Comic Review: Transformers - Dark Prelude

PUBLISHER: IDW (2012-2013)
WRITERS: JAMES ROBERTS, JOHN BARBER, NICK ROCHE
ARTISTS: STEVE KURTH, CHEE, NICK ROCHE, DAVID DAZA, MATT FRANK, AGUSTIN PADILLA

Almost forgot this one. After 2009 the Spotlight series all but ceased apart from the release of Spotlight Prowl, issued entirely to placate the title's educationally subnormal fanbase, a group largely of adult age who will actually pay triple rates to get a toy a short while ahead of other people. Then in 2012 Hasbro decided actually they'd wade full-on into the comics (later collected as a prelude to the prelude to "Dark Cybertron") and reactivating the series for pack-in titles would avoid any weirdness like Crosscut popping up and talking about himself for three pages before fucking off into the crowd. Six new issues were slung out and with careful care wouldn't involve explaining largely obvious past events to thick shitheads or forgettable peripheral cast getting shunted off in Red Dwarf rip-offs. At all.

[Spoilers Follow]
[or would if anything unpredictable was involved]

Comic Review - Transformers: Revelation

PUBLISHER: IDW, 2008
WRITER: SIMON FURMAN
ARTISTS: E.J. SU, NICK ROCHE, DAN KHANNA

Revelation was originally published as four Spotlights  (Cyclonus, Hardhead, Doubledealer and Sideswipe) but was really a hurried rewrite of Simon Furman's mooted Expansion mini-series; as all four run sequentially it makes more sense to review them as a whole than separately. For a start none are really genuine Spotlights; each title character gets a thread which goes some way to exploring their internal drive complete with the usual narration but each issue has a lot of other things going on which doesn't have any real connection to them.

In short, Furman across four issues makes a valiant stab at resolving two years of plotlines , and the result is a far from perfect story which somehow remains breathlessly enjoyable. Simple law of averages means it's impossible to like every single plot thread, with some getting too much space, some getting too little and some getting it just right. 

You do have to wonder why exactly the Spotlight format was used, however, as Furman clearly feels obliged to give the lion's share to the subject even if it is less attention than that received by, say, Wheelie or Ramjet on their big days out. It's probably the biggest flaw in the storyline - Cyclonus gets a role that would have worked better for Galvatron, the obvious payoff of Dealer is shown via a pace-sapping McGuffin quest and Sideswipe's personal realisation is oddly placed in the middle of a cross universe death struggle (which is beautifully illustrated by E J Su, signing off from Transformers in style). Quite why IDW didn't just pack it as a four issue mini I don't know, but then at an editorial level they've always been basically incompetent. Only Hardhead's chapter (helped by fantastic art from Nick Roche) feels particularly organic. 

Still, in among all of this there's payoff for myriad plot elements - Arcee quest for revenge, Nightbeat's lobotomy, the betrayal of Hot Rod's team, Jetfire and the Technobots' research into Thunderwing, Banzaitron's unit, Monstructor,  Sixshot,  Galvatron, Nemesis Prime - aside from the Earth -based stuff held over for Maximum Dinobots there's hardly a thread from the past few years that isn't resolved and most of the defining faces of the era make some sort of showing.

Some of the resolutions are clumsy and unsatisfying, and on occasion Furman makes a rod for his own back - you can give him the benefit of the doubt for the sudden appearance of Straxus and Grindcore as further heralds of Nemesis Prime as the former had a toy out around about then while the latter probably did and I just don't care (though their easy defeat at the hands of Sideswipe is a bit much ). 

But the Pretender stuff is handled poorly - the debut of Cloudburst, Landmine, Waverider and Groundbreaker mere pages before Jetfire's reworked Pretender tech is ready just feels silly, like Furman feels obliged to make the unloved eighties guys Pretenders out of sheer anal neatness and lack of imagination. It worked composing Bludgeon's cult out of eighties Pretenders but in the cramped confines of Revelations putting the Technobots in the suits would have been cleaner and more satisfying. Elsewhere, other characters - such as Sixshot and Monstructor - do just disappear in the press, their fates vaguely implied rather than outright tackled.

On the other hand some are done very well indeed - Hardhead executing Nightbeat in one simple frame is still one of the peak moments of IDW's entire output, an unexpected and clever solution to the problem that convincingly causes Jhiaxus' plan to begin unravelling. The takedown of Nemesis Prime is some of the best Optimus Prime writing Furman has done for some time. 

