Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Transformers: Focus on Decepticons #1
IDW Comics
Harris, McCarthy, Guidi, Scherwinski, Roche & Burcham

This issue is a preview of the new Transformers series called All Hail Megatron due out in the summer. It has a couple of interviews, some miniature bios of the Decepticons and an eight page preview of the first issue. The material is simply not worth the $3 cover price. I’m not even sure it would have been worth $1 cover price. The real item to review here is the material about the series.

You may recall that the Transformers series has been a slow burn through multiple arcs. It went from very slow in Infiltration to many plot threads and action in Devastation. Apparently IDW is pulling the plug on this long story by wrapping up things in a final sweep of some Spotlight issues. It feels severely rushed and odd. It’s not clear if they will ever return to this type of story telling or their established continuity.

This new series takes place a year after Devastation wraps up. It seems only the Decepticons are left on Earth and they are about to destroy it in evil ways. The idea behind this series is to establish just how awful Megatron is as opposed to the bumbling dummy depicted in the cartoons. This idea seems interesting if not for two problems they will have to overcome.

First of all, they are abandoning an arc of slow story telling to dive into a twelve part series? That sure feels like more slow story telling to me. This has the potential to be very difficult hooking folks into a twelve issue commitment.

Second, the stories wont have an adversary from what it sounds like. I assume that Sunstreaker and Hot Rod are still on Earth, but that might be it. What is this story going to be about?

The answers to these questions are not clear from the preview issue.

The information that you get from the interviews are more about where the ideas for this series came from rather than what this twelve issue series will really be about. They don’t want to give anything away which is fine. Except for the doubters out there, that is.

The bios are short and sweet and seem to focus on the core Decepticons, like Soundwave and his tapes, the Constructicons, Insecticons and the planes.

My fears of yet another Transformers reboot were not extinguished with this issue. If it looks like a reboot, smells like a reboot and smacks of a reboot, doesn’t that seem like a lot to disprove?

2 out of 5 geek goggles.