Kinda fun and wild and with some good twists but also mostly about carnage and not showing too much of the amazing queer ecchi robot adventure stuff Robots would go on to. ( )

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Long before the Transformers Humble Bundle came along, I'd heard of Last Stand of the Wreckers. It was described in hushed tones, as one of the best Transformers comics of all time-- and even one of the best comics of all time, full stop. And what I knew of it indicated it would appeal to me, as it is about a group of second-string robots fighting for their lives. So when I got the IDW Transformers Humble Bundle and Last Stand of the Wreckers wasn't in it, I took a gamble and purchased it-- not just in paper, but in hardback, so confident was I that I would like it.

Thankfully I was correct. Last Stand of the Wreckers takes a group of some of the worst Autobots out there and assigns them to the Wreckers, the amoral Autobot commando team with the highest mortality rate of any Autobot unit. My favorites were Pyro and Ironfist. Pyro's toy was a "redeco" of Optimus Prime's, and so the writers turn this into a point of characterization: Pyro modified himself to look more like Optimus, and spends his time making dramatic poses and trying to come up with mottos. Ironfist is a fanboy who writes up detailed accounts of Wrecker missions under the pseudonym Fistiron... only despite that, there's something darker going on with him no one knows about. (Except for Prowl, because Prowl knows everything.) Plus Verity Carlo, the young human who befriended the Autobots in Infiltration, is there too.

These characters are sent into a former Autobot prison that's been conquered by a depraved, rogue Decepticon. A lot of them don't make it. I don't think it's as amazing as people say (probably because I still struggle to distinguish robot characters on sight, and this volume has more than most), but it is very good. The real heroes are the people who don't think it matters, and do the right thing anyway, even if they're not always doing the right thing for the right reason. This is definitely a book about heroes.

It's made even better by the fifty-plus pages of backmatter, which includes multiple prose short stories adding depth and nuance to the characters. These I read over a few days after finishing the main comic, and they left me wanting to reread the book all over again with these new insights in mind. These stories show that, like the best characters, even second-stringers are more than meets the eye.

The Transformers by IDW: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

This series had been hyped beyond all belief by the Transformers fanbase, so I was excited to finally lay my hands on a cheap copy of the trade paperback. It did not disappoint. This is the kind of book that shows just how great this franchise can be when put in the hands of people who really care about and understand it. It takes place in IDW’s current series continuity, but besides a couple of scenes, it’s entirely self-contained, and it draws heavily on obscure characters from all throughout franchise history, meaning you don’t have to be familiar with them to enjoy this book. If you’re a hardcore fan, or just interested in seeing how good TF storytelling can get, you need to pick up this book. Besides the original 5-issue series, the trade paperback also collects a related prose story by Roberts titled “Bullets” that’s just icing on the cake. ( )