Full Preview of IDW First Strike #0 (Spoilers), Plus New Visionaries Series Possibly Confirmed

"So that's what happened to Blitzwing"

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't "toss out Revolution's main inciting conflict, drone on about Onyx's MacGuffin, and get set for the fourth doom-crisis to hit Cybertron in the past year."

The unexpected nature of the apparent crux of First Strike's high level plot would be good, if only said plot actually was. This looks bad and I can't imagine anyone reading this preview and going "wow, better go put in my subs!"

leokearon wrote:Still waiting for Zoids to come back

Maybe they'll make a return with Grimlock and MP3. And Brandon.

ScottyP wrote:I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't "toss out Revolution's main inciting conflict, drone on about Onyx's MacGuffin, and get set for the fourth doom-crisis to hit Cybertron in the past year."

The unexpected nature of the apparent crux of First Strike's high level plot would be good, if only said plot actually was. This looks bad and I can't imagine anyone reading this preview and going "wow, better go put in my subs!"

leokearon wrote:Still waiting for Zoids to come back

Maybe they'll make a return with Grimlock and MP3. And Brandon.

What was Revolution's inciting conflict and how are they throwing it out? Not criticizing, I never bothered to read revolution.

ricemazter wrote:

ScottyP wrote:I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't "toss out Revolution's main inciting conflict, drone on about Onyx's MacGuffin, and get set for the fourth doom-crisis to hit Cybertron in the past year."

The unexpected nature of the apparent crux of First Strike's high level plot would be good, if only said plot actually was. This looks bad and I can't imagine anyone reading this preview and going "wow, better go put in my subs!"

leokearon wrote:Still waiting for Zoids to come back

Maybe they'll make a return with Grimlock and MP3. And Brandon.

What was Revolution's inciting conflict and how are they throwing it out? Not critzicizing, I never bothered to read revolution.

Rom killed Joe Colton. Snowball started down the hill from there.

Slightly longer version with important context: Rom killed a Dire Wraith that had taken over the body of Joe Colton, meaning he was dead already.

This throws out that idea which cheapens it for me, and also makes me less interested in the Joe side of things. This is because the way Rev presented the Joes, which then progressed through the new book, was as a smaller group of characters without too much continuity baggage to go dig into.

None of my local comic shops got this!

Blitzwing, you deserved so much more than to only show up in awful crossover events getting tortured

Daniel Adkins wrote:Gotta love everyone saying something is awful before its even come out.

Revolution was bad, basically everything involved with the transformers since the hasbro universe kicked off has been crap. It's annoying and the universe should really have not been done, or at least given another full year or 2 before they even attempted it.

Personally speaking I thought Revolution was the worst story IDW's main Transformers continuity has ever put out. Yes, even above All Hail Megatron. Yes, possibly even above Transformers/Avengers. It's thankfully not as bad a comic as, say, Dreamwave; but it's still pretty dire.

Despite that, I kind of love the expanded universe - they've handled it and the crossing over material pretty well so far with only a few outstanding annoyances like Skywarp in GI Joe. The only title affected by it in any way is OP, which so far is only affected by it in extremely minor ways beyond the loss of Skywarp and Kup (who weren't big players to begin with and I much prefer Kup in Revolutionaries anyway), and along with TAAO that ongoing has managed to beat all expectations this year. Lost Light, I'll give you, this hasn't been a particularly good arc (in fact unless we count Dark Cybertron, it might just be the worst in MTMTE/LL's run), but that's nothing to do with the expanded universe.

