THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers #25: Police Action, Part 2
Reviewed by Blackjack

That's a lot of loose threads. You really think you can tie them together?
Subjectively it technically isn't a bad issue. After spending most of the McCarthy and Costa run being a background flower, a background flower that jumps out to save a Decepticon from being killed, Costa seems to rewriteProwl, just like he had rewritten Hot Rod. While not quite Furman's or Roche's manipulative prick, Costa's detective Prowl is rather quite enjoyable, with decent monologues. Prowl is pretty confident without being too proud, and I do quite enjoy the Prowl here. The art is gorgeous as well. Streetwise is a fun foil to Prowl, and Magnus is, as always, done well as a straight-man leader. Bumblebee and Jazz isn't half bad either, although Bumblebee's being quite a dick with Jazz, isn't he? Even Pennington is starting to shape up as a likable human. So what is the biggest problem here? Well, Spike Witwicky. Spike effing Witwicky. We could have pursued a dozen more interesting leads, like the consequences of Jazz's murder of a human (after the whole WTF moment, although considering things I'm thankful this is not pursued), or the anti-robot Ben Simpson, or Decepticons left on Earth, but no. We pick the main plot as Prowl investigating Spike for the murder of Scrapper, which, lest we forget, was the worst ever issue of Transformers ever churned out. I mean, if Spike had killed an Autobot it might've made sense, if Spike had killed a Decepticon imprisoned in Skywatch it would even make sense, but why the hell are they investigating that? Not to mention Spike is going more irksome by the minute.

It's not so much as a bad issue, because it is not. Unlike Spotlight Prowl, this isn't a total character rewrite, and instead just meshes together the two extremes from the Furman era and the Costa era, earning a middle ground between them. So, yeah, Prowl is pretty cool. It's the fact that we have to follow him as he investigates stupid Spike and Scrapper's death that bothers me. Having to keep complete disguise because the humans thought the Autobots have left is a nice little concept ars well. Hopefully we won't spend the entire five issues doing this Spike investigation shit, otherwise it'll be one hell of a boring issue.


This issue, and indeed all 'Police Action' issues, have been solicitised as 'the Last Story on Earth', even in the checklists included with these issues.

The Autobots that have been left behind with Bumblebee, Magnus and Prowl include Streetwise, Hot Spot and Inferno. Hot Spot looks just like he always looked, while Inferno is in his Universe-Classics body, albeit with those giant white shoulder kibble from his original toy.

Pennington's first name is Kyle. He is 34 years old.

Prowl is the calm, reserved one here and Streetwise is the gung-ho one that breaks cover. Not so much as a goof, but heck, it makes you think back to the first issue of the ongoing, where their roles are reversed. Really it seems like Costa has realised how unpopular the gung ho Prowl is, and as with Hot Rod, is trying to do this to appease the readers.

Streetwise says 'I'm busting Decepti-chops', a corruption of Ironhide's line in the 1986 movie.

The Megatron guns are taken alongside Omega Supreme into space.


A bunch of plot-related goofs, really. There are Decepticons on Earth, but their priority is not capturing them, but rather investigating the fact that Spike has killed a Decepticon? I mean, I want Spike out of the picture as much as Prowl does, but does it have to be the priority?

If Bumblebee doesn't put any investigation on Jazz, why not put him on the field to take care of a problem? For that matter, why did a troubled soldier like Jazz be left on Earth instead of going with Optimus Prime into space?