Review: Revolution by John Barber & Cullen Bunn and Fico Ossio

Comic PDF eBook, n. pag.
Published 2017 (contents: 2016)
Acquired January 2018
Read March 2018

Revolution

Written by John Barber & Cullen Bunn
Art by Fico Ossio
Colors by Sebastian Cheng
Letters by Tom B. Long

I believe I previously compared IDW's Dark Cybertron crossover to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but Revolution is the real Crisis on Infinite Earths analogue. Cosmic threat, disparate groups of heroes, big status quo changes. Revolution crosses Transformers over with a set of Hasbro-properties-turned-IDW-comics, some preexisting, some made into comics for this event: G.I. Joe, Rom, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, Action Man. I think that's all of them. When I first read Crisis, I had only a dim notion of the world in which it took place; I was a DC comics neophyte. That's not too dissimilar from my reading of Revolution-- I know IDW's Transformers very well at this point, but G.I. Joe only from previous Transformers crossovers, Action Man from the tragically truncated Saturday morning cartoon of 2000 to 2001, and the rest not at all-- yet Crisis worked for me while Revolution didn't.

You always know a character is The Girl One because they have a romantic history with half the male team members.
from Revolution #1

Part of this is intellectual and unfair. Crisis draws on its participants', well, conceptual weight. Historical weight? I dunno. You might not have actually read a Blue Beetle comic, but you know that Blue Beetle has a decades-long preexisting history when he turns up. You might not have read an Earth-3 story before, but you know that the Justice League has been there many times. And this even bleeds over into worlds newly established for Crisis, like Earth-6. But here, Rom and M.A.S.K. and Micronauts and Action Man... it's just like, why should I care? They were basically made up for this story, so seeing them in danger here has no effect. They have fifty days worth of history, not fifty years.

Literally no one else was worried about this, dude.
from Revolution #4

Related to this... these concepts don't seem all that good? Fifty years of evolution mean that every DC character to appear in Crisis had been refined and honed over the years. They were all good ideas... to some extent at least. But like M.A.S.K. is like Knight Rider times five or something? And Action Man is a man who is good at action? And the Micronauts are just small folks? Except they come from a universe where everything is small, so they're not really small in a meaningful way. Like, Transformers started out dumb, and still kind of is, but thirty years have allowed it to accrue some good concepts and ideas. I can't say the same for any of the other concepts here.

I do like how Soundwave seems to believe polite apologies make up for genocide. (This does seem to work for Transformers, judging by Megatron.)
from Revolution #5

Which leads me to my next point... Cullen Bunn and John Barber's story doesn't work on its own terms, either. It's a jumble of characters no one gives you a reason to care about. Like, M.A.S.K. supposedly has a moral dilemma when they realize Transformers are sapient, but their characterization is so flimsy, and the reasons so nonexistent, that you can't get interested in this dilemma. But if you don't care about that, all you've got left is people in super-cars... which is not interesting, and doesn't play to the strengths of the comics medium. Exactly who was doing what when with a magic space rock was another thing I could never really discern. Say what you will about the Anti-Monitor (and I have), but he provides Crisis with a focal point. Revolution is murky. What's at stake? I dunno.

If only I cared about you or your morality, Scarlett.
from Revolution #2

Fico Ossio is an above-average artist when it comes to drawing figures for IDW, but I found his panel-to-panel storytelling unclear at times.

Oh, gee, a character I don't care about has switched from one team I didn't care about to another team I don't care about! (I actually didn't even recognize her until the Transformers wiki clued me in.)
from Revolution #1

I shudder to think how this is going to negatively impact the IDW Transformers line, which has already (outside of More than Meets the Eye) been moving in a direction I don't care for. It has definitely solidified my plan to not pick up Optimus Prime. When the regular series resume, it'll be Lost Light and Till All Are One for me, and that's it.

Next Week: Meanwhile, on Earth... it is still a time for Revolution!