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THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

Marvel Comics
(1984-1994)
Japanese
Manga
Other Books
and Titles
Titan Books
(2001-2010)
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(2001-2016)
Dreamwave
(2002-2004)
Devil's Due
(2003-2007)
IDW Publishing
(2005-now)

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers Regeneration One #86
Reviewed by Blackjack

Issue Review

”You gambled with our lives, our sanity…”
There is a big, big feeling that I have seen this before, and I have! Grimlock, alone against the world, the Dinobots throwing a hissy fit thanks to something reckless Grimlock has done… and the general rivalry between Grimlock and Bond Villain Scorponok is basically lifted from Furman’s own Maximum Dinobots from IDW, something that isn’t exactly remembered for being good either. The idea that Grimlock is prepared to make a deal with the devil to save his Dinobots? We’ve seen that before as well, back during the whole Nucleon business in fact. Overall the entire Scorponok plot seems to be just recycling Furman’s abandoned ideas for the IDW universe. Nevermind the extremely sour taste of spitting on Marvel Scorponok’s brilliant death scene in the original Marvel run, only to bring him back as this wholly unentertaining villain. Grimlock and Scorponok’s dialogue is just so boring to read – even compared to Furman’s old Maximum Dinobots it’s bad.

Oh, also, while my synopsis doesn’t really make it look that long, the dream sequence of Grimlock breaking free and meeting the dream Dinobots? It took six pages. A good six pages. Do we really honestly need to see that? And that flashback with the Dinobots being a bitch to Grimlock because Slag’s turned feral felt very weak.

There was no reason for the Hot Rod/Soundwave stuff to be stretched on for three issues now, is there? All it makes them look is that they're just doing nothing until this issue, so why not have the entire scene happen here? Or back in the past issues? Soundwave making off with Thunderwing is kind of a moot point anyway.

We get the Autobots cleaning up Earth, which also drags on a while – though at least we get some actual character moments of Optimus Prime just melancholically looking as his old foe is tossed aside as garbage, while struggling with the fact that he had just executed Megatron. It ends up rather amounting to nothing, though, since as Kup and Spike so aptly puts it, everything happens is because Optimus Prime didn’t give a shit about Earth for however many years.

Art is still rather unattractive to me, looking neither like the expressiveness of the past nor the sharp detail of the modern day. Red Alert and Wheeljack in particular look like nothing they should, and expressions in general look very Dull Surprise.

A good chunk of this issue is just bloated recapping of how Scorponok has ended up going from a head to his… IDW personality, basically, and monologuing… and really, economically done it could’ve been told in two pages, maybe three. Hell, the entire content of this issue could probably be done in about a third of the pages it takes up. Absolutely nothing really happens beyond a couple of conversations. It’s really just even more setup, and neither one-dimensional Scorponok and the idiotic concept of the Gene Key appeals to me at all.

Notes

Grimlock’s quest to obtain Nucleon to revive the Dinobots, subsequently ignoring the warnings of the local guardians, happened in issue #70, the Price of Life, whereas his conversion into an Action Master, unable to transform, happened in issue #76, Still Life.

The idea that Nucleon affects Transformers in different ways is introduced throughout #74 to #76, though we don’t get to see any other side-effects of Nucleon on anyone else but Grimlock turning into an Action Master. It was mentioned shortly in the UK-exclusive “Another Time and Place”, where Slag was the last Dinobot to be affected. It was one of the remaining story ideas that Furman was forced to axe then, and never really explored afterwards until now. However, with Optimus Prime, Prowl, Wheeljack and Sunstreaker showing to be able to transform and drive around, whereas Skids is shown to be hanging around with no side effects, it appears it’s not universal.

The other four patients in the Nursery are Blaster, Silverbolt, Huffer and Inferno, all of whom are restrained in various ways. Inferno in particular seems to be spontaneously combusting flames, whereas Huffer is wrapped up in rainbow-coloured cling-wrap.

Blaster and Silverbolt were shown to be among those who Grimlock had revived with Nucleon in #75, On the Edge to Extinction. Neither Inferno nor Huffer were explicitly shown to be among those revived with Nucleon, but Inferno did magically show up in the comics after the Nucleon arc (never actually appearing in the US continuity before) whereas Huffer kind of just disappears after the Underbase saga so it’s not inconceivable that they’re off-screen most of the time.

We saw Mirage last issue, and Brawn (who's mentioned in passing by First Aid) is confirmed to be another Underbase fatality that's walking around again.

Scorponok being a hammy master plotter with mad scientist tendencies are, of course, lifted from his IDW counterpart. Marvel Scorponok was a one-dimensional warlord, and later on as the Zarak portion became more dominant, a more tragic anti-villain struggling with his own mortality. Grimlock stating he had battled with Scorponok once before also mirrors their exchange in the IDW comics – though the two did meet once before in the Marvel continuity, fighting side by side against an Underbase-powered Starscream.

From Hot Rod’s dialogue, the Matrix energy surrounding Thunderwing’s body is the last remnant of the Creation Matrix after the main shell was used to destroy Unicron in #75, On the Edge of Extinction. The Matrix did reappear in the Generation Two comics without explanation, but this story seems to be working on the notion that the Matrix was lost after #75.

CNA, the transformer-equivalent of DNA, was a term invented by Furman during his run on the IDW continuity, specifically in Spotlight: Arcee. The idea of transformers having genetic material to begin with, however, was first introduced in Generation 2.

Goofs

The main continuity error here is that the Autobots theorizing about Grimlock being ‘picky’ about who got Nucleon on the Ark’s stasis tubes, leaving the likes of Grotusque to die… which does not match the events of #74 at all. The reason Megatron was revived in the first place was because the Dinobots pumped Nucleon into all the stasis tubes without checking the name-plates.

There’s probably meant to be a ‘there’ at the beginning of Hot Rod’s line “has to be a way past this null field.”

It’s extremely odd that the Autobots threw out their own kind, directly mentioning Grotusque by name (so it can’t just be an art error) without salvaging them or keeping them in stasis like so many other times it had happened in Marvel comics continuity.

Red Alert looks nothing like he is supposed to look. If it wasn't for his colours and that he showed up in previous issues, I wouldn't know it was him.

Wheeljack's missile launcher disappears during the scene when he transforms.

Also it’s rather odd for Kup not to mention anything about Starscream speaking before, nor anyone not noticing him buggering off.

 
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