Drift #3

3/5 More middle-ground fare. Again, it’s very patchy, with the sublime and the horrible jostling for position.

Quick clarification before we begin: as was kindly pointed out to me by T.F. Allen the other day, the Cybertronians of the Crystal City don’t actually identify as Autobots. They don’t have Autobot insignia, and self-identify as simply “knights”.

…

There’s an old 1960s episode of Doctor Who called “The Expedition”, in which the Doctor and chums happen upon a group of aliens unwilling to defend themselves against a group of invaders. These doomed aliens, the Thals, have sworn to a life of pacifism, and refuse to take up arms on any account. There then follows quite a dramatic argument in which the nature of pacifism is questioned. Is meekness always the right answer? Can war be justified if it’s for a good cause? Is pacifism cowardly, or is being willing to die for one’s pacifist beliefs actually the bravest decision someone can make?

Although over thirty years old, these same arguments are wheeled out again here, as Drift tries to convince Dai Atlas (no, he’s not Welsh) to go to war against Lockdown and the Slavers and save the Crystal City. But unlike those Thals in Doctor Who, Atlas is having none of it. Is he brave? Is he a coward? The script wisely leaves it open for the reader to decide, but what is clear is that Atlas is a seasoned warrior who, for whatever reason, is simply tired of fighting, and so refuses to authorise an all-out attack on the slavers.

“Slavers” is actually a misnomer; it transpires that these evil aliens aren’t interested in keeping slaves. Instead they’re in the business of capturing members of various species, and then augmenting their own bodies with genetic elements from their victims, making themselves an extremely powerful “Frankenstein”-like species (again, shades of the Doctor Who episodes “The Brain of Morbius” and “School Reunion”). The Slavers are after the Knights simply because they want to add Transformer tech to their own bodies.

Lockdown and the Slavers want Drift to give up the location of the Knights, not realising that the planet is home to an entire city-full of them. A plan is concocted to trick Lockdown, making the Decepticon believe that there are just a few of the Knights on the planet, victims of a shipwreck. Drift, Wing and a small band of volunteers act as a decoy target, to ensure the City’s existence and that the location remains a secret. The eve of a battle (which the outnumbered volunteer Knights can’t possibly win) makes for an effective cliffhanger.

My main problem here is the ease with which Drift has turned from a mad Decepticon into a hero. After reading the first issue, I was hoping for something a bit deeper than ‘he’s a victim of a bad childhood, Mr Miyagi sets him straight.’ In the old G1 comics, we had a couple of Decepticons who became heroes for various reasons (Scorponok and Carnivac), and there it worked extremely well. Sadly McCarthy has chosen to take Drift on the path to redemption via the most banal route possible. It casts a shadow across the whole adventure, and just makes Drift seem fickle and easily-influenced. It might have made Drift come across better had the decoy ship plan been his idea, but no – he can’t even be the hero of his own book: it’s Wing who comes up with the plan to save the day.

But in spite of all the unoriginality – and the fact that Drift himself is simply a puppet – It’s hard to actively dislike this story, especially coming after the convoluted Furmanations arc. This is a story with a drive, a direction. It’s never boring, always progressive; each scene advances the plot, and there’s very little filler. It has action, drama, character and verve, and that’s all I’ve been asking for since day one.

Drift the person may be as wayward as a leaf in the breeze, but Drift the comic is effective simplicity. It’s often been unoriginal and full of ‘facepalm’ moments, but the sheer pace and confidence of the thing makes it hard to dwell on any negatives.

****

Drift #4

4/5. An enjoyable-yet-flawed miniseries ends on a high.

It’s entirely possible that my appreciation for this story has been boosted because I’ve spent the last five months reading Simon Furman stories. This is the complete antithesis if the Furmanations arcs: it has a beginning, middle and end. The plot flows smoothly and naturally from A to B to C, culminating in an action-packed denouement that ties everything up nicely. Compared to the slow and bloated stories IDW have been putting out prior to this, it’s like a palate-cleansing sorbet.

The problems that affected the early issues (unoriginality, poor characterisation) don’t really come into play here – this is primarily an action episode, the big set-piece finale, so most of the series' underlying problems get pushed to the background. There are just two key decisions here: Drift finally accepts he’s no longer a Decepticon, and Dai Atlas decides to raise the city and flight.

The Drift choice is an obvious one that we all knew was coming. I’m still a bit disappointed in how Drift’s faction flip-flop was portrayed over the course of the previous issues, but even given the dodgy build-up, it’s hard not to cheer when he cuts the Slaver leader in two.

