Dave's Transformers - Comics: G1

Preview Special Capsule: This contains the pretty bad G1 preview story that appeared online, a short Armada story (which focuses a bit too much on organics again, but not to the extent of the first preview), and a bunch of sketches. A bit pricey for what you get. Mildly recommended. $3.95
Volume 1 - Six issues written by Chris Sarracini and drawn by Pat Lee.
- Issue 1: Full review for just this one.
- Issue 2 Capsule (no full review): Okay, there's more Transformers this issue, and I find myself cheering for Megatron. Some of the characterization seems a bit off (when it's not absent), but it's an improvement over the first issue. Mildly recommended (okay, it's not THAT much of an improvement, since I have #1 the same rating). $2.95
- Issue 3 Capsule: Dreamwave - Wow, the writing takes a decided downward turn this issue. While not *every* character is a one-dimensional rhetoric-spouting automaton, way too many are. And the big EI/AD (Transfan jargon for Evil Invention/Alien Device...plot device, basically) comes out of nowhere and is a LOT of impact by being vague at the beginning. Artistically it's okay, but there's a few too many closeups that obscure the action. The reader should linger over a panel because it looks good, not because it's hard to tell what's happening. Finally, the pacing bites. The events of this issue should have taken place over two issues, and the events of the first two issues could probably have been done just as well in one. Neutral. $2.95
- Issue 4 Capsule: Okay, the art does a good job of making the combiner teams really impressive. But that's about all the good I can say about this issue. I hate with hammers the "evil secretive goverment" cliche that gets continued here, and the rest of the issue was kinda disjointed. Very mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 5 Capsule: After a VERY slow start, a lot of things are coming together reasonably well, although there's still a strong plot element/cliche I dislike, and it's no longer a "maybe". The art continues to use certain confusing tricks, but since some of the specific tricks are being used a second time, I was able to follow them right off the bat this go-round. The philosophical angle is also a bit stronger, but not given as much time as I'd like. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 6 Capsule: You can tell by reading this issue and looking back over the previous five that Sarracini did indeed work out a lot of deep motivations for all the characters. Too bad so little of that actually SHOWS. At best, we get hints and "final conclusions" from most of the characters. And while I can see the possibility of good motivations for a lot of the characters having Acted Appropriately Stupid, this is not a complex enough story that I should have had to infer it. In short, Sarracini seems to have done a lot of work that just didn't make it onto the page, and that should have. Ah well, he's still fairly new, and we hear all the time that it takes a creative team around 6 issues to really get a feel for things. But in some ways it would have been better not to see the hints of greater depth this time out (better to be a good mindless story than a failed deep one). Mildly recommended. $2.95
Volume 2 - Another miniseries, written by Brad Mick and drawn by Pat Lee.
- Issue 1: A very rocky start, with art that takes a bit of work to follow. However, by the end I was hooked by what's turning into an interesting reworking of a lot of the ideas brought up in the old continuity. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 2: The storytelling is confusing at times (i.e. who's shooting on the first page? Yes, I figured it out, but it took effort), the coloring clashes oddly with the speech bubbles, and everyone's so obvious about their motivations that you have to wonder how things held together long enough to reach the state seen in #1. Anyway, I think writer Brad Mick is trying to do too many things at once, and none of them works as well as it could. Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 3: kay, I just had to go reread #1-2 to make sense of this one. The storytelling is fragmented and utterly ignores the fact that readers are getting it in pieces a month apart. I'm sure it'll work better in the inevitable TPB, but Mick needs to learn to write a monthly AS a monthly, not as part of a TPB. Well, maybe not so sure, it's a bit of a mess at times regardless. The visual storytelling on Pat Lee's part is also iffy in many places, especially when he tosses in easter eggs that don't LOOK like easter eggs (hint: a particular combat car seen just before the center staple is NOT the character it looks like, it's just a vehicle). Neutral. $2.95
- Issue 4: A more coherent issue than last, with a few cute nods to the toy history (such as the rubsigns). Mostly running combat and therefore light on plot, but Mick's plotting has tended to be too over-complicated to date anyway, and trimming it back is a good thing. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 5: Mick plays around with story structure again, and while it doesn't blow up in his face like a few issues ago, I think he should really just stick to linear storytelling until he firms up his skills. Especially since the murky "it's dark so it should be hard to make anything out, except for lights, which should have lots of blur and flare" coloring hampers the visual storytelling. The basic story ideas are sound, although there's a scene where Mick pretty much says, "To heck with subtle foreshadowing, I'll just show the Big Surprise now in some small panels". Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 6: Between Mick's storytelling and the trademark murky coloring, it's not exactly easy to follow this issue, especially with huge chunks of exposition that aren't always laid out so that it's clear which bubbles come in what order. Still, it does all come out in the end, and a new G1 continuity is made manifest. Mildly recommended. $2.95
Volume 3 - Finally an ongoing series. Also written by Brad Mick at first, with Don Figueroa as the first regular penciller.
