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Wednesday Roundup 8.11.2017

First of all, shoutout and special thanks to my patrons on Patreon, who for as little as $1 per project each month are helping me to grow and expand what I do here on renaramblesaboutcomics and all my other blogs and projects including starting up my own comic. So special thanks to c. win, Erin Jenne, Iz, Keerthana Krosuri, OwlKnight, Rebecca Luu, and Steph.

Now, for this week in comics we have another full and healthy week of comics coming out from almost all the major publishers and then some! But how will they survive my new FIVE STAR RANKING SYSTEM. i mean it’s not that big of a deal, it’s the same as any five point rating scale but the point remains.

Tesladyne’s Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow, DC’s Batgirl and the Birds of Prey, DC’s DC Essentials Catalog 2018, DC’s Justice League Day, Viz’s My Hero Academia, Marvel’s Old Man Logan, Dark Horse’s Overwatch, Marvel’s Runaways, DC’s Superman - Action Comics, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: First Strike

Tesladyne’s Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow #1 Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Anthony Clark, Jeff Powell

To say I have been curious about how Atomic Robo was going to deal with the current political and scientific landscape is sincerely an understatement, because I have been just sitting on edge, wondering if we would be getting another historical arc or at least placed in the not-so-distant past for context. After all, here in America that hasn’t really been an anti-science climate quite like there is right now. At least not within my own lifetime.

But, of course, I should have had far more faith in the foresight and boldness that Clevinger and Wegener have always shown in their craft. Which, of course, is a perfect description of their ongoing science-adventure epic Atomic Robo, because for as scientifically and fiction minded as the pulp adventures are, the fact that it is art is undeniable.

Art is about communicating concepts and ideas, and as scientifically minded as Robo and his team of scientists at Tesladyne may be, and as much as science based nerds like myself appreciate how the science is not bent or broken entirely for the sake of the storytelling, it is masterful at portraying science in a way that is accessible and, most important of all as it relates to Robo, humanizing.

While it’s a slow start to this new arc, what really drives it home is Robo’s frustration and sacrifice for the sake of his dream, and how ignoring the human elements has allowed the politics and general climate of the world around him to drown out his work and inhibit him. Even if the only insight we get to the hurdles is his humorous annoyance with the desert’s self-proclaimed HOA that is between himself, Elon Musk, and Sir Richard Branson, the imposing and overly restrictive hold of Red Tape and permit seeking is imposing all throughout the issue, even for the major parts of it center more around the wily antics and return of young Foley.

And of course, it wouldn’t be Robo without major hinting toward something larger and unexpected to come.

It’s not the most perfect introduction to an arc, especially not for Atomic Robo which has at times had some of the most engaging first issues of almost any long form comic I’ve seen, we are talking about a comic where the electricity-driven skeleton of Thomas Edison is a villain. So it is just short of the high bar that it has set for itself, but even falling short Atomic Robo manages to be one of the best comics of a given week. That for me is justification enough for a solid 4/5 Stars.

DC’s DC Essentials Catalog 2018

Straight up, I am not a fan of Catalogues and I’m definitely almost never in agreement with the books they choose for each of the catalogue’s sections. So it’s not like I’m going to be less than truthful with this guy.

But my harshness is probably best explained as to why I’m being harsh, after all most people would not care that much about what is essentially a free throw-in with someone’s pull list in the week. And, honestly, my answer there is that because it’s free, because it’s promotional and being pushed onto new readers, its viability as a good entry level or at least how helpful it is as a guide for interested new readers, increases exponentially here.

So how does it work on that level, especially with the release of the Justice League movie looming over DC currently? How likely will this persuade a new reader to start getting more submersed into the comic books it’s trying to represent?

Annnnnd the answer there is not great?

