Full Preview - IDW Optimus Prime #5

Daaaaaaaang. Prime's getting scary. Looks like more of Prowl's influence from their Optimus Maximus time is seeping in.

I wonder if it's less "Prime is being corupted" and more "Prime is tired of everbodys shit".


Of course, that can serve as an alternate definition for Prowl, too.

Va'al wrote:

WreckerJack wrote:I want the Sharkticon cover though. I don't know a comic store that carries it though. Bummer.

Ask!

I plan on it. I have been writing down some other titles too.

ya know on the "optimus maximus" thing were all blaming prowl for the change in attitude in prime but think about this.

sunstreakes a narcissist.

ironhides stuborn.

and mirage is a snob.

combined with prowl thats a heady mix for a mindmashed optimus to deal with ontop of whatever effects actually being leader has on him.

so it could be more than just everyones favorite prick to blame here.



what i'd find interesting though now is to see if the effects has bleed over to the other characters. theres scope for some fun to be had anyway.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum; Prowl's settling down for a bit with Fort Max to step outside his usual boundaries and possibly stepping towards some sort of redemption arc. Heck, in Sins of the Wreckers he even showed some sort of compassion towards Hubcap, someone up until that point had been antagonising him. There's some Prime-y traits going on with Prowl imo.

I asked around locally for dat Arcee cover for Op #2, but to no avail.

So I just ordered it from Coliseum of Comics for $5.99, then $7 for shipping.

Totally worth it lol, but now I gotta get 3,4 & 5!

Kurona wrote:Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum; Prowl's settling down for a bit with Fort Max to step outside his usual boundaries and possibly stepping towards some sort of redemption arc. Heck, in Sins of the Wreckers he even showed some sort of compassion towards Hubcap, someone up until that point had been antagonising him. There's some Prime-y traits going on with Prowl imo.

On the other hand, Mirage has basically not shown up again since he has yet to show back up in Lost Light. And Ironhide really hasn't seemed to have changed over in Till All Are One.

As for poor Sunstreaker, he's been part of 2 combiners, with Slugslinger, Sky Lynx, Cosmos, and Thundercracker to boot. If there were side effects, he would have lots

I'm fairly certain prowl has nothing to do with anything. They seem to be pretending that combiner wars didn't happen, especially the bit with OP Max.
My thinking is, they are making Megatron the good guy, and so they need a bad guy. This version of prime has had bipolar disorder since the early days. In the prequels he was angry and agressive, beating swindle near to death. Then went back to being a hero. In the infiltration era he was depressed, giving up his position and surrendering to spike. In the chaos Era he was the noble hero again, till death of optimus when he went emo-loner. Hero again after that, for a time. Now he has a God complex.
Over a Million years of war have pushed on prime till he broke. He's straight mad.

Now they either have Megatron be the hero and stop an evil Optimus, or make Megs snap and go super evil and force OP to be the hero again.

I can understand Optimus going a bit more ruthless, but the thought of him going truly bad and Megatron going heroic is too much for me.....!

I'll be honest -- when he shot Galvy in the face, I couldn't quite believe it....but I felt like he had no choice, and it was due to the millions of war torn years. But still, this was Optimus! I accepted it.

I've even come around to Megz sporting the Auto-brand.

But Optimus as a villain? I can't even....

partholon wrote:ya know on the "optimus maximus" thing were all blaming prowl for the change in attitude in prime but think about this.

sunstreaker's a narcissist.

ironhide's stubborn.

and mirage is a snob.

combined with prowl thats a heady mix for a mindmashed optimus to deal with on top of whatever effects actually being leader has on him.

I like that. That's pretty cool. Hope it's true!

Synopsis
It’s battleground: Earth once more, as the uneasy peace between Optimus’ forces, the Junkions, and G.I. Joe collapses amidst betrayals and subterfuge. Will Optimus Prime and Pyra Magna be able to put aside their differences—or is war really the only way forward?



Story

The turbofox excrement hit the ventilator last issue, as you might recall, with Sharkticons pouring out of the Junkion corkscrew ship by the thousands, Pyra and Optimus not entirely seeing eye to eye (and the complications, if you will, seen in the Ghost Stories annual), and the human side of the alliance still being the squishier part of the two - not ideal in most combat situations.



For an issue that is very, very much tense and building up to a potentially even bigger rupture point, John Barber manages to work in a lot - and I mean a lot - of humour: quips, side comments, snide comments, jokes, tension being maaaybe defused by the likes of Wreck-Gar, Cosmos, the captions, even Aileron and some early snark from flashback cameos. Prowl is undoubtedly not amused.



The narrating voice this issue belongs to Arcee, whose story is still somewhat being developed, and we get to find out more about her attachment to Sideswipe, why she needs him to live, how she might do that, and how her skills will turn in handy in this new fight erupting just over Earth again. The tone, at times, feels a little discordant with the action taking place, I'll admit, but not entirely distracting.



