IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

[andersonh1]

All Hail Megatron Coda
The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #13-16

Four issues, eight stories. And they're all over the place in terms of tone, quality and chronological placement. Some are setup for future stories, and some fill in some missing bits of plot.

Old Ways - Simon Furman and Don Figeroa - I think this is Furman's final contribution as writer to the main IDW Transformers continuity, and it's a "could be set at any time" story where Ironhide and Optimus Prime share a drink and look back over their long relationship. And as much as I enjoy Don Figeroa's art, I'll admit that the movie-inspired way he draws Transformers faces starting with this issue is not very appealing.

Uneasy Lies the Head - Mike Costa and Chee Yang Ong - Having refused to leave Megatron to die at the hands of Autobots or humans last issue, Starscream has reverted to form and wants to shut off life support and let him die, but Soundwave won't allow it. Having inherited leadership at last, Starscream ends up using possession of the Matrix to establish himself after at first planning to throw the Matrix away. His later constant refrains tha the is "the chosen one" as leader of Cybertron fit nicely with his behavior here. Sadly the art is really not to my liking at all, but we haven't seen the last of it.

Replay - Shane McCarthy and Emiliano Santalucia - This story stitches together Sunstreaker's storyline from before he came to Earth, his capture by the Machination, his torture/disassembly, time spent as a decapitated head while still conscious, and his experiences as a Headmaster and recovery, where he claimed to be fine but had clearly been traumatized by his experiences. All of this can be gleaned from the plot of All Hail Megatron, but it's spelled out here, with the reveal being that despite his attempt at self-sacrifice, Sunstreaker is still alive, barely, at the bottom of the canyon on Cybertron surrounded by dead Swarm Insecticons. This links Furman and McCarthy's storylines nicely, and it's totally understandable that Sunstreaker would suffer from PTSD after all of this.

Rebirth - Andy Schmidt and Andrew Griffith - Basically shows that Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge survived the events of Spotlight Sideswipe and will be around as a future threat.

Everything in its Right Place - Nick Roche and James Roberts - Prowl starts down the road towads becoming the amoral villain of the series that we'll see once More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise begin. As Kup is rebuilt after his experiences in his Spotlight issue, Prowl reflects on the fact that if he was running the war, they'd have won long ago since he knows better than everyone else, and he installs subroutines in Kup so he can use Kup as his mouthpiece, because those darn glory-seeking Autobots all listen to Kup, but not to Prowl. This is the beginning of running Prowl's character into the ground, but we're not quite permanently there yet, since Costa will not write him with the same characterization. Costa's Prowl will break cover to stop a Decepticon being killed by humans, while Roche and Roberts's Prowl would likely have orchestrated the deed himself from behind the scenes. Good story and good art, but I do not like the direction it takes Prowl as a character.

Lost and Found - Denton J Tipton and Casey Coller - An encounter by Kup and his crew with Bludgeon and Monstructor gives us the story about how Perceptor upgraded his offensive and defensive capabilities after he was shot in Spotlight Drift. And it's another piece of the puzzle that fits into the year between Maximum Dinobots and All Hail Megatron, showing how Hot Rod ended up with Kup's crew.

The Man of Steel - Mike Costa and Guido Guidi - Spike gets placed in charge of the revamped Skywatch, to protect Earth from Transformers. That will be important going forward, but I'm not a fan of this version of Spike at all, so this is probably my least favorite Coda.

Hidden - Zander Cannon and Chee Yang Ong - And finally, the team that will bring us what is probably the worst Transformers story of the IDW run (the Bumblebee mini-series) gives us this story where Bumblebee and the other Autobots are confirmed to still be on Earth after the Decepticons left, and Bumblebee is nearly killed while saving lives. I still can't stand this art, and this is the beginning of Bumblebee's elevation to one of the main characters in the series, a trend that does not always work.

[Dominic]

Wow, "Bumblebee" is the worst IDW thing? Wow...just.....

Worse than Scioli? Worse than the shipping in "More Than Meets the Eye"? (I was not over the moon for "Bumblebee". But, wow.) I rather like Chee's art.

This is the beginning of running Prowl's character into the ground, but we're not quite permanently there yet, since Costa will not write him with the same characterization.

Never understood this line of thinking.

How is keeping a character heroic inherently good, if making them less heroic (if not fully evil) results in better comics?

(Costa's run is set *before* Prowl's going bad. And, his motives here are sound.)

[andersonh1]

Wow, "Bumblebee" is the worst IDW thing? Wow...just.....

Worse than Scioli? Worse than the shipping in "More Than Meets the Eye"? (I was not over the moon for "Bumblebee". But, wow.) I rather like Chee's art.

