Well I liked it and quite frankly the fact that it ended the way it did was bittersweet but that's what the wreckers are like. Personally i like the fact they use a new way of showing how the wreckers operate in way similar to the mission impossible movies. I think people forget the wreckers are essentially a suicide squad. Which means that the team could be compromised/ imprisoned and killed the moment the mission goes sideways. So that means happy endings are rare.

So while it was sad to see circuit and Minerva go. The fact that it opened and fully established what being a wreckers is all about and how devious the decepticons and their plots truly are. It left on a positive note that no matter how bad things are, we should always wreck and rule!

On that note I actually enjoyed the characters and art style in comparison is way better than the crap we've been getting in the main story.

 

I dunno. With how IDW2 reads as a whole I'd trade in this entire new continuity for that zealot Star Saber again. That way I know that at least when IDW totes something as "BOLD" I can believe it.

No one forgot any of that. It's what we were all reading this series to see happen. We just expect them not to go over like egg farts in church. IDW2's biggest issue (for me at least) is that it tells you things but never shows them. Telling us this team of Wreckers is competent is a great example of that. At no point did any of them NOT act like a bunch of bumbling teenagers. Their cover was that they were effectively a bunch of teenage parkour superstars and they never came across as anything more serious than that.

Circuit wanders away on his own WAY further than anyone else did, got isolated and ended up dead. Minerva PICKS UP A STILL-WARM ASSASSINATION WEAPON and runs off with it. Ricochet and Hot Shot did absolutely nothing of worth the entire series and all Aileron did was complain. The only credible Wrecker here who was believable is Thunderclash and that was only because the previous IDW1 version of him came off as capable. Hell, the only one arguably accomplishing something brave and not foolishly short-sighted in this issue was Leadfoot and he wasn't even on the team.

No, this wasn't the Suicide Squad. It wasn't even David Ayer's Suicide Squad (2016). This was practically The Wiggles.

 

Well, yeah. But the '84 series is strictly in the Marvel G1 continuity. I'm talking present stuff like this current continuity.

Oof. I mean, it's not like IDW2 is a complete loss. I liked the Ultra Magnus story in Galaxies enough that I'm in the process of giving it a screenplay (side note: where would one share ambitious fan stuff like scripts?) and I liked that the Technobots and Computron got to appear instead of, you know, being in the background or horribly killed off before Computron could even be a thought?

 

I was giving this miniseries the benefit of the doubt at first but OOF, that ending!

Spoiler

• Guys! Guys! Thunderclash paraphrased The Big Damn Movie, isn't that awesome?! Shouldn't all Transformers media plunder The Big Damn Movie for quotes for the rest of time?
• I laughed my ass off at Circuit's abrupt death followed by a jump cut to his space burial, what was even the point of that? They could've just killed him off as soon as he was put on life support, it's not like he did anything after that.
• So...I guess Minerva is just screwed then? That was kind of fucked up, and not in a good way either.
• The Wreckers literally would've been better off if they just stayed away from Velocitron. They didn't actually do anything.
• Damn, now I wish we had gotten a miniseries about goddamn Star Saber instead of these dilettantes.
• Knockout was the star of the show, it's a shame his toy is going to be a disappointing Red Jazz.

 

The Wreckers are also usually entertaining but we didn't get any of that here.

"Bittersweet" endings only have merit if the story itself invests you properly enough that it has context. Otherwise it's just a nothing ending to what has been a nothing miniseries. :/

 

Yeah, bittersweet endings are supposed to have an element of sweetness to cut into the bitterness, but this was just a downer ending.

 

I thought this was okay and B the beginning of the Wreckers because they have been living in the relatively peacetimes.

 

Dang. I really enjoyed 1-3, but this ending is really awkward.

A few people called Knockout being in on it and were absolutely right.

Why did they take Circuit off life support?
I get why the last thing they'd do is make a video. If that was his life and a thing he loved doing then there's no better way to die. Which gave this a bittersweet feeling. But that feeling is undermined by the question: why take him off life support at all? I don't recall reading that there was a time frame and he was in stasis lock so it's not like he was suffering. Or were they forced to because they had to leave Minerva behind? But then why leave without a new medic?
It kinda feels like the Breakdown/Knockout kiss. Like the author just threw it in to go for cheap feels without properly building the support. It works for a moment but then afterwards you just end up feeling empty.

Knockout's plan didn't make much sense. So he was shot why? Was it to further fan the flames? In that case he's just lucky Minerva intervening didn't cause the shot to go astray and outright kill him. Minerva apparently just stood around with a smoking gun waiting.
Why leave Minerva behind completely and not wait for her punishment to be decided upon? Just because they didn't want to be discovered? Then hang in low orbit or something.

But hey, at least if the main continuity reaches Velocitron, we can look forward to more Knockout, Breakdown and Skyquake. So that's something.  

 

I want Minerva to escape by becoming a Headmaster.

 

Yeah, it's implied that without Minerva they wouldn't be able to fix Circuit. But in that case couldn't they have sought medical aid from someone else, especially since Knockout was still pretending to be a good guy while they were there? Literally all it would have taken was a bit of dialogue stating that Circuit was damaged beyond repair.

 

The more problematic issue is how badly the scene was framed, with Circuit looking as though he was just a bit busted up but otherwise perfectly fine sitting on a couch with his friends, then he just keeled over.