The phrase "a mixed bag " doesn't begin to cover it, but the flawed and frantic Revelations retains a curious readability that little else of Furman's IDW work possesses. 

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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.

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Transformers - Spotlight: Mirage

Oookay. Spotlight: Mirage is not a bad comic, but I have no idea what it's for. And not in the way that Furman's Spotlights have more than once meandered off on a tangent and further cluttered up the overall story.

The only issue of the third batch of Spotlights not written by Furman,  this one was instead penned by George Strayton - an RPG writer who did some hazily defined work on IDW's movie tie-in comics and presumably displayed enough affinity to be given a try-out. 

With the main material a complicated mess he was no doubt directed to do something as standalone as possible. The choice of Mirage was probably a matter of finding a character well-known enough to shift a Spotlight but not tied up in Furman's masterplan; as a first year character with a single notable appearance as a murder suspect in Spotlight: Blaster he fits the bill.

The approach to avoiding story discontinuity however is a little odd as the issue either takes place in an alternate timeline of some abstraction or entirely in Mirage's head (though the final page depicting the apparent reality of Mirage driving around Earth as a Ligier is still enough to take this out of mainstream continuity until John Barber apparently found a home for it several years later). The plot mines out the character's apparent flexible loyalties via a dream or fantasy of helping the Decepticons kill the last handful of Autobots in an alternate future that has no particular anchor with the rest of IDW's material. That's a bit of a shame for two reasons. 

Firstly,  just about the only attention anyone official has ever given him has revolved around whether his sympathies lie. This story takes a slightly different approach by portraying the internal struggle rather than someone  (i. e. Cliffjumper ) leaping to conclusions but still, it would be nice if the opportunity had been taken to have a different look at the guy.

Secondly what we see of the alternate or imaginary future is so abstract from everything else that you're spending as much time trying to figure out the purposefully fractured plot at the same time you should be focusing on Mirage. A What If style storyline with Mirage betraying the Autobots at some crucial juncture like the battle in Brasnya would oddly have more impact than the downfall of a group of effective strangers. 

Nevertheless taken in isolation it's a nice read, well written and illuminating. The lack of context gives it an odd transcendent feel like the one achieved by the better Mosaics, a universal character study that could ring true for any Mirage. But it's also a dashed odd thing to come out at this point, and it's understandable many readers were nonplussed when it first appeared.

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Transformers - Spotlight: Arcee

Christ almighty. Okay, let's get the good stuff laid out first. And there is some really good stuff in here; structurally the issue does a fine job of naturally dovetailing several plot threads from previous Spotlights in an organic way as opposed to Furman's recent habit of just skipping from one to another with no narrative connection.

Firstly there's the appearance of Banzaitron's secret service-y unit from Spotlight: Hot Rod, clearly acting on information passed on by Doubledealer. It's nice to see the guy get something solid to do even if all those years haven't made that name any less wince-inducing. He makes for a nice clutter-free villain, though it's a shame the Combaticons, one of the better defined Special Teams, are reduced to generic Decepticon psycho-saddhists.

Also followed up on is the fate of Monstructor from Spotlight: Optimus Prime, being examined at the Autobot prison on Garrus-9 by - in a nice callback to Stormbringer - Jetfire and the Technobots. They're a bit of a plot device here as the reason for Banzaitron's attack but it's still nice to touch base. Other elements worthy of praise here are a good flashback showing for Ultra Magnus and the decent recasting of Fortress Maximus as a no-nonsense warden, meaning the guy's name can make sense without him having to turn into a city. 

Now the problems. You'll notice how Arcee herself wasn't mentioned in any of the positive sections - that is because here she is terrible in every possible way - as a character , as a concept, as a narrative device. It's hard to know where to start.

The most immediate I suppose is that this is another issue where narrative clarity is sacrificed so that Furman can bang on about a hot potato from the line's history - in this case gender. It's not actually an area I'm too fussed on personally; I'd rather the female characters weren't sexualised or stereotyped  (much like the handling of gender in Challenge of the Gobots, of all things) but I really don't think it's worth getting steamed up about or bogged down on - something on the level of the Transformers - Prime cartoon, where some Transformers are male and some female and that's about it for depth is fine by me.

