Writer: Simon Furman
Artist: Andrew Wildman
(covers by Andrew Wildman, Guido Guidi, Geoff Senior, Dan Khanna)
Summary: The TRANSFORMERS comic that began it all—is back. With a vengeance! 21 years have passed since CYBERTRON was restored to its former glory, and finally there is peace. But, after millions of years of bitter civil war, can all ever truly be one? In a conflict this primal, this epic and far-reaching… There are always “Loose Ends”!
Comments: And so it begins... we're officially introduced to the Wreckers in the start of this issue (or reintroduced, depending on your perspective). Very quickly we discover some G2 characters--the G2 Decepticon jets take over a facility. Page 8, panel 1--Terradive and Afterburner's word balloons are either switched or somebody forgot which character was who. I thought it was cool we see the Deluxe Insecticons for the first time ever this issue (at least, in the US series anyway. Not sure about the UK stories). One of the Wreckers is also G2 Leadfoot. So, all in all, points for using a variety of characters in this.
There is a brief mention of Unicron and I really, really hope he doesn't come back--ever. One of Furman's strengths was finding new and cool ways to move the story forward (the Swarm, Liege Maximo and Jhiaxus). We don't need to retread the same old ground constantly and I would much prefer something new and exciting as an overall villain in this. I was a little surprised by the story's ending but know we'll get some answers in the next issue most likely.
The artwork is classic Andrew Wildman. You either love him or you don't. I feel it fits in fine with the original run. Some of the color choices were a bit interesting though--Ultra Magnus with a yellow visor just looks wrong to me. It needs to be blue or silver, imo. Hot Rod is also red now instead of fuscha (which strikes me as wrong even though it's technically right) and Soundwave is his proper blue (not purple) which I'm fine with. I got all three of the covers that were available here ("A", "B" and RI-A. The Khanna cover wasn't here--but I didn't care for it anyway). I think Wildman's cover is my favorite of the three. It looks cool and is story relevant.
I was impressed by the fact I read through the issue, reached the end and didn't think, "that's it?" to myself. There's enough plot and set-up for the future here that I was sufficiently satisfied and looking forward to more. I'm not saying it's the greatest TF comic ever or Simon Furman is some kind of genius for writing it but I found it sufficiently entertaining (like I did with his classic run). Whether or not Regeneration One will become part of the classic TF lore in time is uncertain. We don't have enough of it yet to really judge it as a whole and there's still the whole shock-of-the-new aspect to it. There needs to be some time for it to truly settle in and then we can look back and see if it still holds up against the older content or not. For now, I like what I see, so that's something at least.
Verdict: Excellent/Highly recommended.
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| Cover "A" by Andrew Wildman |
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| Cover "B" by Guido Guidi |
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| Retailer Incentive Cover "A" by Geoff Senior |
1 comment:
Great review! Just received the issue today so I waited to read your blogpost.
G2-afterburner is known here in mainland Europe as Snipe and I think Unicron is a sort of methafor for megatron, who returns. all in all a great issue, Andrew's art has really grown over the years and furman....is furman. #82 should arrive within the week.
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