Revolution
| This article is about the IDW Generation 1 crossover event. For the Titan movie story arc of the same name, see Transformers Comic issue 23. |
Revolution is a multi-property crossover event by IDW Publishing that includes many of Hasbro's properties, aiming to amalgamate the separate IDW continuities into a new shared universe. Running from September to November 2016, it consists of a main five-issue mini-series and eight one-shot tie-ins—one for each of the series crossing over in the story.
The five issue mini-series is being written by John Barber and Cullen Bunn (writer of IDW's Micronauts), with art by Fico Ossio. The tie-ins are handled by each book's respective creative teams.
December will see the launch of Revolutionaries, a team-book featuring various Transformers and Revolution characters, including Kup, Garrison Blackrock, and Ayana Jones.[1]
| Revolution issues: | » | ||
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"Road to Revolution" - Till All Are One
"Road to Revolution" - Titans Return
Revolution
Revolution one-shots
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Build-up
IDW's slate of new Hasbro licenses was announced from mid-2015 onwards: ROM and Micronauts in July 2015, Action Man in October 2015, and finally M.A.S.K. in May 2016. The next month, Revolution was announced, a five-issue crossover that would unite those four properties with Transformers and G.I. Joe – not as a one-time-only deal, but to established a shared fictional world in which all those characters would co-exist. Much was made of the fact that no continuity was being discarded – the existing IDW Transformers and G.I. Joe stories were handwaved into having happened in the same universe all along, all their stories and characters intact; the Jem and the Holograms comic which began publishing in 2015 has been stated to have also been placed into the new shared universe, but did not appear in Revolution for "reasons of tone" compared to the other titles.
Whilst Micronauts was the first new book to debut, explicit build-up for Revolution's shared world began with the initial issues ROM and Action Man. Both books made reference to the events happening at Monument Valley in the pages of The Transformers, whilst ROM also incorporated a number of G.I. Joe characters into its debut storyline. Around this time, IDW also released a prelude issue of Revolution through various avenues, which recapped the essentials of the previous Transformers and G.I. Joe stories, and set the stage for the main crossover event.
On the Transformers side of things, both the debut arc of Till All Are One and the Titans Return crossover were billed on their covers as being lead-ins to Revolution, although only the latter featured any significant tie-ins to the event.
Overview
Following Optimus Prime's controversial annexation of Earth into the Cybertronian Council of Worlds, deposits of Ore-13 all around the planet start to rapidly destabilize, threatening Earth with nuclear annihilation. America's highly-trained special mission force, G.I. Joe, is reactivated and mobilizes in response, contracting Miles Manheim to reverse-engineer captured Cybertronian assets into a mechanical strike force in order to fight back. Little do the Joes realize, however, that their ranks have been infiltrated by the shape-shifting alien wizards the Dire Wraiths, whose ancient enemy Rom the Space Knight is now on Earth to root them out. Meanwhile, seeking to save Microspace from the entropy storm which threatens to destroy it, the Micronauts enter regular space, drawing the attention of both Rom and the Transformers.
Collections
- Revolution (January 19, 2017) ISBN 163140816X / ISBN 978-1631408168
- Contains Revolution issues #0 to #5.
- Bonus material unknown.
- Revolution: Heroes (February 9, 2017) ISBN 1631408410 / ISBN 978-1631408410
- Contains the ROM, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, G.I. Joe and Action Man one-shots.
- Bonus material unknown.
- Revolution: Transformers (February 16, 2017) ISBN 1631408429 / ISBN 978-1631408427
- Contains the Till All Are One, The Transformers and More than Meets the Eye one-shots, as well as The Transformers Holiday Special.
- Bonus material unknown.
