Rise of Safeguard: The origin of the
Jetstorm/Jetfire duo, set before The Arrival. Review is part of an overall
review of the toy, which came with the comic.
Transformers Animated the Arrival: Regular series writer Marty
Isenberg scripts, new (to me) artist Dario Brizuela has the drawing job.
Like most IDW books, it's a miniseries. And like all IDW miniseries, there's
no indication anywhere on the comic how many issues it'll be.
Transformers Animated the Arrival #1: IDW - Got cover A. Rather than
just adapt the "Transform And Roll Out" pilot "movie" or take it as read and
move on, Isenberg instead mixes sequences from TARO with events that happened
in the gaps. The repeated scenes each emphasize the point of view of one of
the characters, and most of them get some sort of spotlight, even ones who
didn't actually show up in TARO. Brizuela's art does a good job of keeping
to the animation models without being slavish about it. This looks like it
might be shaping up to be something like Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes,
covering the first season of TF: Animated with a mix of POV shots and behind
the scenes. And it's off to a good start if that's the plan. Recommended.
$3.99
"So, Coded Balloons?" Award to Cover A of Transformers Animated: the
Arrival #1
Transformers Animated the Arrival #2: IDW - I got cover B, with the big
Sentinel Tick, er, Prime looming over a holo-image of the space bridge repair
crew. The lead story answers the question, "With all the human supervillains
running around Detroit, what about human superheroes?" It seems to be set
shortly after Total Meltdown, and follows a fairly stock plot, so-so. The
backup looks at what happened to Starscream between "Transform And Roll Out"
and his next appearance in the cartoon. Heh. No Sentinel Prime in either
story, ah well. Mildly recommended. $3.99
"I Am A Pretty, Pretty Princess" Award to Transformers Animated the
Arrival #2
Transformers Animated the Arrival #3: IDW - My store only got cover B,
oddly. The first story is essentially Nanosec done with a new character.
Megatron arranges for human to get powered gear, she field-tests it as part
of Megatron's rebuilding program, she gets hoist on her own petard. But with
a lot less personality. The second story is the cover piece, featuring Oil
Slick in a flashback to Ratchet's days in the Great War (and set before the
Arcee story, so Ratchet still has a bit more of his innocence). Recommended.
$3.99
"At Least There Was No Space Scarab" Award to Transformers Animated the
Arrival #3
Transformers Animated: Bots of Science: IDW - This is part of the
"Adventures in Reading" series, you're more likely to find it at Target than
at comic shops, I suppose. I got it through Amazon after giving up on
Diamond (along with TF Prime and Amelia Rules below). This is a level 4
"Junior Graphic Novel" for the top end of the target audience, and it adapts
the Bots of Science story from the Arrival comic. The cover is directly
taken from Arrival #3, and all but two of the panels of the 11 page Ratchet/
Oil Slick story are used here, although a lot of them are cropped or changed
in size to better fit the smaller pages and earlier readers. Narration
blocks in larger font are inserted every few pages to clarify things that
kids might not get. But the main reason to pick this up is that they also
added eight pages at the beginning describing the Great War and showing some
of the battle of the Hydrax Plateau (the aftermath of which is the focus of
the adapted story). If they're not new to this book, they're at least new to
me (I check the rest of Arrival, they're not from there). These pages will
need some annotation, there's loads of characters who are either "blink and
you miss them" or even adapted from G1 for this story. The big two page
spread is full of annotation bait, like RiD Optimus Prime, Cyclonus, and what
might be Overlord. Recommended. $3.99
"Animated Tarantulas is HUGE" Award to Transformers Animated Bots of
Science
Transformers Animated the Arrival #4: IDW - As usual, two stories. The
lead story is a fairly simple "Powell is being a poo-head and gets his
comeuppance" tale, although it takes a look at an interesting point that the
cartoon never really addressed: the Autobots do not own their own
appearances, at least in vehicle mode. They copied existing Earth vehicles,
and as such are open to lawsuits for theft of intellectual proprty! Heh.
