I’m late with this review because while I enjoyed the issue, I’m having trouble finding anything to say about it that I haven’t already said in the reviews for issue #1 and #2. Keep reading for a few random thoughts on Transformers #3 (2019).
(Some small spoilers below.)
Artists Angel Hernandez and Cachet Whitman continue to settle into the look of the characters. I think on balance I like Hernandez’s style a little better (I like the dark outlines, and the poses seem a little more natural) but Whitman does a really good job with a G1 style of face.
Windblade, as drawn by Hernandez, looks a little better this issue; there’s still this tendency to put these “marionette lines” around her mouth, which I think is an attempt to give her face some depth. I don’t think it’s necessary (you don’t see that on Prowl’s face, for instance, though you do on Rubble) but it’s been toned down a little this issue. I’d like to see how Whitman draws her sometime, just for comparison.
I’d also love to see more from Anna Malkova, who drew one of the variant covers, which is so far my favorite image in the new series. The way she combined a G1, animated look in the foreground, with an art-deco, stylized propaganda image in the background, is just brilliant, and the colors are excellent too.
As for the story, it continues to move forward carefully. I think they’re trying to avoid giving us a huge info dump, so we’re slowly finding out about how this world differs from the previous incarnation. I’ve seen a reference to “forged” a few times, but not “constructed cold,” and we do find out that Transformers are created from the material of Cybertron, which is harvested/mined by sentiant Leviathans (or maybe there’s just the one, we’ve only seen one. She’s female, which I thought was an interesting touch.) There’s been several mentions of Cybertronians who choose to be reabsorbed by Cybertron, which is important later.
We see Froid too, and I’m curious to see if he ends up being as evil as his previous version. It’d be fun if they made him a complete good guy, just to mess with our heads.
We also finally meet Geomotus, the Transformer who was highly publicized in the early PR announcements. He’s on the “high functioning but noticeably different” portion of the Transformer equivalent of the autism spectrum, and Windblade explains that while he finds unfamiliar spaces unsettling, he has several comfort objects (three geometric shapes) that he focuses on to stay calm. He’s also able to see patterns that others may miss, and sometimes helps out the security teams.
I like that the writer is being so inclusive, and maybe taking the stigma away from autism. Other than that, though, we don’t really learn anything about Geomotus. We haven’t seen his personality or heard more than seven words from him. I hope he ends up being an actual character, rather than an object lesson about autism. (It’s a good lesson, but autistic people are more than just their autism, obviously.)
I’d also like to hear a little more about what Megatron and his Ascenticons are fighting for. Right now they’re mad that they’re being blamed for a death, and they’re furious that someone chucked a bomb at them, but I’m still not sure what their original goal was. They don’t like that the Autobots have so much control, but what specifically is it they want to do? I’m guessing they want to colonize more non-Cybertronian planets, and seeing as how they’ve recruited Quake (a violent enough person to make the Autobots think Megatron’s lost his damn mind) they’re not looking for peaceful solutions.