10 Transformers Resource Books you NEED to own

Hello friends! It's time for another collection of words that I've strung together and called it a blog! Today's topiss is on Transformers resource books, to which, it may surprise you, there are MANY options to choose between, so I figure I would give you a small overview on some of my favourites and most commonly used books (to prove that, I'm using photographs of my personal copies, which should show crease-marks etc).

If you feel I have missed any resource books that you canot live without, then please let me know, and I'll look into them.

I have decided to combine a few books into one section, as they are so similar that it seemed pointless to do it any other way.

Please let me know if you have a topic you want me to cover in the future, and even just let me know what you think about this blog itself! I love feedback!! (When it's good :p)

#1 Bumblebee and Me, by Dan Gilvezan

My first option is a bit unusual, in that it is an autobiography rather than a traditional resource book. I'm including this book here though, because it gives a very good overview on exactly how the process for the creation of the Transformers TV series went back in the 80's, and tells us the full story, including several interesting anecdotes along the way, all told by original cast member Dan Gilvezan (G1 Bumblebee).

I have to admit, I originally only bought this book for me to have something to get Dan to sign at Auto Assembly 2013, but I read it, and found it incredibly interesting and entertaining.

#2 You Can Draw Transformers, by Simon Furman

This book shows us a great deal of techniques for drawing Transformers, and laying out comics in general, going to details of the importance of plotting out a page, making room for speech bubbles etc, and even goes through the whole design and scripting process etc..

The only major issue I have with this book is that it shows you how to draw Dreamwave style robots.....you can probably just ignore those sections huh?

#3 How to Draw Transformers Prime, by Nick Roche

This book is basically the complete opposite of the previous drawing book, it gives no helpful details on drawing Tranformers, or laying out anything (this is even admitted by the author Nick Roche) but it features several lovely pictures of characters from the Prime TV series, and for a long time was the definitive source of decent drawn out (ie not CGI) images of Prime characters (until the Art of Prime came out, but more on that later)

#4 Transformers 30^th Anniversary Collection, by Jim Sorenson

This book is a compilation of selected comics from the franchise's now 30 year old history, and includes creator commentary and behind the scenes details for each issue, which includes sketches and unused concepts. This series attempts to collect examples of all major Transformers lines, and only misses a few out (Fun Publications, 3H, Titan etc), making it a pretty good thing to have in your collection

#5 Transformers: The Complete Ark, by Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster

This book, or rather 2 books blended together, collects character models from the G1 series together to give us a VERY comprehensive collection which is extremely helpful for people wanting a source to draw from for their own comics, or for just simple identifying purposes.

There are some characters who are missing from this book, but most have their Japanese counterpart's instead, so they still get a sort of appearance (annoyingly though Nightbeat was recast a female character in Masterforce, so his character model WASN'T used :( )

More pages to this book can be found on Jim Sorenson's blog, the Disciples of Boltax: http://boltax.blogspot.co.uk/

#6 The Art of.... books, by Jim Sorenson and Mark Bellomo

I decided to place these 2 books together as both give us a lot of the same thing, but for 2 different parts of the franchise. The Art of Fall of Cybertron and The Art of Prime both feature several beautiful pages of character models and design processes, and also include expansive background scenery and item details that are just so good that they have to be looked at for themselves rather than jut described if I'm honest.

#7 The Covenant of Primus, by Justina Robson

This is one I was waiting for for some time. Even though it is presented in a novel style, this IS a resource book, and gives us a lot of invaluable details about the early years of the Cybertronian people. Even though these events are most likely unable to be the same in every continuity, I'd say it's safe to assume that some are the same.

The book tells us about the long unknown Original 13 Transformers, tells us about how the Quintessons get involved in the planet, how the Cybertronians evolved over time, and ends with the finale of the Prime series, giving us a very thorough story-arc and a great amount of information at the same time.

The included illustrations also add to the fun by giving us some nice visuals of several unseen characters, including the Primes and other beings we've only heard of before.

#8 Transformers Vault, by Pablo Hidalgo

Confusingly, this entry ISN'T actually about the Vault in general, it's about the so-called “Ultimate Guide” series. These books are made to compile information about the brand to have it in one convenient place. The reason I am using the Vault as my example here, is because it is the most recent edition.

You may see the problem already...these books are flawed as they are made at one specific point in time and are VERY quickly made obsolete when anything new is released. The best options are just to read this information on the TFWiki to be honest.

