I’m touring the black market, and you’re my fourth stop. I’m getting bored. So either you tell me you traded with that dead Voin, or I’ll see if I can put a you-shaped hole in this wall.
Keep reading for a review of Transformers #9 (2019).
Last week Chromia told a gleeful Sideswipe that they were taking a trip to the arsenal because she was done with being outgunned. And yet this issue when they’re checking out the Rise’s underground lair, Sideswipe’s griping that they should’ve brought bigger guns. So I don’t know if Chromia changed her mind, or if Sideswipe will always want the biggest eff-off guns he can get his hands on. (Knowing Sideswipe, it’s probably the latter.)
(Also, does anyone know what was going on with Windblade telling Sideswipe that wasn’t a thermal lance, and him being certain it was? I feel like we’re supposed to think she’s right, but the events later in the issue felt unclear to me.)
It turns out the cables that Cyclonus found were just the tiniest indication of the massive base the Rise has excavated. (I found myself distracted by the fact that it was dug out with explosives and drills. Does Cybertron have dirt? Or were they digging through metal plating?)
It’s just Chromia, Sideswipe, and Windblade checking it out, with no backup, and as they went in I thought that was awfully overconfident of them. And as it turns out I was right.
Meanwhile Prowl’s roughing up Headlock, but Headlock doesn’t really seem very surprised by it. Cybertron may have been at peace for a long time, but Prowl is very much the loose canon, embracing his dark side to understand the criminal mind, one-day-that-guy’s-gonna-go-too-far kind of security officer.
He finds out a big piece of the puzzle today, and he’s not very happy about it. Bumblebee finds that same puzzle piece later on, but he’s unhappy about it for completely different reasons. (The puzzle piece itself is happiest when everybody else is unhappy, that’s just how that particular puzzle piece rolls.)
I think I’ve figured out my thoughts on Angel Hernandez’s faces: his profiles are flat-out gorgeous, but his front and three-quarter views feel a little…flat? They’re not bad, but the angles feel a little off somehow, and somewhat expressionless. But those profiles are perfect.
Anna Malkova’s faces are a completely different style, more animated. (I love Prowl’s sneer.) She makes the faces almost organic, with a little more mobility, lines around the mouths, and eyes that can change shape. I think it looks good, though I kinda think Headlock’s face is almost too animated (he’s got really pronounced eyelids) but his design is right out of the Robots in Disguise cartoon, so fans of that are going to recognize him instantly.
Hernandez definitely comes out strong with backgrounds, the scenes of the underground layer are really impressive.