That said, I'm not looking forward to First Strike as it's looking to be how to do a crossover in the worst possible way. I'm not really able to sum up my thoughts on why this is at the moment aside from the fact that they really shouldn't be following in Marvel's footsteps and doing another huge event comic this quickly no matter how good it is (especially with, apparently, a THIRD huge event crossover planned for 2018). I just wanted to say that as someone who actually enjoys the Hasbroverse for what it is, how it's proven itself in Revolutionaries, how it's shown to not be intrusive in the slightest with OP and the potential it has and as someone who has enjoyed all three Transformers comics this year to varying degrees (four if we count Revolutionaries), I'm not looking forward to First Strike, nor did I enjoy Revolution in the slightest nor do I support the constant yearly event crossovers no matter how much I ardently defend the Hasbroverse. It's getting to a point of frustration and being hard to follow. And I really, really, REALLY do not like that Transformers readers are being forced to care about 5 entirely different franchises which have barely had a chance to live yet. It would be one thing if they'd been around for 3 or 4 years before another crossover happened and we'd gotten a chance to get used to them and the universe; but these are just coming at us so hard and fast it's difficult to accept this as anything but a forced sales push.

And I'm not just saying this as someone who loves Transformers and wants the other franchises to just go away and not interfere in my sacred temple of alien robots. This isn't good for any of the comics involved. Since most only just started in late 2015, they're barely getting any time to develop as their own thing before getting pushed into crossover hell and huge, all-encompassing important events. Even if the comics are good - and a fair majority are better than a lot of people give them credit for - whatever unique identities they have are quickly washed away into a tide of big, important all-encompassing You Must Read This It Is Huge events rather than being allowed to evolve and grow as their own thing. This isn't good for anyone whether they're a Transformers fan, a ROM fan, or someone from outside who just wants to read a decent fucking comic. Optimus Prime, Action Man and Micronauts are all comics I really want to recommend to my friends who don't know their Shockwaves from their Bumblebees, but exactly how enticing is it going to be when the reading order I give them involves so many crossovers that they have to read to know what the bleedin' hell is going on? It's not exciting to get into a new comic and only four issues in having to get involved in a huge crossover involving 5 other comics which you might not have even heard of. And it's not fun having to do the same thing twelve issues later either!

I have to honest, most of my problems here stem from the fact that it's happening so soon. If this crossover was happening in 2021 instead of now, I'd be far, FAR more excited for it! You know why? Because by that point, all these comics would have had time to breathe. I would have had time to read and appreciate ROM, GI Joe etc. on their own as their own individual stories without crossovers interrupting every few issues. I would have grown to love them and the unique identities they had developed. And I would be really friggin' excited to see all those unique identities collaborate together on something truly special that doesn't come around often.



I remember watching a review not so long ago of the Superman vs. Spiderman comic. One of the things specifically brought up in that review due to the comic apparently being a very good example of it was how to do a fight scene. A bad fight scene has just punch after punch after punch with no breaks; where everything is huge and exaggerated and it just gets boring quickly. With Superman vs. Spiderman, you see the wind-up and THEN the punch. You're allowed to see what gives these hits weight, and because they're spaced out much more they hence have the impact they're supposed to have and feel much more important than if they were just one after another.
And I feel the same should be applied to how you treat crossovers. We have to let the comics develop on their own to know WHY them having an event together is important; why it's so significant that this ROM character is fighting this GI Joe character or why we should care about this MASK character working with Optimus Prime. The wind-up, and then the punch. But right now that does not seem to be the Hasbroverse's policy. Its policy is punch, punch, punch, punch, punch.

Daniel Adkins wrote:Excellent points, Kurona. I can definitely understand the fear of event fatigue. But I have faith in IDW, especially since they've said that they planned this out in advanced.

Btw, we now have advanced solicits for the October issues. https://www.newsarama.com/34891-transfo ... trike.html I love seeing Ayana/Mayday and Arcee teaming up!

Yupyup; don't take this as me giving up on IDW - they've gained my trust immensely with three excellent Transformers ongoings (and a fair few Hasbroverse ongoings!), so even if this is a terrible schedule and gives us no time to breathe; I'm still gonna be following. Still love these stories, just these constant events gets on my nerve

Niiiice, I like Ayana

Some thoughts i had on First Strike what could be a head....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt3hq82LWPI