The Energon Universe has spent two years asking Transformers readers to keep up, and they have: its titles cross over, its Transformers ongoing is solicited into next year, and its first issue has gone back to press so often that the fifteenth printing was a news item in September. On Friday afternoon at New York Comic Con, Skybound announced a line of comics that connect to nothing, and gave the first one to Bumblebee.
The announcement came out of Skybound Comics: Vision for the Future, the Friday 4:00 PM session in North-Room 406.3 that we wrote up on October 8 as the publisher’s wider slate rather than an Energon Universe panel. That slate turned out to be an imprint. Skybound Visions, run with Image Comics and made in collaboration with Hasbro and Universal, is a line of standalone miniseries, each one complete in itself, and the first of the three announced is Transformers: Bumblebee - Lost Planet, in comic shops on January 27, 2027.
Tate Brombal writes it, Matt Emmons draws it, Giovanna Niro colours it, and Becca Carey letters it. Brombal comes to it off Batgirl, Emmons off the creator-owned The Council of Frogs, Niro off Absolute Catwoman and Carey off Radiant Black.
Skybound’s own copy sets up a survival story rather than a war story. A Decepticon attack strands Bumblebee on an uncharted planet with no way to call for help, and the publisher’s copy puts the familiar knock on him to work: the “weakest of all the Autobots” has to tackle the biggest mission of his young life. The planet is the second problem, because it holds a secret that has “already begun to corrupt and change its indigenous life”, and something is hunting him through it.
The premise is a good one, yet it is not the news here. The drawing is. Look at the double page that opens the preview. Emmons draws the lost planet as a hand-inked tangle of purple trunks, pink canopies and things with too many arms, under a gold sky, with a yellow streak coming down at the right and a hand-lettered KOOM where it lands. The Transformers ongoing has looked broadly of a piece since Daniel Warren Johnson launched it. Emmons inks by hand and leaves the line uneven where that book keeps it clean, and nothing on the page is trying to match the house look. Skybound is selling the imprint on surprise, and the first page of the first book is where that has to show; the gold sky and the hand-lettered KOOM are not in the ongoing’s vocabulary.
Sean Mackiewicz, Skybound’s senior vice president, put the idea in the announcement this way: “Skybound Visions pairs beloved comic book characters with the most interesting comic book creators working today, to present their personal takes on these fan-favorites. Visions is all about surprising creators, surprising characters, and surprising storytelling.”
Cover A, by Matt Emmons. Six covers were shown [1].
The cover carries the price the write-ups left out. Issue one is $4.99 US, printed in the Image corner box beside the issue number and the month, which we read off the art rather than off a listing [2].
Two more books follow. G.I. Joe: The Island of Dr. Mindbender lands on February 2, one new comic book day after Lost Planet, and Turok: Son of Stone on March 10. Before any of the three, a Skybound Visions ashcan reaches comic shops on November 11 with character designs and preview pages from all of them.
There is nothing to order yet. A January book has not reached the Previews catalogue, so a standing order at a shop is the way to be sure of issue one; we went looking for a retailer listing on October 10 and did not find one. The ashcan in November is the first thing anyone can pick up.
What it means for the line
Skybound has spent the Energon Universe teaching Transformers readers that everything connects. Lost Planet is the first book the publisher has put out that asks those readers to forget all of it for four issues, and it has handed that job to an artist who draws his jungle by hand, in the purples, pinks and golds the ongoing does not use. Bumblebee has carried the smallest-Autobot story since 1984, and he has nearly always carried it on Earth; this time he gets a planet of his own! Four issues is a short run in which to make anyone forget two years of continuity, and the ashcan in November is the first chance to see whether it holds.
The rest of the show is on our NYCC 2026 hub, and the Hasbro side of the convention is in our panel roundup from October 4.
Sources: TFormers; The Beat; ICv2; Collider. Key art: Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics.
[1] Collider’s gallery runs covers A through F. Cover A is Emmons’ own, signed ME ‘26 in the lower right corner.
[2] None of the four write-ups above carries a price for the issue.