IDW Transformers: Windblade #5 Full Preview

I don't like the scale/style and character portrayal for Ironhide. He is too puny(literally) and weak, he was knocked out by Chromia during the Windblade series. This just seems like a very different character from previous IDW series.

ZeroWolf wrote:I love the relationship that's being set with ironhide and chromia.

Though talk about extreme adaptions I want to know how they survived on that world in the first place

No kidding, this seems like a Twilight Zone or some strange Star Trek mission where they land on a completely alien world. I like it though!

padfoo wrote:I don't like the scale/style and character portrayal for Ironhide. He is too puny(literally) and weak, he was knocked out by Chromia during the Windblade series. This just seems like a very different character from previous IDW series.

Well too be fair, It's been established so far that Ironhide is kind off an oldman.

SW's SilverHammer wrote:

padfoo wrote:I don't like the scale/style and character portrayal for Ironhide. He is too puny(literally) and weak, he was knocked out by Chromia during the Windblade series. This just seems like a very different character from previous IDW series.

Well too be fair, It's been established so far that Ironhide is kind off an oldman.

Additionally, Chromia is pretty established as a badass and it makes sense that Ironhide respects her so much because he's also a badass. In this arc he feels different because he's sort of out of place with all these sleek, fast speedsters. But it makes complete sense to have him in a tale that involves finding the other races made of Primus' children.

Why? Pax Cybertronia.

Remember back about a decade ago, when you first watched Transformers: Cybertron on TV? The first few episodes start with a bang, taking you away on a fast-paced adventure spanning three planets within the span of just the first four episodes. One of these planets was Velocitron, where the heroic Autobots Hot Shot and Red Alert assisted planet natives Override and Clocker in a bid to win races and secure a Cyber Planet Key, thus keeping it out of the clutches of the evil Megatron. To get it, they had to win a race, I think. Unfortunately, the race went on for longer than a Suzuka 8-hour and no one in the fandom remembers the details because why on earth would anyone watch that arc over again? The point here is that most Transformers fans are reminded of one word when thinking about Velocitron: Slow.

This is relevant today because IDW's fifth and latest issue of Windblade Volume 2, written by Mairghread Scott featuring art by Corin Howell and colors by Thomas Deer, brings us back to Velocitron. While doing so, it manages to do a lot of things, but "going slow" isn't one of them.



The pacing really is the stand-out characteristic here, and in fact, events happen so quickly that one has to wonder if the series ending at issue 7 was the original plan. While no one wants a repeat of Cybertron's fourteen episode circular boredom, I can't help but feel like this one takes a well developed premise with a lot of potential and steers off the exit ramp towards the next part of the story a little too quickly.



The art keeps with the implied tone of the narrative, lending a cartoon like quality to the scenes. This works well for most of the scenes, given the sometimes very convenient ways in which our heroes will overcome their external conflicts as the pages progress. Plot aside, the lines for some of the residents of this Velocitron are handled pretty appropriately, and Override in particular (not Nitro Convoy, take that Takara) feels suited to the style.



Deer's colors work very well, helping to lend contrast between locales and offering Velocitron a familiar yet altogether different feel. This isn't Cybertron, and at no point does it really feel that way.



Potential Full On Blatant Spoilers Ahead, Maybe
By the end of the read I certainly wasn't unsatisfied, but I also don't feel like I got the full taste of Velocitron, or perhaps the issue is that it was just a taste. If the sin of Cybertron's old Velocitron arc was being too slow, then this does the opposite and manages to go too fast, at least that's how I can best describe my malaise. Or perhaps, this is a crepe and what I really wanted was something else. They are the really thin pancakes. It's just a French word for them.



The great build to such a simple resolution almost made me forget what happened in between. To use an old theatre adage, "Show, don't Tell". This issue told me a lot about the planet and characters and city, but fell short on showing them to me. An abstract map of the city is cool, but ultimately kind of pointless if only some bits and pieces are shown. Telling me that Override is only tenuously in charge and implying that she's eccentric when given requests is great stuff, but when the chance comes to show it, it isn't taken. The politics of the planet have been played up as rather complicated for a couple issues now, but when you get to the ending they end up being really quite simple with Ransack just sort of doing, well, nothing. The end result is a story that felt complex, but then ultimately just isn't.