The reason I am putting these on as a helpful resource book however is that they do give us new information when they are first released, and even afterwards, they do have several interesting pieces of information for you to marvel over (like the previously unknown concepts from the G2 series revealed in the Vault for example) and also include some extra features, like tech specs, pull out posters etc.

#9 Transformers Profile books!

The Transformers franchise has had several profile books across it's history, including the Marvel Universe series, Dreamwave's More Than Meets the Eye lines, the 3H and Fun Publications profiles included in their comics, the Beast Wars Sourcebook and the new Kreo Encyclopedia (pictured).

These books are useful for identifying characters, but are often unfortunately filled with some mistakes, either with their art or the profiles themselves, but they can still be helpful.

A major problem for these tyrpes of books though, is that like with the Ultimate Guides, they become quite outdated quite fast (for example, the Kreo Encyclopedia was released just this month, and is already outdated!

#10 Transformers Animated: the Allspark Almanac series, by Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster

My final choice here, is of course the Allspark Almanacs. These books are essentially most of the other books on this list combined for the Animated series. They contain profile pages, background information, background artwork, spoilers for what was MEANT to happen next (since the series was cancelled).

These books are essentially perfect as resource tools, giving names to items and characters only briefly seen in the series and were even filled with about 100 Easter Eggs per page just to satisfy even the most picky of long term fans.

There was even an Allspark Almanac Addendum in the works with the Transformers Collector's Club, which covered brand new characters and concepts, but that ended very suddenly with no word as to why. I originally hoped, nay, prayed that it was due to a proper 3^rd Volume being released instead, but since it's been a couple of years now, I think it was just abandoned due to spacing issues or something.

What is Transformers 2015?

So...this is a weird topic to do considering all we have at the moment for this new TV series is this one picture, shown above, and a short announcement:

"The Hub Network, champions of family fun and the only network dedicated to providing kids and their families entertainment they can watch together, announced today that a new animated series is currently in production for the globally renowned TRANSFORMERS brand. Set to debut in early 2015, the new action-packed series is being produced by Hasbro Studios, the production and distribution division of Hasbro, Inc., and is executive produced by Jeff Kline (“Transformers Prime,” “G.I. Joe Renegades”).
Taking place years after the battle between Autobots and Decepticons in “Transformers Prime,” this all new series centers around our hero Bumblebee stepping up to lead a brand new team of Autobots. The show features an all-star cast with Will Friedle (“Boy Meets World”) returning as Bumblebee, along with Darren Criss (“Glee”), Constance Zimmer (“House of Cards”) and Ted McGinley (“Married with Children”). Blending 3D characters with hand-painted environments, the series mixes action-packed adventure with lots of comedy, making it a rip-roaring experience for kids and families to enjoy together.
This is a big year as the TRANSFORMERS brand celebrates its 30th anniversary. The Hub Network will also be celebrating the success of the franchise with special events to be announced later this year."

But this small amount of information ACTUALLY tells us quite a bit of information about the upcoming series. So I figured I'd collate it all here for people to look over:

1. This series is beginning in 2015, this is most likely so it doesn't conflict with the 30th Anniversary and the 4th Transformers movie (both this year) and will allow it to last for a longer amount of time, unlike with poor old Animated   :(
2. The poster shows Bumblebee and Optimus in their new designs, showing us that they are going with a hybrid Prime and Animated art style this time around, which should make fans of both series happy. This is also a good thing as this will mean that the episodes will be quicker to make (meaning less hiatus periods that Prime was infamous for) and likely more crowd scenes (which Animated was loved for!)
3. The series is set an undetermined amount of years after the end of Transformers: Prime. This confirms that the series is set in the Aligned continuity (which was obviously going to be the case regardless, considering the time and effort Hasbro put into this new continuity). Due to the time lapse they can avoid showing the rebuilding and repopulating of Cybertron (and thus avoid being too much like the Robots in Disguise comic) and can even show what advances have been made on Earth in that time too - Do Humans know about the Transformers? What are the kids (now adults likely) doing? and so on.
4. The series is set at least in part on Cybertron, as shown by the poster, meaning we get to explore a new rebuilt version of the planet that we all love.
5. The main cast features only one returning actor (Will Friedle as Bumblebee) meaning that the previous cast members are either not appearing, or will have more of a guest appearance setup. This is good as we get more characters to grow attached to, but with the likelihood of older ones appearing too. The only confirmed role is that Bumblebee will be leader.
6. Optimus, as shown in the poster seems to be a ghost or a hologram of some sort, and appears to be based on his Beast Hunters body, further supporting this theory. This means that either he is to be a "force ghost" type character to guide Bumblebee in leadership, or is simply just a memorial statue of some sort.
7. We have no word on some of the left-over plot points, such as Airachnid and the Insecticons, or even the Rescue Bots. This series could be dangerous for Rescue Bots in particular, since it COULD give spoilers to future events in that series (since it's still set concurrently with about series 1/2 of Prime as of now) but hopefully it'll avoid anything like that...it would be nice to see Heatwave and the others with the Prime characters of course though :)
8. At the end of Prime, the Decepticons have been disbanded (at least what we've seen of them anyway) and since we know Cybertron has been rebuilt that likely means that the war has ended in general too. This could mean that another enemy or faction could make an appearance, such as the Star Seekers or Quintessons. I wouldn't really expect the Predacons to be a threat in this series, since they seemed content enough with just living their lives as an endangered species on Cybertron for now