The rampant unoriginality strikes again here, as Wing, Drift’s mentor is killed. Obviously in a story like this, the wise old teacher has to bite the dust (Obi Wan, Jaga) so that the trainee can step up to the plate. It’s obvious, by-the-numbers plotting, and if Drift was the first Transformers comic from IDW I’d ever read I would be screaming with frustration. But in my current mood, I’ll take simple, classic and on-the-nose over ‘make a trip to a scrapyard last six issues’ any day of the week.

But what wasn’t so predictable was Dai Atlas’s change of heart. We saw last issue how he was unwilling to get involved, how much he hated war. The entire purpose of the Crystal City was to escape war, so it was entirely understandable that the battle-weary Atlas would want to remain hidden. But whilst good principles and philosophies can look good on paper, or in a debating session, the practical and complex nature of the world we live in often leads us to be more pragmatic and cynical that we’d really like. I mean, I know global warming is a terrible thing, and in my head I think we should do stuff to slow it down… but then I hop on a jet plane to take my holidays, and fill my house with pointless plastic robots made out of fossil fuels. The point is, we can all have high ideals, but can we all live up to those ideals in the real world?

The death of Wing proves the final straw for Dai Atlas, who is finally goaded into action. The city rises impressively out of the ground (reminiscent of Scorponok’s arrival at the end of The Rebirth Part 2), turning the tide of the battle completely. There’s just enough time for Lockdown to (understandably) sneer at Drift for his decision to switch sides and make his escape before the story ends.

But whilst all the plotting and character stuff is reasonably okay here, what really drives this issue are the action scenes, which are bigger in scale than anything seen in IDW so far. We’ve had a few well-directed one-on-one battles before (Prime v Megatron, Prime v Nemesis) but never a Lord of the Rings style clash between two whole armies. It’s an incredible sight, and Alex Milne’s art does it justice. It’s frantic, frenetic and well-choreographed, not just the larger battle but the individual fights within, such as Wing v Braid or Drift v Lockdown. Big action set-piece endings are hard to get right (especially in comics), but this one is up there with ninjas in a volcano for spectacle, and the sense that all hell is breaking loose.

Drift #4 then, is an action spectacular, a tour-de-force of art and script that delivers a pulse-pounding finale to the saga. In that respect, it succeeds admirably. I really want to put my ‘objective’ hat on and say that the Drift mini-series has been a disappointment. In trying to establish the background and origins of an Autobot who used to be a Decepticon, I still can’t quite buy the journey that Drift goes on, how he’s so quickly turned from a vicious killer into an idealistic Autobot. His poorly-realised character journey was the central aspect of the series, and in that respect it was a failure.

In all other ways, however, I found the Drift mini to be extremely endearing: the pace, the action sequences, the small character moments, the philosophical arguments, the deft progression of the plot – all these other things add up to create a story that still works well, almost in spite of itself.

 

I will say I loved seeing Dai Atlas being introduced into these comics, and it was nice to see Lockdown show up in a new G1 form, but overall it does feel a bit of an inconsistent change for Deadlock as this killing machine to suddenly wanting to protect a city of nobodies.

 

Yeah, this is my problem exactly - Drift is presented as an idealist, and that all he's looking for is a perfect society with no war... and yet his original plan was to join a terrorist movement. Alright, so the Autobots were historically a bunch of scumbags, but whatever they used to be, they stopped being that a long time ago. The noble Autobots of nowadays are obviously quite different to the corrupt Autobot Senate of yesteryear.

It's like a survivor of WW2 who carries on fighting the Germans of today, even though their culture is now completely different to what it was in the 30s and 40s. How does he not see that he's misguided? It just makes him come across as utterly stupid. Which leads me to...

 

Spotlight: Drift

2/5. More Drift, less fun.

At this point in my IDW catch-up, Drift has now had probably more screen-time afforded him than any other character (only Hunter really comes close). The problem is that, five Drift-centric issues later, and I still have no idea who this guy is, what he stands for, and why I should be expected to connect with him.

He’s presented as an idealist, someone who believes in a cause and then chases that dream to the bitter end. The Decepticons took him in, told him he could help change the world – and he ended up killing so many Autobots that even his commanding officer castigated him for being too murderous.

Turns out, Drift’s anger was pointing in the wrong direction, and it took a chance meeting with Wing to set him on the right path. In striving for a better society via the use of terrorism (peace through tyranny), Drift was actually making things worse. Now he sees the truth: the Autobots (in their current guise) are a closer match for Drift’s vision than the Decepticons ever were.

