TRANSFORMERS BY DEVIL'S DUE

The past few years beginning in September, I've looked at various smaller/shorter Transformers comic book runs from a couple of publishers. In 2013 and 2014 I covered IDW's TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE, and in 2015 and 2016 it was Dreamwave's brief time with the Transformers license. This year, my time with the Transformers comes to an end as we look at one last publisher's finite take on the Robots in Disguise.

In 2001, the tip of the spear in eighties nostalgia hit the comic book industry as Devil's Due Press, then an imprint of Image comics, acquired the license to G.I. Joe and launched a new comic book series starring the Real American Hero. Two years later, riding the success of their ongoing JOE comic, Devil's Due negotiated a limited license to team up the Joes with the Transformers. The series was successful enough to spawn three sequels in 2004, 2006, and 2007. I own all of these series, and I seem to recall mostly liking them at the time, so here we go again: for the rest of the year, I'll be looking at Devil's Due's G.I. JOE/TRANSFORMERS comics an issue at a time.

A couple notes: at some point over the past decade, I misplaced my copies of these issues, but since I really wanted to cover this stuff, I went ahead and purchased the digital collected editions in an IDW sale last year (IDW now having the reprint rights since they picked up the full G.I. Joe license several years ago). But the IDW reprints naturally omit the Devil's Due logo and trade dress from the issues' covers -- and since I like to use covers here which fairly closely resemble what was originally published, I've had to furiously Google in search of the original versions. What I've wound up with are scans of varying quality, some quite nice and others of extremely low resolution and/or quality. But know that any substandard covers you see over the next several weeks are the best I could locate!

Also, speaking of those IDW digital collections, the publisher should be pretty embarrassed by what they've put out. Maybe Devil's Due still owns the original digital files or something, but IDW could've invested a bit more in clean-up of what they're distributing. These look like scans of the original issues. Were I so inclined, I could've just pirated this stuff and gotten the same quality. I'm curious whether the physical trades look this bad too.

Lastly, as noted above, this is likely my last autumn go-round with the Transformers. Between REGENERATION ONE, Dreamwave, and now Devil's Due, I will have covered pretty much all the "micro" continuities that interest me. So next fall, whatever I cover will not be related to my favorite Robots in Diguise (though I may try to keep it somewhat sci-fi and/or toy related if I can). Don't say you weren't warned!