I'm almost embarrassed to say this is my first book of the year. I bought this sometime during the last couple of years, it got shuffled into a box during a move at some point, and I just found it again the other day. Basically, it's nothing more than one big parody of Transformers, especially the original 80s cartoon. It's not a great parody; it's not a terrible parody. There are some genuinely clever riffs on the original 80s cartoon, but it feels like it gets too bogged down in its own cleverness in other parts of the book. I personally can't see anyone who wasn't a fan of the cartoon from the 80s appreciating this at all, and even then it's more or less just a middle of the road caricature. ( )

I am definitely not in the target market for Brown's pocket-sized graphic novel parodying "the shape changing robot genre." I've never read a Transformers comic, or seen a Transformers movie, or played with Transformers toys, or Go-bots for that matter. For all I know, an extraterrestrial version of the 2000 US Presidential election is actually the origin of the overarching conflict in the Transformers narrative, as it is in Incredible Change-Bots.

Despite being outside of the spoof-loop, I found some of it funny anyhow, like the robot sex scene on page...oh, there are no page numbers. Or the heroic 20-yard golf cart transport down an empty hallway. There is in fact a little bit of moral seriousness included under the gags, more than one would usually expect from a funny-book rooted in bloodless violence. The plot has a somewhat cinematic arc to it, and the art has a sort of fan-rendered intensity, complemented by bright felt-tip coloring, that makes it seem like it could have been the inspired magnum opus of a precocious grade-schooler. I found that pleasantly affecting.

Given my detachment from its milieu, why, you may wonder, did I read this book in the first place? An exhortative co-worker loaned it to me. All told, there were worse ways I could have spent my train ride home that day.