Transformers, Vol. 1: Robots in Disguise (Image Comics, 2023-24)

Transformers, Vol. 1: Robots in Disguise

by

Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spicer (Colorist), Rus Wooton (Letterer)

I watched Transformers in the 1990’s as a kid and it was good fun but I was much more into other franchises than this one – and that didn’t change much as I got older because the transforming robots concept as anything more than just “cool” was harder to get past and frankly I found very little to keep me engaged in it or take it seriously as anything other than kiddish fun.

Under the aegis of Skybound comics and as part of their new Energon Universe, writer/artist Daniel Warren Johnson and colourist Mike Spicer attempt what is effectively another rebooting of the franchise.

In a familiar basic setup, we have both good and evil Transformers (Autobots and Decepticons) arriving on Earth – though this time it is an outright crash of an ark-ship and not at all a smooth arrival. We start the story with meeting the human teen Spike living in what appears to be a fairly down-on-its-luck industrial/mining kind of small town in the montains and we meet Spikes father Sparky, a war veteran who has lost his older son (an astronaut who died) and in nice, short order, we understand their strained relationship and life – and we also get to meet Spikes’ friend Carly. Together the teens stumble onto the crashed ark-ship and encounter the giant sentient robots.

There are only a couple of each active and immediately the atmosphere of the story is extremely tense because it is a mad scramble from the moment they awaken to understand where they have all arrived and then the Decepticons immediately seek out sources of power to awaken more soldiers and annihilate the autobots and then take out and take-over the weakling little humans that seem to populate the planet. On the other side we have Optimus Prime truly Optimus-ing to the core as he is constantly on the back-foot, fighting to keep his friends (old mechanical ones and new fleshy ones!) alive while trying to put together some kind of solid resistence to the enemy trying to destory them all.

The story Johnson weaves is truly striking in that it is just a few chapters of a story that is setting up an array of emerging characters, laying foundations of relationships and interactions and I have to admit, I was stunned at the fantastic way in which it is all laid out. You want to, nay, must, keep reading the next page every time you reach the end of one and the main characters – including the evil StarScream who is trying to establish himself as the new leader of the Decepticons with the apparent death of Megatron before this comic starts – are all so well presented that you can FEEL the story and the events and emotions as things move forward and even the idealistic boy-scouting of Optimus feels… right… and not preachy and such, which happens too often with the too-heroic characters.

And of course, as he did with his other books, i.e, Murder Falcon, Beta Ray Bill: Argent Star and others, Johnson brings his fantastic art style to the game! In particular, he has a remarkable ability to make very quiet moments come off well BUT his true skill is the consistently stunning action that he draws – I mean the man is a maestro at crafting action sequences time and again and it has a true adrenaline energy to it all.

This revamp is absolutely an exception to almost every single other entry I have come across in the franchise. Granted I’ve not seen them all, but I’ve dabbled in comic versions, cartoon versions and of course the predominantly overblown garbage that was the movies – and I have to say that I was truly shocked at the effective and classy way that this story has started off. I never thought I would be recommending a Transformers… anything… to people as a must-read/see but there you have it. If you want to read a book about transforming robots from space that actually feels like it works and is solid, thoughtful and suitably blended with the bombastic and action-packed, you would be hard-pressed to do better than this one and it is for sure better than the majority of superhero fare out there.



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