Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers #1-5

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zigzagger
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Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers #1-5

Post by zigzagger »

Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers #1 three-page preview by way of IDW Publishing.
THE WRECKERS RETURN! Somebody’s kidnapped PROWL… but does anybody want him back? A lifetime of messing with everybody’s lives comes around to haunt him. Fortunately, he’s always got a plan. In this case… the one team of brutal, broken heroes… the WRECKERS!
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Post by Rack 'n Ruin »

It is upon us! Hallejulah!

(Though, a different art style than I was expecting. Not bad, just not what I expected.)
Wreck and Rule!
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Red Dave Prime
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Post by Red Dave Prime »

Seems closer to the original Kup spotlight - no bad thing that.
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Post by Blackjack »

What is this thing

What a great and highly welcome surprise! Had no idea this existed.

Man, I really need to keep up with comics better. I'm barely even catching up to MTMTE.

Also, Arcee? Huh, hopefully her... third? Fourth? Rodeo in the IDW comics won't be ass.
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Post by Death's Head »

SMITH
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Post by Auntie Slag »

Does this kick off next week?

Poor choice of words; kick off... sob!
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Post by Red Dave Prime »

Indeed it does.

I'm going to say this now.... Not loving the art work. Not hating it, but not loving it. Its not as bleak as the Spotlight Kup stuff and it lacks the charm of Roches normal style. I'm guessing he is trying for something deliberately different so fair balls and all. Maybe I'll warm to it. But the story looks great. Countdown is on.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

OUT NOW AND READ. DON'T GO FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE SPOILT.






WHICH WOULD BE A SIN.















Let's talk art first. Roche is trying something different here, but it's not that Don style thing of "I went away and didn't want to come back so I'M STICKING MOVIE FACES ON CHARACTER DESIGNS THAT DON'T SUIT THEM YOU BASTARDS", it's a more pencil-ey-sketchy-(? I don't know, I'm not an artist) look that, once you get past the "Is this Roche?" block actually works very well. And it's a smart move as well, Roche basically defined the current "Look" of IDW when he came up with the character designs for DoOP and MTMTE that the other artists have stuck to for the last four years, he needed something fresh here for the book to stand out.

Before we did into the plot itself, a dull continuity thing. Where do we think this fits in with Ex-RID? It's obviously not parallel with the current storyline with everyone trapped on the Ark for months, so it either has to be before or after. Before would make sense of things like Prowl's room being intact and not all shot up, but none of this having been mentioned could equally mean after with a new Ark that Prowl had just set up a room on (the fact he's supposed to be in prison doesn't get a mention either way).

Actually, was there a gap between Prowl being lost in that epilogue issue and the current story where Arcee and Kup would have time to deal with this? Hmm, has Kup actually been in Ex-RID recently?

That aside:

I liked that. A nice slow burn start that is basically about making sure this is a series that can work without prior knowledge. That might leave more knowledgeable readers chomping at the bit, but it's actually nice it doesn't assume everyone knows the details of a five year old comic backwards or will just wiki things they don't understand.

The best stuff was all with the old guard. Impactor's frustration at his failure with Guzzle (and how much he wanted to join in that massacre) and the seeming hopelessness for Springer; Roadbuster's new no doubt short lived mellow persona; Kup's sense of loyalty to both Prowl and Springer, with the later being enough to raise the near-dead (cheesy, but it worked) and, in a pleasing fit for the series, Arcee well and truly narked at everything.

Of the new Autobots, Hubcap felt a bit of an Ironfist proxy, but I suspect that's deliberate wrong-footing. Stakeout seemed like fun as a desperate Ultra Magnus wannabe, but he did kind of buckle under the weight of suddenly having five years of history with Verity which felt a bit convinient.

Dude got to punch a polar bear though.

My main dislike though remains Verity. At least unlike Last Stand there was a reason for her being here due to the already established Data Slug (in the first series she was effectively there because Roche didn't want to draw just robots for five months. Which is understandable but ressurecting a character who had already been sidelined and forgotten about by her creator in an embarrassed way long before he left the main title might not have been the best way of doing it. "At least she's not Jimmy Pink" isn't the best response) and her being older helps avoid the middle aged British Isles Guys Trying To Write American Teenagers problems.

