Transformers: Galaxies #1 - IDW Publishing

TRANSFORMERS: GALAXIES No. 1, September 2019

Spinning-off from the ongoing “Transformers” series by “IDW Publishing”, and apparently focusing upon some of the toy line franchise’s lesser known “secondary characters”, Tyler Bleszinski’s script for this twenty-page periodical probably does live up to the “Vox Media” co-founder’s belief that his penmanship has made “the hardcore Transformers fanbase happy”. Yet whilst such an “incredibly flattering” response from the die-hard readers is understandably “truly fulfilling” for the author, this comic’s persistently inaccessible attention to detail concerning “the fan-favourite Constructicons” must have put off any perusing bibliophile who simply happened to pick a copy of this publication up off the spinner rack so as to ‘dip their toe’ into the building of an Energon processing plant on Mayalx. 

For starters, the frequent time-jumps between life on Cybertron after the War against the Threefold Spark and the ever-grumpy Hook’s increasingly irritating modern-day moans on Planetoid #051075 incessantly jar the reader from enjoying any sort of flow to Bleszinski’s storytelling. Such repeated relocations arguably prove particularly perplexing when the jolts occur every few panels or so, perturbingly transporting the audience from the historic ruins of Iacon, the Central Architectural and Design Headquarters, “Mayalx. Now”, and “Then” within the space of a few seconds.

Equally as confusing are all the different robots thrown into the mix straight from this book’s opening. Having literally just been introduced to the likes of Scrapper, Scavenger, Hook and Mixmaster as they approach the completion of the final standing structure on Mayalax before “we can blow this wasteoid”, Tyler instantly adds the decidedly haughty Wheeljack and Termagax to the pot, before completely bamboozling the uninitiated with even more "mecha toys" in the shape of Bonecrusher and Long Haul; “If I melt a little of that with a hint of refined Energon, I wonder if I can’t create an even stronger alloy that’ll… Oh, yes. Hello.”

Sadly, even the artwork of Livio Ramondelli only seemingly augments this comic’s confusing storyboards, with the American illustrator’s frequent close-ups of the different automatons making it incredibly difficult to discern one Transformer from another. Admittedly, both Wheeljack and Termagax are still pretty recognisable from their triangular eye-lenses and somewhat Samurai-like aesthetic, but the same cannot be said for the plethora of Constructicons who all seem to have similarly-sized square heads with glowing shade-shaped visors...

The regular cover art of "TRANSFORMERS: GALAXIES" No. 1 by Livio Ramondelli