Transformers (2019) #1 -"The World In Your Eyes Part One"

[tripodeca113]

"We wanted to do something just a little different with Cybertron this time around. Nothing crazy drastic, just give it a bit of a new twist, a new flavor. Starting with the fact that it’s at peace, I guess! But lots of other things, too. There are alien species there. There are Cybertronians not just on the landscape, but in it, part of it. There are interesting things going on with the innermost moon. It’s a unique place in the universe in all sorts of ways, and it’s a living planet in all sorts of ways. Hopefully, issue by issue, readers will see that it’s a place of wonders."

Brian Ruckley
(6.66 pages out of 20)


"Your life is yours to shape. In doing so, you owe nothing to those who came before you. But you owe everything to those as yet unforged. Let no shaping of yours, limit what they, in their turn, might yet be and achieve."
Termagax

On the planet Cybertron, the young Transformer Rubble, is exploring the planet's wilderness with his mentor Bumblebee.



Rubble has started his tour of the planet, a rite of passage for young Transformers to figure out what position they want to follow in life. The first stop is the engineer Brainstorm, who's station is located in the wilderness.

Rubble is eager explore, and runs off.



The alien (a Voin, the squid thing in the bowl) is scared off by the arrival of Bumblebee's friend Windblade. She tags along with them to see Brainstorm.



Meanwhile a rally by the Ascenticons, (a group based on Termagax's writings) is underway.



Senator Orion Pax has arranged a meeting with the leader of the Ascenticon.












Rubble spots a shooting star. Windblade explains it's a Titan.



The trio arrives at Brainstorm's station, but Windblade notices that the building has been damaged.

Comments

[owlbrigade1]

"We wanted to do something just a little different with Cybertron this time around. Nothing crazy drastic, "
Maybe a little more crazy ought to have been tried, something along the lines of MTMTE/LL, because this reboot is seriously boring. I dropped out because of the sameyness and the way everything takes too many issues to play out. I don't blame that entirely, it was the pandemic disrupting the schedule last year that was the final straw, and that is in no way IDW's fault, but if it had been MTMTE level of crazy-good, I'd have made an effort to stay uptodate with the schedule changes in a way I wasn't with this.

I still blame IDW/Hasbro for all this, they killed the interesting universe they had going by trying to smoosh all the 'Bro titles into one Dawn of Justice type EU [and killed Kup while doing so]. And that just didn't work at all, because sometimes one bad decision means that you have to hard reboot everything to get rid of it.

[themajesticmoose]

Personally I really enjoy the current reboot

I've enjoyed how it's been making some fun use of characters from throughout the franchises history and not just focusing on a small number of big names and I've enjoyed how we've got some neat new ideas and I've liked the new concepts it's introduced

[trooper924]

I do like some of the ideas the reboot has, but I do think that it's kind of took too long to get the point i.e. the eventual Autobot-Decepticon War.

Also, I think it was a mistake to start off on Cybertron in distant past instead of on present day Earth. I'm probably the only Transformers fan to say this, but I actually prefer it when humans involved in the story. I think it helps add to the stakes if the Autobots are fighting to protect something more than their own self-preservation, if that makes sense.

[coldfury]

Wait... brand new reboot and the first thing they do is take a popular character from one of their beloved former books off the board immediately?

Well that seems wrong-headed.

I'm sure someone thought they where 'raising the stakes' by showing that old favorites were no longer safe, but unless they were going to start off by killing Megatron or OptimusOrion, I feel like this was an underwhelming, token effort. And at the cost of a fan favorite character.

I haven't checked out the reboot because I loved what came before it so much, and this doesn't seem to be changing that decision.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Yeah, that just seems like robbing potential from future stories for no good reason. At this point, I'm sure an original character like the one they're showing around would have been just as sufficient.

[zachbeacon]

"Gone full Prowl"

Is this an "ACAB" thing?

[scorntx]

Nah. Just Prowl being a bad-tempered jerk.

[zachbeacon]

So I take it Sentinel Prime doesn't exist in this reboot? I thought he was supposed to be the robot asshole that all other robot assholes were measured against.

[tripodeca113]

Sentinel does exist, but is not currently on Cybertron, being away on a diplomatic mission.

Regarding Prowl, Ironhide is recounting a time when he got trapped under some rubble and was really mean to the rescue workers.

[scorntx]

It is nice to start with a Cybertron that doesn't completely suck to live on.
That was one of the things about old IDW Cybertron - between the Senate and the Functionists and all the corrupt Primes it was just so terrible it got ridiculous.

The story's pacing is slow, and the occasional jumping around to side-stories is... not always in its favour, going from some big shock turn to Nautica's Outer Space Adventures (love Nautica, but still.)
It's kind of like (and I am sorry, but it's the best comparison I could think of) A Game of Thrones - all the set-up and character interaction before things start hitting the fan.

(also a minor gripe the fact the story never feels much need to tell you where anything's happening...)

[zachbeacon]

"a Cybertron that doesn't completely suck to live on."

No! I won't like Beast Machines! You can't make me!

(I never really understood how plant life was healing the robot planet anyway)

Joking aside, you do have to admire a franchise that exists as a glorified toy commercial for having a fairly consistent message that endless wars over natural resources aren't good for anyone in the long run.

[shakalooloo]

Well, Cybertron has to suck to justify an uprising strong enough to spark a millions of years-long war. Unless the war is started purely because one side is 'evil'.

[matrix_dragon]

I'm still so very tired of 'oh, the Autobots were the bad government the Decepticons were rising up against' the modern stories do. Of all the things we could have kept from the 80s cartoon, why couldn't the Autobots have been the civilians that took up arms to survive the military seizing power?

That said, the mentoring system for fostering new bots is a clever idea that displays their alien nature as living robots, while giving them 'human' connections and helping the reader relate to them. Bee and Rubbles story was one of the high points of the story so far.

[scorntx]

That... kind of is how the story's going.
The Autobots are a bad government, but bad in the sense of flawed, not bad in the sense of "horrific monsters". It gets pretty clear Megatron's out only for himself, anyone else's opinions be damned.