Scans_Daily

Since this series is playing more off the cartoons than off previous comics, having human deaths IS a big departure. It seems as if this is being aimed at people familiar only with the original series, adding a few small tweaks here and there to diverge a little.

Saving the death until the final page really sells to me that it's meant to be a big shock "ZOMG, a Decepticon just killed someone!!!". Given that any fan of TF will have read other comics before by this point, it really does seem like a weird point to make, since there must be nobody that falls into that naive target audience they're shooting for.

More than anything, this feels like the first Dreamwave issues, showing classic Transformer designs only doing more violence. The cover for issue 2 (Starscream seen through a jet canopy) even references Megatron's initial rampage from those days.

I suppose at this point DW was over twenty years ago now, so that's another distinct era of nostalgia with its own crowd of fans now...