Variant Cover for IDW Transformers: Salvation One-Shot by Jeffrey Veregge

Courtesy of iTunes as usual, we have a three page preview of the upcoming one-shot from IDW Publishing in the trilogy of works by John Barber and Livio Ramondelli - Transformers: Salvation. Expect the book to be released in a couple of weeks, and in the meantime, check out the preview below!

Exiled from civilization, the Dinobots are the last line of defense against the ultimate Cybertronian dinosaur—Trypticon! But how much are the Dinobots willing to sacrifice for a world that hates them?

I guess Trypticon thawed out....

This looks like fun.

It will be good to see the Dinobots again, as well as more of Bludgeon's long term plans (I assume he's behind Trypticon's resurrection). Livio's art works well for something like this.

sooooo books with amazing writing and coherent art like Till All are One get cancelled, but Ramondelli is still allowed to wipe his a%* with comic pages and call it "art"?

SG Roadbuster wrote:sooooo books with amazing writing and coherent art like Till All are One get cancelled, but Ramondelli is still allowed to wipe his a%* with comic pages and call it "art"?

This is entirely unnecessary.

From this I feel Ramondelli's improved, actually. One of my bigger problems with his art - at least for a Transformers comic - is that everything felt rather flat. Characters and objects melded into the backgrounds and weren't distinguishable from each other; nothing popped or jumped out at you or made an effort to feel three-dimensional.
But not so much here. I've ran out of descriptive words so I'll repeat myself by saying it feels three-dimensional in comparison to his previous works and it doesn't get in the way of my reading it. He's not my favourite artist but he's come a very long way since Chaos.

Kurona wrote:From this I feel Ramondelli's improved, actually. One of my bigger problems with his art - at least for a Transformers comic - is that everything felt rather flat. Characters and objects melded into the backgrounds and weren't distinguishable from each other; nothing popped or jumped out at you or made an effort to feel three-dimensional.
But not so much here. I've ran out of descriptive words so I'll repeat myself by saying it feels three-dimensional in comparison to his previous works and it doesn't get in the way of my reading it. He's not my favourite artist but he's come a very long way since Chaos.

It's EXTREMELY flat. There's never much depth Livio's art and thank god he's actually playing with sunlight in the past year because for years it was just characters in darkness giving dull expressions. It's an excuse to not work with backgrounds. I imagine it's gotta do with him being a member of the fandom and for the past 6 years he's seen the harsh criticism and he worked on it. I'll say this, he is consistent and he does get better but the flaws are there. There not much depth and he has trouble with angles and story telling.

He needs to work on his light sources too. Literally in the bottom panel of page one sunlight is coming from above everyone while apparently coming from the bottom of strafe.

Va'al wrote:

SG Roadbuster wrote:sooooo books with amazing writing and coherent art like Till All are One get cancelled, but Ramondelli is still allowed to wipe his a%* with comic pages and call it "art"?

This is entirely unnecessary.

Incredibly unnecessary. For the life of me I can't understand the Livio Ramondelli hate that constantly seeps out of this site. He's a talented artist that has room for improvement, sure, but there are many, many worse artists out there. "Cough" Pat Lee "Cough"

Furthermore, despite the flaws, he pulls double duty compared to a lot of other artists who work in teams, doing both the line art and colors. Plus he's improving. Between this and redemption, his line work is much more prominent. Combined more straight primary colors, everything is popping out much more, which is a definite step in the right direction.

Also, it's not as if this is supplanting any other book. This is a one shot. From my memory, all of his books so far have been one shots. Meanwhile, ongoing series have to consistently make their sales figures or they fold. So comparing anything Livio has done to the very unfortunate situation with TAAO is silly.

ricemazter wrote:

Va'al wrote:

SG Roadbuster wrote:sooooo books with amazing writing and coherent art like Till All are One get cancelled, but Ramondelli is still allowed to wipe his a%* with comic pages and call it "art"?

This is entirely unnecessary.

Incredibly unnecessary. For the life of me I can't understand the Livio Ramondelli hate that constantly seeps out of this site. He's a talented artist that has room for improvement, sure, but there are many, many worse artists out there. "Cough" Pat Lee "Cough"

I totally agree that it is very unnecessary, and I do feel the hatred for Ramondelli goes a little too far - yeah his art's not great, but he is a human being that as far as I know has done nothing wrong - but as much as I love any bashing of Pat Lee, I'm not really fond of justifying something by saying "well there are worse things". If art is bad and/or unfitting, it's bad and/or unfitting. Comics are a visual medium so it can't be stated enough how important it is for the art to be good.

