Comic Review - Transformers: Movie Prequel Special

 As part of the promo push for the 2007 Transformers film there were a couple of freebie comics put out with support from Target - one, later titled "Interlude", was handed out in cinemas and the other (which would become "Planetfall") would later be issued with the DVD at the chain's stores. However, never short of a cash-grabbing wheeze (remember when they "found" all those limited edition convention covers in a warehouse?) IDW wrapped them in a new cover and charged four dollars for the two free comics.

Comic Review - Transformers: Movie Prequel

No, not something fan-wanky bridging the gap between the second series of the cartoon and the hair metal-infested guilty pleasure of the final bow of the man behind Touch of Evil, but instead IDW's attempt to get the coin of the 2007 Michael Bay blockbuster in their pocket. Of course, the first thing anyone who's seen the 2007 movie will tell you is that its' got a prequel built into the first hour with endless exposition and flashback. But you have to remember the other thing built in to IDW - not only do they love money but they realise the bulk of their readers are as thick as pigshit. Fuck's sake, they put out a comic specifically to slowly explain Prowl having character development.

Comic Review: Transformers - Revenge of the Decepticons

PUBLISHER: IDW (2010-2011)
WRITER: MIKE COSTA
ARTISTS: NICK ROCHE, DON FIGUEROA, ALEX MILNE

Mike Costa's schizophrenia continues in the third batch of ongoing issues, consisting of a prelude-style one shot and then a five-part story. The real story though is again IDW's lack of editorial direction and forward planning; just like the Dead Furmanverse and All Hail Megatron the ongoing is set into that pattern of a bold new direction that didn't go down too well and then furious backpedalling when the fresh stuff failed to find the expected crossover audience, instead forcing pandering to the fandom in order to keep the numbers up. The main events of the first year's issues were that the war was over, that Megatron was out of the picture, that Optimus Prime had abdicated and that Bumblebee was the leader of the Autobots. Basically all of these things are undone in deed if not word.

Comic Review: Transformers - For All Mankind

PUBLISHER: IDW (2009-2010)
WRITER: MIKE COSTA
ARTIST: DON FIGUEROA

This is it, the most innovative and crucial piece of Transformers fiction since Bill Mantlo and Ralph Macchio sent that stuff about naturally occurring gears and pulleys creating sentient life off to the printers in 1984. Since then the story of the Transformers has been dominated above all by one thing - the civil war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Whole stories have been hung on how perpetual and unavoidable this cycle is, a billion dollar film franchise hinges on the premise that the Decepticons are never quite beaten and naturally having two factions always battling is vital to selling toys, so it's never going to go away. Apart from here, where it does.

Comic Review - Transformers: All Hail Megatron Coda

Having already blundered with the format and possibly the content of All Hail Megatron in the first place IDW decided the best way to deal with the troubled Maxi-series was to extend it by four issues and throw out a series of semi-related short stories while re gearing for the upcoming ongoing series. Mostly this involved catering to whiny Simon Furman fans who were used to having every single dot painstakingly joined for them and undoing as much of Shane McCarthy's work as possible. In short the treatment of McCarthy and AHM underlines that the company would have been fine with whatever if they'd had a blockbuster on their hands but now that the disappointing figures were in they were suddenly all about respecting loyal readers. 

The problem is that most of these stories really didn't need to be told. The Denton Tipton story showing Perceptor's transformation is nicely done and probably one of the more worthy subjects but at the same time is indicative of IDW's habit of capitulating to the pedestrian intelligence of their readers. Within the context of AHM it's entirely plausible and obvious that Perceptor needed to tool up to survive in the current situation and did so, something Sean McCarthy showed amply in two frames. Here we have ten pages for the angry idiots who need everything drip fed. It looks nice and it reads nice but it's like a rogue Mosaic. 

Same with Nick Roche's return to Kup; despite continuing the excellent work on Prowl and formally introducing future cult leader and shipping devotee James Roberts it's just spinning out a story from the evident fact that Kup got better.