- Issue 0: A "what has gone before" book, although a lot of it is explaining stuff that wasn't really presented clearly in the first place. There's several artists and colorists, so things run the gamut from murkfest to pretty clear, although there's a lot of "pinup" pieces and not much actual storytelling (not that the writing supports page to page storytelling continuity). It does do a good job of setting up the ongoing series, solving a few mysteries and bringing up others, and it's also a good demo of the range of Dreamwave art. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 1: Bawhuh? Mick decides to not only start in media res, but also on a fantasy sequence that gives a nod to Transformers: the Movie but otherwise has nothing to do with the actual story. And while, by the end, most of the pertinent plot points have come out, Mick's writing skills are NOT up to the way he chose to run things. And while there were plenty of easter eggs for the fans (like Bumper, or Brawn using a mask to have his toy-version face, or the not-really-Galaxy Shuttle), my repeated reaction was to want to grab Mick and inform him forcefully that he's not capable of pulling off this kind of structure yet, he should stick to linear plotting for a while yet. Figueroa's art is good, and the tag-team coloring isn't too bad for Dreamwave. Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 2: Well, it doesn't suck as bad as #1 on the storytelling front. It's easier to tell what Mick's trying to get across now, and the outline is pretty good. Too bad the execution is so weak. Mick also seems to be trying to go Furman-Cosmic here, but it's not really working. The coloring is generally good, only really murky on the cover. Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 3: Mick is a bit more successful in pulling off the time-jumping storytelling this time (timestamping captions help). On the other hand, Figueroa's visual storytelling has several places of serious muddle, and other places where it doesn't look like Brad and Don were talking to each other (like speech bubbles coming from off-panel with unclear speakers). On the other hand, the easter egg level was enjoyably high this issue, with stuff like the Raiden Trainbots or Bumblebee flying a shuttle patterned after his Cybertronian mode. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 4: Bounces between murky nighttime scenes and blazing yellow combat scenes, oversaturated in all of them. It's nice to see a big throwdown between powerful characters, not so nice to run into Adversarial Earth Governments again. Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 5: Mick's storytelling is a bit steadier this issue, and he is doing one good thing plotwise: establishing an uncertainty between two possibilities that are both plausible (mysticism vs science) in this setting, and never completely coming down on one side. Granted, other sources have answered the question, but in-story it's a good balancing act. Figueroa's art does as good a job as possible in portraying Mick's somewhat fractured story. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 6: On the other hand, (compared to Ruffolo, whose Micromasters #1 came out this week) Figueroa is at least a competent visual storyteller, and does some good work with McD's story here. The colorists have gotten the hang of things as well, and the colors are only oversaturated in the scenes where it's appropriate (i.e. every scene with Sunstorm). McD and Patyk are juggling several plotlines here, but they do seem to be getting the hang of that too...there's some "huh?" stuff here and there, but it mostly seems to be intentional, for the sake of maintaining a mystery. Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 7: Cute references in the first few pages, apparently one of the more controversial (at least in Transfandom) supporting characters from the cartoon got a new career some time in the past two decades. And yes, that's a Takotank on page 3. I was a bit thrown by Figueroa's depiction of the "new" major human character debuting on page 5, though. The story itself is pretty standard "bug hunt" SF/horror material, and it's pretty clear McDonough knows we know he's ripping off Aliens (among other sources). Recommended. $2.95