That's not to say there weren't parts I liked. Including the aforementioned Override and Ransack, along with Clocker (questionable color scheme aside, but at least it was a toy deco so I'll give it a slide) was a really fun touch. I absolutely adored Cybertron when it came out, and seeing some of these characters get further adventures is quite fun. There's nothing more frightening then driving with a live goddamn cougar next to you.



Our normal reviewer and News Admin Extraordinaire, Va'al, did point out some good stuff to me as well that I mostly agree with, so here are his words (mostly ) unedited:

Va'al wrote:I really liked the scenes with the Titan, both in writing (how Windblade feels about the whole thing, and how she connects with it) and the art, colours in particular. The race was quite good, and just the right length to not become overblown or dragged out. Ironhide and Chromia were also great, though Ironhide in general has and continues to be a stand out. I'm too drunk to taste this chicken.

My kudos to him for the help with this review as he juggled helping me out of my criticisms, all whilst writing up reviews for the other two IDW Transformers releases this week.



So with all that said, if you ain't first, you're last, so this gets the following score:



I'm just kidding, here's the real score:



That there Seibertron.com review is trademarked, not to be used without written permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc.

Hi, I'm here to discuss an important problem facing Cybertron, packs of turbo-foxes roaming the streets.

Wait, does this mean blurr's new house is actually haunted?

To clarify, I'm ultimately intending to be complimentary in saying I wish it didn't end so fast, despite what impact that may have had on a goofy objective numerical score that reflects a subjective view of the issue Not sure it comes out that way reading my words here another couple days later.

In other words, if you don't chew Big Red, well, you know.

Well, you wanna come over and play GI Joes?

you know, my biggest gripe is the cartoony city that's bigger on the inside. I just don't think the artist is skilled enough to really convey the idea of moving cities. They should be huge. Honestly, I hope she improves or they replace her. Its not terrible, its just not ... quality


and a side note, I dont really dig the condescending attitude of the Camiens. And why do they keep making me not like Chromia? I liked her in the one-shot. Dont like her here.

Optimizzy wrote:you know, my biggest gripe is the cartoony city that's bigger on the inside. I just don't think the artist is skilled enough to really convey the idea of moving cities. They should be huge. Honestly, I hope she improves or they replace her. Its not terrible, its just not ... quality

Transformers + Scale = Oh dear, I've gone cross eyed

DeadCaL wrote:

Optimizzy wrote:you know, my biggest gripe is the cartoony city that's bigger on the inside. I just don't think the artist is skilled enough to really convey the idea of moving cities. They should be huge. Honestly, I hope she improves or they replace her. Its not terrible, its just not ... quality

Transformers + Scale = Oh dear, I've gone cross eyed

Ha ha. But really the city should have been huge.

Nice connections to the past in Cybertron cartoon eps, which I have a very hard time remembering a whole lot about.

I didn't hate it, and enjoyed it mostly, I'm just not superbly and overly impressed by what's going on in the TF comic verse lately.

Blurr, Blurr, Blurr!!! A resolution that so far was not a surprise. Art could be criticized, but is workable enough. We can't all be Stone, Coller, Milne, Or Guidi. It's not Heart of Darkness bad, everything looks better when compared with that.

I would have thought that a society whose culture revolves around racing would take more than one lap. That annoyed me a lot. They had potential for a two-issue story here, but I guess they're just doing one issue per planet to wrap the series up. :/ Maybe I'm wrong and we have a lead-in issue to the Beast planet and 7 has them meeting the Beast planet delegates properly.

Optimizzy wrote:

DeadCaL wrote:

Optimizzy wrote:you know, my biggest gripe is the cartoony city that's bigger on the inside. I just don't think the artist is skilled enough to really convey the idea of moving cities. They should be huge. Honestly, I hope she improves or they replace her. Its not terrible, its just not ... quality

Transformers + Scale = Oh dear, I've gone cross eyed

Ha ha. But really the city should have been huge.

Agreed.

I like the style of the art, but the sense of scale implied by the dialogue is totally missing from the page. The moving "city" was roughly the size of a small building, and the "huge" racetrack looked to be the size of a big high school gym.

If the next issue is just talking heads, I think I'll enjoy it quite a bit more.

