“I’m gonna enjoy tearing this city down.”
The final issue of the Constructicons Rising arc is here. Keep reading for a review of Transformers: Galaxies #4.
(Spoilers below!)
Unlike previous issues, we don’t have much talking this time around. No discussions between Termagax and Wheeljack, no monologues from Nominus Prime, and not much complaining from the Constructions about how hard their life is. I’m pretty sure the story could only end in one way: Devastator on a rampage.
The three issues before this answered the question: how did a group of bots who’s sole purpose was building things, turn into a monster called Devastator? We know now it was a mix of fear, betrayal, and greed: The Powers That Be gave the Constructicons a massive amount of power, without considering the consequences (or just not caring about them), so they exiled them someplace where they’d do…well, not no harm, but certainly less harm. If it’d stopped there we might not have had a story, but they expected the Constructicons to keep building for them, on less energy, and with no promise of ever going home.
Their resentment built up to the point that when the Insecticons waved a chance of revenge in their faces, they jumped at it.
Which brings us to this issue, and the fallout from that decision.
Tyler Bleszinski said in our interview that he’d never liked Devastator’s origin story, how Megatron brainwashed the Constructicons into being bad guys, they never had a choice in the matter. So now we’ve got a story that shows how much they loved to build things, until they made a choice based on bad information, got stabbed in the back, and in the end made a new choice, saying “Hell with it. We’re never going home anyway. They’re scared of us? Let’s give them a reason to be scared.”
It’s deliciously brutal, and Livio Ramondelli does an excellent job with the carnage. We’ve watched Devastator smash things before, but this time we’re seeing bodies being kicked apart, heads being crushed, the Insecticons toasting each other with severed limbs…and if you imagine Devastator saying “I AM IN CONTROL NOW” in the same voice he used in the 1986 movie to say “PREPARE FOR EXTERMINATION”…well, all is pretty right with the world.
I was worried that the long delay in releasing this issue (originally scheduled for December) would take the sting out of the chaos we knew was coming. I think the massacre was worth the wait.
(Honestly, I’m not that bloodthirsty, but if after all the buildup we didn’t get a scene of Devastator draped in, um, robotic entrails, I would’ve been disappointed.) (…okay, maybe I’m a little bloodthirsty.)
This is the end of the arc, so the Galaxies storyline will follow other people after this, but I hope we’ll hear from the Constructicons again someday. They’ve got a much more nuanced origin story now, I feel like I know each of them a lot better, and I’d like to see how they handle it, the day they finally get to go home.