Well, it happened. I knew I’d start to take the twice-monthly comics for granted, and this month we had to wait three weeks instead of two for an issue of Transformers. WHAT IS THIS THE STONE AGES? Kidding. Two comics a month must be a hell of a schedule to keep, I can wait three weeks. THIS ONE TIME. (Still kidding.) Keep reading for a review of Transformers #8 (2019).
(Minor spoilers below.)
Six of the first seven pages are a brawl between Cyclonus and Flamewar: Flamewar is mad about someone pulling up their cables (“comms hard cable,” she says later) and Cyclonus has had it with being knocked out of the air someone’s going to die.
Well, maybe not die, exactly. Cyclonus’ band of (imaginary?) dead friends make some pretty negative remarks about his chances, since he’s vowed to never kill anyone again. Considering that vow and his choice of mental companions, the war did a number on Cyclonus, obviously.
(Side note: the whole bit where a badass smacks someone to the ground and then sternly says “Stay down!”, I thought that was amazingly cool the first few times I saw it in the mid 2000s. Does anyone think maybe we should retire it now?)
I really liked the conversation between Flamewar and Shadow Striker, after Flamewar gets pummeled by Cyclonus .
“I’m not sure there’s a word for how stupid taking him on was.”
“What was I supposed to do!?”
Meanwhile Megatron has a conversation with Termagax, who he obviously respects and yet…Termagax has removed herself from daily life in Cyberton. Megatron highly disapproves. Termagax couldn’t possibly care less about Megatron’s disapproval. We find out how all that affects Megatron’s plans.
We also got several more references to Starscream and I can’t wait till he shows up.
Bumblebee, newest member of the Ascenticons, has a conversation with Elita, and I still haven’t gotten used to the calm, commanding Elita we’re seeing in this series. I’d grown up with this version, technically: in the G1 cartoon she was a leader who’s only weakness seemed to be Optimus (and teenage Me shipped the hell out of them so that was perfectly acceptable) but in the last series we had crazy, scheming, screaming-in-the-face-of-a-killer-planet Elita Of The Busted Head Horn. I kind of hope we get to see how Calm Elita could turn into Crazy Elita, that’d be fun.
But the final section was the most fun I thought, because it’s Froid being evasive and panicky and Prowl and Chromia being flat out disgusted with him. He’s incapable of giving a straight answer and Prowl is over it.
Froid’s more interested in talking about what years of enforced restraint are having on the population:
We are willful, protean, creative, curious, assertive, troublesome beings. Restraint and constraint were never going to work forever.
(Seems like a commentary on world events, now that I think about it.)
As far as he’s concerned, the violence we’re seeing now was always going to happen. The person causing the violence is a lesser concern. (Up until he’s the victim of it, of course.)
The art in the last section was also my favorite.
The first few pages of the issue (6 out of 7 being a brawl) were by Anna Malkova, and they were nicely done, though I wonder how artists feel about doing six pages of fighting. Is it harder? Is it as much fun? The panels go by so fast when you’re reading them I don’t feel like I get as good a handle on the art. (Though I did like the bit where Cyclonus catches Flamewar straight in the stomach.)
The next seven pages were by Angel Hernandez, and after eight issues his art has a familiar, comfortable feel that I like, with one exception: I love his faces, but Megatron felt off somehow. It might be the lips: I think you have to be very careful with lips on Transformers. They might be a little off-putting like Silverbolt in the original G1 cartoon, or they might look all kinds of wrong like Starscream in the beginning of the 1986 coronation scene. I don’t think Megatron looked terrible, but I feel he might’ve looked a little better without the lips.
But it’s Beth McGuire-Smith’s work in the last six pages that I liked best (by a small margin, Angel and Anna do great work) because of the faces. I mean, the bodies are all great too, there’s a lot of depth in the figures and everybody looks very mobile and flexible while still being robots. But the faces all looked excellent: Prowl’s exasperated “You’re impossible,” Froid’s wide-eyed stare in the aftermath (of the incident I’m not going to tell you about because spoilers), Sideswipe’s face when he says “she’s one of the ones we lost track of,” and all of the shots of Chromia (even one moment where….look, I think they might be implying that we could get a new shipping possibility here, I won’t say anything more, read the issue and let me know if you thought some of the looks between her and someone else were what you might call “longing.” It’s probably teenage Me at it again, she’s impossible.)
All in all, the issue was worth the extra week. (It’d actually be worth more than a week but I don’t want to give IDW any ideas HI IDW IF YOU’RE LISTENING THREE WEEKS IS TOTALLY FINE NOT FOUR PLEASE THANKS.)