IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

The modern comics universe has had such a different take on G1, one that's significantly represented by the Generations toys, so they share a forum. A modern take on a Real Cybertronian Hero. Currently starring Generations toys, IDW "The Transformers" comics, MTMTE, TF vs GI Joe, and Windblade. Oh wait, and now Skybound, wheee!
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andersonh1
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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More than Meets the Eye #31–33

#31 "Twenty Plus One" by James Roberts, Atilio Rojo

This was the last issue of the series that I bought when it was first published, largely because I did not buy into the way Megatron was being handled. But I also thought the whole tone of this issue was off, as the Transformers somewhat cheerfully discuss their dire situation, as the Lost Light has disappeared and they keep disappearing one by one as well, making the whole thing not seem at all like a matter of life and death, which it clearly should be. And that's still a valid criticism of this issue. It never feels like it takes the situation seriously, not until the final page. I personally think this entire issue could have been compressed into a few pages and accomplished the same thing, which is for Nightbeat to work out that everyone who disappeared was on the Lost Light when it originally left Cybertron, and those who have not vanished came aboard later.

#32-33 "Slaughterhouse" by James Roberts, Alex Milne

The implications of this story are pretty horrifing when you think about it, as we're shown the aftermath of a visit by the DJD to the Lost Light, where they have butchered everyone on board, executing or torturing them to death. The dead crew is essentially the same cast of characters that we've been reading since issue 1 as the quantum explosion created a second Lost Light that is just as real as the original. Their history played out slight differently than the Lost Light we've been following, with Rodimus dying when he pulled the trick with the Quantum engines to kill the sparkeater, Drift confessing that Overlord was on board, and someone contacting the DJD to let them know his location, which we find out at the end was probably Brainstorm, who has his Decepticon insignia cunningly hidden inside his faceplate.

Roberts uses this opportunity to cheat and bring back Rewind, who hid inside the Magnus armor. I'm sure he had this planned the whole time, given how recently the other Rewind was killed, but it does make me question the point of killing him off in the first place. And when the reset buttom on the quantum engines is pressed and the duplicates all vanish and the originals return, Rewind magically remains, along with Brainstorm's briefcase. Convenient.

Despite that, this is an effective story for the most part, though the tendency to push the "robot violence" to absurd and extreme levels that plagues this series continues to annoy me, and could a crew of 200 not fight off the DJD? Are those guys really that uber-powerful? I do like the conversation between Megatron and Ravage, though some of it is too cute by half ("we all get the wobbles"... really?). This book can't quite decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a horror series, and settles for an uncomfortable mix of both that is at times enjoyable, and at times frustrating and lacking in credibility.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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Robots in Disguise #33 - "The World of Tomorrow" by John Barber, Sarah Stone

Wheeljack finally recovers after being shot in the head by a Bombshell-controlled Prowl and has to come to terms with the current situation on Cybertron, which is quite different than when he was injured. It's interesting to me that Starscream is genuinely happy to see Wheeljack, and apparently Wheeljack is one of the few people he's actually honest with, at least up to a point. Maybe his regret over killing Metalhawk was genuine, so he latched on to the only other guy to give him a fair chance? I don't know, I've always liked the idea of Starscream as ruler of Cybertron, getting the power he always craved, better than the reality of it, but this is a pretty good issue. It helps any theoretical new readers get caught up on events since the series began, and once again the art is beautiful. I really enjoy whenever Sarah Stone draws an issue of Transformers. I have no idea how long she'll be around, but the longer the better.

This is RID returning to its roots, though given the art and the cast, it feels like Windblade #5 at this point. It took them long enough to bring Wheeljack back, after he was shot back in issue 14, but shown to still be alive in issue 20. Omega Supreme and Superion are still out of action after just as long as Wheeljack, and though Superion will be back in Combiner Wars, I don't think Omega Supreme had ever come back by the time I stopped reading this book. At least they hadn't forgotten about him.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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andersonh1 wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 1:27 pm Robots in Disguise #33 - "The World of Tomorrow" by John Barber, Sarah Stone
I really enjoy whenever Sarah Stone draws an issue of Transformers. I have no idea how long she'll be around, but the longer the better.
I loved the art in this issue. She needs to draw more things.
Check it out, a honey bear! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkajou
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andersonh1
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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Wrapping up volume 7...

Robots in Disguise #34 - "The Crucible" by John Barber, Livio Ramondelli

I remember enjoying this issue back in the day, despite my gripes about yet another flashback to Cybertron's distant past, and another threat drawn from that past. I looked at my old review in the discussion thread and really don't disagree wtih much of it. I said:

I think this series has found its groove again, because this is the second month in a row that I’ve enjoyed the story being told, even if it is another tiresome flashback to ancient Cybertron, which it feels like we get every other issue. The story revolves around Alpha Trion and Optimus Prime traveling to the far side of the moon to have a private conversation about ancient Cybertron and the 13 Primes, and the long lost secret of combination. I’ve griped in the past about making Galvatron an axe-wielding barbarian to fit the current storyline, when that would seem to contradict his past characterization. But this issue almost justifies that, as we see the early alliance between Galvatron and Nova, before he became Nova Prime. The story told has a bit of a mythical feel to it, with Galvatron defeating an army of combiners off-panel, and all sorts of side stories that are “tales in and of themselves” according to Alpha Trion, but “we won’t get into them now”. Instead of the sordid place we keep flashing back to in MTMTE, this issue goes even further back and hints at a Cybertron that had a greatness to it, though it’s clearly winding down. We get Rhinox integrated into IDW Transformers history, though as with the other Beast Wars characters we’ve seen, he’s not the same Rhinox we know.

This issue also leaves us wondering just what really is going on with Prowl on the last page. I suspect being merged with the Constructicons has affected him more than we’ve been told up to this point, but then again it could just be the usual “Prowl is a pretty vile individual” characterization we get from the IDW writers. Good issue.

More than Meets the Eye #34 - "Births, Deaths and Interventions" by James Roberts, Atilio Rojo

We get another story that's half set in the present day, half set in the past. A shuttle from the Lost Light sets down on a planet after they vanished and reappeared to wait for contact from Rodimus, and while there, they find a wounded Transformer and First Aid wants to treat him. As they work out that he's a Decepticon, Bluestreak and Mainframe back out of the energon transfer, and then when they figure out he's part of the DJD, First Aid is out, leaving only Trailcutter determined to save his life, no matter what. And of course the DJD all being vile, over the top villains, the wounded Vos repays Trailcutter's concern by attacking him, and then Kaon charges up off Trailcutter's forcefield and kills him. It's a brutal and unpleasant series of events, and I hope there's a point to it down the road. We already know the DJD are monsters, I'm not sure another character needed to be sacrificed to remind us of that yet again. With his willingness to risk his life and see past old wrongs, Trailbreaker/cutter is one of the most "Autobot" of all the Autobots in this series, and it's a shame to see him written out.

In the past, a young Megatron is writing against the oppressive ruling regime and talking to his wounded friend Terminus. Megatron is captured by Trepan and Froid and we learn why he was so freaked out by Chromedome's needles: Trepan attempted to alter Megatron's mind to remove the rebellious thoughts. Trepan is only partially successful because he is interrupted, and Megatron escapes to find his friend gone. He salvages what he can of his writings. The issue ends with Brainstorm appearing in the past... .

