Transformers Robots in Disguise Animated

Transformers: Robots In Disguise Animated #1-6

by Georgia Ball, Priscilla Tramontano (Illustrations)

GO TEAM ’BEE! BUMBLEBEE leads an all-star team of AUTOBOTS to Earth to find rogue DECEPTICONS… but in this all-new story based on the hit Cartoon Network animated series, they’re forced to go up against their old friend, ULTRA MAGNUS. What terrible secret can set AUTOBOT against AUTOBOT?!

Genres: Comics, Childrens

152 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2016

About the author

Georgia Ball is a writer and developer living in Orlando, Florida. She launched her first webcomic in 2004, Scooter and Ferret, with her husband, artist Scott Ball. The strip ran until 2010 when she landed her first gig writing for licensed comic books. Since then she's written for Transformers, Scooby-Doo, My Little Pony, and Disney Princesses. Her horror credits include four issues of Evil Dead 2.

Recent projects have included Disney's Frozen Comic Collection from Joe Books, three Strawberry Shortcake graphic novels from IDW Publishing and a WWII graphic novel on Guadalcanal for Osprey Publishing. She lives with her husband and daughter with their dog and two cats.

Reviews

[Adelaide Metzger · Rating 5 out of 5]

~Warning: Reviewed by a super Transformers fan~


Although Robots in Disguise isn’t my favorite Transformers series on television, the biggest piece of excitement that comes with it is that it follows the Transformers Prime series sequentially. However, after watching the first two seasons the creators seemed to take the easy road and only connect RiD to Prime through minimal references.

And that’s why we say grace for a comic like this that can give us what we want as fans of Prime.

First off, writer Georgia Ball does a spot on job of making the plot, dialogue, and behavior of the characters akin to that of the RiD show, making the atmosphere light hearted and taking the time to sit back from the plot to insert several clever jokes that I actually thought were funny. I love the art by Priscilla Tramontano--it really makes it feel like you’re watching the show with more thought out framing; I seriously can’t get enough of the design of the characters. They look great in the show, but seeing them under the talented hand of Tramontano made me fall in love with them even more especially with the facial expressions. I really connected more.

The story structure and advancement of the plot, as I said, is pretty much what would happen in the show but with more connectivity between each issue than there is with each episode in the show. I mean, it’s an ongoing comic arc, so that shouldn’t be a surprise, but because IDW gets to make the call of how many issues are published, the writer didn’t have a lot of room for “filler” segments which, I’m frustrated to say, the TV show consists mostly of (one of my TV pet peeves *insert angry emoji*). But everything about this feels well thought out and perfectly balanced--signs of an elite author. Ball is very good at what she does. That harmony alone got this book 4 stars from me.

Now on to the stuff that was teased in FCBD 2016 #0 and left me like “Whaaaaaa?!” You don’t get one character from Prime, you get two, three, four official characters that return and a hilarious fan character that I didn’t ever think would make any continuity into Transformers at all!

~SPOILER SECTION~
Only read if you want to be spoiled or have already read the book.

If you read the Free Comic Book Day issue, you know it left a cliffhanger that showed Arcee, Bulkhead, and Ultra Magnus on Earth and monitoring Bumblebee’s activity. Well, it turns out Bumblebee catches Bulkhead and Arcee reporting back to Ultra Magnus and is hurt because of it. They never do explain what happened between Bumblebee and Ultra Magnus other than they had different points of views on leadership. I was surprised how complicated the plot got when Team Prime entered the stage with them making Bumblebee think Clipshade was a Decepticon and that leading to Overhead (who is a girl Buffaloid) being the mastermind behind it all--it was a great take on adding creativity to the restrictions of the RiD universe.

The trio of Team Prime aren’t the only official characters to return! Predaking makes a very brief appearance in a scared, disturbed kind of animal way. The last time we saw him in Prime was him flying off to somewhere on a waking Cybertron. (Possibly) hundreds of years later he’s back on Earth in solitude it seems. Would have loved to see him help Optimus--or even speak at all would have been amazing. But he just flies off again, seemingly given in to his primal instincts and staying away from all civilization.

And STEVE??? WHAT THE HELL?!!!?!



If you’re unfamiliar with Steve the Vehicon, he is a fan-spawned character that started out as a joke in the fan art community then quickly became meme bait for Prime fans followed by fetish-seekers turning him into one of Stascream’s lovers.



I never really showed interest in him while browsing Deviantart or Tumblr, but I knew of his existence, so color me shocked when--out of freaking nowhere--he’s placed in the comic book version of the sequel to Prime. I don’t read the My Little Pony comics but my siblings do, so I know of how they are packed full to bursting with fan-pleasing endeavors from fan created characters to pop-culture references. Looks like IDW implemented a small bit of that here with Steve. I still can’t believe it. I laugh every time I think about it. My Little Pony fan service: Yes. Transformers fan service? This opens up a whole new area of exploration.

One thing I didn‘t get was the weapon of Starscream‘s that Optimus and Windblade retrieved in order to convince the Vehicons that Steeljaw was deceiving them. I don‘t recall a particular weapon in the Prime series that Starscream was fond of other than the spark extractor, but that wasn’t really a pinpoint of significance. In this comic, the Vehicons refer to the weapon by saying, “(Starscream) would not be without it if he were in a position of leadership.” It…just looks like a missile to me. I‘m either going to have to re-watch every Prime episode to find it or do some research because the way this comic was hiding this item for the big reveal in the end makes it seem like a token of importance that relates to the Prime show.

I loved this volume and the way it ended opened up the possibility for continuing Prime in areas of Robots in Disguise (Animated) that avid fans are thirsting for. As for the general reader, the concentrated story line and enjoyable characters are evidence enough to get into the Transformers universe. Good. Now I’m a little more excited about season 3.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars