Alot of it for Prime/Magnus comes back to Optronix (sorry I refuse to the other name, it's just dumb) and Dion both being upgraded by Alpha Trion. That and the shared Prime figure between Prime and Magnus.
Sadly, at a panel at a con in recent years, Hasbro definitively said that while Orion Pax was rebuilt into Optimus, Dion was not rebuilt into Magnus. I always liked that fantheory, but oh well.
Because I'm in the need for more Magnus in my life, I decided to order TPB of MTME 1 and 2. Do I need anything else to get into this series? Any chance there is that Prime/Magnus dynamic or have they completely dropped it after Dreamwave's collapse?
Optimus' and Magnus' paths do not cross in the MTMTE series until the current Dark Cybertron crossover that's happening in the issues on-shelves now. They are not brothers in the IDW continuity (and it's hard to say whether Magnus actually has the white Optimus robot in his armor...this is actually an ongoing argument among fans, but as far as I'm concerned, if the alt-mode has a white cab, it's inside the red-and-blue armor body in robot mode...otherwise, where does it go?), at least as far as has been mentioned. They know each other and Magnus is greatly respected as the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, and is actually one of the only Cybertronians that non-Cybertronian alien races respect, because he enforces law against his own kind. Aliens in the IDW universe kind of see the Transformers as warmongering monsters, and it's hard to argue against that when you think about it.
Haven't read much of the newer IDW run..I mentioned this in the other Transformers thread but the early stuff was just awful. No direction or ambition, terrible composition, insistence on shoving every character into the same rigid archetypes from G1. It was painful to read. I remember going through Megatron Origin and being completely frustrated visually. Whoever wrote it needed to take a class on framing and how to direct the eye. Had to force myself to finish it. Great concept with terrible execution.
I've been told it's improved greatly since then, so maybe i'll give it a second shot.
Haha, yeah, Megatron: Origins was basically a complete trainwreck. The IDW universe has had its rough spots, but currently the ongoings of More Than Meets The Eye and Robots In Disguise are seriously the best TF fiction ever produced. If you want to get into it, I recommend picking up these trade paperbacks:
The Last Stand of the Wreckers
More Than Meets The Eye 1-4
Robots in Disguise 1-3
Transformers: Dark Prelude
LSotW is not directly part of the ongoings, but what happens in it is very connected to several characters and events in MTMTE and RiD. After that read MTMTE book 1, which actually begins with a one-shot issue called The Death of Optimus Prime, which sets up the situation the two series jump off from.
All you really need to know about what came before that is that whole bunch of really stupid "chaos dimension" crap happened, a giant chaos monster made of Decepticon corpses attacked Cybertron, and everyone teamed up to stop it. Megatron was killed, Cybertron was revitalized/rebooted after millions of years of dormancy, and sent out a signal to all Cybertronians that it was time to come home. So while MTMTE is about Rodimus leading a crew of misfits to find a mystical group of ancient Transformers who may or may not exist, RiD is about the characters who stayed on Cybertron dealing with the thousands of non-aligned Cybertronians returning home, and the tensions that creates along with the now-conquered Decepticons.
Also, two character background notes:
Cyclonus is not a creation of Unicron (and indeed Unicron has not been seen in IDW), he is an ancient Cybertronian who left on the original Ark to find...something with Nova Prime. Galvatron was also on that ship, and is unrelated to Megatron.
Ironhide was killed on Earth during the now-defunct ongoing series several years ago, but awoke on a ruined Cybertron with no memory of the last 4 million years. Turned out his spark had been saved and put in a new body with memories from the last backup Primus/Cybertron made of him, which was before the Transformers left the planet. So to him, the now-ended war's origins are much fresher, and he has had a vision of a far-future time in which Transformers have colonized most of the galaxy and everything is at peace. The catch? He's the only Autobot still alive, and he A) Doesn't know why and B) Thinks that means he is invincible due to destiny.
It's really good stuff. Give it a try.