I haven't read Scioli's series, so I can't comment on that. It may be worse. And the shipping is bad, but there are some good elements in those early issues of MTMTE, and we at least have very strong art from Alex Milne. The Bumblebee mini-series actively insults the reader's intelligence more and more as it goes on, and wastes page after page with Bumblebee playing with the child of one of the Skywatch members. Every character in the book has to make a number of stupid choices for the plot to keep moving. The art is just not to my liking, not at all, and in this visual medium the art is important. If this mini series is not the worst, it's down at the bottom of the barrel, to the point that I don't even think I finished it when it was first published. It's in the collected volume 6, so I'll be re-reading it shortly and we'll see if my earlier impressions get reevaluated or not.

This is the beginning of running Prowl's character into the ground, but we're not quite permanently there yet, since Costa will not write him with the same characterization.

Never understood this line of thinking.

How is keeping a character heroic inherently good, if making them less heroic (if not fully evil) results in better comics?

(Costa's run is set *before* Prowl's going bad. And, his motives here are sound.)

I didn't say Prowl's characterization made the comics worse. I don't know that it made them better either, though an argument can be made that Combiner Wars has some very good "Prowl as villain" scenes that wouldn't have worked with any other character, or at least not without an Autobot as the antagonist for Optimus Prime to have conversations with. There's an argument to be made for Prowl as a slightly shady character, manipulating other Autobots for what he sees as the greater good, but there's no denying that Prowl will eventually lose all subtlety and descend into out and out villain status, which just makes him far less interesting. There was a balance here somewhere that the Coda story probably achieves that later stories will not. Prowl using Arcee as his personal assassin in the early issues of RID is a particularly low point for the character, though I suspect the idea is that he just can't handle peacetime, but the idea is not conveyed well.

[andersonh1]

Transformers: the IDW Collection book 6

The Transformers 1-6
"... For All Mankind"
Writer: Mike Costa Art: Don Figeroa

Two years after Megatron's defeat, and the Autobots are still on Earth, with more having arrived to join them (and we'll later learn that these were refugees). Optimus Prime does not want to leave, because he worries that Megatron will come back and if he does the Autobots need to be there to defend the Earth. Hot Rod is tired of living in caves and being hunted by humans and wants to leave, leading to a rift between the two. Meanwhile Skywatch, led by Spike Witwicky, is busy capturing any Transformers they can find. I had forgotten that this is essentially the first post-war storyline, with several characters declaring the war over, which leads to some conflict between Hot Rod/Rodimus and Ultra Magnus later in the story. Magnus continues to act as law enforcement despite the massively changed circumstances on the ground, while Rodimus is even willing to work with Decepticons to build a ship to leave Earth.

I'm not sure the post-war idea really makes sense here, given that the Decepticons won a massive, galaxy-wide victory, but the idea seems to be that without Megatron they all fail to capitalize on their victory and turn on each other, with Starscream proving to be a dismal leader, but we'll get there down the road. Prowl, in an action that I remember got a lot of criticism at the time for being out of character, breaks cover to stop Breakdown from being killed and gets himself captured, and Ironhide is killed during the rescue, leading a deeply hurt Optimus Prime to surrender himself to Skywatch in the hope that the Autobots will stop relying on hiim and change their ways of thinking.

It's a good story with some good ideas about the pace at which humans change and learn compared to the much longer-lived Transformers. Brian Ruckley had an alien character discuss some of the same ideas in the first issue of the Escape mini-series. Thundercracker in particular gets some very nice character development as he is forced to spend a lot of time injured and in hiding and has little else to do but observe humanity, which leads him to different ways of thinking and an appreciation for human life that he did not have before. With Optimus no longer in command, the Autobots adopt a democratic system and (for some reason) vote for Bumblebee as the new leader, so this is the start of Bumblebee learning to assert himself and take charge. And Swindle of all characters gets to shine as he seemingly brokers a peace between some Autobots and Decepticons long enough for the two groups to cooperate in building a spacecraft to leave Earth, only for him and his followers to turn on the Autobots with the aid of Menasor, the third combiner of this continuity, as Swindle has figured out how to (imperfectly) use the technology. Menasor is not a combined mind, it's all five Stunticons competing even in combined form. It's still a great way to end this story arc with some big moments.

Don Figeroa's art is something I normally have nothing but praise for, but I have to admit that I do not care for his newly-adopted style here. I appreciate that he wanted to stretch himself and try something new, but aesthetically it just doesn't appeal to me. That's not the same thing as saying it's "poor" because it's not. Figeroa has lost none of his skill at composition and dynamic angles and fine details. But I'll take the style of Stormbringer over For All Mankind if I have a choice.

