by wadapan
Michael Bay’s live-action Transformers movies have undoubtedly done more to raise the profile of the franchise than any other piece of media. Each was accompanied by a merchandising blitz of toys and tie-ins, the latter primarily courtesy of IDW Publishing.
The problem with the movie tie-ins was that it was impossible for them to be written with knowledge of future movies—or even, in some cases, with finalised scripts—and that they were being produced by many different writers simultaneously. As such, the “expanded universe” of the live-action films was a self-contradictory muddled nightmare of completely inconsequential stories.
This changed with the arrival of writer John Barber, who deftly weaved together the disparate stories into a single unified timeline. His comics are much higher in quality than those preceding them, but unfortunately rely heavily on the context established by earlier writers, and so are very difficult to recommend—either on their own, or with the homework of all the previous material. My advice is to skip the various books if you’re looking to speedrun the continuity.
Nonetheless, if for some reason—after watching the live-action Transformers movies—you find yourself craving more from that universe, and decide you’re going to set out to read absolutely everything, this reading order is how you should go about it!
Hot off the success of his 2006 reboot with IDW (see our reading guide), which featured many similarities to the first movie in its premise, Simon Furman was hired by IDW to write a four-issue prequel leading into the film. The title was changed at the last minute to simply Official Movie Prequel, presumably to prevent confusion with the older Dreamwave series of the same name. The first issue of the series is set on Cybertron.
Simultaneously, Furman was hired by Titan Comics to write short strips tying into his IDW material for their UK magazine. The first six strips spun out of events of the first issue of the prequel series, and were collected in the US across three issues of the Saga of the Allspark series.
The remaining three issues of the prequel series covered the transition to Earth and early events on the planet.
In cooperation with Target, IDW produced a pair of special one-shots. The first of these was written by Simon Furman to slot in specifically between panels of the fourth issue of his prequel series.
In addition to the comic material being produced, Titan Books hired Alan Dean Foster to write a prequel novel to the film. Its timeline covers much the same period as the comics, but manages to go basically without continuity conflict.
The second of the Target comics to be released, written by Chris Ryall and a team at Hasbro, told a contradictory take on the Decepticon’s arrival on Earth; later series amalgamated both versions of events. It inadvertently led into the events of “Interlude”, and was reprinted by IDW in that order as a special issue, but was obviously written with the intent of leading directly into the movie itself.
Each of the first three Transformers movies was adapted at least twice: as a four-issue comic miniseries, and as a novel. The comic adaptation of the first movie was written by IDW co-founder Kris Oprisko, but was based on an earlier draft of the film’s script and omits all of the movie’s comedic elements for space; later media stuck to the finished movie’s version of events. Alan Dean Foster’s novelisation was similarly based on an early draft.
Having previously worked with Doring Kindersley on The Ultimate Guide (see our Dreamwave reading guide), Furman wrote a guidebook to the first movie featuring expanded profiles for many of the characters; aspects of these were used in his Titan stories.
The seventh and eighth Titan strips, collected in the final Saga of the Allspark issue, took place after the movie. Unfortunately, the seventh referenced one of the decanonised scenes from the movie’s early draft, and the eighth was contradicted entirely by Revenge of the Fallen, so neither of these stories are canon!
Evidently, the restrictions of working around the movies were proving too much to handle, and so Furman devoted the rest of Titan’s initial run to an alternate-universe story set in the aftermath of a Decepticon victory. It’s perhaps the most substantial standalone story to come out of the movies’ expanded universe. One of its later arcs was written contemporaneously with Beast Wars: The Ascending (see our reading guide) and shares some conceptual similarities. Many of the later Titan UK stories are lost media, but Twilight’s Last Gleaming was scanned in its entirety and can be found in our out-of-print media archive.
Do you have copies of the Titan magazine lying around? Want to help us archive them for future readers? Here’s a complete list of what we have and what we’re missing:
Full scans: Transformers #1-2, Dark of the Moon #4
Full scans (missing some probably-unimportant pages): Prime #1-14
Available only in Saga of the Allspark: Transformers #3-8
Comic scans only: Transformers #9-25, Animated #1-3, Revenge of the Fallen #1-2, Dark of the Moon #1-3, Age of Extinction #1-4
Comic photos only: Revenge of the Fallen #9 and #20-21, Prime #16 (proper scans would be great!)
“Lost” media: Revenge of the Fallen #3-8 and #10-19, Prime #15 and #17-20, Age of Extinction #5
Meanwhile at IDW, newcomer Chris Mowry came on to write a five-issue sequel to the first film. It’s notable for giving roles to almost every “offscreen” toy-only character from the first movie line, resulting in a truly monstrous cast.