Via Comic Book Resources, we have a fairly lengthy interview with the creative team behind Transformers: Windblade, in particular issue #5: Mairghread Scott and Corin Howell! The two touched upon the general direction of the series post-Combiner Wars, the introduction of multiple characters from several branches of the robot franchise, their thoughts on their favourite characters so far and much more, including some concepts for Moonracer and Knock-Out. Check out some snippets below, and head here for the full interview!

CBR News spoke with Scott and Howell about what's next for "Transformers: Windblade," what it means for their title character to learn that Prime may not be the 100% altruistic hero she once believed him to be, and why giant, battling robots provide the perfect allegory to explore themes like politics, war, gender and more.

[...]

Starscream has been handling this all magnificently, maneuvering everything into place. Has it been fun to get to have him outpace the others and show off his political agility?

Scott: Starscream is one of my favorite characters and I've had a great time revealing just how cunning he is. He also has a big advantage because everyone else in the book wears their heart on their sleeve. Windblade wants to save Caminus. Optimus wants to save Cybertron. And Starscream just wants to do whatever's best for Starscream. That makes him a lot more flexible than our other characters, and he uses that flexibility to its fullest extent. When Starscream sent Swindle and Menasor to Caminus, I saw a lot of people exclaiming that this would be Starscream's last mistake, and by the end of "Combiner Wars" he'd be ousted from power. I think underestimating Starscream is a lot of people's biggest mistake.

Scott: So at the end of "Combiner Wars," Caminus and Cybertron are now connected via SpaceBridge, and the Cybertronians have learned of at least four other colonies. Windblade's new mission is to make first contact with these worlds and somehow convince them to ally with Cybertron's new Council of Worlds, but each colony will have its own unique challenges she'll have to deal with. We're also kicking open a lot of doors to continuities that haven't been explored much in IDW. We're including a whole lot of new Transformers, many of which fans will know from other iterations of the brand throughout the years.

[...]

The Transformers comics seem to handle sci-fi as allegory more capably than anyone else is able to right now. What is it about the Universe which makes them so suitable to introduce themes of politics, war, gender and the like?

Howell: I think it's because when you get to see huge talking robots fighting, you can be sneaky with some bigger themes like political disputes and rivalries or the cause and costs of war. Everyone reads it to have fun, but they come away with a little bit more than that -- or at least that's the hope, anyway.

Scott: When you are dealing with alien robots, you have just enough distance between you and the subject that you can explore difficult ideas and themes much more comfortably. "Transformers" as a brand has always dealt with war, battle fatigue, prejudice and factionalism. And while our main goal is to tell a really great story, it's always my hope that we're giving people the chance to explore the rationale, emotions and beliefs of people they wouldn't get the chance to do in real life.

[...]

Was it a conscious choice to pick characters from so many different versions of the franchise and unite them here?

Scott: My goal for introducing more diversity to the brand has always been about opening as many doors as possible. I never want a writer to think "I can't introduce Character X because they have no place in this universe." So Caminus got the ball rolling on introducing female Transformers, but now all these other colonies will have female Transformers, too. My next thought was how can we push this further and introduce more bots. I realized that we had a lot of G1 and G2 bots but what if you grew up with "Beast Wars" or "Animated" or any of the later generations of Transformers? I wanted something for those viewers, too. These colonies have allowed me to open even more doors and create a whole universe of possibilities for future stories and future characters. I want any fan no matter their age or what iteration of the brand they grew up with to be able to see their favorite Transformer fitting in to the story.

Corin Howell is my favorite TF artist of all time, just saying.
I gotta say I LOVE Moonracer's design by her, she looks amazing! We REALLY need a toy from this design!

SillySpringer wrote:Corin Howell is my favorite TF artist of all time, just saying.
I gotta say I LOVE Moonracer's design by her, she looks amazing! We REALLY need a toy from this design!

I don't agree with the first comment. But I do think a moon racer based on this would be nice.

Those Knock-Out expressions...

Please please PLEASE give us knockout as a female decepticon. Like she turned from male to female almost like how arcee did but to himself. I always thought transformers prime knockout would have been a great female character and the toy sadly did not allow me to just use my imagination. If the second sketch is indeed knockout.. then to answer the question in the sketch, dark eyes.

