Comic Review...

Cover "B" by Nick Roche

Transformers: More Then Meets The Eye #12

Writer: James Roberts
Artist: Alex Milne and Brendan Cahill (pencils), Alex Milne, Atilio Rojo and Brian Shearer (inks)
(covers by Alex Milne and Nick Roche)



Summary:  AUTOBOTS VERSUS DECEPTICONS! The crew of the Lost Light confronts a band of rogue DECEPTICONS-with terrible consequences. As an AUTOBOT slips closer to death, a single decision sets in motion a chain of events that might just spell the end for RODIMUS and his band of travelers. 

Comments:  The gist of this comic is that it's set before and after a major battle between the Lost Light's crew and some Decepticons they encounter on a world (who they believe captured the Circle of Light). Appropriately, it's called "Before and After". 
   I found this issue dry and uninteresting. Several characters are seriously injured and we get some yap about "Innermost Energon", Spark compatibility between Spark types (say what?), and blah, blah, blah. I just don't care for the writing style of this series...it's not exciting or even interesting to me. It never has been, really. I want to feel like the comic I'm reading is going somewhere and this one always feels like it's meandering all over the place. This issue, for example, is about a battle but gets so bogged down with jumping back and forth explaining who's injured and, eventually, getting to a plot point about how some were injured. Mostly, I don't really care about any of it--in fact, I had trouble even remembering the plot to this issue before I sat down to review it.

Verdict:  Pass. I will likely be dropping this title. After a year of reading it I don't feel it's going anywhere anyway and I'm not prepared to devote any more time to pursuing it and hoping it will adhere more to what I want in a TF comic. 

Comic Review...

Transformers: Robots In Disguise Annual 2012

Writer: John Barber
Artist: Brendan Cahill
(covers by Tim Seeley and Andrew Griffith)



Summary:  CRASHING DOWN! The mysterious Metrotitan from last month's More Than Meets the Eye Annual arrives on CYBERTRON-smashing into the ruins of the legendary Crystal City! Starscream and Prowl begin a battle of wills over the fate of this behemoth-and the outcome will shock you!

Comments:  The Metrotitan from the MTMTE Annual arrives on Cybertron, materializing beneath its surface, where the remains of Crystal City are. Much of the issue is a flashback, explaining Nova Prime's involvement with the rising of the Crystal City centuries before. How he tried to manipulate Omega Supreme and how Omega showed Dai Atlas the Metrotitan and allowed them (Dai Atlas and his followers) to use it to travel to a new world and start anew.
   Barber, as usual, does a great job weaving his and Roberts stories into a coherent tale as well as adding in older IDW elements such as Nova Prime, Omega Supreme and the Drift origin stuff. I think it was kind of unfortunate that the Metrotitan blows up in the end but the revelation about Starscream does set up some interesting things for the future.
   The old school Marvel style flashback art/coloring was a neat gimmick. The other Annual used it slightly but this one did it much more extensively and it invoked memories of the first Marvel mini-series.



Verdict:  Good.

Cover "A by Tim Seeley

Comic Review...

Cover "A" by Andrew Griffith

Transformers: Robots In Disguise #7

Writer: John Barber
Artist: Brendan Cahill
(covers by Andrew Griffith and Casey Coller)

Summary: DECEPTICON MONTH! Fan-favorite character TURMOIL returns from the dead-but what does he want on CYBERTRON? The AUTOBOTS don't want another DECEPTICON on their planet and the DECEPTICONS don't want things to get any worse... but what Wheeljack discovers about the DECEPTICON warlord will change everything!


Comments: The Decepticon Turmoil, who is a fan-favorite character (apparently. I barely remembered him.) returns to Cybertron with his ship and crew, pursuing peace. But he'd previously been a terrifying tyrant and nobody quite trusts him, including the moderates (Metalhawk and Starscream) in the government. Wheeljack decides to covertly investigate Turmoil's ship and finds some bizarre alien technology inside it...
   I was quite surprised this issue didn't continue the story thread started last issue about Orion Pax and his allies as it seemed like a clear set-up for a continuation. Presumably that's still coming at some point... Anyway, it was a reasonably good story. It does have a flaw in that it doesn't make Turmoil's true intentions clear. He builds a dangerous time dilation weapon and then comes to Cybertron to make nice? It doesn't really add up. He must have had some other intention in-mind but we don't learn what that might be. I presume we will soon...  I also hope we get to see more of what the main body of Decepticons is up to (if anything). This story, like MTMTE, needs an overall point or theme for it to migrate toward.
   The drawing of Cybertron on page 2 is very weird looking. More like a funky asteroid then Cybertron...a bizarre stylistic choice in my opinion. Otherwise, the art is fairly good looking.

