I'm up late, and Comixology sent me a DELIGHTFUL email about a new comic.

(I need to stop reading the previews, at five pages, they're 1/4 of the comic)

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Well then. That last page...

A fun issue, captured the tension well. I really enjoyed Starscream, again. Much like with Megatron in the past couple years, I sincerely hope they don't jettison Starscream's development in favor of the standard G1 depiction, ever. I enjoy that he's still a slimy bastard but... there's something more to it.

I like Sara's art, but this issue felt a bit difficult to follow at points. Not sure who was in certain panels, or who was talking, and I wasn't clear with the Devastator battle --- were the aerial ships on the Cybertronian or Carcerian side?

It's interesting to contrast Sara's art with Jack Lawrence's. Both have a "cartoony" vibe, with thicker, slightly rougher inks and lines. But Sara's art, despite some issues this book, I find generally more attractive and interesting. But --- it also seems to fit the story a bit better, with the politics, variety of characters (especially the beasts, mini-bots, and others), and it's not trying to fill Milne's shoes or compete poorly with the established art style.

Hmm. Come to think of it, that's probably a big negative about the Lost Light art. Prime has it's own style. TAAO has its own style. Lawrence's art on LL basically seems like more of the TAAO style, and that's not good for a number of reasons.

Moving on, Obsidian fucking rocks. Tigatron gets to be badass! Blurr being fast!

Anyway, that last page.

Oh.

Shit.

Goddamn it all to hell. This is gonna be bad.

 

Okay, the big question here for me;

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Who the hell Vigilem?!

 

*From tfwiki

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When proposing a mental merge with Metrotitan, Pyra Magna noted that Vigilem served Liege Maximo

 

Yeah, they were previously established as being a thing in the TAAO Revolution one-shot.

It's honestly kinda weird that this big reveal hinges on the reader remembering some throwaway dialogue from a crossover tie-in one-shot...

 

Ah, didn't remember that.

 

I googled the name lol

 

I was expecting something big to come out of that comic with Lady Shazraella torturing Windblade about Cybertron and the threat Cybertronian's posse to Microspace and the Ministry of Defense, but nothing this surprising.

The even bigger question is;

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where is Liege Maximo or is Vigilem about to call him home?

 

Another question; why does Elita have his brain module? And what became of Carcer AND Tempo? Hopefully the concluding issue will give us everything we need to know.

And until I was reminded, I thought for a moment that

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Vigilem was the Titan of Megatronus. But Leige Maximo is every bit as bad.

 

I'm starting to think Elita One and crew are Scavengers who took parts from other Titans to make their own.

I think

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Leige Maximois even worse than Megatronus

, becusce he's kind of like Emperor Palpatine; who makes, uses, and throws away Vader's.

 

*sigh* Oh Scott...

This was yet another decompressed issue but unlike the last couple, it didn't have enough good content to compensate for it. It seems like Scott tried to go for the widescreen route here but her skills are not really fitting for that kind of style and so, most of the action was pretty boring.

There are good character bits, which have always been Scott's strength, but again, they're just a few and didn't make me too invested into the plot (which is pretty simple to begin with).

The art was nice at least.

 

Ehhhh the ominous art and awesome last page made it pretty clear this was very bad.  

 

Same! I came to this thread to see if people actually knew the name. I didn't read revolution.

 

Issue was very decompressed and way too quick, of course. But yeah, definitely got an "oshit" feeling on that last page. I knew that the ship was likely to be an evil titan, but i didn't expect...that

 

I've been on the scavenger theory for a while.

The reveal explains a few things.

 

This whole Carcer situation is gonna wind up being something that could've been avoided with a simple explanation. Isn't it?

 

This was better than I expected from the preview. My heart sunk when I realised we were getting a whole page of Devastator once again *sort of* in the process of wrecking the ship but not really actually doing much.

But I was satisfied enough with the length of the story inside and the character work. I'd say that the infiltration party has a few too many members - half of them do the sum total of sweet FA besides running around, and one of them I can't even identify. (The bot who has the idea of destroying the ship and riding the debris - who is that?)

Other minor complaints - Sparkstalker seriously needed a redesign by this stage. It's bizarre that some characters go through bodies like nobody's business while possibly the most badly designed Transformers in the history of the franchise are rendered faithful to their original toys/models.

Also, as much as I like Obsidian's dialogue, it seems absurd that he doesn't just tell Windblade why she shouldn't bring the titan online. I could understand if he had extreme confidence in his ability to stop the intruders, but given it was a last-ditch, desperate effort to prevent calamity, he didn't exactly pull out all the stops, did he?

Art is decent with one or two very nice panels - and a good command of expression! Starscream and Bumblebee are very enjoyable, and so is Elita-1! Overall, not as good as the first arc in this series and falling below Optimus Prime and Lost Light for me, but still something I can look forward to.

 

Same, lol

 

I feel like at least 50% of things in all of fiction would never happen if the characters just stopped being needlessly secretive and actually gave some much needed explanation of things.

 

Yup, I happened to look at the time. Took only 7 minutes to read. Felt way too short. Although I'm interested to see more, it was really not much story.

 

Just read this and issues 5-6 since I've needed a break after Revolution but, I like the current arc, it's quite fun in a Transformers kick ass like they should do sort of story, although this issue was definitely shorter than the other two. I will admit I am still confused as to how Starscream and Windblade can pull off this infiltration on Carcer without Cybertron being completely destroyed in the time it takes for them to come up with a plan.

But,

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Vigilem,

I remembered that just by being a Liege Maximo fanboy. Can't wait to expand on this!  

I think I saw a few posts on this site where people guessed the titan was actually one of Megatronus's, close enough though. Still if Elita-1 and the others were trying to keep it inactive, why didn't they say anything? From how Obsidian speaks, it sounds like this isn't exactly a ship full of bots loyal to Maximo.