Comic Review - Transformers: Spotlight Grimlock

Spotlight: Grimlock was published in uncertain times; word had not long leaked that Shane McCarthy would be taking over the title of main writer from Simon Furman with a soft reboot series while Furman's planned Expansion miniseries was dropped. The  process does actually seem to have been surprisingly cordial, as Furman was given a total number of nine comics to tie up selected plot threads and seems to have been given the chance to heavily revise this one as a trail for the Maximum Dinobots mini - Spotlight: Grimlock was originally intended to be published the month before Spotlight: Mirage but inexplicably arrived a month after it.

The result is that this issue actually has a clarity in the plot that has been missing from several issues. It gets off to a poor start when Skywatch decide that the best response to losing control of Ravage and Laserbeak the second they were in the field during Devastation is to let a bigger robot loose in the form of Grimlock. Amazingly he breaks loose almost immediately - the last we see of Skywatch is of their incredible backup plan to send the other four Dinobots after him, because surely there can't be anything wrong with using the same plan a third time even after all this, right? To be fair I think there's an element of just wanting to hurry the process here and as dumb as it is once it's done the issue improves dramatically. 

At the time of publication myself and quite a few others had become a bit fed up with Grimlock. Furman latched onto the Dinobots in general and their leader in particular early in his time writing for the British comic, using him a lot before American series writer Bob Budiansky took him in a funny weird unpopular direction and then killed him off. One of the first things Furman did after taking over the American book was bring him back (alright, the reason was the release of the Classic Pretender figure but he was probably going to resurrect the character anyway) and went a long way towards restoring the character's standing in  subsequent issues. However when Furman returned again for the Dreamwave era it felt like the character had become a simplified Wolverine style "badass", an ever-present never-wrong Mary Sue. From memory that seems to be something of an overreaction awoe Furman only wrote for him during the War Within prequel minis, the bulk of the appearances being authored by Chris Sarracini or James McDonough & Adam Patyk. At the same time he was woeful in War Within, so yeah.

Basically when the character made an early doors appearance in Spotlight: Shockwave and was then shoehorned into the Beast Wars mini for no good reason many were braced for more of the same. Indeed,  Furman's incredibly slow-burning style means it could well have still been the plan for Grimlock and the gang to ride in and save  Optimus and everyone who isn't a Dinobot from the implausible number of Decepticons floating around, probably nutting Nemesis Prime to death while throwing an insult at Prowl. It all worked out better, short-term at least let,  as here we have the unusual experience of Grimlock being likable. 

It might be the mechanism of the internal dialogue but this is the best writing the character has had for a decade or more as he examines his misleading of the Dinobots while retaining the headstrong attitude that made the character interesting in the first place. The battle with Scorponok indicates his power levels will be sensible too, and the use of a minor grudge as motivation is a nice touch. The whole business also folds him into the Machination storyline in a nice natural fashion. 

It's not a classic, no comic that opens with that sort of device can be, and IDW let it down with an awful colouring job and their usual inability to point speech bubbles at the right characters. But it is a promising start to Furman's final stint on the main book - and once again indicates that the best way to get results out of him is by constraining his focus.

■■■■■■□□□□

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.

■■■■■■■□□□