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I believe I previously compared IDW's Dark Cybertron crossover to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but Revolution is the real Crisis on Infinite Earths analogue. Cosmic threat, disparate groups of heroes, big status quo changes. Revolution crosses Transformers over with a set of Hasbro-properties-turned-IDW-comics, some preexisting, some made into comics for this event: G.I. Joe, Rom, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, Action Man. I think that's all of them. When I first read Crisis, I had only a dim notion of the world in which it took place; I was a DC comics neophyte. That's not too dissimilar from my reading of Revolution-- I know IDW's Transformers very well at this point, but G.I. Joe only from previous Transformers crossovers, Action Man from the tragically truncated Saturday morning cartoon of 2000 to 2001, and the rest not at all-- yet Crisis worked for me while Revolution didn't.

Part of this is intellectual and unfair. Crisis draws on its participants', well, conceptual weight. Historical weight? I dunno. You might not have actually read a Blue Beetle comic, but you know that Blue Beetle has a decades-long preexisting history when he turns up. You might not have read an Earth-3 story before, but you know that the Justice League has been there many times. And this even bleeds over into worlds newly established for Crisis, like Earth-6. But here, Rom and M.A.S.K. and Micronauts and Action Man... it's just like, why should I care? They were basically made up for this story, so seeing them in danger here has no effect. They have fifty days worth of history, not fifty years.

Related to this... these concepts don't seem all that good? Fifty years of evolution mean that every DC character to appear in Crisis had been refined and honed over the years. They were all good ideas... to some extent at least. But like M.A.S.K. is like Knight Rider times five or something? And Action Man is a man who is good at action? And the Micronauts are just small folks? Except they come from a universe where everything is small, so they're not really small in a meaningful way. Like, Transformers started out dumb, and still kind of is, but thirty years have allowed it to accrue some good concepts and ideas. I can't say the same for any of the other concepts here.

Which leads me to my next point... Cullen Bunn and John Barber's story doesn't work on its own terms, either. It's a jumble of characters no one gives you a reason to care about. Like, M.A.S.K. supposedly has a moral dilemma when they realize Transformers are sapient, but their characterization is so flimsy, and the reasons so nonexistent, that you can't get interested in this dilemma. But if you don't care about that, all you've got left is people in super-cars... which is not interesting, and doesn't play to the strengths of the comics medium. Exactly who was doing what when with a magic space rock was another thing I could never really discern. Say what you will about the Anti-Monitor (and I have), but he provides Crisis with a focal point. Revolution is murky. What's at stake? I dunno.

Fico Ossio is an above-average artist when it comes to drawing figures for IDW, but I found his panel-to-panel storytelling unclear at times.

I shudder to think how this is going to negatively impact the IDW Transformers line, which has already (outside of More than Meets the Eye) been moving in a direction I don't care for. It has definitely solidified my plan to not pick up Optimus Prime. When the regular series resume, it'll be Lost Light and Till All Are One for me, and that's it.

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