However, thanks to the semi-humorous UK strip "Prime's Rib" and the asexual reproduction shown in Generation 2 we already know what to Furman thinks and it's really not worth yet another element being added to the straining IDW continuity to find out that he still basically thinks the same - that Transformers aren't gendered. It especially isn't worth it when it's done this badly.

The twist here is that Jhiaxus has introduced gender to the species by experimenting on Arcee. The why isn't so bad - because he could, he's a mad bastard playing God. It's the how that's really wrongheaded. The issue never really bothers explaining what precisely Jhiaxus does to Arcee - adds a reproductive system that has no male counterpart as the rest of the Transformers are gender neutral? Adds female character trails cribbed from observing other species to Arcee's neural network? A half-hearted mention of CNA doesn't even start covering this. Because on what the comic shows us, all he's actually done is painted Arcee pink, added curvy bodywork and told his experiment they're female now. 

At the risk of sounding offensive it's more a case of forced transvestism than a gender swap, straying into non-consensual sissification. Surely Jhiaxus can't introduce gender into a whole genderless species in this way anyway as he's changed nothing about anyone else to make them male. I'm not especially versed in gender politics but surely at best he's somehow changed the species to however many million gender neutral members and one female than however many million males and one female, otherwise we're left with the crass idea of male gender being defined as anyone not male. And the whole thing is muddied by Arcee effectively choosing to identify as female by going around telling everyone she's female rather than claiming to be a genderless robot mutilated by a mad scientist.

Arcee's characterisation is that of a vengeful action chick from an exploitation flick (though given Furman's propensity for being slightly behind the pop culture curve a homage to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill seems more likely). It's possible to read a bit too much into this and say the writer is trying to convey that being female is something to be angry about or that she's a balanced example of what a female Transformer would be like. In the context of the insane mechanics of gender as per this story though it makes some sense - Arcee is the result of an enforced change through Jhiaxus and no attempt at some sort of empathic female archetype is seriously attempted. While it's unimaginative the idea of a discarded experimental subject out for revenge is simply a dull old trope, and Arcee's quite openly presented as being completely mental. And anyone know why Jhiaxus also made his creation insanely powerful? No?

Annoyingly there was a perfect alternative to much of this literally right there on the page. If Furman had needed a revenge-crazed powerful loose cannon hell-bent on tracking down Jhiaxus, why not Monstructor? No part of the issue wouldn't work with this switch - they'll get nothing but used by the Decepticons and could have some development in putting their faith in Jetfire's honest scientific graft, so they could even be Garrus 9's last resort. Instead Furman introduces another 'new' character to carry out this function, opening an unpleasant can of worms in the process while also answering a question surely nobody was asking. A look at gender in this continuity might have been interesting some point down the line, but the question once again is why the Hell Furman's just throwing so much shit at the title when there are already a preposterous amount of things going on.

One final point should be made - the dialogue in this issue is appalling. It's never really been Furman's strong suit - yes, there have been memorable lines over the years but actual frame-to-frame dialogue's always been a bit of an area to work for even before he found out about the Furmanism thing and prolapsed into self-parody. But here is a low - everything Arcee says is a ridiculous level-breaker only matched by the Combaticons' Saturday morning cartoon evil speeches.

Oh, and Arcee apparently has a homing instinct which means Jhiaxus can't hide from her but is unaware that he's in the next room in the flashback. Rubbish.

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Transformers - Spotlight: Blaster

Spotlight: Blaster is a good demonstration of the way the format found itself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand it's been irritating to have ongoing plots sneak into the Spotlights but on the other something like this standalone character piece feels like a waste of pages now the box has been opened.

In this case the focus is firmly on the Autobot communications officer and his role in the war as a propaganda broadcaster,  boosting the morale of the Autobots with his rousing speeches. The speeches we hear admittedly aren't very inspiring but it's a nice bit of thinking for Furman, albeit still in the frame of reference of the civil war rather than the full blown Cybertronian culture James Roberts would later explore, and that sort of thing is difficult to write anyway. So Furman gets a pass there and the scenes of bustling Autobots listening in gives a good background canvas with lots of fun cameos to spot. 

The bulk of the plot revolves around a second attempt to assassinate Blaster (the issue opens with his deactivated body floating in space before being returned to the Autobots after the first), the twist being that the would be killer is - duh duh duuh - a fellow Autobot. The resulting attempt to lure said killer into the open is good hokey fun, even though if Blaster was half the asset the story makes him out to be it would never have been considered. 