It's a very good opening storyline for this ongoing series, with some strong ideas. I think the next six issues will flounder around in search of a good direction before the book picks up again, but we won't see them until the next collected volume. I really enjoyed re-reading this storyline.

[andersonh1]

Bumblebee 1-4
Zander Cannon and Chee Yang Ong

I don't know that I have a lot more to say about this one that I haven't already said to Dom. This mini-series actively insults the reader's intelligence with stupid characters doing stupid things. Every character in the book has to make a number of stupid choices for the plot to keep moving. I don't like the art. I had a negative reaction to this book when it was first published, and though I felt a bit kinder towards it this time (mainly because I enjoyed the few bits of new information that the mini-series delivered that were relevant to the main plot), it's still not very good. At least I now know where Bumblebee got his upgraded form and why since I had not previously read issues 3 and 4. There had to have been some live-action movie inspiration here with the Camaro alt-mode instead of the VW bug.

Original discussion thread here, and in reading over my comments, I can't say I've changed my mind. https://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=12485#p12485

[andersonh1]

Last Stand of the Wreckers 1-5
Nick Roche and James Roberts

As Verity Carlo writes near the end of the series, this is a story about good people dying in stupid, pointless ways. It's probably one of the best Transformers stories of the original IDW continuity. It's also one of the most violent with possibly the highest body count and the most on-panel blood and gore, albeit of the robot variety, so I guess "energon and parts" is more accurate. No attempt is made to sanitize the violence or to give anyone a "heroic last stand" even though Pyro tries to achive one. I'm honestly surprised that I enjoy the story as much as I do, given how brutal it is.

The Garrus-9 prison falls to Decepticons during Megatron's galaxy-wide assault, with Phase 6 bot Overlord coming in and asserting his rule over the facility, which he turns into a gladiatorial arena where Autobot prisoners are made to fight to the death or are hunted down for sport. Prowl sends in the Wreckers to retrieve Aequitus, which over the course of the story turns out to be a computer that calculates guilt or innocence that has data on it which could be of enormous propaganda value to the Decepticons if they get it, because it's all about Autobot war crimes. In other words, Prowl sent the Wreckers in to fight or die in order to keep unsavory facts from coming to light.

The value of the story to me, and maybe this is why it works despite the over the top violence, is how it's honest about the situation that the Wreckers find themselves in. It's not about adventures or narrow escapes (and indeed, one of the characters in-story asks why it couldn't just be those things), it doesn't cheat or make the protagonists larger than life and able to get out of every scrape. Some of them are killed or badly injured, always in pretty horrible ways, and the sacrifice is not for some noble goal, but to protect some sordid wartime secrets. I didn't think that was a good enough ending to justify all we went through narratively to get there when I first read the book, but I suppose it works on the same level that not turning the violence into some sort of adventure works. I think the theme of "shattered illusions" also works, as multiple characters join the group expecting one thing and end up with something else entirely.

I do feel, unfortunately, that this series somewhat set the template for More Than Meets the Eye, given some of the violence and dialogue and horrible deaths seen in that series, which makes sense given that both Roberts and Roche were involved in that series. On the other hand, the story is a fine example of keeping a plot and story always moving with action or useful dialogue with very few panels wasted. As an example of how to craft a comic-book mini-series, it's excellent.

So yeah, this one's held up well. Now I just need to read the sequel, which is in one of the future volumes down the line, so I'll get to it.

Original discussion thread here: https://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=13181#p13181

[andersonh1]

Spotlight: Prowl
Mike Costa and E. J. Su

While Prowl as antagonist/villain makes for often interesting stories, I've always had a soft spot for this Spotlight, where time on Earth watching a policeman do his job softens Prowl up for a time and seemingly gives him a greater concern for life than he is typically shown to have. The issue was written to explain why he broke cover and risked his life to help Breakdown, something the Decepticon-hating Prowl would not normally do, and in doing so it fills in some gaps from that two year period between AHM and the beginning of the Costa ongoing series. E. J. Su's art is always welcome, though it never quite looks the same as it did in those early Furman books. This is one of my favorites of the later Spotlights, and a nice way to finish up volume 6.

