This is what I miss about Transformers comics.

So there's a four-page Transformers comic in the latest "Generations" volume of Transformers infobooks.  It's a Japanese publication, despite the comic being by Simon Furman and Guido Guido.  Which I'm perfectly fine with, because they're two of my favorite people.  (I should scan that art of Ratchet that Guido drew me at last year's SDCC.  And somewhere he has an Amber sketch that is not even 10% as awesome as my Ratchet.)

Anyway, why do I like it?  It just feels like oldschool Transformers comics.  You know, back when they were about selling toys, and the choice in characters determined who was required to appear?  That's right, I'm nostalgic for being sold to.  But there's just something undeniably vintage Transformers about reading a Transformers comic and it focusing on guys in bodies that are currently available for sale.  IDW mostly avoids that with their comics.  They make up their body designs and choose their character roster as they please, with a few exceptions.

But I miss the old Eighties demand for relevant product placement.  Transformers has been graced with many talented creative types, and sometimes you squeeze the best material out of talented folks with some imposed guidelines.  Sometimes restrictions aren't bad.  And sometimes those restrictions force creatives to use folks they wouldn't have used otherwise, or make them consider other story or character alternatives.

Would Thunderwing or Bludgeon have become important characters if Hasbro hadn't mandated Simon Furman to use toys they were currently selling in his late 80s work?  Probably not.

That's why I like this story in the Generations books.  It's about Stepper/Ricochet, of course, since that's the exclusive toy that the magazine is trying to sell, but it's also about a bunch of other guys in the United toyline.   It's nice to see guys like Wheeljack and Kup and Scourge and Lugnut and Wheeljack and Bumblebee all in their most recent toy designs.  We don't see that often enough.  I like when I buy new toys of old characters, but there's something missing when I don't see those new toys in new stories.

And it doesn't hurt that Guido drew and colored his comic pages like the original Marvel comics material, either.