The second story looks at how Blackarachnia and Lockdown got into play and
knew to go after the Autobots. We also get an official name for their team:
Autobot Spacebridge Repair Transport Unit 073063. Arse-Too? Heh. [Later
correction: ASR, not ARS. Sigh. Asser-Too?] Recommended. $3.99
"Time To Unpimp Ze Auto" Award to Transformers Animated the Arrival #4
Transformers Animated The Arrival #5: IDW - Eh, fairly weak issue. The
lead story treads pretty familiar ground and doesn't really spend enough time
on it to go past the cliche. The much longer second story with art by Boo
(ick) takes place during the first Lockdown episode and milks a gag rather
too long. Reversing the relative pagecounts of these might have helped.
Neutral. $3.99 (I got Cover B)
"You Can't Teach A Sneech" Award to Transformers Animated the Arrival #5
Transformers Animated Cel-Books: Digest-sized books using screenshots
from the cartoon to create a comic. Two or three episodes per volume, with
pagecounts of either 96 or 112.
Transformers Animated vol 1: IDW - This is a cel-book covering the first
three episodes (a.k.a. the pilot "movie") of Transformers Animated in digest-
sized (5" by 7") format on glossy paper. Unlike the Cinemangas for Armada
and Energon, however, it's been put together by someone with half a clue how
to lay out a comic, so it actually reads like a proper comic. The narration
sometimes verges on "would insult the intelligence of a five-year-old", but
it's otherwise well adapted. As one might expect from trying to cram 66
minutes of show into 108 pages (plus 7 pages of profiles), there's some time
compression issues. My rule of thumb for adaptations is that you really need
about 22 pages of comic for every 8-12 minutes of show (the wide variation is
due to differences in pacing), and this is at the edge of that with 22 pages
per 13 minutes. A few of the action scenes, most notably the initial fight
between Megatron and the Autobots, get cut a bit too short as a result, and
Megatron comes across as kinda wimpy. Still, as both cel-books and
adaptations in general go, it does a better job than most...and until they
release a DVD set it'll have to do for art reference purposes. ;) One odd
production choice stands out, though. On the cover, the finish is mostly
matte, but the Autobot symbols are glossy like the title. Kinda weird. As a
final note, Diamond doesn't seem to want to bother shipping orders of this
series (at least, not to my store), and I haven't seen it at any chain book
stores or department stores locally, so if you want this, you may have to go
online. I got mine from deepdiscount.com for $6.39 plus free shipping.
Recommended. $7.99 cover price. (Note, these three episodes are not
officially part of Season 1.)
"Optimus Prime Goes 'Boing!'" Award to Transformers Animated vol 1
Transformers Animated vol 2: IDW - Yeah, pretty much given up on getting
these through Diamond, so they show up now whenever my online source's
shipments show up (deepdiscount.com for reference). This digest-sized full
color volume has the same pagecount as vol 1, but only adapts Blast From The
Past (S1 Ep3, Dinobots first appearance) and Nanosec (S1 Ep5, meaning there's
more space to properly tell the stories. There's also no profile pages like
vol 1, freeing up even more story pages. At 50 pages for Blast and 68 pages
for Nanosec, that's pretty much in the sweet spot for my "22 pages per 8-12
minutes of animation" adaptation rule of thumb. Some of the captions are a
bit too "talking down to the kiddies", but it's not like they get in the way
of the cel art. :) Good episodes, if not the best of the first season, and
it does make it clear that IDW's not going to try to adapt everything in
these volumes. Recommended. $7.99
"Wally Wood's T.R.A.N.S.F.O.R.M.E.R.S. Agents" Award to Transformers
Animated vol 2
Transformers Animated vol 3: IDW - Took a while to get this one, it was
either delayed or vastly short-printed and needed a second printing (volume 4
is already a month late too). This one steps back and covers "Home is Where
the Spark Is" (S1 Ep1) and "Total Meltdown" (S1 Ep2). Total Meltdown gets
two more pages thant HiWtSI (42 versus 44), and there's six pages of profiles
at the start (the main five Autobots, plus Megatron). Profiles of Prometheus
Black and Colossus Rhodes would've been nice. A decent adaptation, although
with the DVD set for S1 coming out soon, I expect demand for these may drop.
