Here's a few ground rules for my list:
- Only comics from the confirmed IDW Hasbroverse will be included, so nothing from the Movie comics, the alternate universe stories or even Clue (since there's no evidence in story for it to be in continuity)
- Only single issues, mini-series or multi-part stories will be included. So I cannot say "All the Wreckers comics" or "the entirety of All Hail Megatron", but I can select an entire Mini-series, or a storyline clearly marked out with parts or chapters.
- I have decided to limit both lists to 10 entries each, so there are many on both lists that could have been included, but this would go on forever otherwise!
- This is my own personal opinion, so if any of these choices offend you or upset you, just remember that these are my choices, and I will try to explain them. If you feel strongly about my opinions, please leave a comment below, or even make your own list!
THE BEST
#10 - Transformers Holiday Special
The Transformers Holiday Special is, as the title may suggest, is a special issue released around Christmas, with stories loosely based around the time. In "Choose Me" Starscream wants to force the population of Cybertron to give him gifts of adoration, but it goes wrong. In "Silent Light" the crew of the Lost Light need to prepare for a journey through a dangerous region of space and antics ensue! Finally in "The Thirteenth Day of Christmas" Thundercracker has written a Christmas story for Marissa and Ayana to enjoy.
Of the three stories, only Silent Light ever gets directly reference again, so it feels a bit like filler in the long run.
#9 - Rom vs Transformers: Shining Armor Mini-series
I love Transformers, and I love the Rom franchise so far. This was a no-brainer to go on the list for me.
Shining Armor is set about 200 years ago and follows a young Cybertronian named Stardrive being found and raised by the Solstar Order, eventually coming across the Cybertronian war and having to decide where her true future lies.
This series features great artwork and further development of the Solstar Order and their role in the universe.
#8 - More Than Meets The Eye: Revolution
MTMTE: Revolution is, as you can guess, the MTMTE issue for the Revolution event. Now since the Lost Light is in deep space, and at this point in time the main characters were stranded on Necroworld, they needed an alternative for their part in the event. Enter this!
The Scavengers, a recurring team of Decepticons in the series arrive on Earth for Crankcase to meet with someone he met on the Decepticon's internet and mis-adventures follow! This story is full of jokes and jabs towards the idea of crossover events and even gives us a few great images (like Misfire and Spinister trying to create human holo-avatars)
#7 - Windblade (Volume 1) Mini-series
This was the first story to focus upon the newly fan-designed character, Windblade and pits her in a mystery story trying to discover what Starscream is plotting and even dealing with a murder mystery. The artwork in the series is beautiful and sets up the now staple character of Windblade very well (especially after her "fill in the blanks" appearance in Dark Cybertron)
#6 - Drift Mini-series
Drift, another new character created for the IDW universe gets his own series, showing how he converted from a violent gun wielding Decepticon named Deadlock to a sword-wielding Autobot. This series gives us some great art and visuals, and gives us some much-needed insight into Drift's backstory and beliefs. It also sets up the Circle of Light, who are an important plot-point in the later More Than Meets The Eye series (before being written out in the Lost Light finale)
#5 - More Than Meets the Eye #50-55: The Dying of the Light
The Dying of the Light is the finale to the More Than Meets The Eye series (excluding the Titans Return and Revolution tie-ins) and brings to head most of the plot lines in the series. It gives us a clear answer to whether Megatron has seen the error of his past ways, resolves Skids' whole story-arc, deals with the DJD and even sets up for the plot and finale of the next series, Lost Light amongst many other things.
This entry would be much higher up, but it was severely let down by the Lost Light comic continuation which has somewhat soured the experience in the long-run...
#4 - Optimus Prime #22: Unstopped and Unstoppable
Unstopped and Unstoppable is essentially an extension to the Unicron event, but shows the emotional reactions of the characters being hurt by the destruction of the colonies. This issue quickly acts to bridge the previous "The Falling" storyline and the Unicron finale for the Hasbroverse and does so beautifully.
I genuinely teared up when I saw Rom curled up following the destruction of Elonia, and when Circuit's voice cracks when he is reporting the destruction of most of the other colony worlds, which also includes the reactions of the Autobot colonists!
If you plan to read the Unicron event, I seriously suggest reading Optimus Prime #22-25 for extra context, but this issue is the stand-out of those issues.
#3 - Transformers: Unicron Mini-series
This is the end of the Hasbroverse and features the permanent deaths of hundreds of characters and several established worlds. This series pulls no punches, starting with the destruction of Elonia, the capital of the Solstar Order, a literal paradise of a world, and ends with an all-out battle above and on the planet Earth.
Again, the artwork is amazing, and except for a few continuity bumps or plot holes, I feel it was the perfect way to conclude this chapter of the franchise.