Which begs the question: in all his time as a Decepticon, why did Drift never stop to think about the path he was on? The war had only just made things worse, Cybertron was in ruins, and the Autobots were now unrecognisable from the snooty elite that he once railed against. Drift was dumb, Drift was stupid, and it took Wing’s death for Drift to realise that – actually – he was being a bit of a selfish hypocrite all these years, chasing a dream of a better life whilst taking the lives of others.

Whilst the Drift mini showed us the ‘lightbulb’ moment when he suddenly realised his foolish mistake, what we didn’t get was Drift’s integration into Autobot society, which is the purpose of this Spotlight. Drift is snooping round a spaceport, hoping to infiltrate a docked Decepticon ship (cue a cantina scene and some rampant robophobia – nope, this isn’t a riff on Star Wars, no sirree). However, Drift’s subtle break-in is scuppered by the arrival of the Wreckers, who are also after the Decepticon ship. Their methods are much more blunderbuss, crashing onto the scene and completely ruining Drift’s attempt to be stealthy.

There’s a shoot-out, Perceptor dies, and Drift and Kup end up in a room together. Whilst the action stuff is okay-ish, it’s the Drift/Kup scene that forms the emotional core of the story. Kup has also been given a second chance, too. Like Drift, he was guilty of Autobot deaths (in his crazed state, in Spotlight: Kup), and like Drift he’s also got a nice new body. We’re supposed to note the parallels, and by making Drift seem akin to fan-favourite Kup, writer Shane McCarthy is obviously hoping that we’ll accept Drift into our hearts, as well.

Except, the comparison is a bad one. Kup killed Autobots because he was delirious, not through rational choice. Kup never spent years fighting for the wrong side, he fights for practical reasons. He’s down to earth and pragmatic, whereas Drift is a dreamer, fighting for whichever side offers him the clearest path to utopia. The comparison isn’t at all flattering, and does a lot of harm to Drift. No matter what he does, no matter what actions he takes (and he basically saves the day here, setting the Decepticon ship to blow up and then grabbing Perceptor’s body from the ship as it explodes around him), it doesn’t quite shake the feeling that whilst he he may be a proficient killer, in terms of motivation he’s a bit of a wet fish.

There’s a confrontation here between Turmoil and Drift, where Turmoil basically begs Drift to kill him, which would prove that Drift hasn’t learned anything of any note: “Do it. Kill me. Kill me and run. Prove you’re nothing more than what you were when you left.” And what does Drift accomplish? By blowing up the ship, Drift does exactly that, killing Turmoil and running, thereby proving his point. Drift may have switched sides but he hasn’t changed a bit. Five issues of supposed enlightenment and yet Drift is still essentially the same guy that Turmoil used to know as Deadlock.

I like the Wreckers here, they totally rock. Turmoil is a decent villain, and again the plot construction is sound. But yet again (and I feel like a stuck record here), the characterisation of Drift is ropey as all hell.

I get the feeling that McCarthy and I are at cross-purposes. It looks like he’s trying to build Drift up as some kick-ass ninja warrior, someone even the Wreckers are in awe of. But the botched character work means that no matter what Drift does, his witless personality will always get in the way. There’s no point imbuing a character with special powers if there’s no substance to the writing. It’s not enough to make a character go on an emotional journey, if we can’t believe in the emotions on display.

Ooh goody, a shared universe. That’ll be something interesting to look forward to…

 

I had pretty much the same reaction to Drift as you. I will say that he improves a lot once he becomes more of a secondary character instead of the main character of his own book. Ironically, Drift's creator is the worst at writing him out of IDW's current writers.

 

Wait, what happened to Drift issue 4?

 

I was wondering that also!

I'm also gripped by the (imaginary) drama of whether Ryan is going to get so frustrated with McCarthy that he throws in the towel, or turns out to actually like All Hail Megatron. Can't wait!

 

Nailed it with the comparison, Drift and Kup are too different from one another, it's like comparing Magnus with Skywarp or something. While the Drift mini series was alright Michael Bay type fun, this was not as fun. I think the art contributed to that because it was mostly too dark for me, not in tone but in shading. Keep in mind, this Spotlight came out sometime before the first Drift mini series and when you think of how fans first read this with no knowledge of Drift's past as Deadlock or his history with Turmoil, it comes across as really shallow here. Also I believe Shane tries too hard to make Drift look all cool with the cloaks and being hit on by giant alien chicks etc.