Recommended. $7.99
Transformers Animated vol 4: IDW - 96 pages, presents "Along Came A
Spider" (S1 Ep6) and "Sound and Fury," (S1 Ep 7) the Blackarachnia and
Soundwave origin episodes. The nigh-unrelenting darkness of the art in
Spider really translates poorly to cel book form, we're talking Dreamwave
levels of murk. Sound and Fury works a bit better, although as an episode
that relies strongly on sound, it necessarily gets hurt by translation to an
unaudible medium. The roster entries at the start are for the Space Bridge
Five, the Sumdacs (each has a half page), Megatron, Blackarachnia and
Soundwave. It might have been a better idea to move those last two to the
end, since their entries kinda summarize the stories in this installment.
Mildly recommended. $7.99
Transformers Animated vol 5: IDW - 112 pages, presents "Survival of the
Fittest" (52 pages, S1 Ep9) and "Lost and Found" (44 pages, S1 Ep8), plus
roster entries of the five Autobots, the Sumdacs, Megatron, Blitzwing, Lugnut
and Starscream. Despite getting more pages, "Survival of the Fittest" cuts
too much, robbing the running Fanzone gag of most of its scenes and making
Bulkhead's detective work come out of nowhere. By contrast, the simpler
story of "Lost and Found" does fine on only 44 pages. They probably could've
stolen a few more pages from the second story to give scenes back to the
first, which definitely needed them. Mildly recommended. $7.99
Transformers Animated vol 6: IDW - 112 pages, with "Headmaster" (S1 Ep10)
and "When Nature Calls" (S1 Ep11). Headmaster is written by the original
episode scribe Michael Ryan, and gets 50 pages plus a title page. When
Nature Calls is adapted from Todd Casey by Zachary Rau, and has 48 pages plus
title. The info files at the start are the core five Autobots, the Sumdacs
and Fanzone (who only appears for about three panels). Both stories felt
about right in terms of how many pages they got, and Headmaster really
managed to bring out Bulkhead's inner conflicts and desire to create rather
than just destroy. One more volume and they'll have all of season 1, and
they're only about a year behind schedule on these cel books....
Recommended. $7.99
Transformers Animated vol 7: IDW - 116 pages, adapting both parts of the
Season 1 closer, "Megatron Rising" (S1 Eps 12-13). 100 pages are given over
to the adaptation, and there's profiles of the five core Autobots, the
Sumdacs, and the five Decepticons from the pilot. "The Thrill of the Hunt"
is not included in this volume, making it the one Season 1 episode not to be
adapted in the first 7 volumes...perhaps it'll be collected with "A Fistful
of Energon" in a later volume. As for what is in this volume as opposed to
what isn't, while some of the panels are confusing in isolation, they did
their usual good job adapting the episodes to static form. Recommended.
$7.99
Transformers Animated vol 8: IDW - I don't feel like reviewing these
anymore, although I'm still getting them. From here on out, I'll just list
what's in each for reference purposes unless something notable strikes me as
worth mentioning (i.e. including scenes not actually in the aired version or
something equally improbable). This volume has second season episodes "The
Elite Guard" and "The Return of Headmaster". $7.99
Transformers Animated vol 9: IDW - Second season episodes "Garbage In,
Garbage Out" (Wreck-Gar) and "Velocity" (Blurr in car mode only, human
villain Master Disaster). The Junkion motorcycle from GIGO does not appear
in the cels chosen for the scene, sadly. $7.99
Transformers Animated vol 10: IDW - If you want these things, look online
or at places like Barnes & Noble brick&mortar stores (in the kiddie section),
I long ago gave up on getting them through Diamond. This volume has Lockdown
on the cover, and while it does include "A Fistful of Energon," it doesn't
have Lockdown's season 1 appearance, which remains the only season 1 episode
NOT collected in thes celbooks. Instead, "Rise of the Constructicons" is the
lead story in this volume. I'd kinda been hoping the reason for the missing
Lockdown story from earlier volumes was because there was going to be an
all-Lockdown volume later, ah well. Another minor quibble is that they
discontinued the practice of using different page backgrounds for the two
stories. In previous volumes, it was pretty easy to tell where the break was
between stories, because the pattern in the gutters between panels was
different for each story. But this time, both have the same pattern, and
combined with the lack of page numbers it's harder to find where one story
ends and the next begins if you just want to check out Fistful. Other than
these minor issues, it's still a good adaptation of the animation images to
comicbook format. Recommended. $7.99