So these are just my thoughts on a series that has yet to be made....I hope you enjoyed them, and let me know what you think I should discuss in the future, or just your own personal opinions on the matter in the comments below!

Top Ten WORST Comics

In honour of Transformers reaching the grand old age of 30 (which I am dreading!!) I decided to make a “Top Ten” list to celebrate. However I know that EVERYONE and his brother has made a “Top Ten Best ” so I decided to make a change, and thus, here are my top ten WORST Transformers titles.

For this list I decided to focus only on titles that I either own a copy of, or have read throughout. I also decided to omit any “adaptation” comics, as they tend to be based on earlier incomplete scripts.

Please remember, these are just my personal opinions, and most likely you will not agree with them, that is fair, but please don't spam me with hate comments regarding your favourite series being here, just make your own counter-article or something :)

If you enjoy this list then let me know and I'll try to make more, maybe you can even give me some topics to discuss! Anyway...on with the fun....

NUMBER 10

Heart of Darkness (2011)

This series was required by IDW to fill in the gaps left when the series was shifted to All Hail Megatron so as to bring Galvatron and his troops back into the story for their big role in the (then) upcoming Chaos story line, following their apparent deaths in Revelation.

Overall this series is just bad, the writing was very clunky, the art work was about what you would expect from a fan comic rather than an officially licensed piece, and it ended up creating a few plot holes that needed to be filled in when the current IDW series began in 2012! (Such as Nova Prime's presence in the Dead Universe, the types of robots in Galvatron's army and so on)

Speaking of bad artwork though...

NUMBER 9

Titan UK (2007-Current)

This one is difficult, it BEGINS very well, it shows back-stories for the main characters and then jumps into an alternate reality storyline that lasted for almost 20 issues.

Things really started going downhill for the series however about halfway through the Revenge of the Fallen rebrand when issues were seemingly moved around in the schedule, which ended up with the finale of the series clearly being actually a mid-way storyline, which included a tail piece that was picked up EARLIER in the series regarding Dead End.

What really took the cake for this series though was Dark of the Moon, which lasted only 4 issues before being promptly rebranded again for Prime, whilst this was potentially because the end of DOTM was so sad that they couldn't find a way to use the remaining characters without it being depressing, they could have tried and even shown us some of the toy-only characters that the previous 2 brands were great for.

The comic is now mostly a magazine full of puzzles and occasionally good profiles and competitions along with an 8-page comic that just doesn't feel the same as it did in 2007 (most likely because it's a different writer, but nonetheless!)

The artistic problems throughout the early stages of the comic were actually more humorous than anything else and ended up with us having about 10 character designs for every main character in the series.

NUMBER 8

Transformers: Bumblebee (2009-2010)

I know, you all know my feelings about Bumblebee in recent years very well, but my reasons for his own mini-series' being here are good ones!

We didn't need any explanation for Optimus being Autobot leader, nor Rodimus during any of his times in charge, nor Megatron (Megatron: Origin shows his backstory, not why he's a great leader) yet when Bumblebee is inexplicably made Autobot leader during Mike Costa's ongoing series we were given a four-issue story JUST TO JUSTIFY IT!

This wouldn't have been such an issue for me if Bumblebee had shown any leadership skills in the past, but he didn't, he was mostly just shown as a spy or a scout type character, and yet the Autobots voted him as leader, despite guys like Jazz, Hound or Prowl (all leadership types) being available.