Verdict: Good/Recommended.

Cover "B" by Casey Coller

Comic Review...

Transformers #29

Writer: Mike Costa
Artist: Brendan Cahill
(Covers by Brendan Cahill and Marcelo Matere)

Summary:  The Last Story On Earth ends here! When Prowl makes a breakthrough in his investigation, he assumes that he has the answers to all his questions until a shadowy adversary brings some shocking revelations to the Autobot's attention. Could this be the end of the human/Autobot truce? Mike Costa and Brendan Cahill bring this tale to its unexpected conclusion!


Comments:  This issue was a prime example of what I've hated about this comic series. We start off the story with Spike admitting he killed Scrapper and telling the Autobots they should be thanking him (exactly what I've been saying about this story's non-premise all along!) Then the Autobots and Skywatch go attack a human named Ben Simpson (no idea who he is) but apparently he's a facsimile (like in the old IDW Furman stories). Swindle is controlling him somehow, apparently, and we learn ultimately that he sold Skywatch's robot-busting tech to Spike (apparently this is supposed to reaffirm Spike's "seat-of-his-pants", wreck-loose mentality. It also shows us how stupid the humans are since nobody has the brains to reverse-engineer any of the tech on their own. Although, considering how advanced TF tech is supposed to be, maybe that's a good thing.) Anyway, Spike escapes before they can confront him further and meanwhile, Jazz goes and blows up a base with Skywatch's tech presumably in it. This was a boring, contrived story that had no ultimate relevance to anything (beyond wrapping up the Earth leg of this series, anyway). I wasn't engaged by any of it and wondered the entire time why they were even bothering. Also, it seems like Costa pulled a lot of stuff out of the thin air to try and give it a conspiracy-like feel. Either none of the elements he materialized here really existed until now or he used elements from before that were so slight I don't recall any of them enough to be amazed at his story composition now (who were half of the human characters that appear in this story, anyway? I have no idea).
   The art was passable although not really great. Brendan Cahill's art is decent but hardly spectacular either. I still hate all the pointless neo-G1 designs everyone has.

Verdict:  Pass. A confusing, contrived ending to a story that didn't need to be told in the first place.

Cover "B" by Brendan Cahill

Comic Review...

Cover B by Brendan Cahill

Transformers #27

Writer: Mike Costa
Artist: Brendan Cahill
(covers by Brendan Cahill and Marcelo Matere) 


Summmary: 'The Last Story On Earth' continues with shocking revelations into what the humans have done to Cybertronians and what they plan to do! Alliances between the two races are on the brink-can Jazz, an Autobot who killed a human, possibly bring both sides back before utter destruction occurs? Here's a hint: Not bloody likely!


Comments: This issue sees art by Brendan Cahill, which is easier to follow in some respects then Ramondelli's is. I wouldn't say he's my favorite artist either though (give me Roche, Guidi or Matere any day).
    So, Prowl survives a sneak attack thanks to Streetwise and they discover it was Brawl who attacked them. They incapacitate him and return to base. We also pick up another story thread about a woman who worked for Skywatch but betrayed them by ratting out that they were working with the Autobots in secret. Later, Prowl grabs her and tries to interrogate her to find out about who killed Scrapper. She hints at Spike and then he comes in and confronts them directly. Yes, he admits to killing Scrapper!  To be honest, I'm not even sure who this woman is (maybe I missed whatever story she was in? I skipped a few issues when they went to North Korea and fought the Decepticons). If she was in the second story arc, this is a long time later to come back to her since likely all but the diehard readers have forgotten who the hell she is. Or if she wasn't in that story, her part was so small I paid her no attention. Either way, this was a plot twist out of the blue...
    Finally, we get to the important part--Spike killed Scrapper and admits to it! The only thing is, who cares? In the issue (TF #9) where Spike committed his "crime", we learn Scrapper's actions caused human deaths so it's not like he went out and summarily executed an innocent party. Also, in case Prowl has forgotten, Scrapper is a Decepticon--his sworn enemy! At least if Spike had killed Bluestreak or something this story might make sense but as it is he did everyone a favor. This story highlights my disdain for this current series--it focuses on issues I just don't care about in a Transformers comic. I don't want more of the same per se, but I would rather the comic pull back and focus more on the bigger picture (like Furman's stuff used to) and less on touchy-feely characterization (or, at least, not so much on it all the time). Costa's approach works so much better for the GIJOE: Cobra comic (in part, because there are other comics in the same continuity being written about other things) but not so much here with only one title.

Verdict: Mediocre.