It's always nice to see the Wreckers again but they're not really at their strongest in this issue. Anyway, might as well ask about the Elephan in the room like everyone else, what happened to Drift #4? I mean there's honestly not much in that issue but, did the post not register or was it deleted? Odd.  

 

Your point about Drift is interesting because while here it's presented as a plot hole under James Roberts it's presented as an actual character flaw.

I don't think this is a spoiler, because I'm pretty sure it's not presented as if you should think so, but

Spoiler

Preceptor isn't dead.

(Somebody tell me if I'm wrong)

 

I just flicked through it and

Spoiler

while Drift did save Perceptor's ass there's no indication here that he survived the incident or was healed back to normal. From a casual glance, he got shot right through the spark and Drift was just bringing in his corpse for his friends to bury him. We'll leave it like that for the time being, but if Ryan bought the trade for Last Stand of the Wreckers didn't he see Perceptor on the cover? I assume he is on the cover but we'll leave the surprise alone until All Hail Megatron does it's thing.

 

Of course not, because then they'd make Drift look bad. Drift is strongest one there is! Fastest! Most handsome! Coolest-est!

And stuff.

^_^

 

I've just noticed ... this criticism only applies at this stage because of the order in which Ryan has just read the issues. But Spotlight: Drift actually came out before the Drift miniseries - at the time McCarthy was writing this, the comparison was that Drift had joined the wrong side, and Kup had murdered his fellow Autobots, but that both deserved a second chance. We could easily imagine Drift as someone who had been a relatively honourable Decepticon growing ever more disillusioned with the cause, like Thundercracker.

It still amounts to a problem with McCarthy's writing, but I'd say it reflects badly on the miniseries more than it does the spotlight. The miniseries takes a character who has earned the uneasy trust of the Autobots and who seems like a decent sort, and retcons in a history of morally vacuous bloodletting.

 

Oops! I assumed I posted it (I definitely wrote it!) - guess my copy-and-paste skills were just rubbish.

I've edited the previous post which had the Dirft #3 review in to include both issues.

Before I stick Metroplex up, I just want to comment on the fact that Spotlight: Drift was published before the Drift mini (I wasn't previously aware of this). The trades (as you've probably guessed) present the miniseries first and then the spotlight. I would probably have liked the spotlight a bit more, if not for all the anti-Drift baggage I brought to the table when reviewing it.

I'm not sure the spotlight would have been a complete success either way, but knowing about Drift's back-story in advance certainly makes the spotlight weaker in retrospect.

But you still have the problem of all the Wreckers (bar Kup) going missing for half the issue just to get Kup and Drift in a room together; the fact that Drift does exactly what Turmoil predicted he'd do, proving that he hasn't really changed, and so on.

 

Spotlight: Metroplex

1/5. Vacuous in the extreme.

As I’ve mentioned before, a Transformers story needs three key ingredients to get into my good books: action, character and plot. This issue admittedly contains some (passable) action, but none of the other two.

Sixshot is especially ill-served here. After a massive info-dump explaining what had happened to him since becoming Jhiaxus’ lapdog in Revelation, he starts going after the Throttlebots, in a bid to extract some secret information from them. The problem is the exact same one we had in Devastation - Sixshot is apparently a merciless killer, who has wiped out entire civilisations… and yet whenever he goes up against some important Autobots he always finds an excuse not to kill them immediately. He was “just toying” with Ratchet in Devastation, and now here he wants the Throttlebots alive so he can extract information from them. What’s the point of having a badass killer in a comic if you don’t actually let him be a badass killer? Time and time again we’re told about how dangerous Sixshot is supposed to be, and yet we never see it.

But of course, the Throttlebots are saved by Metroplex, in the most obvious “reveal” since we discovered that Doubledealer was actually a baddie. Yup, Metroplex wakes up, surprises everyone by turning into a big robot, and then stomps on Sixshot. Nice. Except, oh no, we can’t do anything here that would affect the status quo, so they chicken out of killing Sixshot outright – although slightly flattened he’s actually still alive. Furman did exactly the same thing with Galvatron in Revelation, so not only is it a cop-out, it’s an unoriginal cop-out, to boot.

