Review: The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone by Shane McCarthy, Guido Guidi, Stephen Baskerville, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2014-15)
Acquired November 2016
Read September 2017

The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone

Written by Shane McCarthy
Pencils by Guido Guidi
Additional Pencils by Marcelo Ferreira
Inks by Stephen Baskerville
Colors by John Paul Bove
Letters by Tom B. Long

I wasn't a very big fan of Drift when he was introduced in All Hail Megatron, finding him a bit of a stereotypical tortured-man-with-a-dark-past-and-also-he-has-swords. Except he was a robot. I really warmed to him in More than Meets the Eye, though, which used Drift's spiritual awakening in his self-titled miniseries (which I actually haven't read) to reinvent him as an optimist, creating a sort of Kirk-Spock-McCoy-esque trinity with Rodimus and Ultra Magnus. But in volume 4, Drift was exiled from the Lost Light (taking the fall for something Rodimus did), and in volume 8, Ratchet set off in search for him. Empire of Stone shows what the two get up to together, as Drift tries to discover where he fits in the universe.

I may have come to like Drift, but basically, it turns out, only when he's being written by James Roberts, because back in the hands of his creator Shane McCarthy, he's the same old dull tortured-man-with-a-dark-past-and-also-he-has-swords; McCarthy just puts in one joke to explain away the difference between his Drift and Roberts's hippy-dippy version:

Also he's a little dismissive about Roberts's take in the book's extras.
from The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone #1 (art by Guido Guidi & Stephen Baskerville)

Though it has some high points (I liked the somewhat dumb Decepticon that Drift and Ratchet befriend), this is a pretty standard loner action story: Drift comes to the site of an old mistake, Drift angsts a bit, Drift redeems himself, stuff blows up. The best part is Guido Guidi and Stephen Baskerville's very dependable artwork. They do a good job in making clear storytelling and sharp action sequences, even if McCarthy's writing means there's too many action sequences.

Gotta love that melodramatic narration.
from The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone #3 (art by Guido Guidi & Stephen Baskerville)

The best part of the book is that though by the end Drift is still too cool to be either a Decepticon or an Autobot, he is coming back to the Lost Light, so he'll soon be back in the much more capable writing hands of James Roberts.

In Two Weeks: Meanwhile, on Cybertron... Optimus Prime seeks a little bit of Punishment!

Review: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 4: Coda by Mike Costa, Chee Yang Ong, et al.

Short Trips triple threat! This weekend I posted reviews of three Doctor Who short stories to USF: "Damascus" featuring the third Doctor and Prime Minister Jeremy, "A Full Life" featuring the fourth Doctor and Adric, and "The Toy" featuring the fifth Doctor and Nyssa. Of course the one with Adric was best.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Acquired August 2014
Read August 2016

The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 4: Coda

Written by Simon Furman, Mike Costa, Shane McCarthy, Andy Schmidt, Nick Roche, Denton J. Tipton, Zander Cannon
Art by Don Figueroa, Chee Yang Ong, Emiliano Santalucia, Andrew Griffith, Nick Roche, Casey Coller, Guido Guidi
Colors by James Brown, Moose Baumann, Josh Burcham, Kris Carter, Joana Lafuente
Letters by Chris Mowry

Most, though not all, of the eight stories collected in this volume are codas to the main saga of All Hail Megatron, moving the pieces into position for what comes next in the ongoing series written by Mike Costa (of which I have only read the first volume). The eight stories are by seven different writers and seven different artists, many of them old IDW standbys like Simon Furman and Nick Roche.

A few promised something really interesting to come, like "Uneasy Lies the Head." Starscream, following the events of volume 2 of All Hail Megatron, is now the leader of the Decepticons. Yet with the Decepticons sent packing from Earth, he can only lead them into failure, and the lesson he learned in All Hail Megatron was that he didn't deserve to be leader except if he took power by force; that is the Decepticon philosophy. So what is he to do? He uses the fact that he possesses the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to rally everyone to his side while Megatron recuperates... but outside of that he has no idea:

"Having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #13 (script by Mike Costa, art by Chee Yang Ong)

Some are clearly doing set-up work, like "The Man of Steel," where Spike Witwicky is put in charge of a Transformers-hunting unit and given more of a personal reason to hate the Transformers, when he's brutally injured by Ravage. (I'm not sure why this was needed, given that the Transformers killed billions in All Hail Megatron, but I guess that wasn't personal enough.)

