Transformers - Spotlight: Optimus Prime

This is basically the tipping point from IDW having a convoluted universe to it becoming a case of "for fuck's sake, Simon ".

Set directly after Escalation it isn't even particularly revealing about Optimus himself, though there's a certain admirable quality to such a character thinking exactly as he talks. Shame it's probably unintended but at least Furman doesn't revive the self-doubting version of the character from the later stages of the Marvel G1 book. 

This issue is actually about further setup for the Ark-1 plot opened in Spotlight Nightbeat. It's difficult to evaluate this in hindsight, given that we know now how badly that would turn out but it's certainly not as interesting as it should be and definitely something that could have waited six months while other threads were tied up. It's also the start of mainline plots bleeding into the Spotlights, making them less character pieces and more an overflow system for the "core" plots.  

Really this is more about Furman "doing" the combiners than a story about Optimus. It's one of several IDW issues to just grind to a halt while the writer lays out his theories about how some eighties toy gimmick or another works in his universe. It might not have been so bad if the answer wasn't always "an evil scientist did it and it resulted in a nutter". 

In this case six Decepticons were merged by Ark-1 crew member Jhiaxus so they could combine into super powerful moron Monstructor. And that's a fumble there - while Monstructor is pleasingly esoteric and largely unused he's made up of six nobodies whose scant previous appearances have shown them to also be morons. They include guys called Slog and Birdbrain, for God's sake. And yet we're meant to empathise with Prime being appalled at their fate armed with only this. What would have worked better would have been to use an extant team, Autobots for preference. With the Technobots off the table by dint of being in Stormbringer, the Protectobots might have been a nice choice and, given their fate, more resonance. 

Similarly, the revelation that Nova Prime was a shady character doesn't carry any sort of punch because there's never been much telling us he wasn't. To be honest, what with The War Within and Megatron: Origin both making it clear the Autobots were corrupt and complacent before Optimus showed up and "Evil" Prime being such a common theme in various toylines it'd probably be more of a surprise if he hadn't been a prick. 

Both problems tie in with this incessant need to bring more revelations and twists into a universe creaking under enough weight already. Build Nova Prime up into some lost paragon over the next year, feed in some flashback characterisation for Wildfly and company somewhere and the issue would work a lot better. Once again the big concepts aren't bad but it's Furman's indecent hurry to rush them onto the page that jars. 

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