The traitor is found in short order to be Beachcomber, and this is where the issue falls down. Obviously the irritating Minibot was being mentally controlled in what feels like a Saturday morning cartoon climbdown. Wouldn't it have been much more exciting to play with the pacifist aspect of Beachcomber's character and have him reluctantly resolve to assassinate The Voice for his stirring propaganda prolonging the war? Instead the resolution is used to set up an obvious rivalry between Blaster and Soundwave that to the best of my recollection never bore fruit.

Underwhelming (but truth be told competent ) conclusion aside this is an interesting look at Blaster taken in isolation. However,  in the wider context of the IDW universe and the way the recent Spotlights have been heading you have to question if this story had to be told here and now.

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Transformers - Spotlight: Galvatron

A couple of thoughts came to me on re-reading this issue which made me think considerably less of the thing.

Firstly there's the superficially fresh idea of having Galvatron himself be a totally different character to Megatron. Despite some minor confusion regarding some promotional material for the Japanese Scramble City OVA back in the early days of fandom and the intentionally non-committal wording of the original toy's Tech Spec (to avoid spoilers for the 1986 film) this has never really been done before. However, when you think about it, it basically has.

Furman's own time travel material for Marvel muddied the water by purposely playing up the pair's differences while having them team up against everyone else and by the time of the second clear cut Galvatron on Furman's American run it's even more abstract. Following Unicron's defeat in "On the Edge of Extinction " that Galvatron becomes a future version of "our" Megatron that can't come to pass in "our" timeline as Cybertron's destruction is averted, or at least the same destruction seen in "Rhythms of Darkness". Which doesn't make that Galvatron a different character, but does lessen the impact here - we're used to situations being contrived to allow Megatron and Galvatron to co-exist.

The Marvel USA Galvatron does bring up a second familiar element of this Spotlight - the character as a reluctant, rebelling herald of a dark force threatening life across the universe - just as he was in relation to Unicron. Now, this might be a little uncharitable (but considering the general quality of Furman's work on IDW I'm not feeling particularly charitable) but isn't Nova Prime actually a lot like Unicron? The heralds, the plan to consume everything, the dire astral warning given to Optimus in Escalation... It might be hard to remember now, but between Dreamwave's output, the potted myths of the Ultimate Guide and the Armada cartoon Transformers fans in general were really getting fed up with Unicron's over-exposure at the time IDW's material got started up and it's worth speculating whether the whole Nova Prime/Dead Universe thing was pitched as a Unicron arc before being overruled and tweaked. Or it could just be that Furman's got a limited imagination when it comes to having a great darkness threatens everyone.

That said, while Galvatron isn't as fresh as he could have been he does at least make an interesting subject, both in terms of his new back story  (the idea of him being the one to plunge the Ark-1 into the Dead Universe is a great mirroring of Optimus Prime's fateful decision to set the original Ark on a collision course with Earth in the Marvel series ) and in terms of his resulting personal conflict. His power level is nicely handled too, and it's nice that his agenda to regain his independence for once gives a good reason for him not just killing everyone. As yet the Dead Universe plot is intriguing but it's difficult to get too hyped when there's so much else already going on.

Talking of which the issue takes a page or two to touch base with the Earth plot, establishing that Sunstreaker and Ironhide are still missing after their problems in Escalation and that Verity really deserves to be stepped on.  The absence  of Sunstreaker leads to the issue's other thread - his brother Sideswipe is stationed at Galvatron's destination (a small pocket of artificial environment on Cybertron) as part of a unit led by Hound guarding Thunderwing's body. Naturally he wants to be posted to Earth to help the search but he's being kept away to keep things simple. Both the fraternal relationship and Sideswipe's character actually deserve more space than this comic can afford them, and it would have been a better use of pages to follow this up than what the next three Spotlights served up.

As it is we get a few frames of introspection before Sideswipe has to battle Galvatron and it's difficult hard to tell if some of the Autobot's dialogue is character work showing he's taking Leadfoot's death personally in response to his brother's disappearance, if Sideswipe and Leadfoot were friends or if it's just bad melodramatic dialogue. The rest of the Autobots get even less space though the redesign of Hound is nice and the Generation 2 fan in me is delighted not only to have Skram and Road Rocket show up but also not dying instantly as cannon fodder.

Overall despite the intended freshness falling flat this is a largely enjoyable read and therefore nudging its' way towards the higher end of Furman's work with the format. 