#2 - Last Stand of the Wreckers
Last Stand of the Wreckers follows an Autobot black-ops team try to liberate a captured Autobot prison facility from the insane Decepticon Overlord. Death and gore follow very quickly.
For a long time, this was my favourite Transformers series, which spawned 2 sequel stories and has gained multiple re-releases, often with additional content. This is easily a series that you can recommend to most Transformers fans (unless they are particularly squeamish)
#1 - Optimus Prime #9: The Life of Sideswipe
Oh wow....I love this issue so much. It works in every way possible, the story is strong, the artwork is amazing, and the symbolism is spot-on. This story concludes a sub-plot that began in Transformers #49, about a year earlier, which I will spoil here, as this issue works best if you know the twist. Sideswipe is dying and this is mostly set in a virtual reality fantasy to help him to finally die in peace, aided by his best friends Arcee and Sunstreaker.
When you read this issue, keep a close eye on the backgrounds and you'll notice the clues about Sideswipe's mind-set and even the mirroring of events. When he is angry or in pain the colours and city are dark and grimy, but when he is happy and about to die, everything is bright and clean.
This story also gives us some major progression to Arcee's ongoing story, showing how she can now express her emotions better over the death of someone close to her, which she couldn't with Hardhead and Galvatron.
If you have someone ask you to recommend a Transformers comic to introduce them to the franchise, give them this one.
THE WORST
#10 - Transformers: Continuum
Okay, to start things off, we have something of a joke. This comic was designed to help new readers get into the series, but was filled with so many continuity errors and needless omissions that it was quickly laughed away. Look this comic up on TFWiki to see just what was done wrong and have a good laugh :D
#9 - The New Avengers/Transformers Mini-series
Yeah...this happened and it was in continuity with the IDW universe as well! It is set between the events of Infiltration and Escalation and even had some edits made to the characters and plot to accommodate it (such as Ramjet being put in, instead of the badly injured Starscream).
It is a weird story that due to licensing issues is never really mentioned or referenced again following this story (such as, where are the Avengers during the Decepticon invasion in All Hail Megatron, or during Unicron's attack on the planet?)
It's not a terrible story, but is a major headache when you try to justify it's existence...
#8 - MASK Annual 2017: The Deathstone
Take the pilot episode of the MASK cartoon and throw in some GI Joe characters and a dead Astrotrain, and you have this confusing story.
I don't really have much more to say about this, except it was very underwhelming and just boring. Maybe it would have worked better for a MASK fan?
#7 - First Strike: GI Joe and MASK
These two issues act as one story for the First Strike event, showing what GI Joe are up to during this event....yeah, not the MASK team, despite the covers and the title, just GI Joe. It was made in anticipation for the majorly ill-fated Scarlett's Strike Force comic series, which kind of tells you all you need to know about it. The artwork was ugly, the story was unintelligible and despite a lot of explosions and noise, nothing really happens.
This story suffered with the same problems as the prior GI Joe comic and Strike Force, where it felt separated from the Hasbroverse, despite being set on Earth, where most of the other stories are set. They barely mention the main storyline happening in First Strike, and focus on a museum theft, to set up for some future aborted plot lines.
#6 - The Transformers #1 (Costa Run): ...For All Mankind
This story launched the start of the post-All Hail Megatron era helmed by Mike Costa, and it had a bad start. The characters were all redesigned to look like hybrids of Movie and G1 designs, which do not mesh well and several characters seem to be out of character or make stupid decisions. Also, this issue ends in the death of Ironhide and Optimus being imprisoned by the Humans. Neither of which are permanent, so were just used to garner interest in the new series (really, these two plot twists were featured in the previews for the series!)
The series does get better starting with the second story-arc and leads to the fun Chaos event, but it just has such a weak beginning that I can't forgive it...
#5 - Bumblebee Mini-series
Another weird choice made in the above Costa Transformers run, was having Bumblebee elected to be the new Autobot leader. This was released during the early years of the Transformers Movies, and so Bumblebee was generally unliked by most fans due to his over-saturation in the franchise, so having him made their leader was very controversial.
This series told the story of his first few decisions as leader and also features his new movie-styled body design, which lasted until the end of the series and spawned a couple of new toys. The artwork was very sketch-like and was basically made to give a reason for Bee to be the new leader, and it didn't work. (FYI, he gets badly injured at the end of the second story-arc and is essentially replaced by Optimus in all but name again)
#4 - Till All Are One #10: The Price of You
Oh wow...I know this one, and the remaining issues on this list will get me a lot of hate, but I can't help it. In general I loved the Till All Are One series, just like the other Windbalde centred stories, but this issue features a disturbing scene that makes me hate it and the characters involved.
