Full 7 Page Preview of IDW Transformers #27

I got away from this book after issue 12 or so. Has it gotten any better? Are the TPBs worth getting? I do like the art.

Transformers #30 was released one week ago Wednesday digitally and the week before that, it was available in its printed monthly floppy form in local comic shops. As part of our review catch up here at Seibertron, we'll get into looking at whether or not it's any good.

I've got to start with a disclaimer that may save some readers time on this review, by freely and openly admitting that this series has lost me, with my last care evaporating about four issues ago. It's going to be a monumental task for it to overcome my ennui at this point, so keep that starting state in mind during this review. Of course, if you've been enjoying the series thus far, then you're safe to ignore this review - issue #30 is more of the same.


One of the major problems in the series is a lack of maintained focus on, well, anything. In Transformers #29, Optimus Prime tells Perceptor they're not done talking about how Perceptor aided and abetted previous Primes' decisions about how to handle Titansparks. Instead of following up on that particular point, made memorable by its placement at the end of that issue, Perceptor does not appear. Instead it's time for yet another narrative thread among the already dozen of them in the series, this time with the Torchbearers.


Yes, the already over-booked cast gets even busier, with Pyra Magna joining the fray properly along with her "companions" as they're called at one point. This initially ends up being an invitation to lay down a few of Transformers (2019)'s greatest hits: Optimus Prime and Megatron arguing about an entirely pointless conflict, Optimus Prime and Megatron sucking the life out of everything on the page, and Optimus Prime and Megatron using a great deal of words to say nearly nothing at all. At this point, charisma parasites would be welcome over these two charisma vacuums.


Not everything is terrible, as the action scene in the middle of the issue (roughly speaking) is very well done and saved this from being a complete waste of time. Sunstreaker gets to look cool but gets upstaged by Windcharger being amazing. Sure, they ultimately just lay the smackdown on a couple of red-shirt seekers, but it was fun to witness them do so and it provided a timeless quip where Sunstreaker reminds everyone that Nacelle just plain doesn't matter. Whatever mojo was flowing for this part? More of that, please.


I can't fault Anna Malkova's art as some of my least favorite panels have everything to do with my dislike of the characters (or specific version of, in the above case) within and nothing to do with the actual quality or appropriateness. If I had to make one quibble, it'd be to stop drawing so many scenes on stairs. Add a roadway, flip them to alt mode, have them talk as cars - something like that. David Garcia Cruz handles the colors on this one and everything works pretty well, though Megatron would probably go for a more purple hologram than the pink present here. Jake M. Wood, our now-usual letterer, is back again and while mostly just fine, there's a page with a flashback to a space battle where the second through sixth bubbles feel like they belong on the left side of the page based on art and flow of the dialogue thereafter, but they're on the right. Based on their indentation, this could have been an actual mistake in production, but it's hard to tell.

Stefano Simeone provides the "A" cover which looks like it belongs to issue 29 based on its content, so this review's news story thumbnail image features Priscilla Tramontano's "B" cover since it depicts characters from the issue in a manner somewhat related to how they appear. A ten-copy retailer incentive cover by Blacky Shepherd and Sid Van Blu is also available on a limited basis from your local shop. As always, you can find all the cover images and full credits for the issue through our Vector Sigma Database page for Transformers #30.


Transformers #30 is another poor issue of what's become a stale comic series, which is saved from being a total disaster by one scene. In many ways it epitomizes the series itself, jumping from plot to plot, catching up with previously introduced characters before immediately introducing anywhere from 2-8 more of them all while putting you to sleep with pretentious dialogue. There's a small, anti-climactic payoff to some of Cyclonus' story in this issue which leaves him saying "What do I do now?" That short phrase and all its hopelessness is an appropriate symbol of how I felt after reading another issue of this slog of a series. I hope you enjoy it more than I did.



This issue is out now, and you can pick it up at the Seibertron.com eBay store or at your local shop, check here to find the closest shop to you.

