Transformers: Optimus Prime, Volume 1 Paperback – 20 June 2017

Prime back story is being change in this book

Great artwork and entertaining storyline.

Awesome story, fascinating art.

The illustration and color work in this is legendary.

I first read this in monthly serial form and I thought it was just ok and hadn’t necessarily planned on getting the trade. However, a strong showing in recent issues has warmed me to the series in general, which made me want to go back and revisit earlier plot threads. I’m glad I decided to take advantage of the amazon discount because this first story arc is much better than I remembered. I think it’s partly that more recent developments have retroactively added intrigue to some of the story beats in this volume.The book begins with a flashback sequence from before the war, when Optimus was police officer Orion Pax, an honest cop in a corrupt environment. He is investigating the murder of Hefter, a decepticon activist who was killed while in police custody. The story then skips back and forth between pre-war Cybertron and present day Earth, where Optimus is attempting to integrate our planet into a galactic council of worlds. In this book’s predecessor ‘Robots in Disguise’, Optimus unilaterally decided to annex Earth to preemptively exempt it from enforcement of a law that prohibits any non-affiliated world from possessing Cybertronian technology. His decision seems to cause two problems on both planets for each one it solves.Kei Zama’s art is distinctive and adds a bit of a badass industrial/metal feel to the proceedings. Some of her work seemed a bit obscured by the color in the single issues in a way that sometimes made it hard to follow, but it seems to have printed more clearly in trade form. I’ve continued to read OP as a monthly serial and while I rate this book a 4 star I’m guessing volume 2 will be more like a 3 1/2 as the art will become less consistent with fill-ins and a few issues may feel a bit like killing time while Optimus is on Cybertron dealing with the “First Strike”, but those issues do have some good character development with Optimus’s followers back on Earth. The good news is that ever since that brief lackluster period the book has been on a hot streak, incorporating plot points that go back years in a way that seems to be building toward the kind of epic storyline that can only be accomplished in a long running series with a lot of cleverly woven threads yet to pay off. This series has grown into one of the best monthtly sci-fi comics currently on the market.