Transformers Generation One: War & Peace

Rating:
Summary: An improvement over the first arc
Review: Dreamwave's second Transformers First Generation miniseries is not so much a sequel to the first miniseries as it is a pilot for their First Gen ongoing. The X-Files-ian approach to the TF saga is continued, but this time we have a new writer who has a better handle on the characters and has taken them back to their roots. Although, as with the modern Star Trek series, there are still many things that will likely upset the stomach of the old school purists.

The story starts out with Optimus Prime leading the Autobots into battle against Megatron and his Decepticons, over the possession of what looks to be either a probe or message pod, from their home planet of Cybertron. The fighting is interrupted by the arrival of Decepticon's resident Brainiac, Shockwave. Shockwave has taken control of Cyberton and turned it into a utopia where Autobots and Decepticons live in peace. He gives an ultimatum to the Earthbound TFs, join him or die. Everyone's favorite backstabber Starscream sees the situation as an opportunity to eliminate Megatron(without checking to see if he's really dead) while on the Autobot front, Prime is disheartend to learn that his former protege, Ultra Magnus, is a staunch supporter of Shockwave's new order. When Prime becomes a fugitive, Magnus has a crisis of conscience.

The main strength of the story is how the original characters intermingle with the post-Movie characters. In both the show and the Marvel series, older characters were generally written out to make way for newer characters. Another plus is fusion, writer Brad Mick has taken the fan favorite characterizations of the show, the more mature sci-fi oriented approach of British comic, even the amped-up violence and fatalistic heroism of the Japanese cartoon, and blended them all together. A gripe might be that there is quite a bit of "George Lucas dialogue" in the mix(Star Wars fans will know what I'm talking about), but that can be attributed to the writer still being a little green around the gills. But otherwise, the story is a little bit more tightly plotted this time, because not everything has to be wrapped up in a little pink bow by the end. Even the unintiated will quickly figure out that Shockwave is really up to no good, but were left with a compelling mystery anyway. The story ultimatly DOES stand on it's own, but some plot threads(e.g. Megatron's revenge, Starscream's real agenda) are going to wait until Vol. 3. If you're a fan of TF or even anime/Sci-Tech then this is one to check out.