But she's still annoyingly up herself--seriously Verity, have a look around and say again how tough your life has been because of the Transformers--and I'm not really convinced the slug has anything on it that's worse than Tyrest actually turning out to be a crazy man who likes to drill holes in his head and tried to kill half of his entire species. If that didn't destroy all faith in the credibility and worthiness of the Autobot judicial system and their general good standing, then I'm not sure what will.

It could perhaps have done with a stronger cliffhanger as well, "It's the Wreckers!" in a book called Sins of the Wreckers can't help but be a bit underwhelming, even if "We're here to help" was nice.

Still, overall, a very nice mysterious start.



Oh, and you want to hear my mad Prowl theory?


Kup is actually Prowl (or at least the important bits of him) wearing the Kup Pretender shell suit thing. Hence him knowing the codes and how Prowl thinks. The Prowl scene in the issue was him hidden deep within a copy of Kup's personality being tormented by his own demons.

As to why he's hiding or who he's hiding from...

That's exhausting my insane speculation.

(As for Verity's illness/link with Stakeout... surely not the Headmaster process?)
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

with the later being enough to raise the near-dead (cheesy, but it worked)
As fuel to your Kup-is-Prowl theory, looks to me like Springer was not in a coma but was deliberately put on ice. He wakes up at the sound of the voice of the guy who can open Prowl's doors at a touch? The guy whose body Prowl can take control of whenever he wishes? Nothing miraculous about that awakening.

I've got lots of thoughts on this but I need to save them for later. This was great, surprisingly low-key and the art was utterly stonking. Worth the five year wait.
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Post by Unicron »

inflatable dalek wrote:Before we did into the plot itself, a dull continuity thing. Where do we think this fits in with Ex-RID?
The Wiki pegs it as between 44 and 45
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Post by Patapsco »

inflatable dalek wrote:
Oh, and you want to hear my mad Prowl theory?


Kup is actually Prowl (or at least the important bits of him) wearing the Kup Pretender shell suit thing. Hence him knowing the codes and how Prowl thinks. The Prowl scene in the issue was him hidden deep within a copy of Kup's personality being tormented by his own demons.

As to why he's hiding or who he's hiding from...

That's exhausting my insane speculation.

(As for Verity's illness/link with Stakeout... surely not the Headmaster process?)
Didn't Perceptor and Brainstorm install some new personality routines in Kup when he underwent the pretender process so Prowl could use Kup as a way to get Prime to end the war? Wouldn't surprise me that he put a few more things in there or some sort of link there too
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Post by zigzagger »

Certainly more low key than their last outing, but a pleasant start.

Just some notes for now:

It's not entirely clear where the story is going yet as the pieces are still being set, or quiiiiite what the urgency is here, but there's more than enough intrigue to sustain me.

It's been five-ish years (holy ****, has it really been that long?), so seeing how the Wreckers have been managing during quasi-peacetime feels perfectly justified to me.

Roadbuster and Impactor coping with obsolescence was bittersweet, and I've loooong come to the conclusion that Nick Roche is the only person that can do Kup justice.

I also agree that there was nothing miraculous about Springer's awakening, for pretty much all the reasons Terome and Dalek stated. Arcee's skepticism only helps to support this theory too.

Speaking of which, some decent character salvaging with Arcee (kind of what it is, isn't it?). She'll fit the tone of the series well enough, I think.

I would agree that Hubcap felt slightly like an Ironfist proxy, in spite of not being too terribly impressed by Impactor ("I'm not one of them"). Pretty funny, that scene.

And he somehow manages to be far more awkward than Ironfist ever was. Then again, the nervous stammering is probably a clever ruse, a big floppy red herring. Still, it's wonderful to see that someone actually remembers who he is, so I'm game for some Hubcap appreciation.

I'm quite liking Roche's art here. It's highly expressive as always, sure, but there's a smarter use of space. Not a whole lot of 'bots hunching down to fit into a panel. The 'penciled' looked and leaner characters is also reminiscent to his work in Spotlight: Kup, but much, much cleaner.


