Comics / IDW / 2005-2018
The Transformers (IDW)
A complete reboot. More Than Meets the Eye turned the cast into one of comics’ best ensembles: Megatron’s redemption, the Lost Light.
The run
What it is
IDW Publishing's Transformers line began as a rescue operation. Dreamwave Productions collapsed on 4 January 2005 and shut down mid-story on Transformers: Generation One and The War Within, and IDW editor-in-chief Chris Ryall moved on the licence immediately. Hasbro awarded IDW the rights on 19 May 2005, and the new continuity opened with an issue #0 in October 2005 that took 100,000 copies in pre-orders, a company record at the time. Simon Furman wrote it as, in his words, his own take on Transformers after twenty-plus years with the characters. He deliberately threw out the Ark crash, had the Transformers arrive on Earth recently and on purpose, kept Optimus Prime and Megatron off the board early, and worked in something close to real time using maps to track the story. E.J. Su designed and drew the launch series and was given room to redesign the cast. The line ran continuously to November 2018, making it the longest unbroken Transformers continuity ever published.,The first phase sprawled fast. Infiltration (2006) was followed by Stormbringer, which killed Cybertron off-page and reset the strategic map, then Escalation, Devastation and Revelation, plus the open-ended Spotlight one-shots that let Furman write anyone from Shockwave to Wheelie. Eric Holmes wrote the prequel Megatron Origin; Nick Roche broke through drawing and writing on Spotlight and Maximum Dinobots. Shane McCarthy's All Hail Megatron (2008 to 2009, sixteen issues) handed Earth to the Decepticons and introduced Drift. Mike Costa took the 2009 ongoing for thirty-one issues while the miniseries kept coming: Last Stand of the Wreckers, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Drift, Heart of Darkness. In January 2012, after The Death of Optimus Prime one-shot, IDW split the line into two ongoings that shared a universe but almost nothing else in tone: John Barber's Robots in Disguise, a planetary political thriller on a Cybertron ruled first by Bumblebee and then by Starscream, and James Roberts's More Than Meets the Eye, a starship quest comic about a crew looking for the Knights of Cybertron.,More Than Meets the Eye and its continuation Lost Light are why this continuity still gets recommended to people who do not care about Transformers. Roberts wrote a fixed ensemble and gave nearly all of it interior life: Rodimus as an insecure captain performing confidence, Ultra Magnus as a rulebook with a person inside it, Rung the forgettable psychiatrist, Whirl as damage that will not stop moving, Swerve running a bar on borrowed sitcom nostalgia. The humour is real and load-bearing rather than decoration, and it sits directly against horror, the Decepticon Justice Division being one of the nastiest antagonist units in licensed comics. The plotting is the other half of the reputation: long-fused setups planted years earlier, an alternate Functionist universe created by the crew's own time travel, and a Rung reveal held back to the final arc. The books were also unusually open about queer relationships. Chromedome and Rewind are a couple from early on, Cyclonus and Tailgate become one, and Lost Light introduced Anode and Lug as trans women in a same-sex relationship, which The Guardian covered directly in December 2016. ComicsAlliance gave the run its Continued Excellence in Serial Comics award for 2015 and named it Best Sci-Fi Comic of 2016. The wider line ended by folding into the Hasbro Comic Book Universe through Revolution and First Strike, and closed with the six-issue Unicron event in November 2018 before a full reboot in 2019.
