I thought Matrix Quest was a sign of the series really getting into gear and developing a genuine sense of momentum, myself.
You’ve got some of the details of the story mixed up anyway. The Autobots and Decepticons don’t team-up to get the Matrix, the Autobots are looking for it and the Decepticons are stalking them so that their leader could take it for himself.

Or maybe I just found the British dialect alienating. UNAAAAAAAAH! What are you playing at?

I judged and still judge Transformers comics artists by how close they come to the original animated series, so—after William Johnson—José Delbo is my favourite. Of all the artists on the original comic he stayed the closest to Floro Dery’s model sheets, and I think that was a wise move. Too many Transformers artists draw the Transformers as if they were giant humans covered in metal pieces. That leads to proportion problems. Geoff Senior’s Transformers look weirdly skinny and big-headed, despite the fact that he does a great job of capturing their polygonality and metallic surfaces. Andrew Wildman was particularly bad for drawing them as giant humans in armour; his Transformers’ faces were all lumpy and gross. They drooled and their noses were runny.

Generation 2 was ugly, from the “extreme” art to the experimental lettering (I didn’t like the balloon shapes or the coloured bars down the side, and I disliked Richard Starkings’ original font—though I liked his later fonts, and he seems to be a nice guy IRL). I prefer to pretend G2 never happened.

If I were a billionaire, I’d hire the original animators and surviving actors to make 1980s-animated-series-style episodes out of the comics, so I could judge the stories fairly without being influenced by their aesthetics.

I don’t know how Furman got away with it, but he would introduce one character (or a small group) and give him a single issue to shine. He also had a penchant for making characters that weren’t based on any toys at all. Like half of the Wreckers.

I think he was just slowly driven mad by Hasbro; as noted above, the new toys which were constantly pushed upon the series became increasingly silly after the first couple of years. iirc Budiansky has more or less said so in interviews, even.

Counting the (very Transformer-heavy) prologue issues in GI Joe, there were, what, 17 issues making up one glorious, unified story arc. Good artwork. Good action, good use of favorite characters, good new menaces. And, especially now as a professional designer myself, I still love Starking’s lettering and typography; even today I’m hard-pressed to think of anything quite like it in comics.

I think it was , if nothing else, the pinnacle of Transformers as for me personally: the old continuity taken out for a spin one last time, about as “mature” as you can make the concept (without making it something else, as I noted above), about as perfect an “ending” as you would want, i.e. plots are wrapped up tightly though the never-ending battle goes on.

I’ve sampled some of the subsequent comics (and loved what I’ve seen of the new Animated series), but still, I think G2 is just going to stand as a kind of Last Word on the concept for me.

“So… Transformers: The Movie never happened in these stories? But… it was awesome!”

The UK for the most part kept the US comic continuity, and the then unknown Simon Furman slotted in extra stories designed to fit in between US stories. This led to closer ties to the animated movie than in the US strip, as the future stories had less impact on current continuity (characters could die in the future) so Furman didn’t have to keep second guessing what was coming next from the US. The movie was used to kick start what was, and still is, one of my favourite stories of all-time; Target: 2006! A story which would ultimately cuminate 120 odd issues later in “Time Wars”.

The major, irreconcilable differences between the UK and US continuities revolved round the destruction of Bumblebee and his rebirth as Goldbug (Death’s Head did it, yes?) and the original death of Megatron, which Furman tried but failed to fix when he took over the writing chores on the US comic.

In both cases, Furman’s use of movie-inspired story elements contributed to the problem, come to think of it.

Still, I credit the guy for telling inventive stories and managing to doing some good character development, while balancing the constant requirements from Hasbro that new, often dumb, toys be worked in. (He dodged the Headmaster and Pretender bullets, admittedly, but he had to come up with a use for “Action Masters,” after all.)

Personally I really enjoyed the Matrix Quest stories, especially the first three. Yes, they were kind of off-the-wall… but this is a comic book about English-conversant alien machines, with inexplicably humanoid bodies (and often faces), which in spite of technologies like faster-than-light travel and mass-shifting, somehow needed the products of humanity’s 20th century energy industry. If you try to get rid of all the illogical wackiness, it’s no longer really The Transformers.

“Prime’s persistence in keeping the physical shell of the Matrix a secret proved to have been a mistake when the Autobot leader died. In accordance with Cybertron funerary practises, Prime’s body was loaded into a funeral bier and launched it into space, unwittingly sending the Matrix with it.” http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Matrix_of_Leadership

Whoops! I hope someone was fired over that. Of course, the Autobots have never had the best management system in place. Like when they made Grimlock king. Oh, the humanity.

But yeah, the Transformers comic was its own thing from the beginning, and I forget whether it came before or after the TV show debuted. The casts were generally the same, although the Autobot’s human ally was Buster in the comics and Spike on the TV show (and Shia LeBouf in the movie). Other notable differences: the comic was consistently set in the present day, while the TV show went two seasons in the present, then the movie came, and then the rest of the show was set in 2005 or 2006. Oddly, both the comic and the TV show were firmly set in their respective G.I. Joe universes.

If I’m recalling correctly, the comic DID acknowledge the movie. In future issues, Unicron brough Galvatron back in time from an alternate future, and it was implied that said future was either the movie or a close approximationt thereof.

I know the next issue does Moby-Dick, but since I’m missing the first and fourth parts, I didn’t catch on to it being a running idea throughout the story.

As for the points you raised:

*This issue gives me no idea of how Thunderwing is different from any of the other Decepticon leaders.

Thunderwing doesn’t have a particularly stand-out role in this issue, but he’d ultimately be defined by his obsession with the Matrix; he finally gains it, it corrupts him, and he’s almost destroyed trying to contain it. Beyond that, he’s a fairly competent leader.

* They say the Matrix was lost when Optimus Prime’s old body was blown up? What happened to Rodimus Prime? Man, they need to take better care of that Matrix.

Rodimus Prime doesn’t really exist in the US stories, except for an alternate-future tale, and a really weird issue that straight-up adapted an issue of the animated series’ third season. Remember, in the animated movie, Rodimus Prime doesn’t exist until 2009, and it’s still 1986; Hot Rod is tooling around somewhere, but he never becomes Rodimus Prime in the original US comic timeline.

* Apparently, it’s somehow shameful that these Autobots secretly long for peace and tranquility rather than constant hardship and battle.

It’s shameful when you’re opting for peace and tranquility at the cost of doing your damn job, yes. If Beachcomber or Mirage can be inspired to fight for the safety of the universe, these guys really don’t have much of an excuse to slack off.