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By Simon Furman, Guido Guidi, Joe Ng and various (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84023-932-8
I’m usually all in favour of new and innovative formats and I’ve normally nothing but praise for quality licensed comic strips as they tend to be a good introduction to the wider world of cartoon storytelling. However with this book I find myself reserving judgement.
Under new management, but with long time writer Simon Furman, we’re all introduced to another baffling array of characters and back-story that interact with old stalwarts such as Optimus Prime in what is obviously a sequel to something we haven’t seen, but nevertheless uses a dreadfully old plot to carry the action along. And then to end the volume halfway through the story is just plain annoying.
If you care, there is war on Cybertron, a refitted Prime is out of options and the miracle power source Energon can only be found on Earth which is being ravaged by the Terrorcons under their new leader Scorponok. Unfortunately I only really understood that after reading the press release, not the book.
Another bone of contention is the art and reproduction. I appreciate that styles have changed and that a Japanese flavour is currently the vogue, as is the whole concept of giant warrior robots, but the passionless, technological line-work works in monochrome, but when obscured by murky, overly fussy computer colouring it just means that these tired old eyes can’t tell one giant bucket of bolts from another. A little variation in shot choice and camera angle wouldn’t hurt either.
I think this might be something for the dedicated collector only.
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