Collecting
The issues that matter
| Issue | Why |
|---|---|
| #The Transformers #0 (October 2005) | The first issue of the whole continuity and the book that proved the licence was worth having. Took 100,000 copies in pre-orders, a record for IDW at the time. Furman and E.J. Su. |
| #The Transformers: Infiltration #1 (January 2006) | First numbered issue of the reboot proper. Establishes the covert, recently arrived Transformers and the Ratchet-led cell. |
| #The Transformers: Megatron Origin #1 (2007) | Eric Holmes's prequel and the earliest point in IDW's own published chronology. Megatron as a miner, before anything else in the continuity happens. |
| #The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #1 (10 July 2008) | Launch of the sixteen-issue arc that flipped the premise, giving the Decepticons a conquered Earth and stranding the Autobots on Cybertron. The line's biggest tonal swing before 2012. |
| #The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #5 (26 November 2008) | First appearance of Drift, created by Shane McCarthy and drawn by Guido Guidi. Drift went on to a solo miniseries, a Spotlight, Empire of Stone, a major role in MTMTE and Lost Light, and the live-action films. |
| #The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers #1 (2010) | Opening issue of the five-part Roche and Roberts miniseries that is routinely named the best Transformers comic ever published, and the book that put Roberts in position to get More Than Meets the Eye. |
| #The Death of Optimus Prime one-shot (2011) | The hinge of the entire continuity. Ends the 2009 ongoing and directly sets up the January 2012 split into More Than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #1 (11 January 2012) | Launch of the acclaimed run. Art by Nick Roche. Introduces the Lost Light and its crew including Tailgate, Rung and Swerve, and its subtitle How to Say Goodbye and Mean It is echoed by the title of the final issue of Lost Light seven years later. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #7 (22 August 2012) | First full appearance of the Decepticon Justice Division, Tarn, Vos, Kaon, Helex and Tesarus, hunting and executing Black Shadow. The DJD are set up two issues earlier in #5, where Pharma is harvesting transformation cogs for them, but #7 is where they appear as a unit. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #12 (19 December 2012) | Before and After. Establishes Chromedome and Rewind's relationship history, including Rewind's earlier partner Dominus Ambus, and ends with Cyclonus deciding to bond with Tailgate. The issue that made the book's approach to same-sex relationships explicit and central. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #15 (20 March 2013) | Overlord's rampage. Pipes is killed, Ultra Magnus is stabbed through the spark, and Chromedome has to jettison the slow-time cell with both Overlord and Rewind inside it. The run's most notorious gut-punch. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #16 (24 April 2013) | The Gloaming. Brainstorm gives Chromedome the recorded final message in which Rewind tells him to move on and says I love you. Frequently cited as the single most-quoted page of the run. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #26 (5 February 2014) | First comics appearance of Windblade, chapter eight of Dark Cybertron. Windblade was built from Hasbro's 2013 Fan Built Bot poll and is the rare fan-designed character to become a continuity fixture, a toy, and the lead of her own book. |
| #The Transformers: Windblade #1 (April 2014) | Launch of the first Transformers comic made by an all-female creative team, Mairghread Scott writing and Sarah Stone on art. |
| #More Than Meets the Eye #55 (27 July 2016) | Do Not Go Gentle, the last chapter of the six-part Dying of the Light siege against the DJD. The five closing issues of the arc take their titles from Dylan Thomas's poem, and the arc kills Skids and effectively ends the crew's original run of the ship. |
| #Transformers: Lost Light #1 (14 December 2016) | Relaunch of Roberts's story after Revolution forced a renumbering, released the same day as Optimus Prime #1. Debuted at 11,342 copies, IDW's ninth best-selling comic that month. |
| #Transformers: Lost Light #8 (26 July 2017) | The issue Bleeding Cool covered for confirming Anode and Lug as trans women in a same-sex relationship. The two are reunited in #6, when Anode uses stolen sentio metallico and the Necrobot's spark-flower to bring Lug back to life. |
| #Transformers: Lost Light #22 (8 August 2018) | The Rung reveal. Adaptus of the Guiding Hand names the four other first Cybertronians and closes on Primus having become Rung. Payoff for a running joke about a forgettable psychiatrist set up in 2012, confirmed and explained by Rung himself in #23. |
| #Transformers: Lost Light #25 (7 November 2018) | The finale, titled How To Say Goodbye And Mean It: Part 2, closing the loop on MTMTE #1. The Lost Light is decommissioned, Megatron faces trial, and the crew's later lives are shown, ending with the quantum duplicate jumping into a new universe. |
| #Optimus Prime #25 (21 November 2018) | The last issue published in the continuity, art by Kei Zama, released a week after Unicron #6 and placed last in IDW's own in-story chronology. Ends the thirteen-year run before the 2019 reboot. |
21 titles
The series
IDW published thousands of issues across overlapping titles, several of which change name mid-run without restarting their numbering. This is the catalogue at series level; the numbering traps are set out below.
