Writer: Simon Furman
Artist: Nick Roche
(covers by Nick Roche and Marcelo Matere)
Summary: The story catches us up on what has come before. Grimlock is stranded alone on Earth, his fellow Dinobots missing and his ship is damaged and unusable for the time being. He attempts to contact help--which will come, for a price. Meanwhile, Skywatch deploys the remaining "thunder lizard" units, believing the control problems they had with Grimlock and the Recordacons to be fixed now--little do they know Scorponok's minions have tricked them into playing right into their hands. Elsewhere, Sunstreaker and Hunter O'Nion have tracked down one Machination facility but come up empty. Sunstreaker is distraught that his real head is out there somewhere and under Scorponok's control. Hunter reassures him they'll find it and put things back to normal. Sunstreaker is repulsed by the idea of being a Headmaster while Hunter seems to be somewhat fascinated. Hot Rod tracks Scorponok to his base somehow but Scorponok knows he's there and is ready for him... Grimlock is attacked on a glacier (where his ship is) by a legion of multicolored Headmaster Sunstreakers. They attack his ship and he uses the distraction to take them on! Shortly after, one of them attaches a module to him and he is teleported away to Fallon, Nevada, where the other Dinobots are deployed to apprehend him.
Comments: One thing I can't fault Furman for here--stuff happens in this story, right off the bat. Compare this with the parallel series of All Hail Megatron, where the first five or so issues ran at a snail's pace (yeah, yeah. It works better in TPB format--so what? It should work as individual parts too). Thanks to AHM, we already know Sunstreaker is back to normal in the future which works against this story slightly. Roche's art is mostly pretty good--I don't care for his neo-Dinobot designs though. They just seem wrong to me. Once again, I'd just prefer the classic G1 designs and don't see why IDW must reinterpret everything (then ignore it in AHM anyway). The story is a good serial story so far. Furman is a classic style comic writer, doing an issue at a time of an overall arc, not this new-fangled crap of stretching out a threadbare story over multiple issues. I mean, it's not high art but it's entertaining and at least I didn't read this story and feel like I would've wasted my money buying it (I have a copy on the way too, so technically I did buy it).
Recommended.
***
(As previously stated, I've not seen this series in comic shops where I live, due to Diamond's screw-ups in sending adequate stock out. I do not have issue #2 but did luck out and find a sole issue of #3 at a comic store--finally).
Transformers: Maximum Dinobots #3
Writer: Simon Furman
Artist: Nick Roche
(covers by Nick Roche and Marcelo Matere)
Summary: Skywatch dispatches Shockwave to find the other units (the Dinobots and Recordacons respectively), intent on keeping him on a tight leash. He warns that he will still have more then enough time to cause lots of damage in the twenty four hours they've given him. The director of the operation and his subordinate look at each other worriedly. In Fallon, the Machination's clone Sunstreakers come to attack the Dinobots. The other Dinobots are tough and feel like Grimlock's abandoned them.... Swoop even starts to fly off. The Headmasters strike Grimlock then and eventually start wearing him down, prompting the other Dinobots to turn and aid him after all. Elsewhere, Scorponok watches along with the beaten Hot Rod... he tells him he wants to see all he's accomplished before he has Hot Rod put to death. Elsewhere again, Shockwave detects Soundwave's lifesigns and goes to investigate... the Dinobots are being hit with everything the Machination has at it's disposal. Just then, the Monsterbots show up and aid them. It turns out Grimlock called them for help--and they will help, in exchange for some price (which is not spelled out in the story). Elsewhere, Scorponok has tired of Hot Rod's insolence and orders him to be taken and executed. Once free of Scorponok, Hot Rod uses the last of his energy to take out his two Sunstreaker-clone sentries. He collapses and then Sunstreaker and Hunter arrive.
Comments: I've not read issue #2 so this is a bit jarring but it's not hard to figure out what happened in-between issues. The Dinobots fought, check. Hot Rod fought Scorponok and lost, check. This is very much a middle issue of the story with fights and plans and counter-plans... a typical Furman story, to be honest (which can be good or bad, depending on one's perspective). The art is consistently good (save for my complaints about how the Dinobots look). I do hope M.D. wraps itself up as much as possible and leads into the AHM-era without too much trouble (I know, I know. There's another series coming at some point to bridge the gap--but I meant wrap things up as much as reasonably possible, considering the overall continuity and such). I also forgot to mention that I like the multi-colored Sunstreaker clones--it helps distinguish them, of course, and may or may not be a Diaclone homage at the same time.
(I'm going a bit easy on this series because it was hard to find around here and I welcome another TF story fix in contrast to AHM, which I don't much care for).
Recommended.
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