It's basically a grab bag of unnecessary epilogues and worrying previews. There's an unnerving start for incoming writer Mike Costa as he resets Megatron and Starscream  to exactly where they've always been and undoes one of the few positive progressive elements of AHM; the first try out for Don Figueroa's appalling live-action influenced art style, a pointless return for Simon Furman...

Basically this is four issues of marking time in the most banal fashion imaginable. And part of  that is an indictment of IDW's ever-slapdash handling of the franchise on an editorial level. But it's also a tacit condemnation of a readership and fandom incapable of filling in the blanks and pathologically afraid of change.

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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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Transformers - Stormbringer

At the time it came out Stormbringer showed that neither Simon Furman nor IDW truly believed in the brittle new world of Infiltration. The first of many idiotic editorial decisions from the serial licence renters,  this came out straight after Infiltration and was basically marketed as "no kids, robots on Cybertron,  epic old school action!" - i. e. nothing like the comic you've just stuck with for six months of your life. True, Infiltration lost something like 60% of its' readership (or some 20,000 in sales) across its' duration and received middling reviews but IDW can't have known this when Stormbringer was being made, which makes its' placement all the odder. As a safe opener to built up to the Earth-based stuff it'd work. As a sop to the fans after 12, 18 issues on Earth it'd work. Thrown out as it was it just seems like the ever-fickle company lost its' nerve even before Infiltration began publication

In short it's an insult to the writer,  the readership and the fictional universe. However,  the shameless attempt to play to Furman's strengths has the unexpected consequence of making the story actually fun - a word totally alien to the cod-serious world of Infiltration. It helps that,minor lip service to the ongoing Ore-15 thread aside, Stormbringer exists in a little bubble separate from much of the rest of IDW'S universe, that it actually functions as an action adventure in its own right instead of a forever broken promise of excitement like the rest of Furman's run. 

It was quite a surprise also to be reminded of how influential some of the ideas here are. The devastated uninhabitable Cybertron would be a staple of both the live action films and the Prime cartoon while - after some defiling of the team by shit BotCon merchandise and background stuffing from Dreamwave - the story also properly brings back the Wreckers. Not only are they in it but they're actually useful, so that's crucial groundwork for Last Stand of the Wreckers.

The plot covers what made Cybertron such a mess in the first place - Thunderwing tries to invent the Pretender shell,  makes an arse of it (definite Marvel influence there) and gets turned  into an insane killing machine meaning that every Transformer on the planet has to team up and stop him - via a present day resurrection overseen by emo Bludgeon and his cult of losers. It's a bit of a Furman greatest hits package with the role of Thunderwing reheated from "Matrix Quest", Bludgeon trying to revive a bastard is straight from "Another Time and Place" and the planet threatening superpower that requires a faction team-up is reminiscent of Unicron, but that's part of the charm. A reassuring sense of familiarity underpins Stormbringer, and you can feel how much more comfortable Furman is.

The cast are an interesting bunch on the whole - the Technobots get probably their best ever comic work here even if they're gently moved aside at the midpoint and Jetfire's mix of skills make him interesting; none of them would get any later chance to shine for IDW, but this is better than nothing. Optimus Prime is portentous and verbose but thankfully Furman seems to be past the worst of his phase of writing him as an emotional cripple while Springer and the Wreckers are entertainingly macho. What little we see of the Decepticons make a minor but positive impression, while Bludgeon's role is a nice throwback to his previous zealotry. Oh, and Searchlight getting to be Optimus' aide is cool too.

To add to the square fan appeal the story undoubtedly craves, Don Figueroa returns to art duties at a time when he was largely considered the finest working Transformers artist, having been one of the few to escape Dreamwave with an improved reputation. His work here is clean if unimaginative,  and therefore a perfect fit for the script. 

Stormbringer is not an excellent piece of work; it's safe, largely predictable and in its way is as frustrating for the lack of follow-up as the rest of the era. But at 88 pages of largely standalone consistently paced robot action it's entertaining in its own right and one of the highlights of Furman's stint.

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