“Perhaps my megacycles of experience and contacts may help. That, and not shouting at them.”
“I did not shout at them.”
Keep reading for a review of Transformers #14 (2019).
Minor spoilers below.
The first 13 issues have focused on several groups, and a lot of them cross paths this issue. Prowl meets up with Nautica (and he gets totally owned when it comes to extracting information), Chromia meets up with Springer’s group at the standoff at the Titan (and the Autobots don’t end up looking very impressive there), before senator Soundwave, along with Bumblebee and Elita, show up for some “negotiation.”
Oh, and Starscream shows up and has a chat with someone; I knew he wasn’t really on the Autobots’ side, but since he’s very much playing his own game, I’m still not sure where his allegiances are. (I mean, duh, he’s on his own side, forever and always amen.)
Side note: Geomotus was highly publicized before the series started as being a neurodivergent Transformer, and it’s been interesting to see how that’s shown; he’s brusque and withdrawn, but his skills are sought after and he’s treated respectfully by the people who work with him. (Well, except Prowl.)
This issue we see Geomotus talk with someone who has a startle response to a loud noise, someone who’s gone through something traumatic in the past. I liked the conversation: it was very quick and didn’t come across as a preachy message, but I thought it was a nice call out to people suffering from PTSD.
Anna Malkova and Bethany McGuire-Smith shared the art this issue, and I think their styles really complement each other. You can see the differences if you really look for them, but with Joana Lafuente’s colors to tie them together, the transitions between the pages each of them did were almost seamless. (I kept flipping back to the front of the book to see if I was looking at an Anna page or a Bethany page, because sometimes I wasn’t sure.) I liked the dramatic shot with Javelin, the panel with Nautica talking to the Voin, and the two-page spread near the end. And Soundwave looked excellent in every panel full stop.