Some didn't do much for me, like "Old Ways," where Ironhide wants to retire but doesn't. I can't tell Ironhide apart from all the other robots still, and Figueroa's redesigns make everyone look hella creepy. Some draw on earlier continuity that I didn't know anything about, like "Rebirth," about what Galvatron is doing in space or something. Or there's "Replay," which exists only to retcon Devastation so that Sunstreaker's actions in All Hail Megatron seem more justified.

Optimus Prime is going to eat your soul.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #13 (script by Simon Furman, art by Don Figueroa)

It was with the stories "Everything in Its Right Place" and "Lost & Found" that the IDW continuity began to click into place for me, where I began to be able to see how these characters moved from story to story and changed and developed. In "Everything in Its Right Place," Autobot scientist Perceptor joins Kup's team to monitor him, since Kup has gone insane but cannot spared, and Perceptor's cure requires constant monitoring. From there, Perceptor appears in the Drift story in volume 3 of All Hail Megatron, where he's badly injured. Then he appears back in this volume, in "Lost & Found," where he decides to upgrade himself to be more of a fighter than a scientist. "Lost & Found" leads directly into volume 1 of All Hail Megatron, where Kup's team crashlands on Cybertron, and the Autobots already on Cybertron are flabbergasted by what a badass sharpshooter Perceptor is now. And Perceptor will go on to play a key role in the excellent Last Stand of the Wreckers. It's tangled, obviously, but once I decoded that tangle with the help of the Transformers wiki, I was impressed, and the massive ongoing story of the IDW Transformers tales began to come into focus.

Blaster's always gotta complain about something. (That's Blaster, right?)
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #15 (script by Denton J. Tipton, art by Casey Coller)

Next Week: Optimus Prime discovers how hard it is to stick it out on Earth, even when you've decided to dedicated yourself to service For All Mankind!

Review: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 3 by Shane McCarthy et al.

Comic PDF eBook, 122 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09)
Acquired August 2014
Read August 2016

The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 3

Written by Shane McCarthy, Josh van Reyk and Shawn Knowler, Andy Schmidt
Art by Casey Coller, E. J. Su, Robby Musso, Marcelo Matere
Colors by Joana Lafuente, Priscilla Tramotano
Letters by Neil Uyetake, Chris Mowry

This volume doesn't really follow up the previous two parts of All Hail Megatron, instead it moves backward, filling in some of what we know about its characters, though some of the stories here are about Transformers who don't have anything to do with All Hail Megatron at all. Like any collection of standalone comics, it's a mixed bag.

I liked the tale of Blurr, the narcissist racer who doesn't even notice that society is unraveling around him (as we saw in Autocracy) until it directly impacts his need for speed and his livelihood.

"Have you heard of Our Lord and Savior, Optimus Prime?"
from The Transformers Spotlight: Blurr (script by Shane McCarthy, art by Casey Coller)

The rest were so-so. The story of Jazz is framed as a story told by Tracks during All Hail Megatron to cheer up the Autobots trapped on Cybertron. It's unclear to me where this is supposed to take place, mostly because there's no point where the Autobots are ever cheerful, and besides, it's pretty much an action story that reveals little of character anyway. (Plus I can never remember which one is Jazz.) Cliffjumper's story is also dull, being a stereotypical tale of a soldier from an neverending conflict washing up on an "island" (i.e., planet) and tended to by a loving female native, until the war comes back for him. I know a lot of Transformers fans hate Drift, the Decepticon-turned-Autobot-with-"badass"-swords, and I don't, but his story here didn't win me over.

"AND I HAVE SWORDS!"
from The Transformers Spotlight: Drift (script by Shane McCarthy, art by Casey Coller)

The story of Metroplex is designed to communicate his size with a lot of two-page spreads, which is  neat idea. Unfortunately, the e-version of the story I read split them all in half, really ruining the effect:

This is the right side of a two-page spread, presented as its own page. Seriously, what's going on? Too much work to figure out, sorry.
from The Transformers Spotlight: Metroplex (script by Andy Schmidt, art by Marcelo Matere)

Next Week: It's the final end of All Hail Megatron, with a little bit of Coda!

