Windblade and Starscream race to claim the lost colony led by the mysterious Elita One! But who will recruit the army so long removed from Cybertron—and can Elita’s forces bring anything home… but war?
Click the jump for a review and preview pages of IDW’s Windblade #7!
Starscream and Windblade travel to the final Lost Colony of Tempo (though they’re told later that’s not the name of the Titan anymore, it’s Carcer…or is it?) to meet with what they think will be a ship of philosophers. Being greeted at gunpoint kind of nixes that idea.
Led by Elita One, this world values truth pretty highly: Elita believes if you let someone lie to you in peacetime, they’ll lie to you in battle, and then people die. It’s much better to kill liars as soon as you find them.
I really like Scott’s interpretation of Elita: she’s always been a badass in any incarnation, but this Elita is brutal. She says her throne is made up of pieces of “their greatest heroes” (supposedly it’s a tradition to give your body to the ship when you die) but I’m wondering if that’s true.
Plus, the head at the top of the throne looks a lot like Optimus Prime. That may be a coincidence, but I’m really looking forward to the two of them meeting up.
The dialog in this issue was also fun, the snarky comments from Starscream being my favorite, like when Windblade wondered why he hadn’t left her to die at one point.
And have Chromia hack me to bits when I came back without you? No thanks. When you die, it will be in public, with witnesses, and I’ll be at least five miles away.
That’s the Starscream we all know and love.
Speaking of Starscream, Corin Howell captures his expressions extremely well. He looks exactly the way Starscream’s always looked, but with a much more sarcastic, sneering quality. Even if we didn’t have the dialog to tell us what was going on, we’d be able to figure it out just from the look on his face. (“Here’s where he’s being sassy, here’s where he’s trying to use flattery, here’s where he realizes he’s about to get shot in the face…”)
Elita herself looks wonderful. I love the choice to make her so much bigger than Starscream and Windblade. She’s still feminine in appearance, but it’s a much scarier form of feminine; you know she could easily rip someone’s head off with her bare hands if it came to that.
While this is technically the final issue of Windblade (having gone on a half dozen more issues than planned, due to popular demand) Scott and Howell will return with the Transformers Holiday Special in December, and Till All Are One launches in March with the continuing story of Windblade, Elita One, and the rest of these characters we’ve gotten to know from the series.
Starscream too, because how could we live without all that sass?
What do you think? Shout out in the comments!
Mairghread Scott – writer
Corin Howell – art
Preview pages courtesy of IDW.