Mowry continued with a pair of connected Revenge of the Fallen prequels, published concurrently, collectively titled Destiny. The Defiance prequel series focused on Cybertron’s distant past—but being based on an early draft of Revenge of the Fallen, it introduced a major continuity inconsistency to the comic universe.
Meanwhile, Alliance continued present-day threads from his previous series, covering the formation of NEST and finishing exactly where the movie itself picks up.
Alan Dean Foster returned for another novel meandering about in the immediate build-up to the movie’s events. It’s notable for introducing an unusual number of original characters, some of whom would go on to appear in Barber’s comics.
The second movie, in a completely unexpected move, drew from Dreamwave’s comics for its principal villain. Its production was affected somewhat by the Writers Guild of America strike. Furman wrote the comic book adaptation, which omitted aspects of the movie but otherwise didn’t particularly contradict later comics. Alan Dean Foster’s novelisation was similarly based on an earlier draft.
Furman wrote a second Doring Kindersley guidebook for Revenge of the Fallen.
Writers Ryder Windham and Jason Fry wrote a trilogy of young-adult novels set in the aftermath of Revenge of the Fallen. They weren’t referenced by later media, but don’t introduce any continuity errors.
Mowry and Furman contributed three character spotlights each to a series spinning out from the second movie. Issue #5 was written as a direct prequel to Nefarious, and was originally intended to be released as the final issue #6, so it’s best saved until the end.
Furman’s sequel to the second film unabashedly borrowed elements from his cut-short run on the IDW reboot.
In a very unusual move, TakaraTomy commissioned western creatives Simon Furman and Guido Guidi to write a series of pack-in comics set after Revenge of the Fallen… which ended up being released by other means when the toys were cancelled. This story has only minor contradictions with Nefarious. Furman and Guidi had previously been hired for “Starscream’s New Body“, packed with “G1” versions of Revenge of the Fallen Skids and Mudflap. For information on later comics by this creative team, check out our Marvel reading guide!
Scott Beatty wrote a thirteen-episode animated miniseries set after the film, notable for promoting an assortment of Hunt for the Decepticons and Power Core Combiners figures. Completely by coincidence, the status quo at the end of the series matches that established by Barber in his comics!
John Barber’s debut miniseries consisted of five issues, each set in a different time period, consolidating the seemingly-contradictory timelines established by various prequels and playing around with real-world history.
The first of two Dark of the Moon prequels by Barber elaborated upon the events of Defiance, adding significant depth to the characters of Optimus Prime and Megatron via their relationship with Sentinel Prime.
“Jazz”, “Space Case”, “Ratchet”, “Bumblebee”, “Arcee, “Starscream”
For a series of six Target-exclusive toys, IDW produced a series of short pack-in comics. Written by Barber, these told a complete standalone story (mostly) set before the third film, and were lightly referenced in Rising Storm. These comics were unfortunately never collected as a trade, but archived copies can be read here.
The second Dark of the Moon prequel cleared house in preparation for the film, and carries along a throughline from the first prequel centred around Elita-One.
The third movie’s novelisation was written by Peter David, and notably featured a very different ending. The comic adaptation, meanwhile, was written by Barber, who gleefully made minor tweaks to the story and dialogue to make it better mesh with the comic continuity.
As an incentive for people buying the individual issues of the adaptation, each included an instalment of a short prose story written by Barber. This effectively served as a coda to the comic continuity, tying up an astonishing number of continuity errors, including the big one from Defiance.
Unfortunately, an early leak of the Dark of the Moon adaptation (which spoiled the movie’s main twist) led Michael Bay to forbid future tie-in stories. This didn’t stop IDW from producing a light-hearted Age of Extinction one-shot in the style of the How to Ride Your Dinobot series of animated shorts, written by Barber and released for free on the Hasbro website.
Schick Hydrobot and the Transformers
In perhaps the most bizarre Transformers crossover of all time, Barber was hired to write another free online one-shot tying into The Last Knight featuring… an original character based on a razor. It’s hilarious.
A home-video release of The Last Knight came with a short comic by Avalanche Comics Entertainment, tying into a Toys”R”Us subline of toys. Photos of the comic are available here.
With the new production team behind the Bumblebee prequel movie, IDW was once again allowed to produce tie-ins, and so Barber returned for a spy-movie pastiche. Unfortunately, reshoots for the movie ended up effectively decanonising the story, which sits better as a result in the established comic continuity.
Sector 7 Adventures: The Battle at Half Dome
For the home-video release of Bumblebee, Avalanche Comics Entertainment produced a prequel to the film. It doesn’t really fit into continuity, being written by newcomer Jordan B. Gorfinkel.
To capitalise on Bumblebee hype, IDW hired James Asmus to write a couple of stories starring the character, set in an entirely-new vaguely-Sunbow-inspired continuity.
The first Transformers graphic novel, also written by Asmus, picked up from the events of the one-shot.
TFWiki Community 