I commend him for continuing to draw. I'm not not a fan of livio but I do respect his resolve and him trying to improve. Artillio Rojo was shat on so bad not because his art was awful but because he wasn't Alex Milne. I know some people were not fans and didn't think his art was good but his story telling was solid and it was just his style but plenty of people were just mad he was on mtmte. Plenty of people complained and said "why can't they put him on Robots in disguise and stay off more than meet the eye?" Just like what is going on with jack Lawrence on lost light. The dude has excellent story telling abilities, his page layouts are great and facial expressions are solid but people are just tearing him apart because he is not Alex

That Trypticon page is glorious. I've always found these Dinobot stories to be a perfect match for Ramondelli's style. These and Syndromica are places where, to me, his work just shines.

I can't comment much as I prefer LL's artwork, but the shot of Trypticon breeding fire (ice?) into the sky is pretty.

I just came here to post in defense/praise of Ramondelli. It's taken me a long time to warm up to his art but this preview really shows how far he's come. I'm impressed! This will be a fun book, I hope it'll be part of a trade even if it's a one-shot.

So... here's an interesting little thing.

A lot of early ex-RiD had focus on Devastator. Trypticon has been foreshadowed in not just the Dinobot comics but also Primacy and Monstrosity. One could argue the Titan Graveyard in early MTMTE provided was a set-up opportunity for Fort Max to go full titan, especially since he decided to stay there.

We can obviously assume IDW was told about the plans for Metroplex - and stuff relating to the Titans only really started showing up just prior to Dark Cybertron - but it is it very possible that beyond that IDW is much more privy to Hasbro's plans for Titan-class figures than they let on? Because there seems to be a lot of long-term planning going on here and IDW have mentioned in reference to Sentinel Prime in Titans Return working ahead with Hasbro to some degree to make things work. But the extent to which this long-term planning goes seems to be larger than I previously thought with all these Titan-class figures that need advertising all coincidentally having convenient opportunities set up for them and it's really starting to make me wonder if I should look a little bit more into Scorponok's appearance in Monstrosity and Omega Supreme still being repaired (which by the way, come on, seriously? He's been there for ages, how long can he stay on life support?)

The second of three expected previews for Transformers comics from IDW Publishing for next week sees the third instalment of the Dinobots' stories told by John Barber and Livio Ramondelli: Salvation. Featuring new Dinobot Strafe, the regular team, Trypticon, and a Bludgeon cover tease... check it out below, courtesy of Newsarama!

Transformers: Salvation
John Barber (w) • Livio Ramondelli (a & c)
Exiled from civilization, the Dinobots are the last line of defense against the ultimate Cybertronian dinosaur—Trypticon! But how much are the Dinobots willing to sacrifice for a world that hates them?
FC • 48 pages • $7.99
Bullet points:
- Dinobots versus the biggest dino of them all—Trypticon!

There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

Carnivius_Prime wrote:There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

It all happened in Redemption! Strafe starts out as a Camien with jet mode, then... things happen. Now she's a two-headed dragonsaur creature.

Technobot Strafe is somewhere in Lost Light background character Limbo right now.

Carnivius_Prime wrote:There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

Yep. Dinobot Strafe is from Caminus. She was in the previous book in this "series" and joined the Dinobots when Bludgeon mutated her into her beast form.

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Strafe_(IDW)

Va'al wrote:

Carnivius_Prime wrote:There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

It all happened in Redemption! Strafe starts out as a Camien with jet mode, then... things happen. Now she's a two-headed dragonsaur creature.

Technobot Strafe is somewhere in Lost Light background character Limbo right now.

Bounti76 wrote:

Carnivius_Prime wrote:There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

Yep. Dinobot Strafe is from Caminus. She was in the previous book in this "series" and joined the Dinobots when Bludgeon mutated her into her beast form.

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Strafe_(IDW)

Dino-Strafe's a she? Ok. You can tell I really don't follow IDW. Tried many times (last attempt was probably Sins of the Wreckers which I felt was kinda lousy and I only jumped on that cos it had Carnivac but turned out I didn't really care for his depiction in that at all anyways)

So what happens if Dino-Strafe and Techno-Strafe meet? Can you have TF's with same name? I remember that classic battle of Swoop (who used to be called Divebomb) Vs Predacon Divebomb in the Marvel UK comics. Good times.

Carnivius_Prime wrote:

Va'al wrote:

Carnivius_Prime wrote:There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

It all happened in Redemption! Strafe starts out as a Camien with jet mode, then... things happen. Now she's a two-headed dragonsaur creature.