A number of readers and followers of the story have commented on the ruthlessness of Optimus Prime as seen in the preview, and speculation is running high on why he might be behaving this way after all. There may be more to it in the flashback again, as it develops both his motivations (next to omnipresent Prowl) and, in a very nice parallel track, Soundwave's. More on this below!

Art

Kei Zama returns to the artwork after the one month fill-in, and we get to see even more of her Sharkticons in action, plus the dynamism of the various action sequences in the issue are brought out in their wider framing without losing any of the detail that her style focuses on. Plus her Optimus looks truly menacing, with the broken faceplate and warlord stances.



Staying as the staple connector between artists is technicolour wizzzard Josh Burcham, and I still really appreciate the contrasts between flashback and current time, plus the paler palettes used to counteract the heavier inking of Zama's style - Junkions and Sharkticons both continue to look excellent, and battles are even more vicious as a result.



Where I mention above that the Arcee caption monologue can be jarring, the result is definitely tuned down by the lettering, marking them out as separate, in effect, from the action in the panels they show up; the lettering choices by Tom B. Long make it easy to separate and follow equally. Cover-wise, we have a full TF roster with week with some excellent Casey Coller/Joana Lafuente, Andrew Griffith/Josh Perez and EJ Su pieces to accompany the main Zama/Burcham one. All can be seen in our database entry for the issue, here.

Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

What started out potentially a just-action-fight-scenes sequence, turned out to be a pretty excellent chapter rushing towards the finale in the next issue, and a highlight for many characters involved in the cast: Arcee gets her moments, though I expect more next time; Jetfire, Aileron, the Colonists get some nice time, Cosmos is thrown about and even Optimus himself has a decent block of character added to him.



But it is Soundwave that absolutely shines here, and shows his true Decepticon ideological self - echoing some of the best revolutionary discourse, showing his actual political inclinations, deploying the skills that made his so valuable to the purple cause in what could've been a devastating new conflict - and resulting much scarier (if HECK YEAH) in the process. Suck it, Funny Truck.

This was an amazing issue and I loved it!

I'm willing to bet that the this flashback scene is where Optimus goes from the awesome good cop of the MTMTE stories to the hardass cop from the Autocracy stories

I enjoy that the passage from "Towards Peace" used is the same one that Twincast 159 started with. My favorite lines that James has defined from the imaginary work, and Barber's usage here is dead on point and extremely complementary to the character of Soundwave that he's built up.

Cassette Sharkticons, please. Plz.

Anyone else wondering where Rumble and Frenzy are though? Or is Cosmos the only one who survived

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:Anyone else wondering where Rumble and Frenzy are though? Or is Cosmos the only one who survived

Just another two Season 1/2 crew to chalk up to questionable status!

Rumble & Frenzy - Status unknown
Blitzwing - Status unknown
Dirge - We haven't seen him for years seriously where is he
Astrotrain - Status REALLY unknown what the heck is going on in MASK

Man, along with Shockwave, Thrust, Ramjet and Ravage being dead there's so few left. Megatron, Soundwave, the original 3 Seekers and the bird Cassettes represent.

I really enjoyed this issue, but.....for the love of Primus.....can we PLEASE be rid of the captioning of every individual in EVERY SINGLE issue?? I realize it may have been for "new" readers to the book, but five issues in, it's now just clutter. Zama's artwork is already fairly heavy and dense, and captioning everyone is really starting to work against it.

Bounti76 wrote:I really enjoyed this issue, but.....for the love of Primus.....can we PLEASE be rid of the captioning of every individual in EVERY SINGLE issue?? I realize it may have been for "new" readers to the book, but five issues in, it's now just clutter. Zama's artwork is already fairly heavy and dense, and captioning everyone is really starting to work against it.

I still really like it in the Joe book because I'm bad at remembering their names. Also the captions on the captions are quippy and knowing that would irritate Prowl makes it entertaining! But yes, I can understand wanting a little less text bubble too.

While we have seen two of the variant covers offered for IDW Publishing's Optimus Prime #6, out next month, we now also have another Kei Zama / Josh Burcham piece of art, featuring Skylynx, Optimus and Metrotitan, in clean linework and full colour! Check it out below from Zama's Twitter feed.

I'm starting to warm to Zama's art, though it is still a bit heavy looking for my tastes.

Va'al, any chance we'll be getting a TAAO #8 review?

When is a third party gonna make a seriously ripping Sky lynx? This needs to happen.

pretty cool

Bounti76 wrote:I'm starting to warm to Zama's art, though it is still a bit heavy looking for my tastes.

Va'al, any chance we'll be getting a TAAO #8 review?

