THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers: The Animated Movie #3 (of 4)
Reviewed by Inflatable Dalek

Ironically, it's the weakest part of the Movie that makes the best issue of this adaptation to date.

That's mainly thanks to the changes generally making the structure stronger, Grimlock's not an Junkion-snogging idiot, and whilst people still feel compelled to remind each other of their own names the dialogue is mostly left as was and doesn't become so clunky as in the previous two issues.

However, that doesn't disguise the problem the Movie has that the entire Junk/Quintessa sequence is just padding in the Quest Narrative to stop our heroes achieving their goal before the hour and a half is up. It also isn't enough to hide the complete pointlessness of this comic either.

An improvement then, but the last issue will have to be even more of one to elevate the comic above Generations as the most worthless thing IDW have done to date.


Ron Friedman. Un-credited. I'll stop mentioning it when they stop doing it.

The cover seems to be inspired by the issue 2 cover to Marvel's adaptation of the film.

For this issue the individual chapter title ("Terror On Two Worlds!") is repeated on the first page of the actual comic rather than just on the credits page.

The big changes from the Motion Picture:

Hot Rod has some more exposition dialogue when fighting the fish ("don't know where the rest of the Autobots from the shuttle landed...") in order to bring people who haven't read last issue / seen the film / been smart enough to read the recap on the first page up to speed.

Kup says "End of the road!" at one point on Junkion, which may well be a reference to one of Simon Furman's long-standing in-jokes.

The "Beryllium Baloney" exchange between the Dinobots is cut short, Grimlock doesn't refer to himself as a king (here or later in the issue) and thankfully doesn't join in the rhyming thanks to the "Me Grimlock say we're on our way!" being dropped.

Unicron reiterates to Galvatron that the Matrix is the only thing that can threaten him.

Wreak-Gar's reaction to the arriving Decepticons is cut.

There are no Insecticons on Junk.

There's an additional exchange between Kup and Hot Rod in the Sharkticon pit- "Looks like they're not done with us". "You got it backwards lad, we're not done with them!”

Grimlock encouraging the Sharkticons to start a revolution is gone.

Wreak Gar's TV is tuned to "ABC's TV".

There is no song and dance on Junk.


[Only referring to new mistakes in this comic rather than those of the film.]

Daniel is drawn way to small on the last page — at that scale it's hard to imagine him having done any damage when he runs Scavenger down.

What happens to all the Sharkticons? One second they're fighting the Dinobots hard, the next they've all buggered off (thanks to the loss of the "Me Grimlock say..." sequence.)