- Issue 8: Bwah? Okay, this issue runs smack into another HUGE continuity disconnect, where they've decided on a new backstory for a bunch of characters and then just drop it in as if we all know it already. "Rules of Extinction" is something we're apparently supposed to have read before this, introducing the continuity implant and the villains of this issue. But I've never heard of it, and running "Transformers" and "Rules of Extinction" through a few search engines turns up squat. Maybe it's a convention exclusive I never saw, maybe it's not out yet, maybe it was *supposed* to be out already but isn't. Dreamwave's site isn't searchable, but in my manual searching I found nothing about Rules of Extinction either. Anyway, on top of that story hole, there's a problem with the speech bubble layout this issue...every so often, a bubble is almost completely transparent, making it hard to read the text against the art. At first I thought this was supposed to represent humans being quieter than Transformers, but it shows up without obvious pattern. Finally, while Figueroa does great Transformers, his humans are still kinda disturbing. This could have been a decent, creepy story, but it gets lost in storytelling and production problems. Neutral. $2.95
- Issue 9: It would have helped if the scene following up from #8 had been first, not near the end. Especially with the tie-ins to War Within, the Summer Special and other stuff that may or may not have come out yet...I kept having to check the cover to make sure I was reading G1 and not some other title. Mind you, inter-title continuity is generally a Good Thing, but Mc and Patyk get in over their heads trying to tell a readable story with it. (Aside: the randomly transparent speech bubbles persist this issue, sigh.) Sometimes there's stories that are good enough to be worth the work required to follow all the twists and turns, but this isn't one of them. Very mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 10: Sheesh. Now that the news has broken that the writers on this series have been canned, of COURSE it starts to come together and get interesting. Lots of threads from previous issues weave together, and there's even some more tight continuity with The War Within. While it gets a bit expository for my tastes, I'm actually looking forward to how things turn out now...just as a new writer is about to come on and probably go a different direction. Sigh. Recommended. $2.95
Micromasters - A 4 issue miniseries set in the same continuity as the G1 comic (hence its being plopped here), with writing by James "Brad Mick" McDonough and art by Rob Ruffolo.
- Issue 1: I have three main reactions to this issue. One: nice of the writer to credit himself as James "Brad Mick" McDonough. Two: cool to see Big Daddy and the Deluxe Insecticons in comic form. Three: Rob Ruffolo can't tell a story. Seriously...it took repeated references after the fact by various characters to the events of the opening scene for me to figure out what happened. I mean, at one point I was wondering if one of the Micromasters was unleashing the power of the Matrix! At the time, I also couldn't figure out which Micromaster it WAS. Sure, it was all revealed by the end of the issue, but it should have been clear at the BEGINNING. As for the writing, McD is clearly expecting a LOT more out of Ruffolo in terms of carrying the story, as it's written so minimally in places that one can only presume Ruffolo was supposed to make something patently obvious. I did appreciate that Dreamwave is one of the few "larger" publishers to still use footnotes (connecting events here to G1v3#5), but this comic was otherwise an excellent example of a really interesting concept turned to hash by bad storytelling. Very mildly recommended. $2.95 for any of the three regular covers, didn't look at the special ones.
- Issue 2: Assuming that Ruffolo didn't just ignore the script and go his own way, McDonough and Patyk decided to get a bit tricky with the storytelling this issue, running four threads in horizontal panels across several pages in the middle of the issue. This would have been more effective if the first two pages of the sequence were next to each other, rather than separated by ads, though. Instead, it's more confusing that it needs to be. In fact, that characterizes the art in general (and the overly saturated coloring is back). Now...if this was an open-ended series, I wouldn't really have any complaints about the story itself. But since this is a 4 issue miniseries, it just seems too aimless right now, suggesting that either it will wrap up overly quickly in #4 or that it won't really wrap anything up, leaving things wide open for a sequel. Or both. Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 3: The story was a bit hard to follow visually, especially at first, but does seem to be coming together. Unfortunately, it seems to be coming together to a rushed anticlimax. Ruffolo's staging and posing is rather...uncomplementary to storytelling. Mildly recommended. $2.95
- Issue 4: McDonough, Patyk and Ruffolo turn in a semi-coherent ending to the tale, even the garish coloring doesn't help much in keeping track of who's saying what. While there were a few fun moments, it felt like the story was only wrapping up because it had been solicited as a four issue series. Very mildly recommended. $2.95

Transformers Comics

Dreamwave's TF: Generation One comics reviews.