Incredible Change-Bots

Incredible Change-Bots #1

by Jeffrey Brown

Far away in space, there is a planet full of robots able to change from robot form to vehicle form — the Incredible Change-Bots! Leaving their war torn planet, the Change-Bots arrive on Earth, where their battle continues — but at what cost?! Part parody, part nostalgic tribute, part moral fable, Jeffrey Brown re-invents the shape changing robot genre into an occasionally stopping action comedy half-full of romance, drama and epic battles!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Humor, Science Fiction, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comedy

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2007

About the author

Jeffrey Brown was born in 1975 in Grand Rapids, Michigan and grew up reading comic books with dreams of someday drawing them, only to abandon them and focus on becoming a 'fine artist.' While earning his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brown abandoned painting and began drawing comics with his first autobiographical book 'Clumsy' in 2001. Since then he's drawn a dozen books for publishers including TopShelf, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, McSweeney's and Chronicle Books. Simon & Schuster published his latest graphic memoir 'Funny Misshapen Body.' In addition to directing an animated video for the band Death Cab For Cutie, Brown has had his work featured on NPR's 'This American Life' His art has been shown at galleries in New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Paris. Jeffrey's work has also appeared in the Best American Comics series and received the Ignatz Award in 2003 for 'Outstanding Minicomic.'
He currently lives in Chicago with his wife Jennifer and their son Oscar.

Reviews

[S. Zahler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The overall concept of the Incredible Change-Bots is clearly inspired by The Transformers, but this sharp little graphic novel stands on its own as a creatively engaging, funny, and uniquely rendered piece. It is far more enjoyable than most of the movies, shows, and comics that the 80s toys begat, excepting the James Roberts More Than Meets the Eye comics, some of which are brilliant.
I'd file Jeffrey Brown's homage/parody/expertly realized fan fiction alongside Tom Scioli's equally enjoyable (and biblical) deconstruction of the Go-Bots, both visually and qualitatively. Both stories are complete, touch childishness in a knowing way, have some cool ideas under the hood, and make me wanna take Devastator and Soundwave out of their boxes. And I'm still laughing about "Poor Aim."

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this Transformers parody up at a local convention because I spotted little "chee choo" sound effects when each robot changes shape. It's full of references to the old show, but lines like "Being your leader doesn't mean I'm responsible" are funny enough to stand on their own for people too young to have that Saturday morning nostalgia.

[hweatherfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! I'm familiar with Jeffrey Brown's older works (The Girlfriend Trilogy) and found this while browsing the graphic novel shelf at my job. I assumed that it might be more for kids, similar to his Darth Vader series - but I was pleasantly surprised! The amount of dry adult humor had me cracking up throughout. A fun little read based around a classic concept, if you're looking for something light-hearted and d.i.y aesthetic, I'd definitely recommend this one.

[Matt Maldre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sucked me in. It was sitting on an end-cap shelf at Chicago's Book Cellar. I opened to a few random pages, and i just started cracking up so hard, i was crying! This book shall be good. Oh yes, it shall.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was alright, but I felt the joke was getting a little worn by the end. The text on the spine is in Japanese, and that confuses me nearly every time I look at the Top Shelf section of my bookcase.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not my favorite of Jeffrey Browns but it was descent. Maybe I'm not a big enough Transformers fan to get all the jokes? I prefer his autobiographical stuff and his collectoins.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you liked the transformers, you'll enjoy this funny little graphic novel. It is pretty much a skit from Robot Chicken in print, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Jay Berger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rules. The splash pages introducing all the bots (Balls the golf cart, personal fave) was so fun. The art is simple, straighforward, matches the tone of the book, and is inspiring honestly. Comics are so versatile, and it's a great reminder that comics with superheros (not necessarily "superhero comics,"), independent comics, humor books, etc. come in all comic forms. If you draw it, it's a comic--it doesn't have to come from one of the Big Two (or Three, depending on who you ask), it doesn't have to be in a floppy format, and it can look like it was done completely with 8 colored markers. Inspiring and hilarious. Balls!

[Alex Sarll]

I suppose this is the transitional work between Jeffrey Brown as respected indie cartoonist, and as the guy who does cat and cutesy Star Wars books that get put on the counter as last-minute gift ideas. It makes the obvious jokes about Transformers - some of them have silly names and/or change into daft things; their ancient enmities make very little sense; it's a bit weird when people get inside them. Sometimes it's even mildly amusing. But in a world where Tom Scioli is allowed to do official Transformers books which are at once more indie auteur, and far more strange and absurd, it can't help feeling very outmoded.

