I'm a well read grad student who's bluntly honest about all things, although I try to be most honest about myself.
I'm torn as far as it comes to this graphic novel. It's short, there are four volumes, and each is done by a different penciler, for starters. The art is hit or miss, and the fact that it's done by different artists makes this seem more uneven than it should be. If it were four stand alone stories done by different pencilers, the lack of continuity wouldn't phase me. For one story, though? Even with multi-issue graphic novels, the companies try to keep the same writers and pencilers for each story arc.
The there's the fact that the story of how Arcee and Cliffjumper came to Earth is interesting, and relevant, but there wasn't anything that was really done with the characters. You don't learn anything about them that you didn't learn in the TV series, even though Cliff only had a brief stint. This so easily could have added to his character, and somehow it... didn't.
It's a good read, it's more competently done than the Transformers Animated graphic novels - no typos is what I mean - and I appreciate spending more time in the Aligned continuity.
But when I rated, I was grinning like an idiot. Character and plot development? They can be sparse so long as I get to spend time in the Aligned continuity once more! As weak as this was, it brought me a lot of joy, so three and a half stars.