There’s a short comic at the start, introducing the Justice League and wow is it a testament to how out of touch the lineup is with the increasingly diverse culture of nerds and comic book fandom. Five beefy white guys, one white woman, and one black man. Like it’s seven years into the new DC Universe (technically) and you couldn’t trade anyone here out for some more, less milk toast characters by this point? Hal Jordan couldn’t be traded out for any other Lanterns at all? It’s annoying. And at least something the Justice League movie will be at least somewhat better at thanks to the very awesome casting of Jason Mamoa as Aquaman.

But that’s still only a small part of this issue. The rest of it, and by that admission the vast majority of this digital freebie is dedicated to the “essential reading” of DC as of 2018. And much like the lineup of their premiere team, DC has repeatedly proven in the last couple of years that they... don’t know what to suggest. Most notoriously there was the Essentials collection where they literally had a section for each of the male Justice League members and like. One book for Wonder Woman. That was embarrassing and if we had anything remotely similar it would be our first 1 star of the new rating system, but it’s honestly a much longer, much more thorough and comprehensive version of a reading list for DC and in that way, while still not a “standard” or “satisfactory” example of how to really capture the attention of new fans, and its choices aren’t always the most coherent alongside each other, it doesn’t completely fail at its mission by my estimate.

DC’s Batgirl and the Birds of Prey (2016-present) #16 Julie Benson, Shawna Benson, Roge Antonio, Marcelo Maiolo

The Benson sisters already have to win me over after the first arc of this series which I found terribly disappointing so far as uniting the team that I know and love as the Birds of Prey and not really being on board with the last issue for all the reasons I said in this review.

So I was somewhat apprehensive from the start but, honestly, if you follow this blog for a while you know I’m a sucker for giant superhero team-up storylines and am really willing to hold my sense of disbelief a lot more than even what I regularly do for comics.

....

So why are the villains of this team-up literally militarized paper feminists in.... well, in the United States the first thing that comes to mind when a lot of white people wear uniformed cloaks with hoods and masks is the KKK, of course these masks are old plague doctor masks that double for some kind of... gas. Okay.

But like. Considering the current environment in not just the US but the whole world... just putting into words “the real problems in the world right now are radical feminists” here and having our superheroes literally say “Not all men in Gotham”... If I’m being generous this is a whole lot of shady and uncomfortable. If we’re not supposed to read deeper into this, then why the surface level imagery and blanket statements that so immediately bring to mind current issues. If we’re supposed to read deeper why does it feel so unrewarding with none of the characters having enough time in a team-up this large to really experience the events any deeper than surface level.

And there’s still not even a mention of how this event would effect trans men or women, or how this disease is even supposed to be effecting only people who identify as men to begin with. It’s apparently scientifically based according to this issue and the continued mention of medical investigation from Ivy and the villains themselves. If someone claims it’s due to the Y chromosome then trans and nonbinary people would be effected differently on a case by case basis, giving the medical community a pretty quick idea of what was happening. Not to mention that XXY women and men, XYY men, XXX women, and so on should be effected differently. Now I’m not expecting a comic book writer to write a genetics dissertation for research on a comic idea but if they want to be a mature or adult comic in subject matter, then high school biology should not immediately tear their entire plot apart.

I just. Really feel like this book wanted an all-female superhero team-up and thought there needed to be justification for why the men weren’t around instead of it just.... being unsaid as to why there weren’t men on the team. And things have spiraled out from there. On top of that, the art is not strong enough to regain the things that are lost in what is a clustered and puddle deep storyline.

These sorts of team ups are best when the subject being dealt with is not so politically or culturally charged, or when there is very clearly a reason for each of the present characters to be in the exact positions that they are in. And so far this crossover hasn’t really managed to believably pull this off.

DC’s Justice League #1 - Justice League Day 2017 Special Edition Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair

This issue is really a sampler for the larger issue that is Justice League (2011-2016) #1 which... I’ll be honest, has not aged the best of the Justice League origins that I commonly think of, and really the fact that this sample contains pretty much no Wonder Woman or Flash, it’s hard to really see why outside of this scene between Batman and Green Lantern which has become somewhat iconic in the superhero community, I don’t really get.