[Ruben Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book so much. It pulls me back into a past self, a self that would invent stories with his brother, a self that argues with "kid logic" that is dumb and absurd and makes perfect sense. Besides being nostalgic and cute, it's also just really funny. It had me laughing throughout the book.

Possible negative elements:
Jeffrey Brown's art style is awkward and adorable, but not for everyone
If you're completely unfamiliar with transformers, you won't get every reference (but it's still great as its own book)

[Искандер Булатов · Rating 3 out of 5]

Не самая лучшая работа Брауна. Это конечно забавно и похоже на то как человеку, который ничего не знает о трансформерах, пытаются пересказать сюжет оригинального мультфильма. Автор конечно высмеивает типичные сюжетные клише, однако особой иронии я не заметил. Да и новых забавных персонажей можно было придумать побольше.

[R.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came for the Transformers nostalgia, stayed for the the tongue-in-cheek humor. Parodies can go either way: too close to the original vs. not close enough, too ridiculous vs. not ridiculous enough. This is just right and is a really fun read, though I imagine anyone not familiar with Transformers will have a hard time getting into it.

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An affectionate parody of the original Transformers. Amusing enough, certainly worth a few chuckles, though I don't know how much appeal it would have to non-Transformers fans. Note there are a few rude jokes that keep it from being appropriate for little kids. (B)

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

You might enjoy it if you grew up watching Transformers, but I honestly found it boring. It wasn't for me.

[Erich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Change-bots are hilarious

I enjoyed the hell out of this take on other popular transforming robots. I felt the art and comedic writing tied together well. Sad to see it end.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing special.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious, spot-on parody not only of everything Transformers, but also 80s cartoon dramas and some comics. Compact and super enjoyable fun.

[Colin Parfitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it all with a big grin on my face at this affectionate parody of Transformers.

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

to be fair this gave me exactly what i expected

[Mario · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible Change-Bots: More Than Just Machines surprised me. I found myself enjoying more than I expected I would. I also had low expectation due to this being my first Jeffrey Brown comic. In short, my low expectations coupled with the quality of the writing and the art resulted in a very pleasant reading experience.

Jeffrey Brown clearly loves, or at least loved, the original Transformers cartoon his Change-Bots are obviously based on. You get the sense that he enjoys the "incredible change" sound effects so much he would say them aloud while drawing each and every incredible change that appears in the comic. And there are quite a few.

My reasons for enjoying this comic are simple. I like the Transformers but I don't love them. I like them enough to get most of the jokes and homages but because I don't love then franchise I can laugh with ease at the jokes that poke fun at the whole thing. Jeffrey Brown walks this line throughout and its a delight.

I really liked the art. Brown has a different style that you would normally find in Transformers comics and it's refreshing. Similarly, the use of markers to colour the book was very effective and in some cases down right surprising. Brown's colouring technique is actually quite beautiful in some cases, such as a sun setting in the desert or several of the explosions that are present throughout. All of Brown's artistic choices makes for a unique and vibrant comic. There is also an energy present in the art that greatly influences the tone of the comic.

I have one main point of criticism. The size of the page is too small for my taste. I feel as though the comic could benefit from the art having a bit more room to breath. I would like to clarify that I am talking specifically about the size of the drawings and not number of panels per page. That being said, I also like the size because it makes it seem as something a big less professional. I don't mean this in a negative way, you get a feeling Brown is a kid in high school making this comic in class instead of concentrating on his studies.

I would recommend this book to all fans of Transformers or other transforming robot franchises who also have a good sense of humour. I would also recommend it to aspiring comic creators to give them an example of a book which uses very little in the way of fancy art technique such as computer colouring.