Yep, it's on its way! I'm just very very very jet lagged and had actual work to attend to first - was drained by time I got home.

Va'al wrote:

Bounti76 wrote:I'm starting to warm to Zama's art, though it is still a bit heavy looking for my tastes.

Va'al, any chance we'll be getting a TAAO #8 review?

Yep, it's on its way! I'm just very very very jet lagged and had actual work to attend to first - was drained by time I got home.

Excellent, thanks! Just wasn't sure if someone else was going to be guest-reviewing it, as it were.

I like Zama's art. Very 2000AD in my opinion.

Big Grim wrote:I like Zama's art. Very 2000AD in my opinion.

Very much so, and in hers too.

Va'al wrote:

Big Grim wrote:I like Zama's art. Very 2000AD in my opinion.

Very much so, and in hers too.

Oh, awesome! She's stated that's an inspiration?

Big Grim wrote:

Va'al wrote:

Big Grim wrote:I like Zama's art. Very 2000AD in my opinion.

Very much so, and in hers too.

Oh, awesome! She's stated that's an inspiration?

Yes and no - she's made no secret of it!

https://tfnation.com/2017/guests/Kei%20Zama

https://twitter.com/Golby_mkII/status/8 ... 9865713670

https://2000adonline.tumblr.com/post/11 ... Nz2E0f-vOQ

Va'al wrote:Yes and no - she's made no secret of it!

https://tfnation.com/2017/guests/Kei%20Zama

https://twitter.com/Golby_mkII/status/8 ... 9865713670

https://2000adonline.tumblr.com/post/11 ... Nz2E0f-vOQ

Whoa, there's a lot of awesome on display there! Man, I remember loving ABC Warriors back in the day!

Va'al wrote:While we have seen two of the variant covers offered for IDW Publishing's Optimus Prime #6, out next month, we now also have another Kei Zama / Josh Burcham piece of art, featuring Skylynx, Optimus and Metrotitan, in clean linework and full colour! Check it out below from Zama's Twitter feed.

See, all this? Didn't need to say it. Completely unnecessary.

All you needed to say was THIS IS F*CKING AWESOME

I love this artwork. I really do. And I like the idea of Prime finally breaking and unintentionally turning into Megatron. It's a new thing for him.


But.... I'm gonna have to drop this series. I've given the first arc a try, and it has some good ideas, but Pyra Magna is just not clicking with me. The tease of Quints was nice, and I thought maybe we were going to get some good stuff with the Junkions, but it's just turned into 'invading robot army wants to destroy the world again.' And I just lost all interest in the Junkions at that point. We could at least have made it the Junkions themselves. Just imagine if a crazed biker gang was sweeping across the planet! But no, it's just hordes of sharkticons. Have we even seen any Junkions outside Wreckgar and Mummyjunk? I forget her name.


But the worst offender is a result of Reevolution. If it was generic soldiers, fine. If it was treated like generic soldiers with GI Joe names, like in G2, fine. But every time I see the GI Joe logo plastered everywehere, it completely takes me out of the story. And it's being driven home that this is GI Joe. I read Transformer comics for Transformer stories. If I wanted to read Joe stories, I would read Joe comics. It's just breaking immersion too much for me to continue with this book. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to an ongoing in Zama's style.

iTunes has once again provided us with a sneak peek, this time in the form of IDW Optimus Prime #6. Picking up where #5 left off, we have Arcee battling for the positron core, Rumble and Frenzy have survived, and the big battle appears to be headed to its ending. Oh and GI Joe are there too.

Check it out, and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

OMG, Frenzy and Rumble are too much cute/badass/awesome/funny.

The story seems fine, the art is still a little heavy and dense for my liking, but I'm warming to it.....

.....but for the love of Primus, can we PLEASE get rid of those damn captions on EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE?? While Zama's art is growing on me, the captions make her art and the pages look even busier than it already is. Six issues in, I'm pretty sure we're all up to speed on who they all are.

Nexus Knight wrote:OMG, Frenzy and Rumble are too much cute/badass/awesome/funny.

their current operation

Hey woo-hoo issue 4 introduces Olier back in comics and awaiting new character development

Issue 6....dead

I used to be ok with character deaths but i'm just fed up with them now and prefer character development over death

Oh hey, looks like the Sharkticons are using the TR design. Neat.

God I can't wait for this issue to come out already; there's too many good things ahead!

While we had seen Andrew Griffith's designs for the latest incarnation of Galvatron in the IDW Transformers universe, we had not seen the idea of him as the Warrior King Barbarian Conqueror in the flashbacks from Robots in Disguise - and in upcoming issues of Optimus Prime. Thanks to artist Casey Coller, we now do! Check out below the concept design for his in both robot and alt-mode, and join the conversation in the Energon Pub.

