I'd been avoiding all spoilers about #80.5, so I was surprised to see that it's essentially a "G1 recap" issue. Not terribly interesting for those of G1 fans, but perfectly understandable to help casual readers who aren't familiar with G1 to catch up to speed so they can jump straight into #81. And it if you're gonna do a recap issue, might as well make it free! I'd be miffed if I'd paid for this issue TBH; but as a free comic, it's fine.

I agree that I would have liked to see the story continue from where G2 ended (and potentially plant seeds for Beast Wars) - but Furman said long ago that he didn't want to do this, and wanted to continue from G1... so like it or not, it was expected. Having said... we did see Jhiaxus there... so...

As for the future characters like Ultra Magnus, Hot Rod and Blurr showing up, it makes sense -- in the original Marvel G1 comics they came from the "future" time of then year 2006. This story is set in 2012, so 6 years after these characters would have appeared in Marvel G1 anyway; so it makes sense to me that they would be in this story. Certain events that led up to Transformers the Movie probably did not occur (since Unicron was destroyed in 1991) - this is most likely a different time stream from the one that the "future Autobots" originally came from - which is nothing new to this continuity (after all, we had two Galvatrons from two different parallel universes in Marvel G1 ). So I guess these Future Autobots will never travel back in time and partake in Target: 2006 and the Time Wars. Timey-wimey...

The art looks great. Someone at yesterday's meet described it as "modern-retro," and I think that's an apt description. It's still very much traditional Wildman, but a touch of contemporary design element in it. Baskerville's inking has improved since G1 -- he hasn't drawn spittle everywhere and made everything look saturated! (yay!) The colouring is fantastic -- I so do not miss Yomtov's colouring from G1. Anyone notice that in the flashback, Soundwave is purple, but in the present day he's blue? Heh.

Bring on #81!