3 out of 5

Yes, ’tis true: I bought this in the hopes of reading more of John Barber’s work and, distressed to discover that he was heavily involved in the Transformers comic world, sought a toe-dipper that would be somewhat self-contained without having to go knee- to waist-deep for a trade.  After all – this was just an experiment to check out his work; no need to plop down my hard earned 14.99 which could surely go toward stupid TMNT tokyopop toys.

Turns out Transformers is a difficult toe-dippin’ franchise – part of why my casually-interested-in-reading it inclinations have thus far inclined me to not – and it also turns out that ‘Fall of Cybertron’ the prestige is a collection if 6 digital shorts that led up to a video game.  Self-contained, sure, but maybe not the best bet for a taste test.

However, knowing what this is does give it some leniency – I was wondering why the plot was restated every few pages – and makes it more worthwhile to note that it’s not a bad read, although it definitely doesn’t give the uninitiated (e.g. Me) any context, and the ending is certainly establishing something – Dinobots! – that said uninitiated would have no reason to add an exclamation point to.

The gist, pardoning cumbersome use of terms I don’t understand: At some point in T-form history, the wise Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic autobots, fights a war on Cybertron against the nefarious decepticons.  Foiling their advances is a lack of power – energtron – which the bad guys seem to have an awful lot of.  Optimus wisely plans.  Meanwhile, at the start of our story, battle-ready autobot Grimlock, leader of the elite battle force Lightning Strike Coalition, has kicked off an undercover – i.e. unbeknownst to Prime – plan to discover the baddies source of energtron.  His secret agent to this effect, Swoop, has been kidnapped, so off to the rescue, all battle-ready, Grimlock goes.  And then… Dinobots!  No one says that, but the back cover tells me so, and I’m guessing they’re a big, cool, dinosaur deal.

Did your eyes glaze over?  Decepticons?  ‘Swoop?’. Hey, I love TMNT; to embrace ‘Formers is certainly to embrace these attributes, so no criticisms there.

On the other hand, Dheeraj Verma’s art goes a long way toward giving these lumbering machines recognizable traits and personalities, and a color scheme that manages to be both primary (these were toys designed for 80s teen boys, after all) and war-torn dungy, though I admittedly still struggled at points with determining heads versus feet versus machine treads and the like.  And Barber’s script, as mentioned, is competent: Heavy-handed battle cries without being too overwrought or cheeky.  He gets a bit dodgy when trying to switch the narrative from ‘bots to Dinobots, but I sort of suspect some reference to the game or the larger Transformers history might’ve helped me there.

So: Not turned off the franchise or Barber, but let my experience guide you: This ain’t a jumping on point.