Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Incredible Change-Bots by Jeffrey Brown.

I am definitely not in the target market for Brown’s pocket-sized graphic novel parodying “the shape changing robot genre.” I’ve never read a Transformers comic, or seen a Transformers movie, or played with Transformers toys, or Go-bots for that matter. For all I know, an extraterrestrial version of the 2000 US Presidential election is actually the origin of the overarching conflict in the Transformers narrative, as it is in Incredible Change-Bots.

Despite being outside of the spoof-loop, I found some of it funny anyhow, like the robot sex scene on page…oh, there are no page numbers. Or the heroic 20-yard golf cart transport down an empty hallway. There is in fact a little bit of moral seriousness included under the gags, more than one would usually expect from a funny-book rooted in bloodless violence. The plot has a somewhat cinematic arc to it, and the art has a sort of fan-rendered intensity, complemented by bright felt-tip coloring, that makes it seem like it could have been the inspired magnum opus of a precocious grade-schooler. I found that pleasantly affecting.

Given my detachment from its milieu, why, you may wonder, did I read this book in the first place? An exhortative co-worker loaned it to me. All told, there were worse ways I could have spent my train ride home that day. [via]