I mean, the scene itself is so anti-climactic specifically because it ends with Batman stealing Green Lantern’s power ring to prove that Batman Is Always The Best Period. And if you’re of my persuasion in the comic reading landscape, that probably means you just rolled your eyes as much as I usually do at those sentiments

This is probably okay for a new, entry level fan to pick up for free, but personally I feel like I’ve picked up this particular freebie now five times for different FCBDs or other marketing pushes DC has had in the past six years and it’s just not enough that I’d consider it worth more than sacrificing the literal $0.99 it would cost you to pick up the whole issue on the same website.

Viz’s My Hero Academia (2014-present) Vol. 10 Kohei Horikoshi

I have been making more of an effort lately to keep away from any spoilers to My Hero Academia, be it the anime or the manga, and while it’s not always the easiest thing to do on a content aggregator like tumblr, it’s an effort I’m particularly happy with myself for doing because I love this series. And one thing I love about this series is how it seems so familiar and yet, time and time again, I am floored by the changes and impact it makes through those choices. It’s honestly astounding.

And for this volume, that wait is paid off because of the unique choices that are made throughout it in dealing with Katsuki Bakugo, Deku’s childhood friend and rival who seems to be, easily, the most surface level and simple of the class of 1A, especially among Deku and his friends, and yet is continuously shown throughout here to have something much better and greater about him.

And while Katskui and his choices which ultimately subvert and turn on its head the trope that he seemed to so easily be fitting into throughout the previous nine volumes of content are the most interesting and engaging storyline of this book, he’s by far not the only one to shine in the volume. Deku, of course, being our main gets lots of great moments and we get to see him really develop his skills and instincts as a hero, but the entire gang of 1A classmates in this volume are really shown to grow from the characters we met back in the first volume of the story. They are reckless without completely losing sense and reason, they’re cautious without allowing written rules to inhibit them from what they know is right, and more than anything, they are all coming to recognize that something special in each other and especially in Deku and Katsuki which the two of them have been able to see all along. And it’s honestly all rather wonderful.

This volume also has more attention paid to the adult heroes and what they’re doing the serious responsibility they take in protecting and saving their charges. Which is a bit of superrealism sprinkled in this story that really elevates it above a lot of stories meant for young readers, especially shōnen.

The art’s always great, the story is not like anything else you’ll read East or West, and there honestly just aren’t characters like this you’ll see in other stories all with as much care and development as they have in My Hero Academia and that’s part of why it is so special and deserving of 5/5 stars.

Marvel’s Old Man Logan - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages Robbie Thompson, Andrea Sorrentino

Of the freebie samplers, the ones that I tend to be the most interested in, at least for this week, are the ones that offer something additional to the things we’ve seen before. And in the case of Marvel’s “Legacy Primer Pages” marketing campaign, that’s exactly what the aim to do and actually achieve.

These are good little samples because not only are they uniquely written for this event and with this very intent behind them, but they are more importantly written by a writer I already really enjoy, Robbie Thompson, and all have different artists which not only tap into the style of the books being promoted bout also have a unique flare compared to the other “Legacy Primer Pages.”

In this case, I’ve never been particularly interested in the Old Man Logan books, as I’ve never been the biggest Mark Millar fan, but this is definitely a sample which gives me a good enough taste of what the universe is about and what Logan’s history is in it that I feel like I could readily pick up the next issue. I won’t. But I could. And that’s a delivery on the whole premise of the series.

Even if it’s super annoying that these things are 3 pages long.

A star earned for each page, I say.

Dark Horse’s Overwatch (2016-present) #13 Michael Chu, Ryan Benjamin, Anthony Washington

It’s been far too long since I read a good comic with Ryan Benjamin on art, it’s been sincerely missed in my usual comic appetite. As I’ve gone over quite a few times, the Overwatch comics Blizzard has been putting out has really gone the extra mile in helping someone like me who likes Overwatch but doesn’t really play the games to feel really immersed into the world they’ve created. And it’s in that way that I really enjoy reading these.