[andersonh1]

Infestation 1-2
Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Nick Roche

Book 7 opens with this Zombie crossover that's in-continuity mainly because Kup's installed subroutines are used to help resolve the plot and both Heart of Darkness and Dark Cybertron refer to the events of this story, chalking up the infestation as an aspect of the Dead Universe. I have to admit, I like Infestation simply because it's non-stop fun action from start to finish, well drawn by Nick Roche. Reading these books in order like this over a few weeks has made it more apparent to me just how often Galvatron was used as an atagonist. He's around a lot more than I had remembered. He's a fairly major character in this continuity. I'm still not sure how well this Galvatron lines up character-wise with "Galvatron the barbarian" that we see later in the RID/Transformers series, the boisterous, implacable fighter from Cybertron's distant past. In any case, he's moving up my list of favorite villains for this continuity.

I had forgotten as well that Prowl's manipulation of Kup from the Coda story was used in this crossover, and Kup's view of his would-be rescuers as zombies or evil creatures back in his Spotlight issue is also tied in. This is a surprisingly good inter-property crossover, and the fact that it's only two issues probably has something to do with that. They get in, tell the story and get out again.

[andersonh1]

Transformers vol 2: International Incident
Transformers 7-12
Mike Costa, E. J. Su, Javier Saltares, Guido Guidi

This is the low point of the otherwise strong Costa series, in my opinion, though Spike's killing of Scrapper will have repercussions for a long time, so it can't be swept under the rug. The opening issue of this arc catches the reader up with the Decepticons who are slowly cannibalizing each other while their ship sits out of power on an asteroid, Megatron remains on life support (but recovering, since he narrates the issue), and Starscream sits and stares at the Matrix. The major victory they won during AHM has been wasted. That issue is followed by the infamous issue where Spike kills Scrapper by attacking him with a corrosive chemical mixture and then blowing his head off with his own gun. That's followed by what feels to me like a very Sunbow-esque storyline where the Autobots have to stay in disguise to stop the Combaticons in North Korea and then the Predacons in China as various nations use the factions of Transformers still on Earth to advance their own interests. It's my least favorite story arc of the series, but thankfully things will pick up nicely with the next storyline.

After a unified opening arc, this part feels all over the place as if Costa was scrambling for a direction, or else editorial was asking for something different. I really don't know. The artists change several times and we spend more time with Spike than I really want, though there are a few good Transformers moments as well. Thundercracker continues to shine as a character under Costa's writing, and we probably do about as well with Bumblebee as leader as we could have.

[andersonh1]

Transformers vol 3: Revenge of the Decepticons
Transformers 13-18
Mike Costa, Nick Roche, Don Figeroa, Alex Milne

This is where the Costa run picks back up and gets very good again. It opens with Rodimus single-handedly retrieving the Matrix from the Decepticons, getting by on improvisation and luck until his luck runs out when he encounters Megatron, who shoots him at point black range, blows a hole through his midsection (same as Starscream back in the Infiltration finale) and sends him flying through space. It feels a bit like a semi-sequel to Spotlight Hot Rod given that Nick Roche drew both issues and given that Rodimus uses much of the same methodology to break into a heavily defended Decepticon base, only this time things don't end so well for him. If the Matrix hadn't kept him alive and repaired him as he drifted through space, he'd have been killed by Megatron.

Megatron has been upgraded, given a new and nearly indestructible body by Shockwave and Soundwave, and it contains the ability to generate a spacebridge, something that will not only be important for Costa's plot down the road, but will come back in Dark Cybertron and even MTMTE. The old body has been converted into human-sized Megatron handguns and sent to Earth, because Megatron has decided that he wants revenge not just on the Autobots, but on the humans who nearly killed him as well. The handguns are all connected and Megatron can influence the humans holding them, and he uses this to ramp up hostility between the Autobots and humans. Bumblebee is nearly killed by one of these handguns.

There are a lot of good Transformer scenes in these issues, finally, and we sadly get what I think are Don Figeroa's last two issues drawing Transformers for IDW before Alex Milne takes over. This second year is just so much more full of energy and direction compared to the first year of the book, and yet it's all part of the same story as the Autobots and Spike come to an understanding and figure out how to work together before the rest of the series will spend time tearing that relationship apart again. Costa gives us some pretty good Optimus/Megatron debates, and a great scene where Optimus tries to kill Megatron by dropping a satellite on him from orbit, to no avail. It's Megatron who tells Optimus that Spike killed Scrapper, leading Optimus to declare that he trusts Spike, but he still puts Prowl in charge of investigating the truth of the matter.

And then Megatron, holding all the cards and seemingly unstoppable, surrenders to the Autobots. Despite this making no sense to the Autobots, they sieze the opportunity and imprison him, taking him out into space for trial, and we'll see how that plays out in a future storyline. This is a strong storyline with plenty of good action and dialogue, and it's a massive improvement over "International Incident". From here on out this book will remain consistently strong and enjoyable.