This is an issue where two big things are at stake: the Throttlebots’ secret mission (which Sixshot is so desperate to learn about) and Metroplex’s secret mission. Except, as a reader I can’t really care about any of this, because we’re not actually told what these secret “missions” actually entail. That’s right, this entire skirmish revolves around some ill-defined ‘missions’ that are deliberately kept vague. Come on, writer Andy Schmidt, give us something to hook us into the story, something to latch onto. How can we care about this fight when you’re not even telling us what the fight’s actually about? Motivations are important, and yet this is a story where the reader doesn’t have a clue what these characters’ motivations actually are. It’s presented as a tease, as a mystery, yet all it does is annoy and obfuscate.

So Metroplex comes out of hiding to get involved in the Sixshot battle, and then once he’s finished, he flies into space, muttering about how his location has been compromised. What? If secrecy was so important, then why come out of hiding at all? If you know your Transformers, you’ll know that Metroplex has guns, and lots of them. Couldn’t he just have stayed in city mode and blasted Sixshot with a photon beam or somesuch? Why reveal himself to be a robot when he could have done just the same job without giving the game away? It’s likely the Throttlebots would have assumed it was an automated defence mechanism and just left it at that.

Writer Andy Schmidt is (or was) the editor on IDW’s Transformers output, and before that he was on staff at Marvel, so it’s a bit odd to see such an experienced hand churn out an empty vessel of an issue. The characters don’t learn a lesson here, there’s no growth, no change, no focus, no point. It’s just a bunch of robots fighting about Important Stuff You Don’t Need to Know About Yet. Oh, and for a comic written by an editor, there’s some other bad stuff in here, too. Jhiaxus is mis-spelled as “Jiaxus” throughout. Twice Sixshot (destroyer of worlds) is squished by Metroplex, and on neither occasion does he notice a giant hand or foot in the air above his head, preparing to smoosh him. Let’s get this straight: Sixshot lets Metroplex (of all bots) silently sneak up on him? Sixshot doesn’t notice that a giant shadow is suddenly cast over him? It makes you wonder why the Reapers were ever interested in him, such is his ineptitude here. He’s like Wile E. Coyote, not realising that an Acme anvil is just about to land on his head. WheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeBONK!

The art is great, especially the double-page splash of Metroplex and the shot of his arm bursting out of the ground. Marcelo Matere and Priscilla Tramontano certainly aren’t to blame for any of this mess. But if I wanted to look at pretty pictures I could go buy an art book – in a comic I expect some kind of competent narrative, sorely lacking here.

By some distance, this is my least favourite issue of the entire run thus far.

 

I thought this issue was alright fun, definitely lacking in character and story, it's mostly just a big beautifully drawn and beautifully coloured action comic that requires me to turn off my brain. Although this should have been called Spotlight: Throttlebots seen as Metroplex is barely in it, and the whole thing about Metroplex's mission, yeah it's just a lazy attempt to set up potential future stories isn't it? I mean it made me wonder what the hell he was talking about when I first read it but they didn't really set anything up well at all. By the way not that it matters but Goldbug here is a separate character from Bumblebee in the IDW continuity.

On the subject of Andy Schmidt, if you're the slightest bit bothered by the misspelling of Jhiaxus then be warned, this guy was horrible with continuity. He once wrote a one shot comic called The Transformers Continuum which basically recaps the events of the Furmanation and All Hail Megatron comics with spelling errors and continuity errors all over the place it's actually quite a hilarious thing to behold but only dare that journey after reading All Hail Megatron.  

Overall yeah it's kind of a meh Spotlight, and when it comes to Sixshot he feels like a wasted opportunity when he's not a murderer.

Spoiler

It's a shame that even though he survived, this is the last time we've seen Sixshot in this continuity. But Overlord and the DJD have taken over the duties of mass murderers so meh, good enough.

I do love that final say of the Drift mini-series when you called it endearing, which it was in some respects.  

 

The interesting thing here, is that, as you now know, you're reading (most of) the Drift stories of McCarthy in the reversed order. And thus you also get a bit of reversed feelings about him: from liking him in his mini-series to disliking the character because of the bad writing in his spotlight.

I absolutely loathed Drift in AHM and his spotlight. Just a bland way of writing a character that wasn't very original idea from the start and with better examples of how it should be done right. But despite my dislike for the character from his spotlight and AHN, like you, I quite liked his mini-series.

Considering this background, the quality of his work as both writer and editor on TF is pretty surprising in a negative way.

 

Spotlight: Metroplex was odd to say the least. The Throttlebots haven't been seen since the issue, and neither has Sixshot. Though we still could see him though.

Fortunately, where Andy Schimdt sucked, John Barber excelled. Just wait and see.