This whole issue seems a lot more plot driven than the rest of the comics, it seems to be in the present timeline, it’s showing the moves being made by the Talon operatives after the events we’ve seen unfold in previous issues and in the cinematics Blizzard has provided. And just overall it seems to have a much tighter schedule with a lot more direction than what has been expected.

It’s a little concerning to me that so many of the Talon operatives are heavily pulling from the more diverse characters in the franchise, but that’s not something I suspect rests squarely on the shoulders of this issue, obviously, but it is something I can look toward the writer of this issue, and the overall creative head of Overwatch’s story as a whole, Michael Chu. And with Chu writing it also makes sense why this feels a lot more plot driven.

All fo this aside, it’s a very nifty, very cool spy thriller from the perspective of the team of Bond villains, which has tight control of the characters and dialogue, and a wonderful use of a great artist whose style is fun yet very believable and action oriented.

Marvel’s Runaways (2017-present) #3 Rainbow Rowell, Kris Anka, Matthew Wilson

When you’re really analyzing and critiquing something, one of the things you have to ask yourself is what more could I ask of it? And I think when you’re torn about your personal, subjective impression of something and the quality of what you’re looking at, it’s important to ask that question and really analyze how much of a difference that can make.

For me, that question is particularly interesting in Runaways because while I’lm personally fairly new as a fan compared to some, I am still someone who has read through and fully submerged myself into the history of the characters up to this point and have a vested interest in seeing how they end up as characters and as a story outside of just “where are they now” more than just someone who was being newly introduced to these characters from this issue forward. And in that way, I can honestly say that Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka have put together one of the most beautiful, slow paced, and yet completely rewarding personable comics I have read in a long time.

There’s not a lot of action, there’s an ongoing plot and a sense of danger and risk for our heroes, certainly, but at the end of the day the driving force of this plot and this narrative as a whole is and will remain the question “can they still be a family?”

And in that way, as much as my apprehensions remain, as much as my personal biases on where characters should go or should have gone, are completely overwhelmed by how much thought and care is put into every conversation, every action, every beautiful panel of this comic. And it is also in this way that I am just so blown way and impressed by the insight this comic has.

There are nitpicks, like I think that Karolina should have probably been more receptive and affectionate with Gert even through her surprise, but it’s hard for me to get nitpicky when I’m just so glad a book so much as exists, and can say it’s one comic that I look forward to immensely each and every month.

Definitely glad that this comic is continuing to earn every ounce of my support, 5/5.

DC’s Superman - Action Comics (2016-present) Vol. 4: The New World Dan Jurgens, Patch Zircher, Ian Churchill

I remember back when I was reading every bit of comic book criticism and review that I could find a few years ago, one analysis that I found profoundly changed the way I evaluated comics and how I chose to consume them, was coming across an analysis of the culture around comics, and that was that for most committed comic book fans, which I most certainly qualified as, aren’t really focused looking at individual comics as narrative fiction, but like reading a newspaper, keeping peripherally aware of things that are happening within a given universe.

Now, the crux of that analysis was that readers who do this should stop and not feed the beast, opting instead for comics which are wholly good and further narrative and critical thinking.

But, I’ll be honest. I don’t really look to do that with comics either. I absolutely understand and support using comics as a means to relax, a comfort. A romp. And if you read certain comics like newspapers.... hell, you’re still reading more than like half the entire planet each week. I don’t read the parts of the newspaper I don’t have an interest or investment in, and I don’t read comics I’m not at least interested in as well.

I just drop them and stop buying them.

