PopSyndicate.com

Autobots?  Cybertron?  Megatron?  I’ll admit, if you’re talking to me about the Transformers, you may as well be talking in a foreign language.  For whatever reason when I was growing up, I completely missed out on the Transformers fad in toy, comic, movie and tv form.  Maybe I was already a jaded teenager or maybe my head was already filled with Star Wars, GI Joe and Micronauts but I have just never understood the fascination with robots that turn into cars, planes and boom boxes. 

Now that a movie is coming out (well, really a second movie after the animated movie of the eighties,) IDW is growing their Transformer line with a miniseries that functions as a prequel to the movie.  Written by Simon Furman and Chris Ryall and drawn by Don Figueroa, The Movie Prequel #1 depicts the war as it existed on Cybertron.  Fighting has broken out over the All Spark, the life giving macguffin for the robotic species.  The good guys are lead by Optimus Prime and the bad guys by Megatron.  This story isn’t about the leaders of the war but about Prime’s soldiers, the protectors of the All Spark.  The first person narrative used to tell the story gives this story its humanity and personality.  Even though all the characters are mechanical constructs, Furman and Ryall build in them emotions and needs that make them relatable characters.  As they fight to protect the All Spark, you can see the heroism in even the line soldiers. 

While the new designs for the characters may work on a big screen, they’re horrible on the comic page.  Don Figueroa does an admirable job telling the stories but it is next to impossible to keep the characters separated from one another.  Like badly designed Japanese mecha, the robots tend to blend together and look alike.  On my third read through this book, I had to pay attention to the shape of each robot’s eyes just to keep track of who was who. (This is also made difficult since none of the participating characters are given so much as a name or handle.) But once you can keep the characters apart, Figueroa does a nice job at pacing the story and using body language and design to portray the characters and to give them some personality.

It’s more than fair to say that, going into this book, I really didn’t care about the Transformers.  But Furman and Ryall have put enough story into this book to finally make me see why these robot toys have such a strong and loyal following.  Tranformers: The Movie Prequel #1 is an engaging introduction to this cast and their warring factions.

Transformers: The Movie Prequel #1
Written by: Simon Furman and Chris Ryall
Drawn by: Don Figueroa
Colored by: Josh Burcham
Lettered by: Robbie Robbins

3