The first chapter is titled The Death of Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime believes he is dead because he is in an unknown location. He believes it is either Robot Hell or Robot Heaven. He checks the co-ordinates on his GPS and it turns out he is on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. He then tries to figure out if he is in the past or the future. It turns out he is in the present. He walks into town and is saddened to realise that he doesn't recognise any of the Transformers walking around and even more saddened that they don't recognise him. This goes on for about 5 seconds until he is reunited with his best friend Sideswipe.
I have no idea if this comic is a continuation of the cartoon or another comic series. But it is clear that there are millions of years of rich Transformers history that I am completely missing out on. Chapter 1 does serve as a good jumping point because the key points of Transformers are relayed. In 20 pages I understand that the Autobots beat the Decepticons in war. The Autobots (somehow) restored their home planet. Optimus Prime passed the leadership position to Bumblebee (who can talk now) and the Transformers hate the Autobots because they remind them of a war they all hid from.
There was one character that stood out from the rest, and that was Flamebot. He is a red Autobot that wants to go off on mythic quests instead of hanging around on a planet that hates him. Already I see him as the Indiana Jones of the Transformers Universe. I don't want to read about robots playing Game of Thrones, I want to read about Transforming Fire Robot going on adventures looking for Robot Knights.
Writer James Roberts shows new readers a glimpse of a much deeper universe. He doesn't assume that readers will know everything about Transformers and instead subtly guides readers through what they need to know. There were a couple of spelling errors that should have been fixed by now, especially for digital copies, but they were few and mostly unnoticeable.
The art by Alex Milne is ok. My biggest complaint I have with the art is that sometimes I couldn't figure out which robot was talking or if a robot had been introduced earlier. I don't fault the artist. There are a lot of characters that have to look a certain way and it just so happens that they end up looking alike. I can see this problem being remedied in later issues as I am pretty sure the story leads away from the densely populated Transformer planet and instead focuses on a lot less characters.
The story perfectly fits the comic book format, A movie with this many Transformers would need a budget of $500 billion. This story might be too mature for cartoons but could potentially work.
Overall it was a solid first issue and I will definitely read more. If you like the movies then you will like anything. If you remember Transformers fondly from your childhood you will love this series. If you barely have a passing interest in Transformers then you will enjoy this.
You can buy it here or download it here.