But there are hundreds of comics published every week in America alone, and to buy and keep up with all of them on an issue-by-issue basis, especially if the vast majority are “standard” or lower, doesn’t make sense to me. If a comic isn’t something I “have” to have each week, I move it to a trade wait and buy it that way. And I go over this now not because I want to convert everyone to my way of reading comics, but as an explanation for why certain comics I’m obviously enjoying are moved to this latter experience compared to their “peers”

For me, the events of Action Comics was something I was peripherally aware of through other comics and context clues, but wouldn’t read for myself until I got enough of a story to really sit down and read all together.

Which is a good thing, because as with the common theme of this week, long form arcs are super difficult to do well and so it’s more powerful to read a whole story together once it’s done. Action’s “The New World” story does that, but what it does even more than that is it reestablishes a context for the Super Family in the Rebirth universe.

The start of this issue, really the entirety of the first issue of this arc, is dedicated to showing us the new timeline with retconning the older Super Family and Jon’s birth and growth into the current DCU events. And this is one of those issues that by itself, if I had paid full price for what ended up being a wiki entry to the new universe, I probably would have been super ticked. But in a volume like this, with a whole new story set up by it and cause for moving forward, I find this to be a really good way of telling new readers and friends interested in Superman to read this volume and get a small history for context before moving forward.

And let me just say, as confusing and over the top as the Superman mythos has gotten in the past six years? This was a good call on the writers’ part here. Even if I think that first issue definitely suffers from exposition fatigue.

Now, unrelated to my scoring, I will say that this does upset me as a long time Superman fan because they bought back one of my absolute favorite characters from the previous universe, Chris Kent, but then completely undid everything lovable about him, made him a generic looking foil badguy to Jon’s Superboy, and for the time being seem to have no plans on having his heartbreaking and heartwarming story of finding an adopted family that loves and accepts him in Clark and Lois be revitalized and used to really meaningfully change the bad handling he received less than a year after his invention before. And it’s really disheartening and depressing on a fan’s behalf.

All that said, this is a solid comic and a pretty easy jumping on point for new and old readers alike. It cleans up a lot of the continuity confusion that has been brought on in the last two years for the Super Family, and gives us a lot of solid team ups within the family. So for me, this is a good 3/5 stars.

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II (2017) #2 (of 5) Erik Burnham, Tom Waltz, Dan Schoening, Luis Antonio Delgado

Sometimes you enjoy a property so much that it becomes difficult to look at it with fresh eyes, and sometimes even worse that leads into a point where it takes a very special, a very extraordinary talent to come by and present you with something from that property that not only feels new and refreshing, but in many ways can almost feel like it’s a coming home of sorts.

When I read Burnham’s Ghostbusters or Waltz’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I genuinely feel like it’s coming home to two of the teams that kind of helped me, like they helped a lot of kids, grow a real sense of self and exploration from a young age. There’s a line that’s sometimes difficult to explain to people when it comes to fiction but especially with comics and something as outlandish as the superhero and sci-fi genres, where the line is drawn between things that push the line for things to be ridiculously stupid into ridiculously amazing, but I think if there’s any comic that I would use it could very well be this issue.

The thing is, I mentioned before how I try to always think of a comic as being someone’s very first, and whether or not that would really provide them with anything that would entice a new reader to continue on. But I think there’s another perspective on that which can be just as relevant. And that would be the complicated question, if a comic has already found its audience, can it continue to reward and interest that audience?

And while I would always warn new readers when a comic doesn’t really meet the prior on average, I’m also comfortable with approaching a comic that knows its audience and, as a part of that audience, evaluating what I have gotten out of an issue. In that way, I feel like Ghostbusters/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II is able to tap into something even decades-spanning properties like DC and Marvel are always juggling and struggling to maintain. It has an audience that Burnham and Waltz have personally been entertaining for almost a decade now, and so their main interests now are in rewarding those fans with the most payoff, the most development, and the most new spins on familiar faces that they can possibly give. And I think this is just another in a long list of examples of how they do that incredibly well.

