How many incredible change of minds am I allowed?

Michael Bay isn't the only guy who's made a Transformers parody I wasn't looking forward to. Back in May I was writing about how much I thought the Incredible Change-Bots comic by Jeffrey Brown would be terrible. Looking back at those posts I feel like all the negativity and vitriol I spewed made me sound like a total cockholster. I was so sure that Incredible Change-Bots was just a well timed attempt at making a quick buck off the Transformers movie mania and Brown was just a bandwagon jumping robots whore comic parody writer. After finally getting a copy I realize that I was right, but I also realize that Incredible Change-Bots is really really good.

The only reason I picked it up is that despite my misgivings, the single page ICB comic that ran in issue #190 of Wizard in June was pretty funny. I wondered why I was so down on ICB in the first place and it occurs to me that the preview pages at Top Shelf's site aren't really the best material from the book. That's probably why I felt the comedy in ICB was stale. Lots of nerdy people have made the same jokes about the bad guys having poor aim. I've heard it a million times before about Stormtroopers and COBRA soldiers. But then once I got around 20 pages in, the witty observations in Incerdible Change-Bots became quite fresh and every page was laugh out loud funny. The book has a structure where most every page is a different joke executed within the context of a larger story arc. I was shocked to find myself laughing at Change-Bots, especially since I thought it was only going to be funny because it sucked.

They're both friggin' hilarious

One of the thingsI think Michael Bay's movie has done well is wipe the old Transformers canon from the minds of the current pop culture public. Not that they were paying attention much in the first place, but by starting from scratch and not tying into anything that came before beyond character names, Bay's Transformers movie supplants all defining Transformers characteristics from twenty years ago and makes a new mythology. The Bay vision was what I first thought Change-Bots would be about. What caught me off guard is that Incredible Change Bots is a comic that is a hardcore goof on the comics and cartoon from twenty years ago instead. I thought that Brown was going write a more contemporary story and maybe have Change-Bots be a takeoff on the current movie or any of the recent cartoons. The Bay movie desgins and script had leaked just about a year ago so I imagine he had the opportunity to make ICB a more contemporary tie-in to the robots of today. I figured that would be a more commercially viable perspective than goofing on stories from 20 years ago that everyone has forgotten. Not to say Brown won't try that in the future. The book concludes rather ambiguously, leaving room for a sequel.

My only problem with Incredible Change-Bots is that it is not the regular comic book size. I was expecting a traditional trade paperback size but instead this is 6 1/2 by 5 inches. So it's relatively small compared to regular comics. In fact all of Brown's books are weird sizes so I don't know why I was expecting Change-Bots to be any different. At first glance $15 seems like a lot for a book that little but then I had to take into account that it's 144 pages. That's a lot of jokes. My other problem is that it's a pain in the butt to find unless you have access to a bigass comic store. I suppose you can go online. I also saw it in the computer at Borders.

Just buying the book is not good enough! No self-respecting robot nerd completist would be happy with just owning the paperback and here I'm going to tell you why your Incredible Change Bots collection is deficient if you only own the paperback. There is also a hardcover edition of Change-Bots with a different cover and limited to 300 copies that retails for $30. I am thinking about getting that one. ICB completists will also want the aforementioned Wizard issue 190 and don't forget to join the Incredible Change Bots fan club, where for $20 you get a mini comic, membership card and a sketch of the Change-Bot of your choice. Details on joining are in the book itself, but basically all you do is email Jeffrey and send him 20 bucks before December 31st.

Unbelievably Jeffrey Brown made a comic that is a nostalgic parody of the very first few issues of the Marvel Transformers comics and the first episodes of the cartoon. I never thought that would happen. I even detect some Go-Bots character archetypes in there like the army guy who aligns himself with the bad robots. Brown wins points from me for making this a book full of jokes about the old robot stories of the eighties. I only wish Incredible Change-Bots (or something like it) would have come out twenty years ago when the source robot material was still fresh in people's minds or in recent times when the robot fandom was more of an underground cult following. That's not to say people didn't try. I've just never found even the more popular Transformer fan parody comics this funny.

To hear Jeffrey Brown talk about Incredible Change-Bots check out Fanboy Radio podcast episode 402. You can see him talk about ICB on IFanboy video podcast episode 30. He was also interviewed by the NY Daily News and you can see other people's reviews of Change-Bots at Comic Pants and A Comicbook Orange.