The artwork in this series is mostly un-viewable as most characters are in completely the wrong character models for the time they're set in, the story itself is just boring and it gets resolved in a confusing manner that results in Bumblebee getting a completely new body that just HAPPENS to look like his counterpart from the Movies.

That's right...this whole series was just to make Bumblebee, who Hasbro were making their mascot, into a major player in all their continuities. The result? We hated him more than ever!

NUMBER 7

Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters (2013)

This series had a lot of potential, it included the popular Dinobot characters, it was a sequel to the popular “Rage of the Dinobots” series and was made as an “add-on” to the then being broadcasted Transformers Prime TV series, what could go wrong?

Well, it could go very wrong when they decided to end the series very quickly with the last 4 issues of this 8-issue series being all about the Dinobots and other Cybertronians leaving the underground when the Autobots from Earth returned and revived Cybertron.

This resulted in a few annoying things, several characters who were being fleshed out were just killed off or ignored very suddenly, the threat of the Forged was extinguished within a few panels, and lots of bad story editing.

One of the major annoyances in the final 4 issues was that it was treated as if we didn't know what was happening to Cybertron, yet we were shown what happened in the Prime finale, so the appearance of Team Prime wasn't a shock either!

NUMBER 6

Marvel G1 - US (1984-1991)

This is the one I was most worried about. Before I go too far into this I just want to say that there ARE a few good issues in this series, but they are few and far between. I was born in 1985, so by the time I was able to read or understand comics the series was either over or mostly over, as such I didn't read this series until several years later and I have to say, the majority of these stories have not aged well in the slightest.

The artwork in general is bad (I know it's from the 80's, but it's still a factor) and the general take on characters is just appalling. They introduced dozens of new characters at a time in places, then just ignored them until they were needed for a crowd-filler scene or mass death. Now I now this was likely a mandate from Hasbro to advertise their toys, but it could have been done in a better way.

The continuity of this series is also just terrible with characters changing appearance, location, or even status every issue, most of the more memorable stories (like Skullgrim becoming a Movie star or Roadhandler becoming a wrestler) are only remembered due to their absurdity.

The only reason I can really give for people loving these comics so much is due to nostalgia-tinted glasses, they remember them as much better when they were kids, and now they're adults they refuse to accept that they're bad (much like with most of the early G1 toys)

The end of the original Marvel storyline, and the original Transformers storyline in general has sparked several continuations over the years, but my next entry is probably the worst of them....

NUMBER 5

Regeneration One (2012-2014)

This series has only just ended (literally just last week) so now I can safely say that over all it was just bad. I have only enjoyed 3 issues of this series (#80.5, #0 and #100) and have found the rest of the story arcs to just be great bores, derivative of older stories and felt rushed towards the end of all of them.

One of the main reasons I disliked this series in general was because of the promises we were made before it was made, about how the characters would be updated from how they looked in the 80's and how it would be like they never left off.

First off, every character has their G1 character models and alternate modes, how is that being updated exactly? And secondly, the series has clearly been influenced by the comics of recent years as to their plots, meaning this is most likely NOT what they had planned for the ending all those years ago

The plot of “Loose Ends” is very similar to that of “All Hail Megatron” in that Megatron has had his Decepticons conquer Earth with the Autobots being absent, and of course Circuit Smasher is a new version of Circuit Breaker.

“Natural Selection” just screams “The Return of Optimus Prime”, primarily the hate plague plot-line of it. This particular story arc pisses me off a fair amount though because of the “Gene Key” which basically says that all Transformers are genetically predisposed to be an Autobot or a Decepticon....let that sink in please!

“Destiny” was a long-built up storyline that just felt like a retelling of the early plot from the G2 comics, and even had a scene similar to Jhiaxus blowing up San Francisco! This story also had a few plots that were left unattended from his time on IDW 's main continuity with Omega Supreme and Monstructor having a battle, as well as Soundwave and Blaster.

“War to End All Wars” is essentially the second part of the G2 comic series, but just replaces the Swarm with the Underbase ghosts and Wreckers.

In all these stories the “big bad guy” is killed off, or otherwise taken out of the picture extremely quickly in the last part of that arc, and all their plans are unravelled.

NUMBER 4

IDW Ongoing (2009-2011)

This was IDW's plan to bring in a new audience after All Hail Megatron ended and I think it's safe to say that it failed. This series spawned the idea for Bumblebee becoming leader, Optimus becoming jaded at his own leadership, and was just confusing at times.