I must be the minority that is actually enjoying the build up of this universe. Sure it has been a little slow on some pages but its been amazing watching this universe building story take place. For me this is how it should have always been. When IDW first started transformers with the -ition series, that was great too. The war wasn't huge yet and we got some cool little moments while in space somewhere, something big was happening or at best, there was a lull in the conflict.

Here we have the political, the religious, the science, and social aspects of a society that was always either touched upon in flash backs in previous incarnations and it always seemed so all over the place fitting to what was currently going on in the story. This we are getting most of it right now and again building towards the great war we have all come and love in our transformers lure.

For me I feel the art has gotten better and since issue 25, it has really taken off for me. My only complaint thus far would be we still didn't see the true relationship between Orion and Megatron even though they gave us a nice little bit. This is a story that can go on for years just before they board the ark and crash on Earth. I'm enjoying this! It's amazing and issue 30 was pretty solid to me. The mass exodus of the autobots out of Iacon...I mean whoa. Seems very reminiscent of Moses leading the Hebrews into the wilderness.

Is it perfect, absolutely not, but for me, it's pretty darn good. Then the little side stories to show the more personal aspect of who and where are being felt by this genesis of the great war.

Randomhero wrote:

Toizarus wrote:Hey Siebertron? Can we get someone who actually gives a crap about this comic to review it, please? Or at least try and present a counterpoint? For one of the two biggest news sites to be peddling this bored snark, featuring the same lame old cliches about "Stairs and talking ZZZZZZZZZZZZ" is just not doing the work of these two excellent creators justice. I mean, being told "if you enjoy this series stop reading" is no excuse for what's become a regular dose of sour invective. I enjoy a witty takedown of something horrible as much as the next 'Bot but there's none of that energy here, just words floating aloft on bored sighs.

I ask you, seriously: what is anyone's reason to keep reading these? If the reviewer admits they can't give a ****, what's the point of them putting any further words down or us continuing to read them? Let them go do something they enjoy, stop torturing your readers, and stop disrespectng the very hard work these creators are putting into this excellent (imo) book.

100% agreed. The reviews are joke

then one of you volunteer, by all means. As of 7 months ago (?) everyone single staff member had grown bored with the ongoing, and at that point there were only 3 people still reading it on staff anyway, and it was to keep up, not out of any enjoyment.

so no one on staff likes it. Volunteer and be that voice, talk about why you love it. Because the 2 of you seem to be the only voices of that kind here

ScottyP wrote:

Yep, it's IDW's Transformers 2.0. I can tell by the stairs and the talking.

lol, they just won't quit it

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Randomhero wrote:

Toizarus wrote:Hey Siebertron? Can we get someone who actually gives a crap about this comic to review it, please? Or at least try and present a counterpoint? For one of the two biggest news sites to be peddling this bored snark, featuring the same lame old cliches about "Stairs and talking ZZZZZZZZZZZZ" is just not doing the work of these two excellent creators justice. I mean, being told "if you enjoy this series stop reading" is no excuse for what's become a regular dose of sour invective. I enjoy a witty takedown of something horrible as much as the next 'Bot but there's none of that energy here, just words floating aloft on bored sighs.

I ask you, seriously: what is anyone's reason to keep reading these? If the reviewer admits they can't give a ****, what's the point of them putting any further words down or us continuing to read them? Let them go do something they enjoy, stop torturing your readers, and stop disrespectng the very hard work these creators are putting into this excellent (imo) book.