It was his first appearance since issue 2, then suddenly this. He was almost forgotten entirely. There's no way this wasn't supposed to be played for laughs.

 

It feels especially shitty for Circuit since the whole first issue was about him hating being their cameraman.

Even if there was a scene where Circuit is like “No it is important for me to televise this” it would just come off as out of character. Like it wouldn’t be as bad, but without any kind of scene with him waking up it really does feel like these guys took their friend off life support just to make a youtube video and it killed him.

Also Minerva got framed for a crime and they abandoned her. Like that is just so unheroic and separated from reality that it is insane. If the story tried to frame the Wreckers as actually pieces of shit then maybe this could work but we’ve had folks like Leadfoot go on about how cool Thunderclash and the Wreckers are over the course of several issues without actually knowing any of them, and we’re supposed to just be down with it.

Celebrities good! Ignore the friends in your life! Look a gay kiss between two characters with only one line of dialogue shared between them! Love the spectacle! Look, a picture of Star Saber! Don’t question the logic in of the bad guys- they just hate celebrity and hollywood culture and quote Marx— they bad! Robot toys go vroom vroom!

 

IDW has gone so contrarian against the standard depiction of death in storytelling that they're completely incapable of depicting it as anything less than an unintentional joke. Compounding that is the utter lack of actual narrative pacing or structure. Circuit's death could have had some emotion if it was drawn out a bit more, showing him gradually losing consciousness and colour before passing away. The fact that he just drops grey next panel makes it look like a cutaway gag. Like the whole reason TFs turned grey starting with Optimus was as a somber depiction of their live fading away away. It makes no logical sense whatsoever, it existed solely as an emotional representation. Making it some actual mechanic of their physiology is just foolish, especially like this.

 

Just me, if they wanted to play the accidental death thing, maybe add a panel before the funeral of an autopsy where they find out a piece of shrapnel got loose and killed him, similar to the brain bullet on Ironfist in the original. That way, it wouldn't be a humorous thing or out of nowhere, it was something they thought they cleaned up but didn't because Minerva wasn't there to finish it up. One panel of one of them taking a piece out of his spark casing and saying "Damn, thought I had it all..." would make all the difference.

 

buddy, you just wrote logan paul's newest video

 

Thunderclash literally is Logan Paul now that I think about it. "For the show."

It's insane how made up the Wreckers' "cover" is though. Like I get how vigilante-ing is illegal and all but what is actually going to happen? Are they going to be arrested for stepping in to fight off terrorists?

"Sorry civilian. You should have just let the terrorists win and died I guess. If we don't obey the law then the terrorists win."

Like it's ridiculous. If the Wreckers were actively staging attacks with weapons on Mayhem's compound then yeah, that would be vigilante-ing, and could compromise a security operation, regardless of sec-ops' actual efficacy. But they literally just asked around about things and then stood waiting for Mayhem to commit terrorism before doing anything. And they weren't even the only ones to do it, Leadfoot did too. They have no reason to run because they didn't actually do any vigilante-ing. The most illegal thing they did was carry guns that weren't even checked for because plot convenience I guess. I'd say it factors into Knock Out's plan to frame someone else as the assassin, but come on... They literally didn't need to abandon Minerva, and they especially didn't need to take Circuit off life support.

We still don't know why they don't just work for sec-ops. The whole deal with this universe is that security has been extra understaffed since so few serious crimes occurred on Cybertron until recently. They can sure as shit get hired. Why doesn't Thunderclash just say screw the whole secret cover thing? I thought there would have at least been some exposition on why the Wreckers exist in this universe.

I'm going to shut up about this comic now, but it's just so blatantly bad to me. Like worse than Beast Wars, and worse than some of the bad stuff IDW1 had to offer. Like I hated the Ultra Magnus story in Galaxies, but at least Magnus acted heroic, and I don't like Beast Wars, but at least the Maximals are taking initiative and the characters are making choices. This comic spent more time having Thunderclash chat with Leadfoot and have Xaaron speech about Knock Out than it did giving Circuit a dignified death scene.

 

Read all the issues today, since the last one was out. Yeah uh. Wasn't. Great.

 

This series does not deserve the Wreckers name.

 

Spoiler

Right? I have been pretty forgiving of IDW2 because I just consider myself along for the ride, good or bad, but that was so IMMEDIATELY abrupt and just unnecessary?? There is legit zero explanation or reason behind it. He just... dies.

 

I liked it but feel like it should have been the second arc of a ~8 issue story with the first arc being a classical mission for these Wreckers and their typical way to solve it. Basically, a common criminal they manage to find and capture by their usual playful modus operandi that worked well enough during the times of peace that are now ending. To make up for the lack of seriousness they could have built up the Wreckers as a team and characters. Tell us how they met and why, where exactly everybody is coming from and show us flashbacks of the war especially Thunderclash is implied to suffer from. That way we would know more about them and them breaking apart at the end would hit harder. The second arc could just be the Mayhem story we got.

I also had a problem with Circuit's death, but it wasn't even the abruptness. Minerva already hinted in issue #2 that they cannot say for sure if he survives or not. My problem was the video. Circuits hated being the camera man, so that part felt off to me. I would have preferred it if they just looked at the space together, at old videos of them or that they came up with a new performance for him. If you know someone is gonna die you would try to do something together with him.
Personally I had no problem with the art itself, I like Lawrence's art. But some of the serious scenes near the end should have been colored and shaded differently imo.