You Want a Revolution? I Want a Revelation
(Spoiler free-ish)
SynopsisLAST STAND IN AUTOBOT CITY! It’s all come to this—TRANSFORMERS vs. ROM vs. MICRONAUTS vs. G.I. JOE vs. M.A.S.K. vs. the ultimate evil! The futures of Earth, Cybertron, and the Microverse will all be changed forever by the decisions made this day.
..or fall together? StoryHere we are, the final issue of the core storyline for IDW's Revolution. The end of this stretch of the road. The final chance to prove that this could lead somewhere, and do so well. By the timing of this review, you can probably guess how much it lived up to that, really. But let's proceed with order, and constructively, shall we?
Bless First, a recap. Karza has allied himself with the Dire Wraiths to save his universe, then merged with them, and realised that he's about to destroy two universes for the price of one. Everyone else decides to stop him. Humans (G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K.) are still not happy that aliens are doing things on their territory. Miles Mayhem keeps being evil but maybe not but maybe yes.
Soz bro The good things, writing wise: there are some good interactions, especially when it comes to established group dynamics like between the Transformers or between the Joes, and the Micronauts still have a better edge. Windblade digging at Optimus is always a treat. There is
some sort of organic fitting in of the different factions at play, and yes as a crossover it does create a common starting point for stories from here.
I guess? On the other hand, personally, ROM has brought nothing to this whole event (sure, it started because of him, but the character is nothing much at all compared to others), both MASK and GI Joe are used very oddly given their potential, and fans of the latter in particular may feel a little under-catered for. Where not having a fixed villain could've been good ground for interesting stories, it fell short of using the various 'antagonists'. But more below on the follow-up.
ArtFrom the visual side of things, I have defended Fico Ossio's work previously, as there are some good ways of depicting humans, and giving that more organic feel to some robotic designs - more appropriate for MASK and ROM than Transformers, I felt, and better executed overall - but in this issue in particular, a lot of flash covered the undermining problems of the 'too much together' elements of the series.
Tyler, is that you? And if that was true for the layouts and linework, the colours did not help make things clearer either. Mind you, I am not saying that Sebastian Cheng did not do a good job, but rather that the colours do not clarify what the art is trying to do, opting instead for a DC or Marvel-style visually punchy style with shaky substance beneath the technicolor smoke.
Offered without comment Similarly, and unfortunately, the lettering could only do so much: with this still being an event trying to draw in new readers, Tom B. Long was asked to fit in name tags and Budiansky pretty much the entire issue, making the most of the space available - not an enviable task, and not one that leads to a result that makes things any clearer either.
The covers, I have to say, are excellent: Tradd Moore and Felipe Sobreiro with the cartoon classic, Ken Christiansen with a part of his composite patchwork, Adam Riches and James Biggie with their signature toy and promo art respectively, Brandon Peterson's take on superenergised Karza, Art Baltazar suggesting the Aw Yeah! issue coming in the new year, Guido Guidi's excellent G2/I Joe mashup (thumbnailed) - and the oddly chosen John Byrne art, with Len O'Grady on colours.
ThoughtsSpoilerish aheadReally, all in all? It was a bit of a mess. The suggested schedule was not helpful, nor accurate, to follow the event in a linear fashion - and the tie-ins were decidedly much better, to varying degrees, than the core story itself - and the events happening within the issues were either too stretched out to begin with, or too condensed towards the end as was the case for this last book, visually and script-wise. It was confusing, or negligible, and just ..sort of happened. And looked inconsistent while happening.
And it only took us 5 issues to remember! As we've said in previous reviews, it's really a shame: all the series going into this were written by people who actually believed in the books and their characters, from Ryall to Easton to Barber to Bunn, but somewhere along the line, the idea of making a comic book EVENT proves one of IDW's missing achievements, especially one acting as a shared universe catalyst as Revolution was meant to be.
That said, it does not detract from the stories that come out of this, with Revolutionaries sounding like Revolution done right (now that it's out of the way), Till All Are One and Micronauts working on a wider scale, MASK, ROM, and GI Joe continuing the Earth-based sides of the plot, and Optimus Prime sort of shoving people around to sneak in between everyone.