Technobot Strafe is somewhere in Lost Light background character Limbo right now.

Bounti76 wrote:

Carnivius_Prime wrote:There's Dinobot Strafe and Swoop in IDW now? Is that Strafe different from Technobot Strafe I thought was already in IDW?

Yep. Dinobot Strafe is from Caminus. She was in the previous book in this "series" and joined the Dinobots when Bludgeon mutated her into her beast form.

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Strafe_(IDW)

Dino-Strafe's a she? Ok. You can tell I really don't follow IDW. Tried many times (last attempt was probably Sins of the Wreckers which I felt was kinda lousy and I only jumped on that cos it had Carnivac but turned out I didn't really care for his depiction in that at all anyways)

So what happens if Dino-Strafe and Techno-Strafe meet? Can you have TF's with same name? I remember that classic battle of Swoop (who used to be called Divebomb) Vs Predacon Divebomb in the Marvel UK comics. Good times.

Probably the same thing as if you met someone who shared your name.

"Hey"

"Sup"

Honestly it's not that big of a thing like how simon firman depicted it over 25 years ago.

There's 2 prowls (G1 prowl and a Prowl that turned into a lion), 2 Rollers Optimus's drone and his friend Roller but one may have been named after the other. 2 strafes, 2 tankors(beast machines and G1 octane). 2 knockouts(Prime and the G2 micromaster). It's just one of those things. People share a name. MTMTE played it as a joke saying all the good names are taken.

Both tankors are actually best friends because they share the same name. Even got tattoos for it.

Randomhero wrote:There's 2 prowls (G1 prowl and a Prowl that turned into a lion), 2 Rollers Optimus's drone and his friend Roller but one may have been named after the other. 2 strafes, 2 tankors(beast machines and G1 octane). 2 knockouts(Prime and the G2 micromaster). It's just one of those things. People share a name. MTMTE played it as a joke saying all the good names are taken.

Both tankors are actually best friends because they share the same name. Even got tattoos for it.

But do they exist in the same continuity and even same time as the other character with their name? Usually things like that are avoided in storytelling just because it leads to confusion. Even soap operas usually only have one character with a particular first name at any on time (the rare cases of having more usually comes down to a returning character). If the comic actually said 'all the good names are taken' as a reason for reusing a name of a still current character then that does seem kinda like laziness trying to pass itself off as clever or witty.

Sorry I didn't mean to start any argument or debate about it. I just often click news items even of TF stuff I know I'm not into cos I'm killing time and I saw 'Dinobot Strafe' mentioned and was curious as obviously that was a movieverse thing and I wondered what it was doing in IDW and wondered who it was. It turns out my first thoughts of it being a new bot identical to movieverse Strafe or the Technobot Strafe ditching the Technobots in favour of Dinobots with a new alt mode were both wrong. I'll leave now the topic now. Sorry.

Carnivius_Prime wrote:

Randomhero wrote:There's 2 prowls (G1 prowl and a Prowl that turned into a lion), 2 Rollers Optimus's drone and his friend Roller but one may have been named after the other. 2 strafes, 2 tankors(beast machines and G1 octane). 2 knockouts(Prime and the G2 micromaster). It's just one of those things. People share a name. MTMTE played it as a joke saying all the good names are taken.

Both tankors are actually best friends because they share the same name. Even got tattoos for it.

But do they exist in the same continuity and even same time as the other character with their name? Usually things like that are avoided in storytelling just because it leads to confusion. Even soap operas usually only have one character with a particular first name at any on time (the rare cases of having more usually comes down to a returning character). If the comic actually said 'all the good names are taken' as a reason for reusing a name of a still current character then that does seem kinda like laziness trying to pass itself off as clever or witty.

Sorry I didn't mean to start any argument or debate about it. I just often click news items even of TF stuff I know I'm not into cos I'm killing time and I saw 'Dinobot Strafe' mentioned and was curious as obviously that was a movieverse thing and I wondered what it was doing in IDW and wondered who it was. It turns out my first thoughts of it being a new bot identical to movieverse Strafe or the Technobot Strafe ditching the Technobots in favour of Dinobots with a new alt mode were both wrong. I'll leave now the topic now. Sorry.

They all exist in the G1 continuity. Prime Knockout is from a colony while the micromastet Knockout was part of a decepticons unit. They've never met. The prowls are both autobot but the lion prowl changed his name because of G1 Prick Prowl plus it doesn't matter, lion Prowl died. . As for tankors, Octane goes by tall Tankor and MN Tankor goes by fat tankor. But not to his face. He heard them say it once but thought they said FAST tankor and took it as a compliment for his speed. I'm not making this shit up.

