I’m doubling up on the review since we had two Transformers issues out this week: keep reading for a quick review of Transformers #17 and the Transformers Valentine’s Day Special.
Transformers #17
Cyclonus talking to his dead friends is fascinating, Gears having a perpetual problem with gravity is hilarious, but my absolute favorite part of the issue was everything to do with Lightbright and Lodestar.
The connection between a cityspeaker and a Titan is endlessly interesting, but we also got this wonderful kind of panicky feeling, where something huge is coming and you can’t really stop it but you can’t just run away and oh did I mention the giant awful thing is also completely crazy? Bad enough that you’re probably going to be slaughtered but to have someone calmly quote a manifesto at you while they’re doing it? Gaaaaaah.
The artwork in that section was also gorgeous. (Bethany McGuire-Smith had the section with Cyclonus, and Anna Malkova had the rest of the art, including the part with Ligthbright and Lodestar.) There’s a particularly lovely panel of everyone looking up at an approaching ship, and realizing it’s not Lodestar, and the faces are excellent, but the colors and shading (Joana Lafuente’s work there) are stunning.
Transformers Valentine’s Day Special
I mentioned last week that sometimes I miss the interpersonal relationships of More Than Meets The Eye and Lost Light, and this issue is a very quick fix for that. A quick, sugary, adorable fix. There’s nothing heavy about this, nothing overdramatic or angsty, it’s two short stories about bots and relationships, and it was pretty darn cute.
The first story brings back Jack Lawrence on the art, with Josh Burcham on colors, and looking at the art was like putting on a comfy sweater. I miss seeing his work, I always like his G1-style faces. (And the aliens all look like raccoons and how can you go wrong with that?)
I don’t think every comic book special needs to have a “message,” but if this story did have one, I’m not sure what it’d be. Get out of your comfort zone? Find your purpose? If things aren’t working then ask your boyfriend to do things your way, and if that doesn’t work maybe do things his way? It’s not really that important, in the end it was a nice, feel-good kind of story.
The second story was written, drawn, and colored by Sara Pitre-Durocher, and it was also all kinds of cute. It focused on Cosmos, a bot I’m not particularly familiar with (I find it’s hard to identify with the face-shield bots sometimes, unless it’s Soundwave. Or Optimus.) so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It helps that Sara’s one of those people that can get an amazing amount of emotion into the face of someone who doesn’t have a real mouth. (Her art is beautiful, but I’ve said that so many times I start to repeat myself.)
It’s a fun story about a conversation between two people who’ve never met, and we get a little of that online-relationship kind of vibe, where you connect with someone even though you have no idea what they look like. We see a little of Cosmos’ day-to-day life as a “Space Security Chief” (we even see another rescue of Gears, which is a neat bit of continuity with issue 17) and bits and pieces of their chat together. I loved the bit where Cosmos is trying to pick out his friend in a photo he’s been sent. (I was going to quote it here, but you should really read it for yourself, it’s so fun.)
(Edited to say: I’d originally thought we were supposed to wonder who he’d been talking to, but no, that’s made clear in the very beginning. But now I’m wondering if we’ll get a sequel to this? I certainly hope so.)