Between this and the mood whiplash that was MTMTE #47, I'm still gathering my thoughts. More ramblings to come, I hope.
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Post by Warcry »

This was not at all what I expected, though I'd say that's a good thing.

First off, re: Impactor...shouldn't he, you know, be in jail? Grimlock apparently still needs to serve his time, so why does ol' harpoon hand get off scot-free? He's hanging out on Debris, so it's not like he's in hiding or anything.
inflatable dalek wrote:Let's talk art first. Roche is trying something different here, but it's not that Don style thing of "I went away and didn't want to come back so I'M STICKING MOVIE FACES ON CHARACTER DESIGNS THAT DON'T SUIT THEM YOU BASTARDS", it's a more pencil-ey-sketchy-(? I don't know, I'm not an artist) look that, once you get past the "Is this Roche?" block actually works very well. And it's a smart move as well, Roche basically defined the current "Look" of IDW when he came up with the character designs for DoOP and MTMTE that the other artists have stuck to for the last four years, he needed something fresh here for the book to stand out.
Is it really all that new or different, though? If anything it seems like a throwback to Marvel-style art. Either way, I really liked it! I've never been a huge fan of Roche's pencils before, but this time around I think the art looks beautiful.
inflatable dalek wrote:Of the new Autobots, Hubcap felt a bit of an Ironfist proxy, but I suspect that's deliberate wrong-footing. Stakeout seemed like fun as a desperate Ultra Magnus wannabe, but he did kind of buckle under the weight of suddenly having five years of history with Verity which felt a bit convinient.
Maybe I'm letting my own history with the character cloud my view of him here (I used him for ages in the site's RPG as a comic relief petty criminal) but I thought it pretty obvious that Hubcap had a nefarious streak to him. The line about how he got himself assigned to Debris so that he could have access to the communications equipment just screamed "up to no good!"

Stakeout seems interesting so far, but the close relationship that he's got with Verity does seem a bit like cheating to me. Not for its' own sake, but because I don't think we've ever seen a human and a Transformer actually build a friendship in this universe. It would have been great to see them become friends rather than be tossed into it after it's already established.
inflatable dalek wrote:Kup is actually Prowl (or at least the important bits of him) wearing the Kup Pretender shell suit thing. Hence him knowing the codes and how Prowl thinks. The Prowl scene in the issue was him hidden deep within a copy of Kup's personality being tormented by his own demons.
Well, we do know that there's a "part" of Prowl inside Kup's head. We never really established just how much, or how deep that connection runs. I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility that Prowl could transfer himself there if things got tough, but I think it's just as likely that he coded in a "in case of emergency, break glass" sort of compulsion that would make Kup come looking, just in case a scenario like this played out.

Though that brings me to me biggest complaint about the story so far, which can basically be boiled down to: **** IDW Prowl. **** him with a rusty chainsaw. The character has become so tired and hackneyed that I just wish he would go away and stay gone. The story seems to be building up to another "oh, Prowl's done something evil!" reveal and I just can't bring myself to care about his newest atrocity, whatever it may be. He's turned into Dreamwave Shockwave, "secretly" behind everything, and he never gets his comeuppance because the writers have (so far) been unwilling to deal with just how abhorrent they've made him (he really should still be in jail for what he did in Combiner Wars, or at the very least stripped of his rank and authority for it, but no).

The sad thing is that the monster he's become is sort of Roche's own fault. In AHM 15 he wrote the character to be morally ambiguous, which was great. But subsequent writers have just piled on, making him do more and more awful things until the original "good guy who does bad things for the cause" idea was overwhelmed entirely. There's nothing ambiguous about Prowl these days. He's a stock villain whose time has passed, and if this series does away with him nothing would make me happier.

