The Energon Pub

Ain't It Cool News caught up with IDW Senior Editor John Barber to discuss their upcoming Transformers Prime: Rage of the Dinobots mini-series, which is scheduled to release in November. Click here to see how the Dinobots factor into the Prime universe and the Aligned continuity.

Tying in with the video game TRANSFORMERS PRIME: FALL OF CYBERTRON, comes the IDW comic book TRANSFORMERS PRIME: RAGE OF THE DINOBOTS. Hitting shelves in November and taking place in the 'Prime' Universe, Transformers readers can get to meet everyone's favourite robotic T-Rex, Grimlock for the first time, in this incarnation of the Transformers. In RAGE OF THE DINOBOTS, the Grimlock and co are forced to battle Shockwave with the very fate of Cybertron hanging in the balance. Written by Mike Johnson (Star Trek) and Mairghread Scott, the writer of the TRANSFORMERS: PRIME animated series. Artist Agustin Padilla (Dungeons & Dragons) provides pencils while Ken Christiansen provides covers. I spoke to IDW Senior Editor John Barber about the book and the Transformers legacy on the screen and in comics.

JOHN BARBER (JB): Well, the Prime Universe is the timeline where theTransformers: Prime TV series from Hasbro Studiostakes place, along with the FALL OF CYBERTRON video games from Activision and the novels that Random House publishes, like Exiles and Exodus by Alex Irvine. So if you’re familiar with any of those, you’re already familiar with the characters. The team at Hasbro takes special care to ensure there is continuity between a wide variety of storytelling platforms for the brand.

I am very excited for this miniseries. I was very impressed with the Dinobots' story in FOC and I can't wait to see how they tie this into Prime. Hopefully this lead into season 3 pretty much guarantees at least some kind of Dinobots appearance in TFP. Also, I'm happy to see that John Barber and other writers for TFP and IDW were pushing for the Dinobots to return to the TF universe as well! Matt Tieger at HMS really got a good thing started up again!

Can't wait. Hope it comes to TPB form.

...so, do you think people are STILL gonna say "Prime" and the video games aren't in the same continuity?

Pft. Nevermind. I keep forgetting what fandom I'm talking about...

Me Grimlock demand face time in prime NOW, give me dinobots, give me NOW! I loved the story in fall of cybertron and although prime is entertaining grimlock would definitely be an improvement.

When is this suppose to be released? I really want to see how this ties into Prime.

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but its the best I could find by searching.

I've been reading through old Transformers comics that I missed lately and I've been reading through the Aligned comics. I just read War for Cybertron, Fall of Cybertron, and Rage of the Dinobots (Still have to read Beast Hunters).

My thoughts on each:

I read Rage of the Dinobots first and I didn't really care for it. It's cool to see the Dinobots in something that ties in to Prime, but the story and character writing were nothing special in my opinion.

After that, I went back and read War for Cybertron. Of course, it was a condensed summary of parts of Transformers: Exodus, but it was pretty solid and a nice refresher.

Finally, I read the Fall of Cybetron miniseries. This one did everything that Rage of the Dinobots did but better, I much preferred this comic run. My only real complaint is that the Dinobots look like dinosaurs before becoming dinosaurs, that's always a big complaint of mine.

Plan to read Beast Hunters in the near future.

#1 Signal Lancer fan wrote:Plan to read Beast Hunters in the near future.

I just read Beast Hunters, this one was definitely my favorite of the aligned comics. Unlike Rage of the Dinobots, this one felt like it has a story to tell that really added to the story. It was really interesting to see what was happening on Cybertron during the events of Prime. The early issues were interesting, but the last four were especially cool to see.

I also really liked the character design for Blackout.

I remember reading Beast Hunters, and not being too impressed. It wasn't bad, but not what I expected. I did like Exodus, so I'm glad we got more of that story. I have the series packed away in a comic box, I'll have to dig it out and read it again to see if I feel differently. It's been over a decade since I read the story.