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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 - Spotlight: Ramjet

The one significant legacy of the crossover with the Avengers (which I have not and will not be reading as those things are always a terrible waste of all concerned ) was that Ramjet was left on Earth and clearly not part of main writer Simon Furman's plans. Thus the crossover's writer Stuart Moore was basically given a Spotlight to write the guy back out.

The original Ramjet was probably the stupidest of the trio lamentably known as the Coneheads, best summed up by his name being not a reference to the crude engine design but his habit of trying to charge everything with his nosecone in either mode. Moore alloys this minuscule intelligence with a stratospheric ambition and the result is a joy. The page where Ramjet explains his insane, incomprehensible and utterly unfeasible "nonlinear" plan for universal domination and shows complete ignorance of his abilities and resources is worth the price of admission alone. 

And it's not alone, because this comic is hilarious. As in on purpose hilarious. There's the Mini-Constructicons, Ramjet's trio of jive talking minions who make fart jokes. There's Harrison, his barely literate facsimile helper. There's his boasting attempt to recruit an obviously contemptuous Skywarp - yep, even Skywarp thinks Ramjet is an idiot. 

Despite his misplaced arrogance and pettiness it's actually a bit hard not to feel a little sorry for Ramjet when his planning is cut short by Megatron turning up to - wordlessly and effortlessly - kill him. It's clear that Megatron knew his plans from the start and - due to one of the better uses of overlapping with the main storyline - seems to use crushing the ersatz traitor as physical therapy after his humiliation in Brasnya rather than because he actually considers him a threat.

The end result is a funny, clever take on the perennial idea of a Decepticon plotter trying to overthrow the leader, and one that actually adds to Megatron - imagine if he'd done this to Starscream at the end of Infiltration, though.

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Transformers - Spotlight: Kup

Spotlight: Kup was an early experiment for IDW in several ways. The most obvious is the break given to Nick Roche, handed an issue to write and draw as well as two characters to properly play with. It's actually surprisingly big of Furman to let a possible future competitor effectively determine the long term fate of a character who has always been a bit of a favourite from the Marvel days.

The big thing that hits you about the issue the most - especially on an in-context read through - is the remarkable density. Not just the lengthy internal dialogue of Kup but the sheer amount crammed into 22 pages. As well as the lengthy nightmarish scenes on Kup's planet there's a lot of good work for others on the recovery end - Prowl's scheming and politicking via communicator (moving him away from the jobsworth seen in Infiltration to a nuanced necessary bastard), Springer's bravado tempered by his doubts, an impassioned cry for sanity from Siren... If anyone suffers from a characterisation it's Kup himself as we only see him out of his metal skull. But then even that is handled well - we're shown what Kup means by even the straight-talking Springer being clearly passionate about his fate. It reminds me in a way of a particular issue of Captain America by Mark Waid, where the character was absent and his meaning was perfectly explained by his Avengers team-mates.

The actual situation Kup's stuck in is very inventive and brings with it a very interesting moral dilemma which is teased out perfectly by the script - the ethics of wasting Autobot lives in saving a half-dead Kup are debated but there's no pat resolution. While those killed in the story are sadly nameless and faceless (probably simply due to a lack of space), Outback - with form as a genial if minor character in past media - adds a little poignancy and black comedy as Kup alternates between joking with his remains and berating them. The added bonus here is that being very dead eliminates him from a possible future as a joke character, probably making him the best used of the '86 Minibots despite being half a corpse on a chair. There's a good resolution that makes fine use of Trailbreaker's special skill too.

Roche's art is also magnificent. He renders Kup's nightmares as sinewy viscera,  an approach only even half-tried before on the series by Derek Yaniger. It makes for as welcome a change as the writing does, a nice break from the usual clean lines and bright colours of most 21st century Transformers books. The skeletal Kup design is especially brilliant, a perfect way of illustrating age, decay and a determination to survive. Not that the stuff set in the real world isn't great either, with the emotion of the art matching the tense discussion. 

On the one hand it's perhaps harsh to compare this to Furman's concurrent work - the whole story is clearly a much-drafted labour of love from Roche, the work of someone not doing monthly franchise work as bread and butter, and it's just one issue anyway. However, Roche's love for the project shines through, and he takes the opportunity given to him with both hands. In short, up to this point this was the best thing IDW had put out - a state of affairs that would take a long time to change.

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