#brushing up on my comics navigation skills from my DC and marvel days holy moly. holy moly yes sir

[macadam]

Hey I don't know if you're the person to ask this but I've been trying to kind of piece together in which order to read which tf comics ( like idw and lost light and stuff ) because I've been seeing snippets around forever but I'm afraid to dig in more because I don't want to run into spoilers so my knowledge of them except for the characters I'm seeing drawn is approximately zero. I've only ever consumed the animated series ( g1, tfa and tfp ). Can you just kinda tell me where to start, and are they even connected ( sorry if the questions are dumb )? It's absolutely fine if you won't answer! To be fair I'm kind of a chicken and this isn't your hassle. Have a nice day either way!

Hi hello. I'm going to start of my answer to this ask by saying that I'm probably not the person to ask about transformers comics, because I am very much new here and only just discovered where IDW 1 ends and IDW 2 begins. So.. I'm pretty lost as well.

That being said!! When I was looking into reading the comics I did a little bit of research into the timeline and publication dates, and stumbled upon a few good articles.

If what you're looking for is the organic reading experience. That is, to read the story in the order it was released (and arguably intended to be read), here's a list of all the main transformers comics in order of release. I’d suggest finding the earliest comic on the list that you’ve heard of or been thinking of reading and start there, because some of this stuff really has been left in the dust. There is some overlap between issues, as you will see. I'd wouldn’t worry about the interjections of the series in red and green, as those are one-shots and limited series which, generally, don't infringe on the plot of the larger-run comics. The overlap is more to give you an idea of what comics should be read together. 

I was really confused initially on what was going on with the comics timeline because a lot of people interchange IDW 1 and IDW 2 with Phase 1 and Phase 2 which-- it-- they’re different... so there's that. This is a list that breaks down what’s in phase 1, phase 2, and the expanded universe (which is basically also phase 2 as far as I’m concerned). Along with publication dates and authors.  

Here's what I've amassed so far: Phase 1, Phase 2, and the EU are all part of the IDW 1 continuity. (Sidenote: the big player in phase 1 was Simon Furman, the big player in phase 2/EU was James Roberts. This doesn’t really matter I just find it interesting which writers are given the mic during which eras. Anyways.) Phase 1 focuses on pre-war and current-war storylines, while phase 2/EU focuses on post-war storylines (this isn’t 100% it’s just a pattern I’ve noticed). IDW 2 has barely come out yet, only including comics published from 2019 onward. 

I’ve personally decided to start with the phase 2 comics that start off with James Robert’s MTMTE. This is the most popular series on Tumblr so I’d imagine it’s the one you’ve heard the most about. There are the occasional references back to comics from phase 1 in MTMTE, so what I have chosen to do is just write them all down for future reading (last stand of the wreckers is one that’s been mentioned a lot, off the top of my head). I know that MTMTE and RID were written a little bit in tandem with each other, and there’s some larger overlaps around issue #23 for both of them (you’ll notice this in both reading lists I linked) so I will likely pick up reading RID around the issue 23 mark. 

Here’s my TL;DR digest: 

If you’re worried about spoilers, read the comics in order of publication, not based off timeline chronology. You’ll never be given information before you should, that way. 

Phase 2 has all the stuff by James Roberts in it, which is mainly what everyone talks about on here. It’s where I’ve decided to start. 

If you want to start with comics from the very beginning (2005), I’d suggest following the first list I linked. It’s condensed down to the main comics, and shows you which ones are connected storylines, vs one-shots and limited runs. 

All IDW 1 comics (phase 1, 2, EU) fall under one continuity. IDW 2 is a brand new continuity started in 2019.