Transformers More than Meets The Eye and Robots In Disguise Comics (January 2012)

[Hursticon]

Damn, for a second there, the topic title had me thinking it was news on #81...

Sorry man, they have been a little quiet on that front as of late though huh?

[Paulbot]

Bumbleebee and his inner circle have their recent Earth modes on the four covers. The cover with them all together suggests that they are getting new Cybertronian modes (which makes sense given the storyline of their book). Bumblebee still has a cane though.. shame that getting a new body can't fix the problem with your leg!

We are buying two Transformers comics a month now anyway, and I don't find it a bad thing... I just look forward to the Chaos issue more than the Last story on Earth issue. It's also similar to the early IDW days where there were are couple of series at a time.

Comic companies assume that large numbers are "off-putting" to new readers and know that speculators/'investors'/somewhat interested people are likely to try out a new issue 1. DC just renumbered every single superhero book they produce and, even though some where approaching the 700s. Marvel has restarted the numbering on every long running comic they produce, but often then reset the numbers back to 'original' numbering (Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, Fantastic Four have all done this). And now they are adding .1 to some book numbers to suggest it's like an issue 1 as it's the start of a new story/status quo. It does makes things very confusing.

[i_amtrunks]

With the focus in one series being on Cybertron, it makes sense for Bee and his cohorts (Prowl, Wheeljack and Ironhide) to sport cybertronian based designs. Using WFC as a starting point is a good idea, they have some fantastic visuals to use.
Hopefully we wont get teaked/different body designs every issue like we did in the ongoing, as well as each miniseries, it as jarring trying to figure out who was who week in and week out.

IDW sure has grown as a company, I think the business (and $$$) from acquiring the Buffy, TF, GIJoe and Star Trek licenses as well as having some fantastic titles not associated with other lines (Locke and Key) has helped them to expand so quickly and try to cement down #4 in the comic industry. I know that they have had some excellent series of late while TF went downhill thanks to poor editing, and I am hearing good things about their newer license purchases like TMNT too.

I guess the two tf titles a month may be working alright (they have done more than two titles every time a movie has come out, with the main book, movie title/s and mini series!), and I would much prefer to have two distinctly titled books focusing on two distinctly different teams and storylines, than have the mish mash we have in the ongoing currently! That way if one starts circling the drain storywise, hopefully the other will still be worth tracking down.

Lets just wait and see if dead means dead...

[Hursticon]

I'm looking forward to these myself as I am one of the newbies who are looking to jump onto the IDW bandwagon but have been prevented from doing so in the past.

Mainly because, from an outsiders perspective , it has been so utterly confusing as to where to begin with the IDWverse; at present the only stuff I've read of theirs is the Beast Wars (TPB) and Last Stand of The Wreckers (TPB), mainly because they're more or less self contained.

[griffin]

Images of the covers in their combined form (each of the two series has 5 covers - 4 that join up and one that is a different group shot).

(that's like 10 issues to be bought in one month, plus any incentive covers)