Was the issue interesting? Yes, it was, and no doubt the look at Megatron's past is significant, though I hope Roberts is not trying to remove all moral responsibility for the war from Megatron via "brain damage from interrupted mnemosurgery" because that would be a massive cop-out. Was the issue enjoyable? On some levels, yes, but I can't say that the various levels of brutality displayed by various characters in this story were "enjoyable" to read.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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Transformers: the IDW Collection Phase 2 book 8

More than Meets the Eye #35–38 - Elegant Chaos by James Roberts and Alex Milne

#35 - "The Custom Made Now" Brainstorm's time travel has altered the past and present, and the story opening that appears to be a flashback is instead revealed to be present day. We're seeing the altered timeline which, for whatever reason (and Perceptor does discuss this in-story) does not instantly change the present on board the Lost Light, but gradually changes the present day to prevent a paradox. In the new reality, it appears that the war never broke out, and Cybertron is instead ruled by a functionalist council who categorize everyone according to their alt modes and cull the population periodically. Megatron has a breakdown at how absurd life on the ship is, and he, Rodimus and Ultra Magnus decide that Brainstorm has traveled into the past to change the outcome of the war and give the Decepticons a victory. Interesting to see Armada Hot Shot and Prime Bulkhead cameo on altered timeline Cybertron. The scenes with Minimus Ambus and Rewind on Cybertron (while they're also on the Lost Light) don't affect the plot, they just serve to show us how bad life can be under the revised timeline. I guess the poor Transformers just have no happy options in any timeline.

#36 - "All Our Parlous Yesterdays" Having decided that Brainstorm is out to kill Orion Pax, Rodimus and a team set out to follow and stop him, using the control case they found on the alternate Lost Light. They join forces with Pax and his crew to defend a hot spot on Cybertron full of new sparks. Rodimus tries to warn Trailbreaker about how he's going to die but fails, and present day Megatron has an interesting conversation with past Orion that really makes me wish I could buy into the whole repentant Megatron storyline more than I do. I don't think Brainstorm even shows up in this one. Good issue, nice to see Autobots working together, caring about life and protecting the innocent, and heroic, idealistic Orion is always great.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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#37 - I did randomly buy this issue after I dropped the series, just to give it another shot, so I had read this one before, but I didn't like yet more of what I saw at the time as yet more mining of Cybertron's sordid past. That's a fair complaint, this series has spent a lot of time depicting Cybertron as a dreary, violent, dangerous place that no one should want to live in. The war doesn't seem much worse than peace, honestly. That aside, I have to comment on Alex Milne's art, which just gets better and better. Some of his landscapes are amazingly packed with detail here.

So Brainstorm spots that he's being followed, we revisit Megatron and Impactor's chat at Macaddam's from Chaos Theory and the events of Shadowplay. The sequence with the barroom brawl where Megatron is arrested reminds me of the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribbleations" where the crew are supposed to be observing the past and get caught up in the fight with the Klingons at the bar. And after the crew has been following Brainstorm for a few time jumps, Megatron figures out that they got it wrong, and that it's him that Brainstorm intends to kill, not Orion Pax.

#38 - We see Megatron's creation, and Rodimus stops Brainstorm from killing him, but only because Brainstorm stood there for a while, not quite able to pull the trigger, and they are able to talk him down from his to alter the timeline. He didn't originally want to kill Megatron, just change his history in an attempt to prevent the war, and was left with killing as a final option, but he couldn't do it. But it turns out Rewind can, and he kills not quite born yet Megatron, puts out his spark. But Brainstorm had taken the .1 percenter spark from Luna 1, and that replaces the one that Rewind destroyed. That restores the timeline, and then it's at this point that we finally revisit the interrupted message from the first issue and we see who sent it and why.

The story ends with a discussion about how all of this time travel was what had always happened, and Perceptor wonders if the changing timeline was actually his fault, and that he may have created actual parallel universes after dismissing the idea earlier. I'm sure THAT won't come back to bite the Lost Light crew...

