TRANSFORMERS: GENERATION #1

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Friday, April 12, 2002

Lately it feels like my second childhood has started about forty years too early. First Devil's Due Publishing starts producing a fairly decent update of the G.I. JOE series, remaking it from a soldiers vs. bad guys shoot-'em-up into a 21st century military thriller. Now Dreamwave Productions has done a similar update for the Joes' kissing cousins in the mid-'80s animated cartoon line-up, the Transformers. It's like 1986 all over again, except this time the stories are that much better.

It's been three years since the Ark II tragedy of 1999, in which the Autobots and seven humans they'd chosen to come with them to visit Cybertron, including Spike Witwicky's father Sparkplug, were all destroyed in a mysterious explosion soon after take-off. Spike and his son Daniel have tried to move on with their lives, but the military has other plans for Spike now that terrorists are using a new weapon-a weapon formerly known as Megatron. The government wants Spike to help them revive a Transformer of their own to balance the scales. Three guesses which one.

Chris Sarracini's plot is incredibly complex, especially since it relies on a backstory that we don't completely have. The Ark II tragedy, for instance, is referenced within the main script, but it's only at the very end of the book, in which we get a newspaper article detailing the events leading up to it, that we get anything like the entire story. And what a story it is, too: the leaders of the world authorizing Operation Liberation, a joint effort to help the Autobots defeat the Decepticons once and for all? Human troops led by Optimus Prime? A massive attack by Megatron on the entire planet using laser cannons powered by Energon? It's almost a shame we don't get to see this story rather than the one begun in this issue. A prequel series, perhaps, once this one concludes successfully?

And I have no doubts that it'll conclude successfully, either, if future issues can capture the imagination as much as this one does. We've never seen the Transformers this dangerous, for one thing, even in all their animated appearances. The opening scenes, in which Megatron makes his first kills, remind us of something we all knew at 16 but never got to see on television: a giant robot weighing several tons can be very deadly. Sarracini also handles characterization extremely well-Spike Witwicky is just as we'd expect him to be, although he's closer to his TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE incarnation than his television series one. We don't get to hear the real heroes speak yet, but I can safely predict that they'll be just as we remember them when they eventually do. This first issue also avoids any of the silly humor one might expect, though a "more than meets the eye" reference manages to make a thankfully brief appearance. Otherwise, this script is flawless.


Finally, Pat Lee and Rob Armstrong's artwork looks far more like stills taken from an animated series that we only wish were airing right now than images in a static comic book. There's a perfect sense of line and shading here, and the Transformers themselves have never looked better. (It also looks like that thorny scaling problem the series already had has been solved, too-but if Megatron ever changes into a gun small enough to fit into Starscream's hand once again, I'm taking that back.)

Of all the series brought back from the '80s, this one looks like it has the most promise so far. It boasts a writer who can handle a lot of necessary exposition in such a way that it doesn't sound talky and can still make it sound exciting; it boasts an artistic team whose talents are perfectly suited to the script and the material; and it boasts a line of pop culture street cred that most comic series would kill for. Now, if only they could bring back a series like SILVERHAWKS and make it look this cool...