TFW2005 Reviews Transformers #7 – Transformers News
Yeah EJ Su told so in some forums that he’s channeling Mike Mignola (hence the shading and the pronounced chins and grim expressions, you don’t see Hellboy smile a lot) and Geoff Senior (Marvel US/UK, one of my fav. TF artists, his robots were very gritty and robotic). That said, the mottled cameo shading… just doesn’t work. It really looks like they are all wearing military cameo paint…
And I agree. Even in Marvel, with the various artists coming and going, the designs never changed this much, the biggest changes we had were Soundwave’s on again/off again faceplate for a few issues, and Skids’ “Crosswise” head in the UK comics. And the UK had like, 10 different artists. IDW stuck with consistency during the ‘Ion’ series, even in the different Spotlights they were using the same designs. It only got this bad after AHM, it’s almost as if Chris Ryall put out an “Anything goes, folks” sign in the office.
Story-wise… OK, so Costa wants us to assume that the Decepticons, after conquering most of the Autobots in space (off-panel in AHM) have lost Megatron, and now for some odd reason none of the bigwigs could come up with a plan to get even some energon for themselves? REALLY?!? Seriously, does this guy read any TF comics at all? When the same thing happened in
Marvel, let’s see…
- Scorponok set out to conquer a new planet, got incredible new technology (pretenders, head/targetmasters) and fought the Autobots off until he got to Earth, where he gained command of the Earth Con forces from Ratbat.
- Thunderwing impressed the Con elders with a reckless attack on the Ark, then organized a galaxy-wide hunt for the lost Creation Matrix (that said, it ultimately lead to his demise)
- Bludgeon used the rag-tag band of exiled Cons after the Unicron attack to act as Space Pirates, creating a powerfull weapon of mass destruction from alien technology, and then luring Prime to Earth to get the Matrix and give life to a new army.
- Shockwave (in 2006) did not rest after Galvatron’s disappearance, instead organized the Cons and ambushed the Autobots who were still dazed after the Unicron attack, quickly conquering half of Cybertron and restoring the status quo.
And those are but a few examples of how the Decepticons can function without Megatron. But here? They are hiding out on “Charr” (I guess, hommage to the cartoon which is probably the only thing Costa knows), low on energon, with major players just twiddling their thumbs and waiting for Megs to get better? Seriously, why are they low on energon? In Stormbringer we saw the Predacon’s ship has weapons capable of destroying Cybertron… go raid a planet, take slaves, DO SOMETHING! The Autobots are not even bothering to stop you anymore, due to sharing the mistaken belief that ‘No Megatron=No war”.
I’m sorry, no matter how good dialoge Costa will write (not that he did impress me so far), the starter situation he thought up from out of the blue is so immensely stupid that I cannot take this whole scenario seriously. It’s just as forced upon the Cons as it was on the Bots in the previous 6 issues, so that the writer can tell a story he desperately wanted to tell. Mind you, I’d have most likely forgiven that, had that story been imaginative, new, fresh, and interesting… but it wasn’t. And neither is this. As Starscream says on that caption – “What have you been working on in here?!?” I miss the Furman run, where you know, we got character development and the main storyline went forward in amazing leaps. Here, it crawls, and characters sit around delivering forced monologues (Prime and Spike were the worst last issue).