[Patrick Artazu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looked at from a certain perspective, you could call this book a success in that it resembles the kind of story an actual 6 year old might invent while playing with his Transformers. For that matter, the art resembles a 6 year old’s, too. Now, who am I to say? but even if that was Jeffrey Brown’s real, for true intention, I think he could’ve done something better with the core concept, which I love: an homage to/semi-parody of Transformers adventures as they occurred in the minds of kids growing up 25 years ago, via indie comics. At least, I was excited by the inherent creative possibilities. The trick would be for Brown to evoke a sense of nostalgia while writing something that could stand on its own merits. Let’s face it, for all that it was potent fertilizer for a kid’s imagination, those cartoons were crap. Instead of trying to elevate the material in some way – which I think is totally doable, given that there’s a lot that is genuinely cool and fun about the idea of giant transforming robots, and the myriad emotional connections they have for an audience that was left cold by their CGI movie incarnations (I was, anyway) – Brown wrote something that is actually a step backwards from that old junk and can’t be justified by the modicum of self-awareness he includes. There’re only a handful of gags that work (the best one, and it is admittedly awesome, is that the Changebots perceive our vehicles as the dominant lifeforms on our planet, and ourselves as some kind of parasite.) Meanwhile, the art is so unsophisticated that the transformation scenes (which are endless) are without energy or interest to the point that I pretty soon was ignoring them all together – but there would be amazing potential for creative invention in the hands of a better artist. Two stars for an unbelievably tedious execution of a five star idea.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I treated myself to this book (and its sequel, which I haven't read yet) during Top Shelf's annual clearance sale. It's an affectionate send-up of the old Transformers cartoons, which were something I grew up with, so clearly I am the target nostalgia-driven audience. The main joke of the book is that it's a silly trifle of a story about robots who live only to fight each other, because ... well, because basically that's all that the Transformers cartoon was about. There are a couple of particularly good Zing!s at the expense of the more egregiously ridiculous elements of Transformers lore, but ultimately nothing truly subversive or deeply insightful. It's as if Brown simply wanted to come up with his own Transformer characters and do a riff on the whole idea, with a few wisecracks breaking up essentially a face-value knock-off. Fun to read, but fairly trivial.

[David Edmonds · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm almost embarrassed to say this is my first book of the year. I bought this sometime during the last couple of years, it got shuffled into a box during a move at some point, and I just found it again the other day. Basically, it's nothing more than one big parody of Transformers, especially the original 80s cartoon. It's not a great parody; it's not a terrible parody. There are some genuinely clever riffs on the original 80s cartoon, but it feels like it gets too bogged down in its own cleverness in other parts of the book. I personally can't see anyone who wasn't a fan of the cartoon from the 80s appreciating this at all, and even then it's more or less just a middle of the road caricature.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining Transformers parody, though not as awesome as Jeffrey Brown's superhero book Bighead. The Awesomebots and Fantasticons fight on ElectronoCyberCircuitron, then come and fight on Earth. The humor comes largely not from cutting swipes at the Transformers themselves (though I did like one of the Fantasticons named "Wheee"), but from Brown's awkward dialogues, like when one of the robots tells a human that they should pleasure each other (meaning trade information and secrets). Unlike most of Brown's other work, this is fully-colored, and looks pretty great, though his art will never be confused with any official Transformers cartoons.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

this had me bust out laughing several times. A brilliant comic book parody of the "transformers". Instead of shouting "transform!" when they change from car to robot, they shout "incredible change!" this is the best thing Jeffrey Brown has done. Most of his stuff is autobiographical. Blech. "Write what you know" is bad advise. How many narcissists with an inflated sense of self importance have written volumes of "what they know". I very much like the idea of someone writing about something they know nothing about. "incredible change!"

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed out loud a lot while reading Incredible Change-Bots. Jeffrey Brown lovingly mocks Transformers and he makes sure no plot hole gets filled. He calls attention to the asinine purpose of robots who can transform into vehicles, boomboxes, and microwaves. Awesomebots and Fantasticons are selfish, oblivious, and fight each other for seemingly no reason. Heck, they don't even recognize their enemy unless they're shooting lasers at one another. It leads to an ongoing cycle of logic-defying sneak attacks, "they vanished!" retreats, and me laughing just thinking about it.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a parody or a straight tribute to any existing Transformers narrative, Brown's book is instead a tribute to toy-based narrative play using the Transformers as, um, vehicles. The instant changes of location, the sudden pauses in battle ("let me set up my trailer...") and especially the dialogue seem to come straight from the brain of a ten-year-old (a ten-year-old with a vague, sardonic political awareness). And the art is actually really beautiful. Colored with marker, yes? It looks nice.

[Nicol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me and the eleven year old really enjoyed this goofy spoof on Transformers. It got him into writing his own comics, which he calls The Adventures of Stickman and usually spoofs off scifi flicks. This book is somewhat more for adults who were either hardcore Transformer cartoon fans in their youth (as the author states he was) or just enjoys robots in general with an MST3K humor thrown in, but me and the tween share the same bad sense of humor, so it was a good "together" read.

[Wes Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very funny! No, I mean VERY funny! The laughs aren't constant, that just wouldn't be possible, but they are scattered throughout and some of the jokes are real doozies! Robots! Favorite line: "I dunno, Balls... who needs girls when you get to hang out with robots?"

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprised to come across this in the library. Real quick read and a real change of pace from Brown's usual autobio stuff. Fun tribute/parody of The Transformers. I'd like to thank my friend B for introducing me to Brown.