The Energon Pub

News on the comics front was a bit slow due to IDW and other big publishers choosing to postpone their release of new comics during part of the pandemic. Well, we got a lot of news all at once and some of it is pandemic related and quite sad. Quite a bit of the senior staff at IDW who were furloughed initially have now been laid off. This includes Managing Editor Denton Tipton, Associate Publisher David Hedgecock, Senior Graphic Artist Gilberto Lazcano, Senior Graphic Designer Christa Miesner and Brand & Marketing Manager Spencer Reeve.

On the Transformers side of things, we have some new art with Freddie Williams II's retail incentive cover for Transformers vs. The Terminator 4. You can see it below. It will be coming out June 24th. And you can discuss about that series here.



Last but most certainly not least, we have Simon Furman discussing the first 4 pages of the upcoming Transformers '84: Secrets & Lies. This is set before Marvel's first issue of Transformers, and we have a nice shot of Jetfire working alongside his Decepticon brethren. The article comes to us from SYFY. This book is coming out in July and you can discuss that series here

“The attack on Stanix is also referenced by Optimus Prime in Transformers ’84 #0, dovetailing the narratives somewhat. Ratbat made his U.S. comic book debut in TF US #27, which established his role (on Cybertron) as the Decepticons’ fuel auditor, and here he plays a bigger role in the unfolding events. By the way, Shockwave’s solution (on the following pages) provides another key twist to established/formative events in Transformers (Marvel) #1.”

There was a UK issue (“The Gift”), which explores the fact that Jetfire was unique amongst Transformers in that he was born on Earth. As he did with Regeneration One, Furman is once again ignoring / going against his U.K. work, the material that put him on the map in the first place.

As a fan of the U.K. comics, it’s very frustrating.

Yeah, Furman failed to clear the bar with Regeneration he set long ago with his original run, but hopefully Secrets & Lies will be better.

That art, however, is so beautiful. Much better than the other books IMO.

I wasn't particularly impressed when they did the sequel to the 84 series, especially since it didn't feel to me as if it was continuing that story so much as it was tossing in current day elements that didn't exist prior.

Not to mention it didn't look to me like it even continued from where the Marvel series left off, at least no the one released int he states.

I don't see a prequel series being any better.

Looks interesting. Hopefully it will be as good as Transformers #0 was. Growing up with Marvel UK, I'm always happy to see any expansion on that continuity. Regeneration was disappointing but I loved Rodimus Prime in it.

Interesting to see a yellow Constructicon. Be interesting if they're retroactively making the G2 yellow Constructicons separate characters to the G1 versions.

IDW did it in their previous continuity portraying G2 Sideswipe and Actionmaster Thundercracker as separate to the G1 versions and I loved it. Nothing worse than a repaint that's meant to be the same character.

Looking forward to seeing this series. Trying to work out who the Decepticon between Hook and Starscream is. Reminds me of G2 Deluge.

I grew up with Marvel U.K., too.

I remember when Ultra Magnus was introduced in “Target: 2006”, as a naive young rookie who had just been created. Yet in Transformers ‘84 #0, Optimus Prime greets Magnus as an “old friend”, pre-Ark launch.

I remember the events of “Man of Iron”, when an Autobot ship crashed in England. The eponymous Man of Iron would periodically leave the ship in order to search for the Ark. Later, a castle was built on the site of the wreck, and one of those many periodic awakenings coincided with an 11th century Saxon battle. Yet in Transformers ‘84 #0, we see the Man of Iron’s ship crash INTO a pre-existing castle, during Saxon times (rather than many years prior).

And now we have a pre-Earth Jetfire, contradicting the events of “The Gift”.

It’s like, Guido Guidi was so meticulous in getting the look and the design of the comic right. John-Paul Bove got the exact combination of Ben-Day dots right to make Soundwave look his classic comic lavender colour. The artists really went that extra mile to make issue zero look and feel like a vintage Transformers comic. Which kinda puts Furman to shame, considering that he’d written a prequel that directly tied into old issues, and he couldn’t be bothered to do the research and actually read them.

So in issue 0, we find out that the Ark mission wasn’t about saving Cybertron at all, but was in fact a ‘clever’ ruse to take out Megatron And his best troops. Which basically lowered the stakes of the entire basis of the original comic. Prime wasn’t about saving a planet from destruction, sacrificing himself for truly cosmic events. No, it was a mere assassination attempt (and an failed one, at that).

But the more you examine Prime’s assassination plan, the less it makes sense. He is essentially sacrificing the entire Ark crew, in order to ensure that Megatron’s crew gets killed, too. What an awful plan! Tactically it’s fine to sacrifice a bishop to take a queen, but Prime’s plan involves wiping out the best soldiers of both factions - essentially sacrificing a queen to take out a queen. How does that possibly move the needle in the Autobots’ favour? Prime’s bizarre plan is actually a worse idea than the original planet-saving origin that it retconned.

And of course, as we saw, Megatron and most of his crew survived, and Cybertron eventually fell to Decepticon warlords in the absence of the elite Autobots - first Trannis and then Straxus, while the remaining Cybertronian Autobots were reduced to scattered pockets of resistance fighters (as per “The Smelting Pool”). Furman might think he’s cleverly subverting the events of the original comics, when really he’s just riding roughshod over established continuity, replacing it with Prime’s really dumb and ineffectual plan! Why does everyone just go along with this?

Look, I really liked ‘To The Death’, it showed that Furman can still be a great writer when he wants to be, and I’m hoping that these new issues can course-correct away from some of the scripting problems of issue #0.

But the whole idea of a prequel is to give the audience a better understanding of the original material, to expand upon what had gone before, to shine a new light on familiar events and characters. Retconning established lore and replacing it with something that’s arguably worse - while admittedly surprising and unexpected - only serves to retroactively cheapen the events of those original comics, rather than enhance them.