Transformers - Spotlight: Soundwave

I've not always been a huge fan of Simon Furman's contrivances but for this one I'm prepared to tip my hat in his general direction. This comic basically exists to get Soundwave into his iconic cassette player (yes, we all know the toy was a Dictaphone, no-one cares) mode, even moreso than Spotlight: Shockwave was built to make the Dinobots made into dinosaurs, but there's so much fun stuff thrown in that the otherwise-arbitrary decision to set this in the eighties is totally forgivable.

Soundwave himself, a notable absence from the opening months of IDW's work, is superb. There have always been two well-known versions of Soundwave vying to be used in any revival; the loyal, calm lieutenant of the cartoon and the ambitious scheming sod of the comic. Furman has a fair crack at blending both, with the loyalty an immaculately maintained facade to keep in Megatron's good graces, a status he seemingly abuses when the right opportunity comes up. The story also shows off his technical skills well, even if there's a showing for one of the more amusing IDW/Furman traits - someone deciding that the most subtle way of covering tracks is to explode a building or two, because no-one follows up on that sort of thing, right?

In this case the opportunity if from monitoring Bludgeon's little cult as they go through the missing Shockwave's data and use it to plan their resurrection of Thunderwing after a visit to Earth, cutting a fine line between smart backstory and forced contrivance by pulling a curious Soundwave after them. It adds a little to Stormbringer by explaining how exactly they found and resurrected Thunderwing, but also gives the chance for a nice bit of development for Soundwave, who surprises himself by realising that his opportunism has limits - the moment when he belatedly realises the insanity of the group's plan and its' danger to his species and decides he must stop it with only Ravage and Laserbeak as back-up is a fantastic, unexpected twist.

There's then the typical coda bringing the trio into the present day which sadly includes foreshadowing Furman's obsession with secret human conspiracy organisations, in this case Skywatch. But never mind, the meat is satisfying enough to make this a decent issue.

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