So, despite my complaints (which have more to do with the series as a whole than this story in particular), Elegant Chaos turns out to be a fun and effective time travel, tamper with history type of storyline that I generally enjoyed quite a bit.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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Going back a few pages regarding likeable characters and whatnot. I can deal with stories about an "antihero", who is a hero more by accident rather than intention, possibly with one or several character flaws. Kratos from God of War comes to mind. It's established early on that he's done horrible things and isn't acting out of anyone's best interest but his own. And yet, he still works as the protagonist because the other characters he fights are so unlikable that they one up even him. I think that was supposed to be the thing with Prowl. He's done some horrible things, but the Decepticons are supposed to be that much more awful. I'm reading through All Hail Megatron right now and I don't feel like it's a case where everyone is horrible so there's no one to root for, it's asking the question "How bad can bad get?" It's a case where the heroes are judged by the villains they face and the Decepticons are made out to be as bad as possible. By the end of the first issue, they've already racked up tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of human casualties. Now, there are cases where if everybody is terrible, it can ruin a work. My wife and I recently saw Hillbilly Elegy. Glenn Close is nominated for an Oscar for her role in this. I kind hope she doesn't get it. Everyone in the movie is terrible to the point where I found myself not caring about any of them. I mean I think we're supposed to be rooting for the writer, JD something. And, while he's less terrible than the rest of them, the bar was not high to begin with. Another example is some of the vapid, crappy reality tv my wife watches. She was watching something last night that I don't know what it was, but it was basically a bunch of terrible people yelling at each other. And I didn't care about any of it, nor did I even care to try and find out.

TL:DR: Good stories can be written without any decent or honorable characters, but it's challenging and not every writer is up to it. In the case of Prowl, I might have more to say about this when I get to that point in the story, but I recall at the time hoping that it would lead to more interesting character development (why have a story with no heroes if there's not going to be some sort of pay off or nothing interesting is done with any of them?
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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I think with Prowl the idea might have been that the war had really warped his sense of right and wrong. Different characters comment on how much he's changed. That seems to be about the only reason Jimmy Pink is in the next RID arc, which I'm reading now, to comment on how different Prowl is from when Jimmy knew him back in the beginning. I remember in Combiner Wars that Optimus thought the war had warped his mind, or words to that effect. And maybe being part of a combiner with the Constructicons has had an effect on him. I'm really getting into the part of this continuity where all I've read is another dozen issues of RID/Transformers and the Combiner Wars issues, so most of it will be new. I'm interested to see where Prowl goes after Optimus beats him up at the end of Combiner Wars, and if he changes as a result of his experiences.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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The Transformers vol. 2 #35–38
"Onyx Interface" by John Barber, Andrew Griffith, Brendan Cahill

The banner is not included on the cover art in the collected edition, but this was originally part of the "Days of Deception" branding. The book drops "Robots in Disguise" from this point forward and is just The Transformers.

#36 - "Signals, Calls and Marches" - The series introduces Garrison Blackrock, IDW's version of G. B. Blackrock from Marvel Transformers, as the head of Onyx Corporation who takes advantage of the technology left behind because the Transformers spent time on Earth. Meanwhile Spike returns with, of all people, the long-absent Jimmy Pink in tow, determined to expose Blackrock's collusion with the Transformers (and they kill what may be the last of the mini-Constructicons from Spotlight Ramjet... poor little guy). Optimus returns to Cybertron temporarily, leaving Prowl in command and determined to retrieve the Enigma of Combination. So it's not hard to guess where all of this is heading, given how Prowl and the Constructicons feel about Spike.

I don't know if the "Prowl having nosebleeds" storyline was ever resolved. His dialogue here ("get out of my head") and his confusion about which Constructicon he was talking to indicates that combining with the Constructicons is having an adverse effect on his physical and mental health. Presumably that was all going somewhere, but I have the feeling that Combiner Wars derailed whatever plot resolution Barber had in mind. At any rate, Galvatron is also interested in what Spike knows, so both factions are out to get him as the issue ends. I have to admit, given how much Spike's behavior affected Prowl, the end of this issue left me very interested in how a meeting between the two would turn out.