 

Yeah, some good (ish?) news is that wherever Sixshot is he hasn't been in the comic since this issue.

Some better news is that the next time you meet a Phase Sixer the writer definitely won't be afraid to make him a badass killer.

 

Sadly, it's the shape of things to come under Schmidt's hand.

 

Spotlight: Jazz

3/5. An amiable, low-key one-shot.

In my previous review of Spotlight: Metroplex, I lamented the fact that there was no character throughline, no growth, no dilemma, no inner conflict to go with the external conflict. And straightaway we get Spotlight: Jazz, which successfully blends action with personal drama to create an enjoyably breezy one-off adventure.

The Autobots on Cybertron are cranky and tense, and it gets to the point where Bumblebee and Cliffjumper engage in a heated argument. Up steps Tracks, who decides the time is right for a little pep-talk about what it means to be an Autobot. He recalls a battle in which he temporarily lost his vision. Guided by a mysterious ‘guardian angel’, the injured Tracks is able to survive through almost insurmountable odds against an attack by the Predacons. We as readers are told that Jazz is the mysterious rescuer, but Tracks himself remains in the dark as to his rescuer’s identity. In a final scene loaded with irony, Jazz thanks Tracks for telling the story and giving the Autobots hope again, even though, unbeknownst to Tracks, it was Jazz himself who was the hero of the story. It’s a lovely final scene and a great way to end Volume 4 of these trade reprints.

It’s very reminiscent of Spotlight: Blaster, which also posited that the Autobots rely on hope, belief and strong morale, just as much as they rely on weapons and warcraft. In a way, it’s a shame that Tracks is the transformer who gets rescued here; it would have perhaps been better had it been Drift in Tracks’s place. Here we see the core Autobot values demonstrated, argued and reinforced in a far more compelling way than we saw in the Drift mini-series. “Drift becomes an Autobot after being rescued by a mysterious Unknown Soldier who embodies the Autobot spirit” is a far better story than “Drift becomes an Autobot almost by default after helping a bunch of nonentity Cybertronians defeat a bunch of nonentity aliens.”

Jazz’s pep-talks straddle the fine line between cheesy and inspirational: “When we put on this badge, we made a promise. A promise to ourselves, a promise to the people of Cybertron. A promise to every other Autobot past, present and future. We don’t give up. We don’t lose hope.” Shades of Bill Pullman in Independence Day, maybe, but it works in context.

One necessity of a story like this, is that – in having a pair of debilitated Autobots defeat a whole squad of Decepticons – it does make the Predacons come across as extremely weak and stupid here. It’s a plot necessity, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Whilst the story needs the Autobots to overcome the odds for the whole ‘hope in adversity’ idea to work properly, this is up there with the G1 comic story ‘Toy Soldiers’ for its feeble interpretation of the Predacons. When a half-blind Tracks is able to take out Divebomb, you know it’s probably better to just go with the flow rather than think too much about the details.

Of course, a lot of this is open to interpretation. These events are a story told by Tracks. How much of it is true? How much of it actually happened? We have to consider that Tracks, in his eagerness to get his point across to his fellow Autobots, might well be an unreliable narrator. That would certainly solve the problem with the depiction of the Predacons, and it would also explain some other oddities, here, too.

For example, although I can buy that Tracks is semi-blinded here and so can’t see Jazz clearly, it does strain a bit of credulity that he can hear Jazz’s voice and yet still not recognise his fellow Autobot, especially as it seems like the two are firm friends in the present day. Secondly, the Tracks we see in the flashback heroically risks his life to attack Divebomb. If Tracks were really that brave, then why do his comrades refer to him as “Commander Wax-n-Buff”, the guy who never gets his hands dirty? If Tracks had really learnt a life lesson on that fateful day, then why does he still have a reputation for being vain and preening? You can argue the case either way, but I do appreciate the ambiguity here (reminiscent of Spotlight: Mirage, but more successful).

Just a quick note about the art: I’m not sure if this was rushed or whether it was simply a stylistic choice, but EJ Su’s art seems a little rougher, heavier and ‘scratchier’ here. It has more of a natural, ‘old school’ vibe to it that works well in context.

Despite the maltreatment of the Predacons, the cheesy “Uncle Sam Needs You” speechifying and the rather dispensable nature of the story, I actually liked it, all the same. It has a bit of heart, a bit of character, some good action sequences and a great final panel. It might not be brilliant but it’s certainly endearing.

Up next: All Hail Megatron.