IDW Transformers Vs. Visionaries #5 Review

Synopsis

The final fate of Cybertron! Leoric and the drill team, on a mission to stop the destruction of the planet, reach the core—only to be met by Virulina and her Darkling Lords! Now, the two sides are locked in a final battle to determine whether Cybertron sees tomorrow. Everything comes to a head in this thrilling conclusion!

Story

Well it's finally the end, the fate of the Transformers homeworld is at stake(again...) thanks to an alien race, and once again it feels like a disappointment. This has been done, been there, done that, it's how we even got to this story. It was an attack on Cybertron's core from First Strike that got us to this point (that and some very bad editing decisions made between the 2, looking at you New Prysmos forcefield) and it is another attack here that finally ends the series. And it is thanks to that first attack that the final attack of the current IDW run (Unicron) will occur.

To be honest, these series should have had potential, but it just floundered it. The Visionaries are a not overly well known group of characters from a single season TV show back in the 1980's. With so few people even knowing what they are, you need to capture the attention of the readers looking for new characters to love. And this series did not do that.



There were many chances to try, but nothing ever caught on. Killing Kup in issue 1 certainly did not help, especially with how good he had been in the crossovers. Let's face it: he was the Crossover go-to Bot, and you killed him. It didn't help that some of the Bot's personalities in this were a bit wonky too.

And it most certainly didn't help that the Visionaries themselves were all over the board, not overly lovable or consistent. We had a character who was a good guy apparently actually be a traitor, yet he was tortured by the bad guy despite being a bad guy too? See, hard to reason.



I was also not a fan of the way the final bit of the series panned out. Leoric finally decides to become the spokesperson, the guy everyone rallies around, and it felt flat. He didn't do anything. We do get to see on the way too rare transformations from Visionary Bipedal to magic totem animal, but even then it doesn't last, and Virulina never uses her totem. I think only like 3 guys actually used their animal shape-shifting powers or something? They were that rare.

And then of course it turns out that Virulina and Leoric were actually meant to do this so another bad can use them both to ensure a proper future. Yeah, sure.

Meanwhile, the battle of the core, the thing advertised in the Synopsis, wasn't really a thing. It was disappointing. Only 2 of the big names were even there, and they weren't even the 2 big names. And of course in a story based around magic, everything comes down to magic, but in this case it was not clever magic. The whole series revolved around magic, and not once did it ever really feel "magical" and instead feeling like "not overly good writing and not really understanding how to make this work." The parts about helping each other and actually getting along felt quite forced in this area too, as did the ones at the very end.



But in short, the story didn't satisfy anything, and it was a disappointing return for the Visionaries.

Art

Art for the story was once more taken on by Fico Ossio with colors by David Garcia Cruz and lettered by Shawn Lee. The art is the part of the book that sort of pulls it back a hair, seeing as how Ossio's art is fairly good, with some interesting stylizations. I am particularly fond of his Leoric and Virulina, and most of the visionaries. The shame is the one Visionary I do like, Galadria, is the one that really isn't drawn well. Her facial expressions just aren't that good.



The Transformers do suffer some in the art department as well, with Ossio being better with organic looking beings than mechanical. Again, it's the faces that really don't look that good.

The colors are pretty good as well, especially with the scenery. But again, the bots feel flat and suffer some. Which is a shame considering the Visionaries and the scenery do actually appear decent.



Final Thoughts

Honestly, this series didn't do it for me at all. There really wasn't a lot going for it from stage one, and it never overcame that first bump. It's a series that should have done better, and had the potential cool factor of shape shifting humanoids who can turn into magical animals and who are basically wizards, but squandered it. I wish the series could have been handled better, or had occurred at a better time or using a different set of circumstances. All the past year or 2 have been are Cybertronians being threatened in Crossovers, with Cybertron itself being the center of the past 2 and will be center stage for the final one. The story really needed a different story set away from Cybertron, or set in the past, much like ROM vs. Transformers, itself a great series. And it needed more likable characters.

It needed the hook, and never presented one. And again I say what a shame that is.