Well, let's get the stuff that I liked out of the way first.
1. Exarchon: I think this was the most brilliant thing Ruckley created during his run. A villain who twists "Till All Are One" into a threat. I love that. I feel like it's a shame he didn't go farther with it, honestly. I kept expecting him to mutate into a living zombie plague that could over-write ALL the sparks he came into contact with. It needs a "limit", like maybe he'd have to physically touch the spark to infect it, or he'd have to shoot a beam from his eyes into the targets eyes like Medusa, or something. But, I hope future writers take this idea and expand upon it. It's a really cool idea for a Transformers villain.
2. Transformers merging back into the landscape. It was a cool visual. But, I don't think Ruckley really ever thought of anything interesting to DO with it. Honestly, it was probably used best in the Halloween Special, and that was written by someone else. I think if this idea returns, they need to come up with a reason for it beyond the semi-merged characters spouting vague lines of prophecy.
3. Cyclonus. I think Cyclonus was done well enough, not perfect, but probably the best of the bunch, in my opinion. There was growth, there was change, his plotline actually mattered to the larger narrative, foreshadowing Exarchon. I'll admit, though, I do NOT remember a single one of the ghosts' names. It was a interesting idea to make them all reflect different aspects of his grief...but they weren't memorable enough to make me care much about them as characters.
4. Ruckley used a LOT of characters in his run. I don't think they were all used exceedingly WELL. And some of them were only used ONCE and barely seen ever again. Some kind of ended up fading away into the background as time went on. But, he made Windcharger a overpowered powerhouse, so that counts for something. And, it was nice to see so MANY familiar faces in the backgrounds.
5. Straxus. I think Straxus kind of has a interesting characterization in this universe. He cares about protecting HIS people first and foremost. He's not even really a villain, here. I...wish he just didn't just disappear into the aether, but what can you do?
6. Termagax. I'll admit, I'm mostly neutral on Termagax. The idea of a writer's work being twisted into a ideology they NEVER supported is a interested one. But, I think I like how they did it in IDW1 better, with Megatron being inspired by some common miners and the problems inherit in their society. But, this isn't a bad idea. And her Baba Yaga-style Chicken Leg House is...unique. It's memorable, at any rate. I think they could have given her a better design, though. This one's a little ugly.
Okay, now the whining can commence. (*gets his dead-horse-kicking boots on*)
This book was SOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOW. It had like 5 or 6 stories every issue and those stories sometimes disappeared for 5 or 6 issues. It was just WAY TOO MUCH stretched out over WAY TOO LONG. Somehow Ruckley managed to find the worst combination of "jamming a bunch of stuff in" and "slow burn" I'll admit, it gets better after issue 30...but it still feels pretty stretched out, even after that.
And this whole comic feels like SUCH a HUGE missed opportunity. We had nearly 50 issues on Cybertron. We could have learned SO MUCH about their culture or different political factions or how the different alien cultures influenced Cybertrons. But, no, we basically just get Autobots and Decepticons right from the start. Barely any nuance. Barely any exploration of the beliefs or thinking behind the different factions.
OH SWEET PRIMUS, THE ALIENS. What was the point? You basically went into a *little*, *miniscule*, *tiny* amount of detail about ONE of the species living on Cybertron. And then, after issue...what 15 or so(?) they just completely disappear from the plot. Why bother introducing them if they don't have a point?
Speaking of which, what is the deal with the Transformers comics TEASING the Quintessons, but never actually pulling the trigger on them? Is Hasbro not letting the comic writers use the Quintessons? It was the same in IDW1, I don't know what's going on here. They tease the Quintessons creating Exarchon...and then that's it. Nothing else.
It just feels like so many ideas in this run were half-baked. Stuff that sounded cool to the author, but weren't really thought about long enough to make them interesting or unique.
And...some of them just don't feel like "Transformers" ideas, just generic sci-fi ideas. Like the Tether falling. It's treated as such a GIGANTIC event, but...I just didn't care. The book didn't do a good job of MAKING me care. It didn't crush someone's bar that we were following before then. None of the characters we CARED about died. And...the Tether feels like generic sci-fi rather than a Transformers idea. If it had been a Titan spark going critical or weaponized proto-sparks falling from the sky launched from the moon, that would have felt more uniquely "Transformers" to me.
And, yeah, I said above it was nice to see so many characters we knew. But, at the same time, that kind of worked against the book. We spent SO MUCH time with SO MANY characters, I'm not sure many characters really got as fleshed out as they could have.
Bumblebee's arc was....kind of a mess, but a unique mess. Joining the Decepticons was at least a interesting idea on paper. It really doesn't feel like it mattered much in the end, though. But, it's still the second best plotline in this book...which is telling.
EVERYONE else is just such a collection of non-entities. I don't care about THIS version of ANY of the other characters. We don't really get to know most of them. They show up too sporadically to really get to like any of them. They're just a sea of random faces. They are literally just toys. Little personality, just colorful props to fill out crowd scenes.
The Insecticons were a boring threat. It was basically just a faceless cloud of evil. I'm not a fan of faceless clouds of evil.
And, ending with the Ark leaving Cybertron was predictable. That's not a bad thing. But, I won't pretend that I wasn't hoping against hope that there'd be SOME twist at the end that would make all this MUCH more interesting in retrospect, somehow. I don't know how. And honestly what we got was fine...it's just a little dull.
Honestly? I think I prefer War Within to this. I'm not going to sit here and say that The War Within was a masterpiece of storytelling. Honestly, Ruckley's run is probably objectively better. But, War Within had such memorable new designs which are nowhere to be found here. And back in the early 00s, it was kind of novel to have ANY sort of story set on Cybertron, since there were relatively few back then. Since then, we've had Barber's run and Robert's run with a all-Cybertron cast. The bar had been raised. And this...did not even come close to clearing it, in my opinion. I like War Within better than I'll ever like this book.
Overall...I wasn't a fan. Of ALL the old authors, I vibe with Ruckley's style the least. Like I've said before, I think other authors took his ideas and did them better in some of the miniseries. I mean, even in my positives, I can't help discussing aspects I didn't like.
So...I'm giving this run a 4/10. D-. I know the math doesn't work out on that D-, but I don't think it's a complete failure, just most of one. There's some salvageable ideas here. I wish the execution had been better.
My advice to Ruckley? Work on your fundamentals more. Don't add so many characters next time. Work on actually structuring more focused 6-issue-ish story arcs, rather than have rotating story arcs that go on for dozens of issues. If you MUST have multiple groups of characters, try to make at least ONE member of each group memorable, like Cyclonus and his gaggle of ghosts were. Try to flesh out some of your world-building ideas a little more, they're good but a little shallow. Try to work the world building into the actual plot more, you'll get more mileage out of the ideas.