| Series | Years | Issues | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Transformers: Infiltration Simon Furman (writer), E. J. Su (art) | 2005-2006 | 7 | The launch title of IDW's rebooted Generation 1 continuity, in which Autobot and Decepticon cells are already embedded on Earth running a covert cold war rather than waking from a four-million-year sleep. The story is told largely through three humans, Verity Carlo, Hunter O'Nion and Jimmy Pink, who stumble into it. Numbered #0-6. IDW overarching sub-numbering #0-6. |
| The Transformers: Stormbringer Simon Furman (writer), Don Figueroa (art) | 2006 | 4 | A four-issue miniseries running parallel to Infiltration that leaves Earth entirely and shows Cybertron as a dead, drained world. It exists largely because readers wanted a human-free story, and was advertised with the tagline 'Nothing But ROBOTS On Cybertron'. IDW sub-numbering #7-10. Originally planned to run after Escalation, moved up in response to fan feedback. |
| The Transformers: Escalation Simon Furman (writer), E. J. Su (art) | 2006-2007 | 6 | The direct sequel to Infiltration and Stormbringer, in which the Earth cold war turns hot as the Decepticons initiate Phase Two using the Ore-13 super-energon Starscream discovered. A parallel thread follows the human Machination organisation abducting Sunstreaker. IDW sub-numbering #11-16. Direct sequel to Infiltration. |
| The Transformers: Megatron Origin Eric Holmes (writer), Alex Milne (art) | 2007 | 4 | A prequel tracing Megatron from energon miner at Outpost C-12 to founder of the Decepticons, by way of Kaon's underground gladiator pits. It sits far in the continuity's past and was originally developed for Dreamwave before that publisher collapsed. Marcelo Matere assisted on art for #2. Chronologically the earliest story in the IDW continuity. |
| The Transformers: Devastation Simon Furman (writer), E. J. Su with Nick Roche and Robby Musso (art) | 2007-2008 | 6 | The third -ation miniseries, in which Megatron deploys Sixshot as a one-robot living weapon against the Autobots on Earth. Simultaneously the planet-scouring Reapers arrive and the Dead Universe Cybertronians stake their own claim to Earth. IDW sub-numbering #17-22. Sequel to Escalation. |
| The Transformers: Revelation Simon Furman (writer); E. J. Su, Nick Roche and Dan Khanna (art) | 2008 | 4 | The intended fourth -ation miniseries, truncated by IDW editorial and published instead as four linked Spotlight-format one-shots on Cyclonus, Hardhead, Doubledealer and Sideswipe. Together they resolve Furman's Dead Universe arc, Nemesis Prime's crew, the fate of the first Ark's crew and Arcee's revenge on Jhiaxus. Sub-numbered #23-26, the only Spotlights ever folded into the -ation sub-numbering. Published in addition to the regular Spotlight line. A planned fifth chapter, 'Expansion', was never made. |
| The Transformers: Spotlight Mostly Simon Furman early on; later Shane McCarthy, Nick Roche, John Barber, James Roberts, Mike Costa and others. Rotating artists. | 2006-2013 | 31 | A semi-ongoing line of 31 unnumbered standalone one-shots, each focused on a single character, running alongside the main IDW books. Under Furman they doubled as plot-seeding for the -ation series; after 2012 they returned as Generations toy pack-in comics and a stealth prelude to Dark Cybertron. Publication order of subjects: Shockwave, Nightbeat, Hot Rod, Sixshot, Ultra Magnus, Soundwave, Kup, Galvatron, Optimus Prime, Ramjet, Blaster, Arcee, Mirage, Grimlock, Wheelie, Cyclonus, Hardhead, Doubledealer, Sideswipe, Blurr, Jazz, Drift, Cliffjumper, Metroplex, Prowl, Orion Pax, Thundercracker, Megatron, Bumblebee, Trailcutter, Hoist. Six carry distinct story titles rather than 'Spotlight: X'. |
| The Transformers: All Hail Megatron Shane McCarthy (writer, #1-12), Guido Guidi (predominant artist) | 2008-2009 | 16 | A deliberate soft reboot and new-reader jumping-on point after Furman's run was cut short, opening with the Decepticons having already won and Megatron's army occupying New York City while the Autobots are broken on Cybertron. Hugely controversial at the time for discarding Furman's continuity, though its reputation has softened. Issues #13-16 are 'Coda' anthology issues by various hands, not McCarthy solo. Originally solicited as 12 issues, expanded to 16. |