Blast Off and the other Combaticons have been rendered somewhat comatose following their recent combination into Bruticus, and so Starscream decides to use this to control them into being his personal enforcers. To do this he makes a deal with Blast Off to alter Onslaught's mind into believing he is in love with the former, so he'll be more complient....AND BLAST OFF IS OKAY WITH THIS!!! WTF?!?!?
What makes this worse is that there is never a real resolution to this decision, when Starscream and his envoy are imprisoned, we see ALL of the Combaticons in jail, so Blast Off is in jail with his victim, and we never see any of them again (except Starscream of course). This is just the creepiest story I've ever read and has so many dark undertones, which has also led to some very disturbing fan-art and slash fics between these two!
#3 - Transformers vs Visionaries #5: The Curtain
The Transformers vs Visionaries series was very interesting to me, it gave us a view of magic in this universe and gave a real threat to the Cybertronians (despite the threat being easily stopped if the Cybertronains were willing to just squish the organics, or remove the oxygen from the cave they lived in...).
The finale however is utter bullshit, the problems are solved when Galadria uses some healing magic that she has never shown before and that saves both Cybertron and gives plant-life to Cybertron too....great. It just feels like a lazy cop-out ending which could have been resolved with something that made sense.
Also, the series didn't end with Virulina being assassinated by Action Man for killing Kup, so it fails for me on principle :)
#2 - Lost Light #6: This Machine Kills Fascists
The first storyline of Lost Light, the sequel to More Than Meets The Eye, was very good, it explored the alternate Functionist Universe created by accident by Perceptor in the previous series and even sets up the new characters and plots for the series to come. However this issue gives us one majorly bad piece of story-writing...they brought a dead character back from the dead.
Anode somehow uses her Blacksmith abilities to turn some dead Sentio-Metalico into a new body for her long dead friend Lug, and somehow managed to create a new spark for her, using a trace of energy from a flower that the Necrobot had that stored a tiny part of Lug's spark inside...AND LUG WAS ALIVE AGAIN!?!?!
Before this point, being dead in this continuity was permanent. There were a few exceptions, but those were explained with off-panel healing or the Dead Universe being involved, but when a character is shown fully dead and we see their body, they stay dead.
This issue has a character that has been dead for about 500 years in story, brought back to life as if nothing happened. There are no mental scars or any physical problems, despite her centuries of death or even that a literal trace of her spark was used to revive her. I was expecting her to have a zombie-state storyline in the future, but it never happened.
What is most insulting about this, is that they had to kill off Kaput in the next issue just to stop this from happening again, and NO-ONE ever asks Anode if she can try this with anyone else...like I don't know...Skids? The guy who Nautica was willing to give up anything to revive just a couple of issues later. Such a stupid thing to put in the series just to avoid being criticised for "fridging" a character!
#1 - Lost Light #25: How to Say Goodbye and Mean It Part 2
This is the issue we were waiting for for years, and it was awful!
This issue marks the final issue of More Than Meets The Eye and Lost Light and it just feels like a spiteful story complaining about the series being cancelled and replaced with a new one.
This issue is framed by a flash-forward to Ratchet's funeral, where everyone has had a horrible life, Swerve started and lost a franchise, Rewind is now trapped in his alternate mode, Chromedome has to look after him all the time, Megatron is either in indefinite prison or is dead, Brainstorm is dying and is on constant life support, Rodimus is a drunk and Drift is now a widower, just to name a few.
The present day storyline shows that Prowl has come to take the Lost Light's quantum engines so they can use it to repower New Cybertron, which leads to Rodimus getting a final lap of glory for him and the crew, which leads to them recreating the original accident that created a duplicate Lost Light, hoping they can duplicate themselves again, and continue their adventures in a new universe.
This story is full of very on the nose symbolism for the series ending and how the writer is unhappy with it, such as his OC Rung being erased from the memories of everyone (Despite canon showing that that shouldn't have happened), how everyone in the future is depressed and having bad lives without the Lost Light, the Lost Light being dismantled rather than letting someone else getting their hands on it.
The ending scene, where we see that their plan worked and they were duplicated should have been omitted as that would have left it open to interpretation, and allowed the readers to make their own stories, as the final three words of the series stated "Over to you"....or rather it would have, if the writer didn't remove that because of the reboot.
Overall, this story was a poor and insulting finale to the "meh" series of Lost Light and the fantastic More Than Meets The Eye, especially when the other two IDW finales, Optimus Prime and Unicron were so good!
Just avoid this issue, and pretend the series ended with issue 24, that'll leave you with a better lasting impression on the series.
So that's my list, I hope you enjoyed, or at least didn't hate it too much and let me know what you think about my listing or your own additions to it!
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