#37 - "Vs." - Soundwave and Thundercracker have a conversation in which Soundwave keeps peddling his "Decepticons all care about peace" nonsense and Thundercracker figures out that all the Thrust and Ramet clones have been built without the Decepticons knowing. Prowl and the Constructicons go after Spike and Jimmy, though Prowl's actual goal is to retrieve the Enigma of Combination that he learned was on Earth both through his computer interface last storyline and by listening in on Prime and Alpha Trion's conversation. Galvatron is also after Spike and briefly lures him in, so we have multiple agendas in conflict in this issue. So yeah, the title makes good sense. In the end, Prowl ends up capturing Spike, and he has one thing to say to him: "I forgive you." Not that I believe him for a moment, but it's a great cliffhanger.
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Re: IDW Transformers Comics - retro reviews

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#38 - "ONoffON" - Seeing the Thrust and Ramjet drones reminds me just how little either of those two characters have appeared in this continuity. Ramjet at least got a Spotlight issue, while Thrust showed up in AHM coda and died off panel. Galvatron's attitude amuses me here, he really is the stereotypical "boisterous barbarian" who takes joy in the fight and praises his enemies even as he tries to kill them. He and Arcee come to something of an understanding (mainly because Galvatron lies about Prowl killing General Witwicky), and so do Spike and Prowl, though in both cases each is quite willing to kill the other down the road, once the deal has run its course. There are more indications that Prowl's merger with the Constructicons has affected his thinking. His explanation to Spike at one point only really makes sense if he's speaking from a Decepticon point of view.

Both Transformers and MTMTE are drawing from Cybertron's past to create present-day threats that drive the plot, though here in TF it's a literal physical artifact rather than social attitudes, and it was the at-the-time upcoming Combiner Wars toyline that dictates what the artifact is: the Enigma of Combination, held by Garrison Blackrock. It can make Transformers into gestalts, but it affects humans differently, causing them to think alike and combine ideas to produce greater ones. Yes, it's the old sci-fi cliche of aliens being responsible for mankind's technological development. Turns out that Galvatron had tried to destroy the Enigma by shooting it off into space to burn in a star, but it ended up on Earth instead. Spike is able to tell Prowl where to get it, and once he's inside Blackrock's facility and able to confirm that it's there, Devastator goes to work to obtain it, causing Blackrock to launch the Thrust and Ramjet drones, much to Thundercracker's dismay...

Plot and character cliches aside (and there's no denying that they're present), there's some good stuff in this issue. I haven't been missing the Cybertron political landscape in this book, because the plot on Earth has been fairly interesting, and some of the conflict between characters goes way back. I don't mind Barber revisiting Prowl, Spike and the Constructicons' history at all.

#39 - "The Obliterati" - Jimmy finally (barely) justifies his presence in the story when he and Arcee talk about how Prowl is not like he was in the old days. I like that the series acknowledges how much the character has changed, which he should have given how much he's been through. Devastator succeeds in obtaining the Enigma, but then the combined thirst for revenge on spike and Devastator's destire to fight (or at least that's how I read it) take over and he actually throws the enigma away. Scoop, who had been with Galvatron's crew, takes it and returns it to his "chosen one" Starscream back on Cybertron, so the chess pieces are moved to where they need to be. Thundercracker prevails on Soundwave to stop the Thrust and Ramjet drones so the Earth won't get burned to the ground in a war between humanity and Galvatron's forces.

I don't care for the alien artifact is responsible for mankind's development angle that we've seen many times in various sci-fi stories. On the other hand, it does work to create a decent mcguffin for everyone to compete over, and since we're about to hit a toy-driven event, they needed a quick and easy way to introduce combiners tinto the series after years of making the technology difficult to crack, Monstructor and Devastator aside. I guess all things considered, the story works well enough for what it needs to do, and there are some enjoyable character moments in it. It's nice to see Jimmy Pink again, though he's about as useless to the plot as Kup is, he's just sort of there to tag along with Spike and ask questions. Does he ever show up again after this? I have no idea. He looks nothing like he did when E. J. Su drew him, I have to say.

It's a decent four-part story, and I certainly enjoyed it more this time than I did originally, which I'm finding has often been the case. Maybe I'm just mellowing out or something.
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