| The Transformers: Maximum Dinobots Simon Furman (writer), Nick Roche (art) | 2008-2009 | 5 | Furman's true final chapter on IDW G1, wrapping the Scorponok/Machination and Sunstreaker/Hunter storylines he had run since Escalation. Grimlock and the Dynobots go rogue in Nevada while Scorponok deploys a Headmaster army built from Sunstreaker clones. Intended to be sub-numbered #27-31; published out of order relative to All Hail Megatron, which had already started. |
| The Transformers (vol. 1 ongoing) Mike Costa (writer), Don Figueroa then rotating artists incl. Guido Guidi, Alex Milne, Livio Ramondelli | 2009-2011 | 31 | The third major act of IDW's G1 continuity, set two years after All Hail Megatron with the Autobots stranded on a rebuilt Earth, low on energon and hunted by the human agency Skywatch. It went bi-weekly in 2011 for the series-ending Chaos event and was replaced by More Than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise. James Roberts wrote #22-23 solo and co-wrote the four 'Chaos' issues (#24, 26, 28, 30) with Costa. Followed by the one-shot The Death of Optimus Prime (Dec 2011). |
| The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers Nick Roche and James Roberts (writers), Nick Roche (art) | 2010 | 5 | A brutal miniseries in which a reassembled Wreckers squad is sent into Garrus-9, a prison lost to the Decepticons and now the personal playground of Overlord. Deliberately violent and unglamorous, built on the theme of good people dying in stupid, pointless ways, and the book that launched James Roberts' career. Roberts is credited from #2 onward though he wrote the Rotorstorm profile in #1. |
| The Transformers: Autocracy / Monstrosity / Primacy Chris Metzen and Flint Dille (writers), Livio Ramondelli (art) | 2012-2014 | 28 | A loose prequel trilogy set just before and during the earliest years of the Great War, following Orion Pax's rise and Megatron's turn from freedom fighter to conqueror. Livio Ramondelli drew and coloured all three in his painterly style, giving the trilogy a unified look distinct from the main ongoings. Format warning: Autocracy is 12 digital 8-page chapters (no print singles, TPB only). Monstrosity is 12 digital chapters but only 4 print issues. Primacy is 4 print issues. The issueCount of 28 counts digital chapters; the print count is far lower. |
| The Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye James Roberts (writer), Alex Milne (art) | 2012-2016 | 57 | A character-driven space opera set almost entirely aboard the starship Lost Light, as Rodimus and a crew of Autobot misfits chase the myth of the Knights of Cybertron. Widely regarded as the most acclaimed Transformers comic ever published, celebrated for its ensemble cast, long-fuse plotting and its openly queer central couple. Plus Annual 2012 and a Revolution-branded one-shot. Issues #23-27 are Dark Cybertron chapters. Colours by Josh Burcham (#1-28) then Joana Lafuente. |
| The Transformers: Robots in Disguise (retitled The Transformers vol. 2) John Barber (writer), Andrew Griffith (art) | 2012-2016 | 57 | More Than Meets the Eye's sister book, set on Cybertron rather than deep space, following Bumblebee's fragile post-war government and later Optimus Prime's return to command. Each issue is narrated in first person by a different cast member, and the run ends with Optimus annexing Earth into the Council of Worlds. One continuous book across three titles. Robots in Disguise #1-34, then The Transformers #35-57, then relaunched (fresh numbering) as Transformers: Optimus Prime #1-25. Plus Annual 2012 and a Revolution one-shot. |
| The Transformers: Windblade (vol. 1 and vol. 2) Mairghread Scott (writer), Sarah Stone then Corin Howell (art) | 2014-2015 | 11 | A Cybertron-set spotlight on Windblade, the first officially fan-created Transformer, as she tries to heal the ailing Titan Metroplex and untangles a conspiracy pointing at Starscream. Volume 1 was the first Transformers comic produced by an all-female creative team; volume 2 pivots into interplanetary politics as Windblade reconnects Cybertron with the lost Titan colonies. IMPORTANT: Windblade's first comic APPEARANCE is not in her own book. It is More Than Meets The Eye #26 (Dark Cybertron Chapter 8), 5 February 2014, about two months before Windblade vol. 1 #1. Vol. 1 is 4 issues, vol. 2 is 7. |
| Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers / Requiem of the Wreckers Nick Roche (writer and artist), Josh Burcham (colours) | 2015-2018 | 6 | Nick Roche's sequel run to Last Stand of the Wreckers, a bleak crime thriller in which Springer assembles an ad-hoc Wreckers team to find the missing Prowl before his secrets restart the war. Requiem of the Wreckers is the epilogue one-shot, set two years later, that closes out Springer and Verity Carlo's story. Sins is 5 issues, Requiem is 1. Both collected with Last Stand of the Wreckers in The Wreckers Saga (2018). |
| Transformers: Till All Are One Mairghread Scott (writer), Sara Pitre-Durocher (art) | 2016-2017 | 12 | The ongoing sequel to the two Windblade miniseries, set on Cybertron and the reunited Titan colonies as Windblade, Starscream and the Council of Worlds try to hold a fragile peace together. It ran twelve issues before being wrapped up with a final annual. Plus a Revolution one-shot ('Informed', 2 November 2016) and Annual 2017. Issues #5-8 tie into Titans Return. |
| Transformers: Optimus Prime John Barber (writer), Kei Zama (art) | 2016-2018 | 25 | The rebranded continuation of Robots in Disguise / The Transformers, following the fallout from Optimus Prime annexing Earth into the Council of Worlds. Kei Zama's heavy blacks plus Josh Burcham's Ben-Day-dot palette gave it a deliberately retro Generation 2 look. Relaunched with fresh #1 numbering, but narratively continuous with Robots in Disguise #1-34 / The Transformers #35-57. TWO annuals, 2017 and 2018, not one. Issues #22-24 tie into Unicron. |
| Transformers: Lost Light James Roberts (writer), Jack Lawrence (art) | 2016-2018 | 25 | Effectively season three of More Than Meets the Eye under a new title and a new art team, picking up with Team Rodimus marooned on Necroworld and then stranded in the Functionist Universe. It ran two years to a planned grand finale that closed out the whole Lost Light story. CRITICAL: Lost Light does NOT continue More Than Meets the Eye's numbering. It restarted at #1 and ran #1-25. It is a rebranded sequel, not a renumbering. |
| The Transformers: Dark Cybertron John Barber and James Roberts (writers); Atilio Rojo, James Raiz and Livio Ramondelli (art), Phil Jimenez layouts | 2013-2014 | 12 | IDW's simultaneous celebration of the Transformers 30th anniversary and the second anniversary of its 2012 relaunch, in which Shockwave enacts a plan millions of years in the making. It ran as alternating chapters through More Than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise with dedicated one-shots at each end. Twelve chapters: Dark Cybertron #1, then MTMTE #23-27 and RiD #23-27 alternating, then Dark Cybertron Finale. Preludes: RiD #17-22, MTMTE #22 and the six Dark Prelude Spotlights (Orion Pax, Thundercracker, Megatron, Bumblebee, Trailcutter, Hoist). Eighteen issues in total were Generations toy pack-ins. |
| Transformers: Unicron John Barber (writer), Alex Milne (art) | 2018 | 7 | The grand finale of the 2005 IDW continuity and the third part of a loose trilogy after Revolution (2016) and First Strike (2017). It finally introduces Unicron to the IDW universe as a planet-eating existential threat, wiping the board ahead of the 2019 reboot. Numbered #0-6. Optimus Prime #22-24 are direct tie-ins. Chronologically Optimus Prime #25 (21 Nov 2018) is the true final issue published in the continuity. |
Who made it
Creators
| Simon Furman | Met with Chris Ryall before the licence was even announced and set the ground rules for the continuity: no Ark crash, a recent and deliberate arrival on Earth, a real-time approach mapped out in advance. Wrote Infiltration, Stormbringer, Escalation, Devastation, Revelation, Maximum Dinobots and the bulk of the Spotlight one-shots. Called it his own take on the characters after twenty-plus years writing them. |
| James Roberts | Co-wrote Last Stand of the Wreckers with Nick Roche, then wrote More Than Meets the Eye #1 to #57 and Lost Light #1 to #25 as one continuous story from 2012 to 2018. Responsible for the Decepticon Justice Division, the Functionist universe, mnemosurgery, Rung, and the character work and long-fuse plotting that the run is known for. Two ComicsAlliance awards for the book, in 2015 and 2016. |
| Alex Milne | Primary artist on More Than Meets the Eye and a major contributor to Lost Light and Unicron. Drew the crowded ensemble scenes, the Overlord rampage in #14 and #15, most of Remain in Light and most of The Dying of the Light. |
