Optimus Time: Transformers Punishment!

ONE of the best things about manga and anime is the openness to doing stories which run parallel to the main story. They even have a great term for it: side stories. These in-continuity tales enable creators to fit in characters and plotlines that would be obscured by the weight of the main narrative.

            And that’s exactly what we’ve got with the new “Transformers: Punishment” one-shot. This extra-sized one-shot is actually a print version of a comic book originally created for the interactive Madefire platform. Reading it, it’s hard to believe this wasn’t originally scheduled for a release from IDW Publishing considering how good it is.

            Fans of writer John Barber and artist Livio Ramondelli will get a thrill because they get an extra helping of the two this month. “Punishment” is the kind of side story you get when the characters aren’t all trying to save planets.

            That being said, this is still Optimus Prime’s show. In “Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye” and “The Transformers,” Prime bids the Autobots farewell seemingly on a lark to go back to Cybertron. He doesn’t tell anyone why he’s going back right now, only that he must and that he will be back.

            “Punishment” details what happens on his trip to Cybertron. The book begins with the death of three Decepticons—Wilder, Treadshot and Brisko—at the hands of an unknown assailant.  This is apparently not an isolated incident, and Cybertron’s supreme leader Starscream soon arrives on the scene with Decepticon detective Barricade at his side. There’s someone killing Decepticons in what is called a Decepticon ghetto.

The Last Issue: Transformers Robots in Disguise # 34!

THIS is the last issue of IDW’s “Transformers: Robots in Disguise”—technically speaking. But it’s not going away, it’s just changing titles next month to just plain “The Transformers” # 35. Read into that what you will, but “TF: RID,” though well-written and well-illustrated, still somewhat remains overshadowed by its even-better-written and better-illustrated sibling title, “Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye.” That is not helped by the fact that “TF:RID” is now jumping all over the place. Originally, the series seemed focused on the Earth-bound adventures of Optimus Prime and the remaining Autobots, but it’s since jumped back to life on a bittersweet Cybertron and then back to Earth now that the humans have aligned themselves with the Decepticons. But now, it’s going back in time with some surprising and defining back stories.