Well...what comes around goes around: Spoiler The psych patch makes a return. Weirdly enough though, Guage uses it on herself to recover her memories. The revolutionaries are happy embracing destiny. Guage eventually frees Arcee and Green Light, and just in time, as the revolutionaries and Heretech are planning to cleanse Cybertron. Most memorable moment from the page would probably have to be this: Although I though this issue was somewhat light in terms of content, I’m still intrigued in seeing how this story arc wraps up. I’ll also say that, given how we only have four issues left in Galaxies...I’ll miss this title.
Gauge is still a rather bland lead character and the "Who Should She Trust?" dilemma is ruined by the comic having to rush the plot and the fact that Heretech has already directly established that he was untrustworthy in the last issue. Also, why would the Reversionists be upset at having the trio on their ship when they welcomed them onboard in Issue 18. They were letting anyone who wanted to come along onboard until the tether fell and the tried to Autobots shut down the space port.
I'd care more for Gauge if she were a known character instead. Even an obscure known character. She is as bland and generic a design as they get. As far as the story goes, I thought this issue was better than last issue but still just an okay story. Any reader in their 30s or older will have already seen this type of story before elsewhere, only told better.
I think this is my least favourite Galaxies issue, and maybe least favourite issue in IDW2. It’s just really not intuitive or creative in the slightest. The Reversionists went from being a religious sect who viewed Cybertron’s decline as indicative of their roles of spiritual being and chose to leave and start anew, to a straight up insane religious cult that wants to brainwash the entire population of Cybertron with some sort of brainwashing beam so that everyone worships Primus I guess? Even though I am pretty sure Primus is still the dominant religion on Cybertron. Maybe there are just a lot of atheists and they don’t like that, I don’t know. Here’s something. IDW Star Saber never bothered me because he was one character, who’s role in the story was to represent a pillar of society gone bad. His motivations were similar to what is being depicted here, but in that comic, everyone laughed at him and called him a maniac. As one should. Here we are supposed to believe that these revisionists have apparently always believed Cybertron’s Senator with a name like Heretech is some kind of vessel for Primus, and they all agree despite his name being Heretech, and the fact that be talks like a saturday morning cartoon villain in this 2020 comic book for older fans, and the fact his name is Heretech. He even calls the people of Cybertron “heretics” at one point and the comic just glosses over this as if no one, not even Gauge, has made the connection. But all of these perhaps hundreds of reversionists, aside from the brainwashed Gauge, are apparently 100% down with this kind of atheist genocide and removal of free will. Which is ridiculous. Gauge’s dilemma is also wayyy underdeveloped, and page space isn’t really an excuse, there is more that could have been done here. Gauge isn’t sure what the truth is, even after witnessing Heretech preach like a villain and assault her, and even after recovering her memories of being raised by her parents, she still struggles to decide what is right and wrong, as if the audience is in the same boat with her. But come on, who is she supposed to trust, The two women locked in a cell with names like Arcee and Greenlight or GRAND PLENARY HERETECH?! There is a huge opportunity missed with Accelerator here, though. On this ship it is clear that Accelerator is her new/fake mom who makes her do chores and is always irritable and tells her what to do. What if the conflict in this story wasn’t the dilemma of “Who should Gauge trust even though you the audience know already.” What if Gauge and Accelerator actually hit it off? What if Accelerator, though strict, genuinely cared about Gauge, and Gauge Accelerator? When Gauge learns she’s been brainwashed, maybe she feels personally betrayed by Accelerator for lying to her, and she must choose whether to abandon one mentor figure for two others who she cares about equally. Have Gauge make a choice, and depict the pros and cons of each choice. Maybe living on the Reversionist ship isn’t actually that bad, despite the chores. Maybe there are aspects of the religion she connects with that helps her understand herself, in addition to aspects that restrain her creative mind. The choice needs to be personally difficult, and as such there needs to be something both lost and gained in whatever choice she makes in her dilemma. In fact, maybe Arcee and Greenlight shouldn’t have been arrested for being atheists in the first place because this cynical view of religion is frankly repugnant. Maybe Heretech wanted to put Gauge through a religion heavy education with the other young reversionists, A and GL said no, because they wanted to homeschool her, and because Arcee is established as having a temper, fought back when Heretech tried to force Gauge into classes, since that was the only form of education on the ship, and maybe he sees properly educating the next generation of Transformers in his new society as incredibly important or something. There. Heretech becomes a villain with good intentions, but also misguided ones, as Arcee and Greenlight could have easily homeschooled Gauge, but he didn’t think they were up to it, and perhaps had biases against their atheism already that affected his opinion. See? Villainous, but palpable. Oh, and this whole brainwashing Cybertron en-masse thing? Hows about instead of that we keep the brainwashing just to the morose, lonely gauge as a means of trying to make right for imprisoning her parents, and have Heretech’s plan being getting the hell away from Sentinel’s fleets as fast as possible. Heretech was a Senator who without warning stole Energon, scooped up a hell of a lot of Iacon’s population, and just left while the planet was facing it’s greatest calamity since the war. He deserted, and stole from Cybertron. The large scaled conflict could easily be the Reversionists trying to escape a fleet sent by Sentinel to bring them back and put Heretech on trial. If you wanted to be ironic, the fleet captain could be Star Saber. I know the story isn’t yet completed, but it is just so lame what is being done here on so many levels. I wouldn’t even care about Heretech’s name that much- it’s just because whether or not Gauge can trust him is the core of her dilemma that makes this story so ridiculous. At least have someone point it out or have Heretech be like “Now, we shall fight these heretic— HEATHENS. We shall fight these heathens.” Also one last thing. How is this newborn able to overcome all her pursuers by punching them in the face? Also does no one on this ship own a gun for security?
