Broken Frontier

IDW flexes its licensing muscle and presents its first Transformers comic book. At least the covers are nice.

Transformers are the love of any child of the 1980’s. We grew up watching them. We lived and died with Optimus Prime. We hated Megatron as much as we wanted to be him. And Bumblebee was every boy’s best friend. This book marks the return of the "Robots in Disguise" after IDW picked up the license. Not a full-fledged issue, this #0 is more of a prelude of what is to come. In it the reader is introduced to a couple humans, one who is a loner pickpocket stealing from people at bus stops, and the other is something of a conspiracy theorist. And it seems like someone, or something, is out to get them.

Simon Furman is THE Transformers writer. He wrote the books for Marvel in the 80’s and he wrote some issues for Dreamwave in the most recent incarnations. So it was wise for IDW to tap him to write the new series for them. The story here isn’t anything groundbreaking, it’s a standard set-up—put two opposite character together and have them stumble into a plot way over their heads—and Furman basically does his job. The dialogue works, and the story is easy to follow. But nothing about it really stands out. What really bothers me is: in a book called Transformers it would be nice to get some Transformers.

The artwork follows suit with the writing. There just isn’t anything special about the work of EJ Su. It’s almost like he’s a cartoonist trying to work with a more realistic style. Everything looks like it should and the story is real easy to follow, just nothing makes or leaves an impression. The work is simple and shows minimal details, which in a book about robots is really out of place, especially compared to the detailed work that Pat Lee was doing (and I’m not even a Pat Lee fan). The Transformers always work best with detailed linework designed to show off the technology. In the few instances where Su is given space to show off, his work still seems stale. There is one double page splash that only stands out because of the lettering, and a short action scene that lacks any vivacity.

It’s hard to tell people that it’s not worth buying a book when it only costs $0.99, but this book really isn’t worth it (unless you’re a Transformers completist, then you already bought it). The story is short, and the artwork is bland. One can only hope that when the regular series starts up in January, the team is allowed to show off some more.