| Nick Roche | Wrote and drew Spotlight: Kup, drew Maximum Dinobots, then co-wrote and drew Last Stand of the Wreckers with Roberts. Drew MTMTE #1 and #6 and contributed to Dark Cybertron. Also wrote and drew the Sins of the Wreckers and Requiem of the Wreckers follow-ups. |
| John Barber | Edited More Than Meets the Eye and wrote Robots in Disguise (2012 to 2014), its retitled continuation The Transformers, then Optimus Prime (2016 to 2018) and the Unicron finale. The political and continuity spine of the later line. Became IDW editor-in-chief. |
| Livio Ramondelli | Distinctive murky, heavily lit painted style. Worked across Dark Cybertron, Autocracy, Monstrosity, Primacy and Optimus Prime, including The Dead Come Home two-parter. |
| Mike Costa | Wrote the bulk of the 2009 ongoing The Transformers, which ran thirty-one issues from November 2009 to December 2011 and bridged All Hail Megatron to the 2012 relaunch. |
| Shane McCarthy | Wrote All Hail Megatron, the sixteen-issue arc that handed Earth to the Decepticons. Created Drift, modelled on samurai and given a Japanese drift-car alternate mode, to fill a gap he saw for reformed Decepticons in the Autobot ranks. |
| Guido Guidi | Main artist on All Hail Megatron. Also drew MTMTE #13 and the First Strike: Unification Day: Dawn special. A long-serving line artist known for classic-model fidelity. |
| E.J. Su | Launch artist on Infiltration, hired in 2005 and given free rein to slightly redesign the cast for the new continuity. Returned years later to draw Lost Light #19. |
| Don Figueroa | Drew Stormbringer, whose covers form the composite image used to represent the whole line. Also drew the Old Ways backup in All Hail Megatron #13. |
| Andrew Griffith | Main artist on Robots in Disguise and its retitled continuation, and later on Optimus Prime and Unicron. The visual identity of the Cybertron-side half of the line. |
| Mairghread Scott | Wrote both Windblade miniseries and the twelve-issue Till All Are One plus its annual. Said explicitly she had no intention of writing Windblade in a stereotypical geisha or demure-anime-girl role. |
| Sarah Stone | Drew Windblade volume 1 (2014), which alongside Scott made it the first Transformers comic produced by an all-female creative team. |
| Sara Pitre-Durocher | Main artist on Till All Are One, and a regular on Optimus Prime, Lost Light and Unicron. |
| Kei Zama | Lead artist on Optimus Prime from #1 through the final issue #25, with a scratchy, mechanical, heavily textured take on the cast. |
| Jack Lawrence | Lead artist on Lost Light, drawing the Dissolution, Plotters' Club, Everlasting Voices and most of the Crucible arcs plus the finale. |
| Casey Coller | Line artist across the later books, including Lost Light #20 and Optimus Prime #8. |
| Josh Burcham | Coloured MTMTE roughly #1 to #22, giving the early Lost Light its bright, saturated look, and later coloured Optimus Prime. |
| Joana Lafuente | Coloured MTMTE roughly #28 to #57 and worked on Last Stand of the Wreckers and Lost Light. |
| Eric Holmes | Wrote the four-issue Megatron Origin in 2007, conceiving it for his favourite character and drawing on the decline of the Roman Empire. |
| Chris Ryall | Moved on the Transformers licence the moment Dreamwave collapsed and brought Furman in. The reason the continuity exists. |
Continuity
Comics versus cartoon
Three numbering traps matter in the IDW line, and two of them are opposites of each other.
1) ONE BOOK, THREE TITLES. The Transformers: Robots in Disguise ran #1-34 (Jan 2012 to Oct 2014). With issue #35, 'Onyx Interface Part One', released 12 November 2014, it dropped the subtitle and continued as simply The Transformers (vol. 2), running #35-57 with the numbering unbroken. IDW made the change to avoid confusion with Hasbro's 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon. After #57 and a Revolution one-shot, the same book relaunched with FRESH numbering as Transformers: Optimus Prime #1-25 (Dec 2016 to Nov 2018). So the reading chain is RiD #1-34 -> The Transformers #35-57 -> Optimus Prime #1-25, one continuous John Barber story across three mastheads and two numbering schemes. An archive should treat these as one lineage with a title change at #35 and a renumber at Optimus Prime #1.
