Mars Attacks: The Transformers

Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	January 23, 2012
Cover date	January 2012
Written by	Shane McCarthy
Pencils by	Matt Frank
Colors by	Josh Perez
Letters by	Neil Uyetake
Editor	Carlos Guzman
Continuity	Generation 1 continuity family

Synopsis

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

This issue is one of five one-shot specials released in January 2013 by IDW, in which the Martians of the Mars Attacks franchise—currently being published in comic form by the company—attack different IDW licensed properties, similar to the Infestation events of the previous two years. In addition to the Transformers, the other victims were Popeye, KISS, The Real Ghostbusters and Zombies vs. Robots. There's no complicated dimension-hopping multiversal explanation for the attacks as with Infestation: it's all just a bit of silly fun.
Pushing the wackiness even further, each of the five issues featured two retailer incentive covers that showed the Martians attacking lots of other comic properties, including current and former IDW licenses, and even books from other companies. The two variants for this issue, listed below, saw Martians attack bad-boy Brit-vamp Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and popular independent comic book Strangers in Paradise.

Regular cover: Optimus Prime and Megatron fend off a Martian horde, by Ray Dillon. Like all the regular covers for the Mars Attacks one-shots, it is designed to look like a trading card in homage to the franchise's beginnings, with the back cover showing the card's rear, sporting a blurb for the comic's contents.
Cover RI A: Mars Attacks: Spike by Franco Urru and Fabio Mantovani
Cover RI B: Mars Attacks: Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore and Brian Miller,