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 20th anniversary should appear on
a “worst list” for the 30th 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!
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