proper reading order in hardcovers. Especially for people like me who are trying to play catch up. Here is the first one.....

http://www.instocktrades.com/TP/IDW/TRA ... /MAR100992

Phase I had some really good stories and art. There were some slow/fast stories and some crappy art, but there was enough good stuff that made me buy the volumes.

I think you can be fairly safe with just starting with RiD and MtMtE # 1. But if you have the money and time go for it all.