Double agent Punch/Counterpunch continues recalling his tale from the days prior to the Autobots and Decepticons leaving Cybertron for Earth, with this issue’s primary focus being Decepticon scientist Shockwave’s clandestine attempts to deal with the out-of-control, Autobot-obsessed Megatron, whatever the cost.

As with issue #0 before it, the ‘official’ first issue of Transformers ’84 is a wonderfully stylised nostalgia trip, laden with Ben-Day dots, 80s-style colour schemes and blocky G1 Transformer designs. Of particular interest this time are the pre-Earth Dynobot (yep, not Dinobot) designs, with their alt-modes being vehicles, rather than dinosaurs – seeing as, of course, they’ve yet to encounter Earth’s prehistoric inhabitants at this point in the timeline. They look great – and, in an especially neat touch, they’re still individually recognisable even in their vehicle forms.

With issue #0 setting up slightly darker motivations on the Autobots side of the story, it’s good to spend more time fleshing out the Decepticons and their own internal conflicts and underhand, secret plans. I enjoyed the nostalgically presented tale here and got a real kick out of the brilliant old-school visuals. It’s a lot of fun and incredibly impressive as a recreation of comics from a bygone era.