THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CLUB AND CONVENTION TRANSFORMERS COMICS

Transcendent, Part 3
Reviewed by Blackjack

”He is still alive?”
Now, the difference between this and most of Fun Publications’ later output (most notably the TransTech, Shattered Glass and Wings of Honor stories) is that this is not fun at all. The text stories and other comics have this campy feel which makes reading them, and liking them, so much easier. It’s another dose of ‘introdump and boring dialogue session’ with our cast, although Shockwave is kind of intriguing. It’s a slight improvement from last issue because more characters are introduced and we see more of the TransTech world, but we are introduced to yet another uninteresting character in Topspin, and another MacGuffin that is Slaughter’s sword. Not really fun.


The TransTech Ratbat is designed by Alex Milne, who previously has designed a humanoid version of Ratbat when working on IDW’s Megatron: Origin. Like in that comic, Ratbat is a Senator. Megatron is some sort of commander, and Shockwave is science minister.

Topspin, a repaint of the helicopter mold in the Energon combiner teams, has the ability to rip out sparks from one Transformer to another, or to move it into jars. Topspin is a Decepticon. According to his profile (which is never mentioned in-story) Topspin was from the Marvel comics universe, as part of the Decepticons which left Cybertron with Jhiaxus, but during a battle he found himself drifting away until he found himself somehow transported to Axiom Nexus, where he was cared by Alpha Trion, causing his intense fanaticism with the old Transformer.

Alpha Trion has made use of Topspin’s ability to move the sparks of offworlders into those of the TransTech. One such case is in the text story ‘I, Lowtech’.


The detailing on Ratbat’s mouthplate area differ from panel to panel.

How did Landquake know about ‘the sparks of the other Transformers’? The conversation seems jumpy, as if it’s only to tell us that Alpha Trion has agents among the TransTech.

If Slaughter’s sword can warp minds, why didn’t Alpha Trion just throw it away?