It's such a cool design - and thankfully not far off the Titans Return one. People have already made that awesome helm, if only they'd make that gun and axe

Kurona wrote:It's such a cool design - and thankfully not far off the Titans Return one. People have already made that awesome helm, if only they'd make that gun and axe

The gun is his g1 toy gun. I think his axe is on shapeways but im not sure.

Kurona wrote:It's such a cool design - and thankfully not far off the Titans Return one. People have already made that awesome helm, if only they'd make that gun and axe

I have yet to see one that doesn't look like it protects him from seizures. They all look stupid and oversized. Axe however I use Orin's axe that came with a marvel Build-a-figure.

Don't like that dorky helmet/head design at all.

For those of you looking for an axe for him I find the RiD Prime's axe works well. Or at least the version that came with the "Power Surge" Nemesis Prime.

I'm not that big a fan of the helmet design, but he is quite cool looking and the alt mode is pretty sweet too

Burcham having fun.

That's a freakin' gorgeous cover.

Multiversity has become the first site to release the full preview for IDW's Optimus Prime #6! The final story of the opening story arc features some sassy cassetticons, some violent throwdowns, and even some Thundercracker! Check out the preview below, and let us know what you think in the comments section below!

I need sub cover B! How do I get it specifically? Gotta have my sharkies

WreckerJack wrote:I need sub cover B! How do I get it specifically? Gotta have my sharkies

Is cover a homage to something? It looks familiar...

WreckerJack wrote:I need sub cover B! How do I get it specifically? Gotta have my sharkies

I think I answered this elsewhere: ask your comics retailer! If they can't put it aside for you, eBay is probably your best bet.

Synopsis
“NEW CYBERTRON”—CONCLUSION! As the Junkions reveal their ultimate plan, Optimus Prime makes a decision that will define the relationship between Earth and Cybertron for all time... but will Arcee be able to live with the fallout?



Story

The first arc of Optimus Prime, the big core book at the heart of the Hasbro Universe (take that, Crown Jewel), comes to a close in this sixth issue, and we get some closure indeed on the multiple threads dangling through the story - and some more are left to unravel for the future...



We know John Barber's propensity for the caption technique, to aid with the narration and provide some 'behind the scenes' commentary for what is actually happening in the gutters between panels - but this time, despite the very good writing, it's perhaps the very first time I've found it clash a little with the story itself. Having Optimus Prime narrate his own arc just felt ..off, at times.



The other stories, the other faces, the other characters around which the issue and the arc revolve, on the other hand, are still really quite pleasing. There is a lot happening all in one place (if you want a hand in catching up on the roles, our database entry might help!), both in the past and in the present, and it's all satisfyingly tantalising for more story threads from here.



The way in which Optimus is perceived on the many sides of the issues, from the colonist recruits to Aileron and Pyra Magna, to Soundwave and Jetfire's past and present outlook and opinions, to how Earth sees him as coloniser and invader - the story is in no way at its end, if anything we have a new fraught beginning of a much bigger story to be told. And then there's that last page...

Art

Kei Zama is still so much joy to follow through the pages, be it for organic, Cybertronian, Cybertrorganic, landscapes, battles, dialogue or face-offs - be they blasting or verbal, in the present or past - and I'm extremely pleased to see the variations across the Sharkticon ranks as well and variety in humans, who do not obviously have designs as distinctive as the robot protagonists.



The issue also relies a lot on heavy visual cues for resolutions - as well as the trademark time shifts and parallels - allowing for more of Josh Burcham's effective colouring to blend with Zama's linework. The lighter moments, not necessarily in tone, are impressive where the writing may not reach, and any lingering shadow is that much darker for it.



As for the lettering, I am still in awe at how Tom B. Long manages to juggle so many things at once in pages that can be extremely busy, between visuals and text. Never mind some of the fight scenes, the ink work and dynamism - we still follow narration; top marks. And cover wise, while the veteran roster of Zama/Burcham (SkyLynx rider), Coller/Bove (face-off), Griffith/Perez (Sharkpile) is a wonder to behold, I'd like to congratulate Jin Kim on some really solid output with IDW covers this month - see thumbnail for proof.

Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

I was somehow expecting more from a conclusion, at this stage. Not that what we got wasn't a good one, mind you, but something felt a little underplayed - which might be beneficial for the wider game in the long run, and future stories, but leaves a little anticlimactic here. Soundwave's role, the explanation of his presence by Megatron's side, Jetfire's role in particular, feel well rounded enough to allow it, sure, but Optimus' actions are a bit.. whelming.



Things I am looking forwards to, nonetheless: Jazz and the exploration of his 'getting to know Earth' storyline, so very much. More Thundercracker in an active role. More challenges to Optimus, even - in spite of - apparent changes of heart/mind. Ramifications of his role in the eye of the new recruits. THAT ENDING PAGE.