It's really not confusing. None of them except the Tankors interact with eachother.

I just find it kinda funny. I want the RiD 2001 Grimlock to turn up from a colony; being all friendly and happy but no-one wants to go near him because they think he's the big badass Dinobot


Also, the 'all the good names are taken' thing was played up for jokes. They ran into a minor character named Dent early in the story, Ratchet said he knew the guy when he was called Prowl; turns out Dent changed it to avoid confusion and he changed it to Dent because... well, all the good names are taken. It's just a very minor thing and scene and all in good humour.

Synopsis
Exiled from civilization, the Dinobots are the last line of defense against the ultimate Cybertronian dinosaur—Trypticon! But how much are the Dinobots willing to sacrifice for a world that hates them?



Story

We now return to your yearly schedule update on the Dinobots, minus Grimlock, because we wouldn't want you to forget that the Dinobots are very much still a thing, except when they're not (most of the time), but here - the third part of the Barber/Ramondelli 'we need more Maximum Dinobots' story: after Punishment and Redemption, comes Salvation.



Despite my initial tone there, John Barber is actually able to bring together a lot of previous material into the book, and clear out some air that needed airing, from Trypticon (and even Chaos and Monstrosity) fulfilling the toy quota without a special event, to Bludgeon, Strafe, Swift and the general characterisation of the Dinobots (plus other characters, which I won't go too into here) - and carrying over some Redemption material, at risk of otherwise being ignored.



All the character work, of course, is to be nicely found in Bludgeon too. He follows quite steamrollingly in the footsteps of Jhiaxus and Thunderwing - his predecessors in more ways than one - of being a complete cosmic rustheap. However, the Dinobots are most definitely the stars of the book: character, dialogue, interactions, snide comments and shade are all perfectly in line with their personalities as developed in IDW, but also with callbacks to other TF tropes.

Art

I am aware of the fandom's divided opinion on Livio Ramondelli, but the book - in my opinion - shows an artist working on full throttle, with some very well laid out passages and compositions, some clearly defined sequences, and designs that are both recognisable and well-utilised for the individual characters involved in the book. And splash pages and spreads have always been his forte anyway.



Not to forget, Ramondelli provides his own colours too - which sometimes still leaves me wondering what a different colour artist might do with that lineart - and he captures the various moods of this dark but still somehow hopeful story well, bringing different lights and hues to the scenes that take place. Even on the vaster scale of Cybertron's plains.



Tom B. Long's lettering work - with all the above said, perhaps works best with Ramondelli too, giving a chance to the particular style with words that pair and weave with the fiery scenes, or moody scapes. And the caption positioning, of course, eases the reading beautifully. There are two covers alone for the issue, one by Ramondelli, one by Jeffrey Veregge (thumbnailed), but both spotlight the giant space dinosaur in the room in their own way, and are both really great.

Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

This review was a piece of cooperative work, between staff members with diverging opinions, but one point that we agreed on was this: Salvation does not work with new readers. It relies a real lot on previous stories, previous plot, pre-existing characterisation, and general TF lore that may not be enjoyed fully by newer fans of the comics.



But! But for long-term, heavily invested readers - on the other hand - that same reliance of all of that material (Chaos, Syndromica, Monstrosity, Redemption, even TAAO and RID) means that the one-shot does not fit in its own name, and still delivers an incredible accomplishment for a team of characters that is often overlooked but widely appreciated in the fandom.

I had kind of a hard time following some of this story so I don't know what to think. I'll have to give it another read tonight after work

I'll say what I said in the staff emails: I liked most of the pieces of the story, just not how it was put together. Great bricks, terrible cement. Very good posters, awful blu-tak. My analogies are getting worse and worse so I'll just leave it at Bludgeon looking FRIGGIN' AWESOME

I positively adored this story, this book, this arc (long as it took to happen), and the setup it leaves for future stories. Congratulations new Protoforms, your adopted parents are the dumber of the Dinobots, the new smart lady Dinobot, and Sandstorm.

I enjoyed it. Ramondelli's art suited the story and was actually among the best I've seen from him. His Trypticon is awesome. Excellent stuff with Starscream, too, very in keeping with how Scott has portrayed him in TAAO. Some fun twists and turns.

I'd like John Barber to stop using a million name tags and somebody's inner monologue now, please.

Quick video on Transformers Salvation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpS6xBaD4o