2) SEQUEL, NOT A RENUMBER. More Than Meets The Eye ran #1-57 (Jan 2012 to Sept 2016) and continues as Transformers: Lost Light. Lost Light did NOT carry the numbering: it restarted at #1 and ran #1-25. Same writer (James Roberts), same crew, same ongoing plot, new artist (Jack Lawrence replacing Alex Milne) and a fresh #1. Lost Light #25 is narratively issue 82 of one story but is printed as #25. This is the exact mirror image of the Robots in Disguise case, and conflating the two is the most common error in Transformers listings.
3) SUB-NUMBERING BEHIND THE COVERS. The 2005-2009 miniseries carried a hidden overarching sub-numbering: Infiltration #0-6 is #0-6, Stormbringer is #7-10, Escalation is #11-16, Devastation is #17-22, and the four Revelation Spotlights (Cyclonus, Hardhead, Doubledealer, Sideswipe) are #23-26. Maximum Dinobots was intended as #27-31 but shipped out of sequence relative to All Hail Megatron. Revelation is also not a numbered miniseries at all: it is four linked Spotlight one-shots, the only Spotlights ever folded into the -ation sub-numbering, published alongside the regular Spotlight line.
Two smaller traps: The Transformers: Spotlight is 31 UNNUMBERED one-shots, so it cannot be listed by issue number, only by subject. And Autocracy/Monstrosity/Primacy have format-dependent counts: Autocracy is 12 digital 8-page chapters with no print singles, Monstrosity is 12 digital chapters but only 4 print issues, and Primacy is 4 print issues only.
The long box
Every issue we hold
10 covers, each with an indicative collector value and a back-issue buy path. Values are indicative only; grade moves them a very long way.
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Handle with care
Contested
Comics data is unusually messy: reprint credits, renumbering and first-appearance claims all contradict across sources. What we could not settle is recorded rather than smoothed over.
- MTMTE numbering: More Than Meets the Eye ran #1 to #57 plus a 2012 annual, then continued as Transformers: Lost Light #1 to #25 rather than carrying the numbering forward. Lost Light is the same story by the same writer and is described by Roberts as season three, so the two titles are one 82-issue run split by a marketing renumbering forced by the Revolution crossover. The specific contents of MTMTE #56 and #57 are not fully verified here; IDW's own chronology places #56 and #57 inside the Titans Return event and lists a further MTMTE chapter inside Revolution, which cannot be reconciled from the sources checked.
- Robots in Disguise numbering: RiD ran #1 to #34, was retitled simply The Transformers in November 2014 while continuing the numbering from #35 through to #57, and was then relaunched as Optimus Prime #1 in December 2016. So the same book carries three titles and two numbering schemes. Anyone cataloguing IDW issues by title alone will double-count or lose issues here.
- Drift's first appearance is given as All Hail Megatron #5 (26 November 2008) by the Wikipedia issue table, which flags it explicitly. At least one secondary source says #6. Treat #5 as the likely answer and verify against a scan or GCD before printing it as a key-issue claim.
- Tarn's debut: the DJD are named and their cog-harvesting is set up in MTMTE #5, and the team appears in full in MTMTE #7. Sources disagree over whether #5 counts as a first appearance for Tarn specifically. Both numbers are correct for something; the framing matters.
- Whirl's exact IDW first appearance was not verified. He is a central Wrecker in Last Stand of the Wreckers (2010) and a lead in MTMTE from 2012, but whether LSOTW #1 is his true IDW debut or whether he appeared earlier in the 2009 ongoing or a Spotlight was not confirmed. Do not print a first-appearance claim for Whirl without checking.
- Anode and Lug's wedding or conjunx endura ceremony: no specific issue number could be verified. What is verified is that Lost Light #8 (26 July 2017) was covered by Bleeding Cool for featuring them as trans women, that Lug is resurrected by Anode in Lost Light #6, and that they are widely described as conjunx endurae. The issue in which that status is established on the page is unconfirmed.