So turn well established iconic characters upside down ala Megs, Starsaber, Deathsaurus etc. Wash Rinse Dry. Is that all the handbook of well worn out ideas have to churn out today?

Quite frankly, I like Megatron as Autobot (and I know I'm far from the only one. After all, the most recent Megatron figure came with an Autobot sticker!). If you keep telling the same stories with no character growth, the brand becomes stale. As far as Star Saber and Deathsaurus... well... they're hardly iconic outside of Japan, are they? The comic needs to put their own twist on things. The old cartoons and old comics are still there. This is a new story.

Black Bumblebee wrote:Quite frankly, I like Megatron as Autobot (and I know I'm far from the only one. After all, the most recent Megatron figure came with an Autobot sticker!). If you keep telling the same stories with no character growth, the brand becomes stale. As far as Star Saber and Deathsaurus... well... they're hardly iconic outside of Japan, are they? The comic needs to put their own twist on things. The old cartoons and old comics are still there. This is a new story.

Also in the Victory manga continuity Deathsauruas had continued fighting essentially to protect his and the other Decepticons' families, which parallels well with his IDW interpretation of not wanting to treat his comrades as disposable. As for star saber the villain interpretation comes from Transmasters UK a transformers fan club in the UK, which Nick Roche and James Roberts were a part of. So these character changes have some biases in the past.

If Knock-Out is a fem-bot now it would help explain his rather feminine behavior in TF Prime. He could of been in a transition period for all we know. His/Her "sex" matters nothing really being they are robots, but we can come up with our own conclusions. Either way the character is cool as they come IMHO! Who else has, or lacks having the balls to give Prime a Decepticon tattoo? EPIC! In reality, the changing of ones "sex" has become as easy as a scalpel, money, time, and hair dye. If it is seemingly easy for us, how much more for them when they can just scan/rescan? It would make for one heck of a story though.

So wait, is Knock Out a fembot now? I always thought the whole appeal of Knock Out was that he was a preening, sadistic and extremely camp guy. Making him female removes most of his uniqueness.

If they wanna add more female Decepticons, how about making Cybertron Ransack and Crumplezone female? They barely had any personality beyond "incompetent troublemakers" so they're pretty much clean slates. Heck, if you wanted to go uber "progressive" you could always make them lesbians (Ransack always looked pretty feminine anyway, and Crumplezone...well...She could be the butch I guess? Or just keep him a guy, whatever works...).

Why are people taking Knock-Out as being female?

The interview doesn't say that, unless I've completely missed it!

And then there's the arrival of Knock Out, as you mention. What drives (pun intended) the character, to your mind?

Scott: So many fans know that I've wanted to introduce Knock Out to the IDW verse for a while. Velocitron gave me a great way to introduce him and keep much of his personality intact. For this iteration of the character, he is still very vain and obsessed with his appearance, and thinks of practically everyone as beneath him. Corin did a great job of making Knock Out "act" with as big a personality as he had in "Transformers Prime." He makes his grand, sweeping gestures. He's designed to take up a lot of room on the page and it works tremendously well with Moonracer standing next to him looking completely over it. There's also a little bit more pathos we were able to give a nod to in this version of Knock Out, but you'll have to read closely to catch it.

Howell: Knock Out in terms of design was simple: take his "Transformers Prime" design and tweak it just a bit to make him more slender. Knock Out is kind of like Starscream in my mind minus the wings: he likes to race, he likes to look good and he likes to be the best of the best. I often referred to Knock Out as "The Sass-Master," considering the amount of sass-tastic, smug attitude that he constantly portrays. He's the complete opposite of Moonracer.

Knock Out is still male in IDW. He's basically the same as his Prime version, even down to his relationship with Breakdown (recently confirmed as his Conjunx Endura), except that he doesn't harbor disdain for Autobots because he has no involvement in that war.

Well thank goodness for that, I guess.

I agree totally with Delta Magnus on the thank goodness part! Though turning him into a fem-bot would of been interesting for them to explain, I'm glad he is the same character. He was my favorite bad guy in Prime, so keeping him the same is awesome.

Also, It was deathdrive asking for a fem-bot knock-out that lead to the discussion of him switching genders. No one actually stated he was/is.

For some reason people keep thinking that all transformers from the colonies are female, in fact a lot of people on other sites still think all the characters from caminus are women.