They clearly can't. And it's showing. Bland stories happen in every franchise. But ever since this line rebooted in 2019, it's told the least interesting, least engaging version of the start of the War for Cybertron. I realize that they had to reboot since they had pretty much written themselves into a corner in the prior IDWverse and couldn't realistically eturn to the "default" of Transformers (like Megatron reverting to being a monster? Unkilling dozens of characters? No way). But they have completely failed to make me care. But I can stand with that. Every comic goes through that. And then it's suddenly good. But the art. The art is just unbareable. Transformers used to be among the best looking comics on the shelves. During the Dreamwave Era, Don Figueroa and his colorists created some of the best images of Transformers ever. It took IDW Transformers a while to get there (that EJ Suh stuff and the long overuse of pastels was just weird), but it eventually got there. Alex Milne, Guido Guidi, Casey Coller, Andrew Griffith, Livio Ramondelli, and Kei Zama, along with better colorists, made Transformers a looker as recently as 2018. I think special distinction goes out to Kei Zama and Livio Ramondelli, who took Transformers in an entirely different direction with truly striking art work that looked like nothing on the selves... in a GOOD way. The others I listed did fantastic work, but were still more or less "closer" to Don Figueroa (with the exception of Alex Milne probably). Transformers looked fantanstic on paper, in a comic book, a visual medium. And then we get the IDW Reboot. The fuck is this. I realize art taste is subjective, but this shit is serious giving Ulises Farinas' "work" on "Heart of Darkness" a run for it's money on worst transformers ever. The art is neither particularly stylized nor striking. It looks like amateurish fan art - people working on figuring out how to draw Transformers. And then there is the page composition. Good lord. It's so offensive to the eyes to go from what Alex Milne, Guido and Kei Zama did to this. Those three artists knew how to build a page. The regular artists on Transformers and this issue of Galaxies are just so not living up to their predecessors. Every issue looks like a "fill in" issue. I know some of the prior artists got sick of drawing Transformers and wanted a change. But some of them also did it for so long and were so integral to the line, they probably got comparatively expensive to maintain. This current group is all unknowns, seemingly found on DeviantArt, and probably really, really cheap for a comic that sells less than 10,000 copies a month (which means for $3.99, they're making less than $40,000 on it a month, before expenses, so it's probably barely profitable). I wouldn't be surprised if IDW is paying its pencilers less than $100 per page. In short, this has become a farce of a line and it should be put out of its bland, poorly illustrated misery. The sooner the Transformers licence goes to Marvel or hell, goes in-house at Hasbro, the better because IDW is clearly just fulfilling its contractual obligations at this point. With DC in the past few days seemingly taking the dive becoming a mass market-and-digital-first publisher (with Direct Market an afterthought), that may be easier for Hasbro to stomach, since they could just skip dealing with Diamond entirely. Make a Pulse app and publish through that!
this book is just another snoozefest like the rest of the reboot. it is funny how bad these newer books are in comparison with the terminator crossover and the 1984 books. each one of those books is such a fun read and very well drawn with plenty of little easter eggs and things just to keep us entertained along the way. i feel just like what was said earlier. these books look and read like shit fanfic. i feel like every issue is just thought of on the spot and draw out on an ipad. what a sad state idw is in right now with TF.
