THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers Regeneration One #87
Reviewed by Blackjack

”…why anyone would go to the effort of seeking out this patently derelict husk of a spaceship.”
The plot slogs onwards, as stupid-sounding as it is. I never really got the Gene Key, and despite how Scorponok might monologue about how allegiance still comes down to personal choices, the idea that you are genetically predisposed to good and evil, and that it can be switched on and off with a device, makes for a ridiculously poor plot. It’s really stupid that they went with the Gene Key when a simple virus or a reprogramming or, hell, even the Hate Plague would’ve done the job easily without going through all the Gene Key stuff. Also the question remains about why Scorponok doesn’t just infect Grimlock with the Gene Key himself.

Brainstorm, Hardhead and Highbrow are reduced to violent thugs and beyond storming the Iacon Defense Hub (which Grimlock can easily do) I’m not sure why Scorponok went through all the trouble to bring them up. Considering they don’t act or even look like the Headmasters we’re familiar with it’s just Furman going ‘oh look the Autobots are evil now’ while not having the heart to do it on Grimlock, which would make the story far more compact. The Headmasters are just so two-dimensional evil thugs that irritate the hell out of me with their bad dialogue, and Grimlock’s going along with Scorponok’s plan and infecting people…

Starscream and Galvatron find Shockwave in the Ark… again, both Galvatron and Shockwave are re-introduced back into the fold after being taken out. Furman is just revisiting all the Decepticon leaders except Ratbat and Straxus now, isn’t he? Optimus Prime stays on Earth, and while it seems to be set up that he’s going to come to conflict with either Spike or Team Galvatron, he doesn’t really do much but show up here and there until the finale.

Another plot point introduced here is Hot Rod going down to the now-spent chambers of Primus to try and investigate if there’s any traces of the Matrix left, while the Demons apparently kill Lightspeed and the others down there. Again, it feels really stretched out with a couple of pages just devoted to Hot Rod going down an elevator.

Overall it’s another setup issue, which begs to mind just how many of these we need, or why Regeneration One needs to be stretched out for so long. We get scenes wasted on people like Siren and Crosshairs, and if it was any other writer doing this I would be excited at the prospect of them getting characterization, but knowing Furman these guys will probably be unceremoniously returned to the background sooner or later in favour of playing with the big boys. It feels just so decompressed and generally so exhausting to read just to pad things out, with extremely little happening in each issue, and both dialogue and art being pretty bad.


The original heads of the Headmasters were all left behind on Nebulos, though why Scorponok doesn’t make new bodies for his fellow Decepticons, or only used these three as opposed to Chromedome and Fortress Maximus boggles the mind. You’d think Scorponok would be more interested to muck around with his former rival now, don’t you?

Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebe were teleported into the Primus chamber in #60-61, though considering they found their way out conventionally I’m not sure why it took so long to locate that particular tunnel beyond Primus magic.

Grimlock touches down in Cybertropolis, a city introduced in the Beast Machines cartoon.

Hot Rod threatens to put Grimlock in a Variable Voltage Harness, a torture equipment that Grimlock himself likes to use during his stint as Autobot leader.

What appears to be the Skyscorchers are seen on the prison monitors since the events of Loose Ends, Part 1, so some of them may have survived the Insecticons’ attack there. The art is so bad that I can’t really tell any specific one, and it might not be them and just generics that look like them.

Perceptor’s lower face is coloured blue as a homage to how he showed up in many of the older Marvel comics.


Brainstorm and Hardhead’s head designs are thoroughly messed up throughout this entire series. Brainstorm randomly sprouts a mouth and a darker-coloured lower face, and Hardhead now has a faceplate randomly. It is not impossible for Scorponok to, oh, transplant Brainstorm’s mouthplate to Hardhead, but it’s idiotic and generally makes them bad looking.

The three Autobot Headmasters are drawn pretty ugly here, but Brainstorm is practically butchered – only by the fact that he’s referred by name that I even know he is Brainstorm. Hell, his character model randomly changes throughout the issue itself…

Hosehead is walking around alive, though he was last seen in #76 as a wrecked corpse after the Unicron battle.

All three are also coloured as Highbrow in page 2.

Grimlock phrases ‘yourselves’ as ‘yourself-s’.

Crosshairs is miscoloured in blue and gray with an orange faceplate on page 7.