- Which issue is the true final issue of the continuity: Unicron #6 shipped 14 November 2018 and is billed as the finale event, Lost Light #25 shipped 7 November 2018, and Optimus Prime #25 shipped 21 November 2018 and sits last in IDW's own in-story chronological listing. Wikipedia's line-level article says the continuity ended in November 2018 after Unicron. All three are defensible endpoints depending on whether you mean publication date, event finale, or in-story chronology.
- Issue counts for the early Furman miniseries are taken from IDW's own chronological listing rather than from covers: Infiltration #0 to #6, Stormbringer #1 to #4, Escalation #1 to #6, Devastation #1 to #6, Maximum Dinobots #1 to #5. Revelation had no numbered issues at all and consisted of four interlinked Spotlights on Cyclonus, Hardhead, Doubledealer and Sideswipe. Worth confirming against GCD before building a database schema around them.
- Spotlight: Blurr is listed sixth in IDW's published chronology, immediately after Megatron Origin and Spotlight: Orion Pax, making it one of the earliest-set stories in the continuity. Its specific significance as a collectible or first appearance was not verified.
- Windblade volume 2 ran seven issues per IDW's chronology (#1 to #7, with #1 to #3 forming part of Combiner Wars). The stated start date of March 2015 comes from the line-level Wikipedia article and was not cross-checked against a solicitation.
- Critical reception is not uniform. The Wikipedia MTMTE article notes that some readers and fans considered the stories from issue #39 onward to have jumped the shark, even as the book was winning ComicsAlliance awards in 2015 and 2016. Infiltration's own reception in 2006 was mixed, with fans divided over the slow pace, the human characters, and Furman's choice to sideline Optimus Prime and Megatron.
- Transformers #2 (Skybound) date: Wikipedia lists 2023-11-07, a Tuesday. Image Comics' own release page says 2023-11-08. We used 2023-11-08; every other issue lands on a Wednesday.
- Transformers #13 (Skybound) date: Wikipedia lists 2024-10-13, a Sunday, which cannot be an on-sale date. We used 2024-10-09 on the Wednesday cadence, but it is not confirmed against a primary solicitation.
- Jason Howard appears TWICE in the Skybound run: as a two-issue fill-in artist on #13-14 and again as the regular artist from #32. Some listings only record the second stint. Both are believed correct but the #13-14 credit is the weaker-sourced of the two.
- Beachcomber's death in Transformers #23 is described in sources as 'seemingly' killed; not confirmed as permanent.
- Shredhead's fate after the Bruticus fight in Transformers #34 (crushed, barely functional) is not resolved; do not call it a death.
- Miles Mayhem's Transformers #25 appearance may not be his absolute Energon Universe first, since M.A.S.K. Origins material may predate it. Safest framing is 'his Transformers-title debut'.
- No Skybound Transformers issue carries an on-page story title; only collected arcs are named. All title fields are deliberately empty, not omitted.
- IDW Megatron Origin: only issue #1's exact date (2007-06-20) was verified; the TPB shipped 2007-12-12, so the run completed in 2007.
- IDW Autocracy / Monstrosity / Primacy issue counts are format-dependent (digital chapters vs print issues). The idwSeries issueCount of 28 counts digital chapters.
- IDW Robots in Disguise #57 has a split date: digital 2016-09-28, print 2016-10-05. More Than Meets The Eye #57 was 2016-09-28 for both.
- Windblade's artist is credited as Sarah Stone in the comics; TFWiki now files her as Saren Stone.
- Transformers: Optimus Prime had TWO annuals (2017 and 2018), not one.
- Void Rivals and M.A.S.K. exact issue counts as of Aug 2026 are approximate: Void Rivals is around #33 and M.A.S.K. around #3, confirmed only to solicitation month.
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1984-1991
The Transformers
The foundational run. Budiansky and Furman built a darker mythology than the cartoon: the Creation Matrix, the
1984-1992The Transformers (UK)
Simon Furman’s weekly UK strips grew into their own epic: Death’s Head, the Wreckers, Time Wars. Faster, weird
2023-presentTransformers (Energon Universe)
Daniel Warren Johnson’s brutal, Eisner-winning relaunch inside the shared Energon Universe with G.I. Joe. The
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