Heart of Darkness will always be the absolute worse art from IDW. It wasn’t an alternative stylistic choice from the artist, it was just plain bad. I don’t like Livio’s art for how murky and unclear he draws and colors, but it was still better than Heart of Darkness. I don’t understand how a publisher could let this art be sold. Anyway, some people do like the Gauge story. But personally I just think we deserve better in terms of artwork and writing. Remember when readers were hating on All Hail Megatron? That was actually a decent comic, with amazing artwork and good writing. We hadn’t seen an actual bad IDW comic at that point.
Couldn't agree more. Maybe throw in download codes with each toy. Also, you know how McFarlane got his own spiderman book? Give Milne his own book at let him go wild. Why tf not?
I would definitely read a full-on Milne TF book. The man puts so much character building into his work just through all the little visual subtleties he throws in that I feel whatever he would put together would at the very least read with a tremendous amount of energy and style.
Why is the last sentence 'Not if Heretech has anything to say about it'? Shouldnt it be 'not if I have anything to say about it', if the Trio is gonna stop Heretech?
A bit of advice guys, I gave up the main Transformers continuity shortly after Galaxies started. Feel like I want to test the water again, is Galaxies the best place to go or back to the main continuity again? Do I need that?
I'd say that the main series has started to pick up it's pace, and Galaxies is ending soon, at issue #12. Might be worth picking up the series as a trade paperback though, if you are returning to the series.
Things are definitely taking off more and more in the main series now, in my opinion. Galaxies is still a good idea to follow through since it seems to be setting up the next big era for the comics, possibly with the war itself properly starting.
I like Galaxies as a series a lot but I agree with The fascinating thing is that the setting and Heretech actually had a ton of potential in my opinion. One of IDW2's strong points was always the worldbuilding and the greyness and complexity of the Cybertronian society and factions. So seeing the religious groups being fleshed out was something I looked forward to for a while, but the exact opposite happened and the author turned a morally complex, down-to-earth senator into the most one dimensional cult leader trope you can think of. How did the same guy that sided with Nominus regarding his idea of peace and the same dude that warned Megatron about Sentinel for moral reasons be the guy of this arc? Same with everybody else. These people lived on a free Cybertron for ages, probably witnessed the war themselves, and yet they all act like brainwashed kids, never thinking even once, never doubting anything when most informations or hints are even accessible, as Gauge has shown. I think the central problem here is that the writer tries really hard to make this a kid/girl-power story in a setting really not made for it. IIRC Gauge is her own OC, and this is exactly how this story reads. Even with only three volumes it could work as intriguing horror story in which the MC is slowly beginning to doubt her reality when everybody around her seems to confirm the opposite. I mean obvious mindfucks work too, see "They Live". But even for that the story is too occopied with Gauge telling us about how much of an innocent kid she is to evolve into anything like a social commentary. Another option would be making the story closer to Ruckley's writing as a complex moral dilemma. Just tells us how exactly Heretech disagrees with atheist Cybertronians or why he had given up hope on them and when. Or make Heretech take on the role of the benevolent father of the cultists, giving them a reason to stick with him regardless of the chores. Instead, Gauge seems to exist in a bubble and the story doesn't try to build up any chemistry, arguments or genuine relationships with any other characters in vol 1 and gives us repetitive inner monologues instead, even up to the end of vol. 2 when they shouldn't be needed anymore (show, don't tell etc.). The whole point of the story is to paint Gauge as a hero and everybody else as dumb or bad, when it's hard to buy anything about her development. I simply do not believe that a young naive kid can beat up big grownass guard guys that have fought in the war. I do not buy that every adult believes Heretech's lies, despite having witnessed the complex society and truth about Cybertron themselves for thousands of years and I also do not believe that Arcee is conveniently carrying a psychic patch with her (why did she have that to begin with?) and that no cultist ever noticed that or ever bothered taking it away from a prisoner. Same with the convenient abilty of Greenlight to make Gauge see the hidden messages. And if Gauge was really a brainwashed cultist as the story wants to make us believe, the first thing such a person would do was to tell others about these messages, maybe Heretech himself. Well~ as said, to me it's just wasted potential because religious factions, Heretech himself as he was written before, as well as the potential cameos of older religious IDW1 characters like Star Saber, Flywheels (he was wearing those Primal Beads in Grindcore IIRC), Drift, maybe even Tyrest (if he isn't a Prime here) would have made the world more colorful and fill some holes, and the earlier arc has proven (IMO) well that you can easily bring some of the big guys like Deathsaurus in and make them great again, even when they won't play another big role for the next time.
And that makes it sound interesting. That would be the kind of story I would be interested in reading. But in execution, the actual comic was a dull tedious slog to read. Especially coming after Lost Light, which I did enjoy.