Review: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 2 by Shane McCarthy, Guido Guidi, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2009)
Acquired August 2014
Read July 2016

The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 2

Story by Shane McCarthy
Art by Guido Guidi, E. J. Su, Robert Deas, and Emiliano Santalucia
Colors by Josh Burcham, Kris Carter, James Brown, Robert Deas, Felix Serrano
Color Assist by Benjamin Maier
Letters by Chris Mowry and Robbie Robbins

Though there were two more volumes of All Hail Megatron after this, volume 2 concludes the main event, as those were prequels, side stories, and codas. This volume opens by explaining how the Autobots ended up in such dire straits as the series began with, though I didn't find the answers entirely satisfying. Much of the problems that plagued volume 1 still plague this one, but I found a lot of the stuff in the last two chapters more interesting than what had come before: Megatron expressing his frustration to Starscream, for example, that Starscream has never become the warrior-leader that Megatron wanted him to be was great, as is the dealing with the idea that everything Megatron does hearkens back to his original revolutionary purpose.

As always, imagine this in David Kaye's Megatron voice to make it even better.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #11 (art by Guido Guidi)

This leads to a pretty good ending, where Starscream actually saves Megatron instead of killing him, and a Decepticon actually break ranks to help humanity-- though not for the reasons that the Autobots would like, not even for the reasons his fellow traitor would like. But this is just the final two issues, and it's taken us a whole twelve issues to get through all this. In the end, All Hail Megatron seems more interesting for the follow-up stories it promises than the story it told itself.

No one likes Drift.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #12 (art by Guido Guidi)

Guido Guidi's work is usually very dependable, but there's also a lot of terrible fill-in artists that look like they came off DeviantArt. It's bad when one artist's humans look less expressive and lively than another artist's robots.

It almost looks to me like something out of Questionable Content, and not in a good way.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #9 (art by Robert Deas)

Next Week: I take a break from The Transformers to read a Doctor Who book set at Christmas at Christmas!

Review: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 1 by Shane McCarthy, Guido Guidi, et al.

Another day, another audio drama review: one of my favo[u]rite Doctor-companion teams by one of their best writers in Doctor Who and the Paradox Planet and the Legacy of Death! (It's not really called that.)

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09)
Acquired August 2014
Read July 2016

The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 1

Story by Shane McCarthy
Art by Guido Guidi and Casey Coller
Colors by Josh Burcham
Letters by Chris Mowry and Neil Uyetake

I wanted to like this book more than I did. "The Decepticons actually do conquer Earth" is a great premise, and unlike the devoted fans who write articles on the Transformers wiki, I don't really care if the depiction of Cybertron here is consistent with past ones in IDW, or whatever. It's just that: 1) the human military characters dominate the first few chapters of the book, and they are as generic as all get out, like too-hotshot-for-you-I-don't-obey-orders-but-never-get-in-trouble generic, and 2) the Autobots are back to being an indistinguishable mass of non-characters for me when they do turn up, all hanging out on Cybertron and moping, but what's the difference between Prowl and Jazz anyway. I like the idea of a dark situation that reveals these robots' inner characters, but mostly that just turns out to be snarling at each other.

This book was supposed to be a jumping-on point, but no one ever says the name of the guy on the right? What if I wasn't four years old when the G1 cartoon went out? Not much of a jumping-on point, then.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #4 (art by Guido Guidi)

There a just a lot of scenes, on both Earth and Cybertron, that I think are meant to build tension, but just go nowhere, spinning in circles. That Megatron has got hold of the SPOILER is a pretty good twist, though, and the hints we get of philosophical and moral disagreements among the Decepticons now that they've achieved their goals are pretty good, too. I didn't hate this or anything. But what happened here didn't need to occupy six issues, and it should have been better than it was. Guido Guidi is a surprisingly good artist, though-- like E. J. Su, he can make these robots come to life.

C'mon Megatron, genocide should make you happier than this!
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #3 (art by Guido Guidi)

Next Week: Time to save the Earth and Cybertron, when the Autobots strike back in All Hail Megatron, Volume 2!