IDW Transformers: Windblade #4 Review

Synopsis
MORE WORLDS-MORE PROBLEMS! After the events of COMBINERS WARS, WINDBLADE and STARSCREAM race to recruit the lost CYBERTRONIAN colonies to the Council of Worlds-but which of them will control the fate of Cybertron?



Story

Once more, we look at the almost immediate aftermath of Combiner Wars, as one of the minds behind the arc's story takes her writing back to the series that first launched the multiverse. Mairghread Scott dwells on Cybertron, and the many worlds that refer back to it, more or less, and some old-but-new friends make their appearance.



Scott's script manages to be fresh while drawing from a number of sources, from Animated to Prime to older material still, and we finally also get a look another of the colonies: Velocitron, and its peculiarly self-assured inhabitants, as Starscream begins to build his empire Council - just as the Transformers fiction re-expands, too.



Having someone like Knock-Out, with his Prime personality, is a magnificent counterpart to the snark that Starscream brings to the scene, and provides some great character bouncing off for both Blurr and Windblade. The latter, however, is even better placed next to the more humble Moonracer, while louder egos clash in ..er.. negotiations.



Character-establishing, world-building, great interactions, fabulous characters from previous strengths and preferences, the first fully-fledged Windblade issue is a great venture into a wider verse and the smaller realities of the individuals populating it. And it's darn good fun, of course.

Art

While we have seen Corin Howell debuting in the previous issue of Windblade, this is the first time we get to see a full issue featuring her linework, from pencils to inks. And, despite some expected criticisms from readers expecting a 'Stone continuation', I enjoy the Animated-influenced perspective we get in the issue. Some sequences are full of life, and even joy - with some excellent homages and call-backs to what Windblade has already been established as in the previous run.



Thomas Teyowisonte Deer is another very nice addition to the creative team on the book, and the colouring style does fit quite nicely with Howell's line-and-ink performance. Some of the backgrounds are magnificent, though there are some more muted, almost silently contrasted to the otherwise joyous atmosphere of the party scenes. Nonetheless, you can see below what he can do elsewhere.



Lettering is left to Tom B. Long once again, a mainstay in the TFverse by now, and his work blends particularly aptly with Howell's small sound additions in the linework, both in font work and subtlety, and keeps some level of continuity with previous comics. As for the covers, we have another impressive array, with Priscilla Tramontano on main variant, the dramatically splendid Casey Coller/Joana Lafuente Cityspeaker, the stunning Windblade by Naoto Tsutshima and Jet Enter plus the SDCC exclusive Combiner Hunter version, by Sara Pitre Durocher (thumbnail).


Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

There are many Seibertron.com staff words and thoughts in this review, and thought I should acknowledge them here before I get lost in my own - and overall, we agree on its merits. It's a fun, well-dialogued interaction between different cultures, characters and references that fans from across the franchise will enjoy as it starts laying out the steps to something bigger.



So big, in fact, that we may have seen the beginning of Titan Wars dropped in, very casually, in the early pages. There are cameos, there are homages, there are redesigns and reworkings of established elements of the mediatic Transformers universe, and most of all - it's fun. Light enough after the heavy-fisted Combiner Wars, without drifting off, or going off track. Chapeau.