Is this like the Pat Lee Transformers crap?
No, it's almost all written by Simon Furman, who wrote most of the Marvel TF series and has become something of the de facto mastermind behind the continuing Transformers stories in some form since then. There's not as much of a heavy manga influence to the IDW series as there was to the Dreamwave ones, and Ultra Magnus is (thankfully) no longer a white clone of Optimus Prime. I hated most of the Dreamwave TF stuff I read--which wasn't much, since it sucked--but I'm really enjoying the IDW stuff.
The IDW series is a reimagining of the G1 story, but that's not as bad as it sounds. All of the characters are still pretty recognizable and "reimagining" here basically means that it's kind of a "What if the Transformers were around in today's world instead of the '80s?" Instead of the Transformers all waking up in the '80s, we find that Decepticons and Autobots have been running missions in small squads on Earth and other planets for years (because Cybertron is a burnt-out husk at this point) in their continuing war against each other. The story is published in mini-series that all make one ongoing storyline when combined, much like the Hellboy and BPRD comics. The first series, Infiltration, is all about a small group of humans finding out about the Transformers. The second, Escalation, is about the Autobots' and Decepticons' battle going from a behind-the-scenes covert ops war to a full-blown, open conflict (though still relatively contained--most of the world doesn't know about them, but some governments are aware of their presence). The third series, Devastation, just started, and it appears Megatron has pulled out all the stops and decided to destroy the Autobots at any cost, even if it means exposing themselves to the world at large. The first issue of Devastation ended with Sixshot shooting down an Ark shuttle with Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, the humans, and some other Autobots over a populated suburb in Tennessee.
IDW is also doing some other TF stories simultaneously. There's the Spotlight one-shots that Anubis mentioned, which are one-issue stories about various characters. Although they can be read as stand-alones, they do fit into the larger G1 TF story Furman is masterminding through IDW's comics. Then there's Stormbringer, which was a huge space story featuring the IDW introduction of Thunderwing, a Transformer so powerful that the Autobots and Decepticons put aside their differences and fought him together for their own survival. He was eventually defeated in the distant past, but a cult grew up around him and they just recently brought him back.
Finally, there's the Beast Wars series, which, unlike the G1 IDW series, does actually take the show's continuity as canon (Beast Wars, at least; there's been no mention of whether Beast Machines is still canon, though I'm hoping it's not). Because the show is considered canon and it covers pretty much everything for the major Maximals and Predacons, Furman took the opportunity to build the comic around the other Maximals and Predacons--the ones who were made into toys but didn't quite make it onto the show. They and the show's characters are allowed to be on Earth at the same time because they're slightly out of phase with each other. Magmatron was the leader of the Predacons initially, but Razorbeast, a Maximal spy posing as one of his troops, turns on him and defeats him, shunting him out of phase with time. Now Ravage (yes, the G1 tape from Soundwave) commands the Preds and Razorbeast commands the Maximals. The first BW series, The Gathering, established who the new Maximals and Predacons were and dealt with Magmatron's initial scheme. Now the current series, The Ascending, has started off with the Maximals trying to find a way back to Cybertron while Magmatron--out of phase and thus incorporeal but able to travel to any time and place he wants instantly--tries to make his way back onto the physical plane. The covers of the first few issues seem to indicate that Leo Convoy, the leader of the Maximals on the Japanese Beast Wars show, may turn up in The Ascending, too.
Whew, that was a lot of typing.
Besides, Beast Machines ruined Rhinox and Silverbolt, and that's just unforgivable.
) in terms of the actual plot of the show, but why change their faces? The audience grew to recognize their features throughout Beast Wars, so why give Blackarachnia (sp) eight eyes when she never needed them before? Why take away Rattrap's distinctive ratface from BW? And the redesign of Silverbolt's entire head was just ******ed.