100% agreed. The reviews are joke

then one of you volunteer, by all means. As of 7 months ago (?) everyone single staff member had grown bored with the ongoing, and at that point there were only 3 people still reading it on staff anyway, and it was to keep up, not out of any enjoyment.

so no one on staff likes it. Volunteer and be that voice, talk about why you love it. Because the 2 of you seem to be the only voices of that kind here

Then just stop doing reviews. If all you guys are doing if making it for views and feel like it’s a chore then what’s the point? Predictions for the next 6 months: didn’t like it. Well…then again Milne is doing the annual so I imagine that review will be “the arts great and reminds me of when I used to review MTMTE blindly and only gave that a positive review because it had jame Roberts name on it and I was inclined to give it a positive review because I refuse to believe James Robert can’t write a good comic so this reminded me of that so 2 out of 4” . It’s not like you guys are on the ball with them. The comic came out over a week ago but it’s nothing new for seibertron.com to be a week behind on anything anymore.

All I ask of reviews is that they are the honest opinion of the reviewer. These seem pretty honest to me. I also don't understand why you'd want someone who's enjoying them to review it, as that's replacing one bias with another. Have some one who's familiar with the source material review by all means but wanting someone to review it, who you'll know will like, just because you like it, feels very artifical to me.

Also complaining about us reviewing a comic we liked positively, just because we’re reviewing a comic you like negatively is hypocritical

Bleak5170 wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:All I ask of reviews is that they are the honest opinion of the reviewer. These seem pretty honest to me. I also don't understand why you'd want someone who's enjoying them to review it, as that's replacing one bias with another. Have some one who's familiar with the source material review by all means but wanting someone to review it, who you'll know will like, just because you like it, feels very artifical to me.

Also complaining about us reviewing a comic we liked positively, just because we’re reviewing a comic you like negatively is hypocritical

So much this. Reminds me of video game reviews where people on reddit immediately dismiss any review which doesn't agree with their own opinion. Like the classic "You can't spell ignorant without IGN." But then a month later when that same IGN positively reviews a game that person likes, they are a trusted and great reviewer!

If people are enjoying this book then more power to them. We all like different things. But for me personally it's one of the worst TF comics I have ever read in my life. I still buy the issues but I stopped reading a few months ago. That almost never happens with me and comics.

I'll be honest here since I was in the review - the folks trashing my review of TF 30 have a good point. It's really tough to be objective about a book when my starting point is "oh jeez, this again."

But it was nice to wake up to a bit of defense, so thanks for that

There's good and bad about the series for me. First, my take on the bad:

I liked the direction of IDW v1 because it went to new places. The war finally ended. The same war we've been rehashing in one way or another since 1984. There was a new dynamic. New combinations, variations, and permutations on character interactions. And then v2 switched from something so new and forward-looking back to "Day One: Megatron Was Grumpy". And then killing off a fan-favorite from the prior series to make what seemed like a mean-spirited point was... well, it was certainly a start.

And then there's the fact that we know what's going to happen: the big picture is old. When it goes to the two leaders talking, we mostly know what they're going to say. Or at least the gist of it. It's foregone conclusion. This was not done any favors by the criticism of the Siege cartoon, which was again, a storm of cliche. Just one wrapped in portentious declarations and more pauses than a Pinter play.

That said... Inside the larger framework, there are some interesting ideas. I just wish we'd see more of it! This War of the Threefold Spark. Exarchon. The big players there. That The Companions elicit that kind of reaction from battle-hardened 'cons? There's a story there. The side stories with Hound and company trying to evacuate the planet's organic refugee population. Cyclonus and the demons in his mind. Offworld diplomacy and how Cybertronians interacted with the larger galactic community. Give us more of those, please. The list goes on, but Megatron and Prime dull it by comparison because we already know what's going to happen. Because we've seen them do it before. It's simply going through the motions, and it pulls out a lot of energy from what had been building up.

I don't think the talking is the problem. I liked Ironhide going over things with the security team, and spending time one-on-one with people like Javelin. I liked Wheeljack and crew trying to problem solve the moon. Geomotus geeking out about seismic disturbances in the Rust Sea. Glyph and Tap-Out on their mission. Nautica being excited and Road Rage being security.

To me the biggest problem is that the focus shouldn't be on Megatron and Prime. We know that story.

Love me some Technobots. From what I've heard, this was actually a pretty enjoyable story, I'll have to give this one a go