Costa, Mike
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3.3 out of 5
(4 books)
TOP PICK:
The Transformers: Volume 1 - For All Mankind
The Transformers: Ironhide
(Art by Casey Coller)
Ironhide awakens on Cybertron having lost his memories of the exodus from that planet, the war on Earth and his death at the hands of the humans there. He then encounters Alpha Trion, who tasks him with eradicating the Insecticon infestation on Cybertron and thereby making way for the rebirth of the planet.
One of my least favourite narrative tropes is when a character's memory is erased and they revert to an earlier version of themselves. It usually arises from writers having written themselves into a dead-end and finding that the best way to get back on track is just to revert to a previous status quo. The reason I hate it so much is that it robs the character in question of any and all development they've had and, by extension, it means that the stories you've seen of that character are all rendered pointless. (My most-hated example of this trope is Donna Noble in Doctor Who). I've loved Ironhide since I was a kid, so to have him robbed of all his adventures on Earth seems like an insult to the character.
Aside from the stupid 'lost memory' plot point, nothing else really happens in this book. We don't get any explanations of what's actually going on and we don't get any resolution to Ironhide's situation. It's all so clearly intended as preamble for some other story that it's annoying that this book tries to pass itself off as a self-contained graphic novel.
Still, I suppose we at least get to see Metroplex in action briefly.
2 out of 5
The Transformers: Volume 1 - For All Mankind
(Art by Don Figueroa)
Three years after the devastating end of the war between Autobots and Decepticons on Earth, the remaining Transformers on both sides are in hiding and humanity's Skywatch is systematically hunting them down. Adrift in this new political reality, Optimus Prime renounces leadership of the Autobots and surrenders to the humans. Without Prime, the Autobots divide between those who choose to remain on Earth as hidden protectors and those who wish to return to the stars.
The core theme of this book is a really engaging one; what happens to soldiers who've been fighting their whole lives when the war is finally over? Autobot and Decepticon alike are faced with the challenge of discovering who they are when the war which has always defined them is missing. Some find themselves trying to reignite hostilities, some simply want to run away in search of a new life and some, like Optimus, find themselves confused and without purpose.
I enjoyed the moral ambiguity of the character in this story too. Where the Transformers franchise could all too easily be rendered down to Autobots=Good, Decepticons=Bad, here we see that there are more grey areas than we might initially imagine. A good example of this is Ultra Magnus, a single-minded enforcer of the law who is faced with situations where the law no longer applies or no longer aligns with morality. The human characters, like Spike Witwicky, also play into this ambiguity as they're responsible for brutally capturing, torturing and, in one case, killing beloved Autobots, but they're also doing what they feel has to be done to protect the world from alien robots whose war has already devastated the planet.
The only thing I'd really criticise this book for is Don Figueroa's art style. It's entirely subjective, but I really didn't like the over-designed look of the Transformers and felt they had just a touch too much of Michael Bay about them.
4 out of 5
The Transformers: Volume 2 - International Incident
(Art by E. J. Su, Javier Saltares, Guido Guidi and Christopher Ivy)
The Autobots have forged a secret alliance with Skywatch but the integrity of that secret is tested when North Korea and China begin employing Decepticon mercenaries and the President of the United States declares all Cybertronians to be Weapons of Mass Destruction.
There's a good amount of political intrigue in this book as the shaky relationship the Autobots have with the US comes up against the decision of the North Korean rogue state to employ the Combaticons to invade South Korea. I really liked the concept of the Transformers being treated as WMDs because it gives an interesting Cold War dynamic to the countries secretly or openly employing the robots.
We also get to see Bumblebee's leadership of the Autobots continue to develop and I'm glad of that, having been worried that it would immediately revert back to Optimus in the 'return to the status quo' way that comics often do.
For me the worst part of the book was Spike Witwicky and Skywatch, who operate in such a way that they're not really credible as a real military operation and to whom the writer tries to give some 'witty banter' that totally fails to land.
4 out of 5
The Transformers: Volume 3 - Revenge Of The Decepticons
(Art by Nick Roche, Don Figueroa and Alex Milne)
The secret alliance between the Autobots and Skywatch has been revealed to the public, who still see only alien robots responsible for untold destruction. The situation escalates when Cybertronian weapons find their ways into the hands of extremist factions bent on killing any and all Transformers. Amidst the chaos, and with the Autobots divided and leaderless, Megatron returns from the grave.
It feels odd to say, but the true return of the conflict between Autobot and Decepticon leads to this book being less enjoyable than the previous two. Optimus Prime expresses his frustration and exasperation with Megatron and their endless cycle of conflict and, honestly, it felt like he was speaking on my behalf. As a lifelong fan of the franchise, seeing Prime and Megatron facing off should've been a epic moment but instead feels like a drop in this series' intelligence and maturity.
It doesn't help that I really don't like Megatron's redesign. Honestly, with the exception of Galvatron, I've never liked any version of Megatron that wasn't his classic original look but this version in particular just seems totally uninspired.
This book isn't really bad, and I did enjoy the plotline of the Autobots trying to figure out how to deal with heavily-armed human civilians being manipulated by the Decepticons, but it's nevertheless not as good as what came immediately before.
3 out of 5
Collaborations & Anthologies:
The Transformers: Volume 7 - Chaos (here)
Read more...
Transformers (here)