Some of the plots were intriguing at first, but like with so many things they were all wrapped up far too quickly or had too many needless twists and turns.

The series did get good from Space Opera onwards, but that seemed to be just because they were building up to the finale storyline “Chaos”. Mike Costa, the main writer of this series has even admitted on occasion that he didn't understand the characters or particularly care about them, which is very clear to see from the dialogue at times.

The artwork at the start of this series was also notorious for it's Movie-G1 hybrid style, that no-one wants to EVER see again, the movie designs work for the movie characters, please don't breed them together with other series'!!

Also this series gave us “Continuum”.......

NUMBER 3

Micromasters (2004)

How ironic is it that a comic created to celebrate the brand's 20^th anniversary should appear on a “worst list” for the 30^th anniversary?

I don't think I have to say much about this, everyone already knows why it's bad, but I guess some people who have been fortunate to avoid it the bare bones of it.

This series is essentially a G1 retelling of the Mini-Con's plight from the Armada comic...except it removes all the good bits of it.

Like most other Dreamwave series this comic has bad artwork and writing (the writing in particular here is bad). And just suffers from terrible continuity and design choices, such as the half-hearterd excuses for all the Transformers to have Earth modes, despite the story being centuries before the Earth vehicles are even designed!

I'm sure some of the plot issues would have been dealt with had the company of stayed afloat after being struck by the Pat Lee iceberg, but most seemed like just terrible ideas that just shouldn't have ever been made.

NUMBER 2

GI Joe vs The Transformers (Dreamwave) (2003-2004)

Don't worry guys, this isn't about the wonderful Devil's Due Press series that spawned 3 sequels, this is about the depressingly terrible one Dreamwave made at the same time!

The basic premise for this series is a good one: “What if the Transformers woke up during WW2?” but honestly, thy made this series too gritty, including the artwork, and just made itself unreadable. None of the characters were fleshed out too well, with all of them just being “big robot alien” or “soldier guy” and honestly, I didn't care in the slightest when any of them were killed off.

The redesigns used here were just messy (think Carlo Magno's attempts of drawing Movie characters, but worse!) and you just couldn't identify most characters without someone name-dropping them

They did try making a sequel series later in the year set in the 80's, but a we all know that series only ever released one issue before the company went belly-up. It looked like a promising series that could have redeemed this one, but we'll never know now!

And now...finally....

The worst Transformers comic series in my opinion....

Let's milk this for a bit....

NUMBER 1

Fun Publications (2005-Current)

Yes....it's these guys.....

For those who don't know, Fun Publications (or Fun Pub) are the current Transformers convention license holders and make comics for Botcon and their collector's club, that sound's great right?

WRONG!

Fun Pub's work tends to feel a little fanwank-ish, and it sacrifices a good coherent story most of the time just to get a couple of obscure characters a moment to shine, or to show off a potential “new toy” design using an existing character model, but redesigned to be someone else for no other reason other than “it's cool”.

Their Botcon boxset comics are made to advertise their current year's toys, this is totally fair and I understand these are just adverts for their new toys, but they could make them a little more interesting in the process. Most of the well-loved comics from this batch are based on a pre-existing universe (like Beast Wars or Animated) but they then are never seen from again for some reason or another.

The majority of their other sets are based in the same long-standing storyline they've been working on since the 2007 set, and is just starting to wear thin now...

The Collector's Club comics are released 8 pages at a time, with 6 issues a year. This gives us a 30 page comic per year for one story. Unfortunately it reads a lot like that as well. If you read a whole year's storyline in one sitting, you'll notice that every 8 pages has a cliffhanger that is solved the next page with something completely random.

This set of Fun Pub's comics are where we find most of the obscure character fanwank as these comics aren't made to advertise a toy in particular.

That being said, the series does do some good things, like gives us some profiles for underused or new characters, or even gives us some cool fan-theories come to life (like a life after his shooting for Dion, or what happens after the Golden Age returned in the G1 cartoon) but in general is just disappoints at every turn

Thank you for putting up with me throughout this thing, let me know what you think, but don't expect me to change my mind on most of these.

I know some of you excepted things like the Dreamwave Ongoing or All Hail Megatron to be on this list, but honestly, they were like #11 and higher.....

Leave comments below for any other things I should discuss in the future!