All Hail Megatron 13 - The new direction of Transformer aesthetics?

Previews for IDW's All Hail Megatron #13, the return of Simon Furman and Don Figueroa, are out - and it's actually a bit worrying in a way:

So...our Generation 1 Transformers are starting to get the skeletal, thousand-part plate filled faces now.

It's fine to experiment but I and some others worry this is a sign that maybe the whole franchise might shift into a movie-injected aesthetic. It's not even my personal distaste for the look of the movie bots...it's just that I don't want the whole feel of the brand to change just because one part of it has more exposure. It'd be like when the X-Men comics suddenly had everyone in black leather after the first X-Men film came out. Almost alienating, as if the thinking is "the mainstream way - or NO way!"

It's probably going too far to assume this is some telling shift for the franchise at large, but it still makes you wonder if that might be happening.

I know a lot of people rag on the "liquid metal faces" but...it just looks so much nicer to me than whatever the hell is going on here. It may be more logical that they have all sorts of different plates in their faces, but it just appears cluttered and makes them look like any old cold, random robot. One of the main attributes of the Transformers franchise, and one of the main charms as far as I'm concerned, is that the robots are relatable, with personalities akin to that of humans. I think the smoother, simpler faces teeter more towards the human-like side of the spectrum and serve as a better physical mirror of the personalities, and yes, I think it has been done convincingly without going too far ala teeth and tongues. This high-tech, almost skeletal look loses a bit of that charm and serves as a slight disconnect from their...perceived human-like nature, I think.

A post from Nato Bot at TFW hit it well, I think:

I just got my issue in the mail today. I agree that Don's work is awesome. I like what he's done with their bodies, just not the faces. I've been trying some similar things with my own work. I just keep coming back to the more emotive nature of the "liquid metal" approach (which I've never seen as liquid metal but as some sort of combination of metallic cells bonded with a softer cellular bond to make a flexible, yet durable metal-like "skin". If you think of TFs as living biological organisms with cells like every other living thing we know of [just metallic ones], then it makes sense).

I think that it might have worked for the movie, but in a comic book all the extra lines just make the faces look too busy and cluttered, not to mention skeletal. Which (as was stated before) is cool for bad guys like Bludgeon, but not good for the good guys. Especially if you want a human reader to identify emotionally with the characters. Judge for yourself:

That image really drives the point home.