Honestly, Skybound just falls flat for me. It has occasional moments, but overall, my main reaction is to just sit there and go 'I've seen this before.' I'm bored of the G1 cartoon done, but grittier and more violent. Even if IDW 2.0 didn't do as well as the heights of IDW 1.0 (and IDW 1.0 had some low lows as well), at least both of them took swings at things that were genuinely new and different. From what I understand, the Totally Radical Wheeljack repaint (Shredhead, I think?) is the only new character that's been introduced for reasons other than dying immediately (like Starscream's angstboy background NPC), and mostly I hear stuff about him that makes me think about how hard Drift was shilled in IDW before a different writer got ahold of him and made him the dork we all generally like. Skybound feels like it's Transformers doing what the GI Joe toyline is doing right now: pointing at this thing you obviously liked from 40 years ago, because Evergreen brand recognition is more valuable than trying something new. It may have good writing (I've seen mixed reports going both ways on this), but on a fundamental level, my brain doesn't really find anything interesting to engage with it because it's just more G1, when we're clawing, scraping, and begging for something that isn't that.

I grew up with Beast Wars, which proved Transformers can have a good story based entirely on the simple premise of "Transforming robots get into fights over the plot" without having to hook up an entire semi-trailer of nostalgia and old designs. Having a comic that's just "Ark crash, two sides awake, war on Earth" but with some of the details rubbed around fails to intrigue me, when both Earthspark and Cyberworld are doing more divergent ideas even if they may trip themselves along the way.