This isn’t the only comic this week which is in the middle of a story, obviously, but I think of the available comics this one does the best job of doing something that I look at when examining an issue on its own. I ask myself, going into this issue from the last issue, what stakes are there and where (mentally or physically) are all the characters when the story starts, and do those things change by the end, and by how much. Sometimes, in a weak and drawn thin premise of a comic, those things don’t move the dial for the three or four middle issues that the story has, and it’s one of the reasons I am incredibly critical of long, 5+ issue storylines. They very rarely seem to fully payoff for what time and effort you invest in them by this measurement, especially in those middle issues.

Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are not those kinds of series, and their crossovers reflect that comfort that their teams bring to the table for these events. There’s an understanding of how much change is needed to reward the readers, and even if this is one of the incline issues taking us on our way to the climax very early in the story, it still manages to focus on the things we need to change within an issue.

In this case, that is character development and it’s something that these creators do fantastically well even with a huge ensemble cast. We have a lot of touching and vital moments for each of the characters, seeing the different groups bond and play off each other. It’s more than just the eggheads, the leaders, the comic reliefs, and the hotheads (respectively) together, it’s about taking those personalities and having them play off each other in a way that makes the characters reflect on themselves and the issues they’re not addressing in their personal arcs without being heavy handed.

Basically, if I could, I would teach a graduate level course on how these IDW comics understand how to make an ongoing comic’s individual issues maintain story structure while still contributing to an overall narrative.

It falls short of perfect, I still think it would be very difficult to tell someone new or fledgling in either property to pick it up, and I think that for a lot of people waiting each week, even it’s only a week, can be difficult with the price of comics these days, but it also feels so completely worth it for those of us already on the train.

DC’s Titans (2016-present) #17 Dan Abnett, Minkyu Jung, Mick Gray, Blond

A lot of people over the years have come along to debate me on my assertion that monthly comics should fix their publication method or write comic arcs to be four issues or shorter, and while that’s never been a position I deter from it’s one I am more than willing to hear other opinions are. There are good examples of stories that go on for longer.

But most of the time they don’t. And you end up with pretty run of the mill issues that take up the majority of the middle of the arc and more take away from the momentum of the storyline that had been building than anything else. This isn’t a complete condemnation of this arc, but it is a point I’m willing to stand on for this issue.

We start this issue with the exact same circumstances that we ended it in. Wally I is dead and Wally II is... around. Evil Future Donna reveals herself as the leader and the ultimate betrayer (more on that in a second). Mel and Gnarrk are still mind controlled. Other villains from the Titans’ pasts are also fighting for Donna.

Annnnd that’s it. This is the ultimate example of a filler issue that takes away from the momentum that had been building the entire time before all this happened. None of the characters are in a drastically different place, none of the personalities are changed, none of the circumstances are changed. t’s a lot of exposition and evil pondering that gives us... what is basically the cliffhanger from last issue -- is Donna evil? Will Wally live?

The stakes have not changed and thus this issue doesn’t add to the story. If anything, issues that pull stunts like this, basically pushing the pause button for another month, add to the reputation comics have that they have no real direction or conclusion to offer, that they just are endless cycles of the same game. And I’m saying that as a fan of not only comics, but of this series and this storyline. And it really doesn’t help its case that it all but flat out states a reference to “Who Is Donna Troy?”, a storyline that on one end of the spectrum could be a perfect example of a one-shot story that is self-contained and gives a change to the narrative and characterizations it touches... and on the other end of the spectrum is an example of convoluted retcons, disappointingly missed stakes, and a generally forgettable multipart “epic” that bit off more than it could chew. So we really could be barreling toward one side or the other.

For what it’s worth, I’m not at all saying that this is a terrible issue, but it’s a perfect example of why my skepticism toward comics which stretch stories to 6 issues or longer has grown as thick and impenetrable as it has. Issues of a comic series, like episodes of an ongoing TV show, are best served when you can either watch them on their own, or have demonstrably changed the stakes from the start of the issue/episode to the end, making it matter whether or not it is placed before or after the previous part of the story.

It also doesn’t help that this is the third-ish twist on the “Who Betrayed The Titans” thing they’ve had going for this story arc which has.. basically just been using as many twists as possible to try to combat the Information Age and how covers and solicits are released months in advance, making the element of surprise so questionable. Why else would they throw off the trail by having the traitor be Lilith and then maybe Dick and then maybe Roy and then, oh wait all the clues and lead up had been red herrings it’s Donna.... from the future... who turned evil because everyone died.... and now she wants to kill them earlier... Oh, comics.

On its own, this comic is a solid, standard issue, 3/5, but it’s going to contribute to the overall story arc feeling lax in pace and honestly stretched pretty thin in order to make it to that oh-so-desirable trade length.

IDW’s Transformers: First Strike (2017) #1 John Barber, Guido Guidi

It feels like over the past two years, as I’ve excitedly expanded my library for the IDW Transformers comics, I’ve had to deal with the ongoing struggle of following my favorite characters as they jump around between the various titles, and no two characters probably personify that more than Arcee and Kup right now. While I haven’t picked up Revolutionaries yet as I wait for the trade, I’ve enjoyed the general premise of the book from a distance and wondering if/when we’ll get more tie-ins to Sins of the Wreckers, which is where my love for Arcee and Kup has really been fostered.

This stand alone issue for First Strike is in itself fairly interesting. Even without a lot of the background from Revolutionaries or even the more recent arc of Optimus Prime, I followed the characters and relationships pretty easily. A good part of that is thanks to how John Barber’s consistent voice across all of the Hasbro line of properties has led to a real feeling of being able to follow the characters first and filling in for the storylines after. Which is a really good note for a multi-series shared universe like Transformers (and many other IDW properties) have become.

But that doesn’t entirely make it an easy read for newcomers jumping into the adventure. There is a lot with Blackrock and that whole nonsense (aka the main crux of the issue) that was really lost on me, and that cheapens the issue significantly when it goes for a “power of friendship” basically ending like this one does. It’s something that may very well easily be rewarding for more avid followers of the Revolutionaries storyline but not so much for my own limited perspective. That’s not necessarily a problem with the issue so much as it is for me.

What is a problem for the issue is the more inconsistent aspects of the art. Now, any Transformers fan is probably pre-packaged with a high tolerance for inconsistent proportions. That’s.... just part of the deal when you’re a Transformers fan. But even with that in mind, the changes characters would have with their sizes in this issue was really getting to me, especially with the humans serving as a consistent marker for height throughout.

I also felt that while the character art wasn’t bad, the tones and colors felt too bright and inconsistent with the surroundings, often not shifting shades even as the environment changed, which probably speaks more to the amount of time crunch here and not the actual quality of the digital colorists. But it is still pretty distracting even if you can’t exactly put your finger on why the characters seem to stand out so much to you as you read.

In general the issue is standard in a lot of ways, so I can’t say it’s the sort of jump on point that if you don’t love Transformers already you’ll be jumping over the moon for or something. It’s a good stand alone for a larger appreciative whole. And for me that’s a pretty solid, if just below exceptionalism, 3/5

Hey there! We finish up another pretty stellar week in comics with lots of stories and characters, and another pretty great time from yours truly. And if you enjoy these write-ups or anything else I do whether it be the Roundups, my Rambles, my personal creative projects, or you’re interested in my upcoming podcast, you can help contribute through donations to my Ko-Fi, Patreon, or PayPal. For as little as $1 per project, you make all of this possible.

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#Rena Roundups #Wednesday Spoilers #SPOILERS #Action Comics (2016 )#My Hero Academia (2014 )#DC Essentials Catalog 2018 #Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow #Overwatch (2016 )#Runaways (2017 )#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II #Titans (2016 )#Batgirl and the Birds of Prey (2016 )#Justice League Day #Old Man Logan

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