And those of you like ziggy who know how much I love Prowl will know how hard it is for me to say that.
zigzagger wrote:It's been five-ish years (holy ****, has it really been that long?), so seeing how the Wreckers have been managing during quasi-peacetime feels perfectly justified to me.
It only feels like a few months. :(

I don't think I've been as hyped for any other fiction since then, which is probably why it feels so fresh after so long. Here's hoping this series will live up to the first!
zigzagger wrote:I also agree that there was nothing miraculous about Springer's awakening, for pretty much all the reasons Terome and Dalek stated. Arcee's skepticism only helps to support this theory too.
Yeah. I immediately wondered if there was actually nothing wrong with him at all, but Prowl had him put on ice just to make his own life easier. Obviously he knew that it would be trivial for Springer to be brought back online when he needed him, because he's not the type to leave his emergency messages unedited for five years while his designated saviour is on death's door.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote: First off, re: Impactor...shouldn't he, you know, be in jail? Grimlock apparently still needs to serve his time, so why does ol' harpoon hand get off scot-free? He's hanging out on Debris, so it's not like he's in hiding or anything.
He was pardoned at the end of Last Stand for services rendered, hence him going off with Guzzle. Grimlock is still officially an escapee, though how reliable Fort Max would be on that score is open to debate, he'd probably try to kill Impactor as well.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote:He was pardoned at the end of Last Stand for services rendered, hence him going off with Guzzle. Grimlock is still officially an escapee, though how reliable Fort Max would be on that score is open to debate, he'd probably try to kill Impactor as well.
Was he? I'd thought they just went "screw this, we're out of here" and took off. Obviously I need to reread the first series. :)

You'd think being tortured for several years would earn Grimlock a pardon too, especially since his crime was orders of magnitude smaller than what Impactor did. But then we've clearly seen how screwed up the Transformers' criminal justice system is, so...

And like you say, Fort Max would probably flip out on Impactor too.
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Post by Denyer »

Warcry wrote:It would have been great to see them become friends rather than be tossed into it after it's already established.
Yeah. I'd have read RID if it'd been that.

Springer plus Kup and codes... could definitely see Prowl's captivity being mental rather than physical and all three of those events closely linked. Maybe Roche will even manage to redeem Prowl from the dross of the last few years.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote:Was he? I'd thought they just went "screw this, we're out of here" and took off. Obviously I need to reread the first series. :)
Yeah, it's established in the last chat between Magnus (and why hasn't he followed up on the data slug he gave Prowl actually?) and Prowl.
You'd think being tortured for several years would earn Grimlock a pardon too, especially since his crime was orders of magnitude smaller than what Impactor did. But then we've clearly seen how screwed up the Transformers' criminal justice system is, so...
Up till last issue only the Scavengers knew what had happened to Grimlock though, as far as everyone else is concerned he was just missing.
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, it's established in the last chat between Magnus (and why hasn't he followed up on the data slug he gave Prowl actually?) and Prowl.
Too busy auditing doorframes, obviously. He's got to tackle these things in order of priority, you know.
inflatable dalek wrote:Up till last issue only the Scavengers knew what had happened to Grimlock though, as far as everyone else is concerned he was just missing.
I was only thinking of what he went through in G9 while Overlord was in charge, actually, which the Wreckers did hear about. Being locked up and forced to watch while his fellow Autobots were killed, that sort of thing.

What was Grimlock actually guilty of, anyway? My memory is foggy but I thought the main reason the Dinobots were even listed as "wanted" to begin with was because everyone thought they had deserted when they'd gotten lost on their unauthorized mission to kill Shockwave.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote:
What was Grimlock actually guilty of, anyway? My memory is foggy but I thought the main reason the Dinobots were even listed as "wanted" to begin with was because everyone thought they had deserted when they'd gotten lost on their unauthorized mission to kill Shockwave.
I think they actually did desert in order to go after Shockwave (in that they were supposed to be somewhere else and doing something else), it just wound up for being for longer than they thought. I think teaming up with the Monsterbots was also a no-no.

Grimlock did get the others a pardon though in exchange for taking a jail term himself, so it's not unreasonable Impactor would get the same. You know, back when we had a half-sane Duly Appointed Enforcer.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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Post by Terome »

I really liked how Impactor was just there, hanging out. I'd assumed that his adventures with Guzzle would take him far away and that recruiting him would be a plot point. But of course he can't get rid of his old habits. He probably would be arrested if Fort Max was useful. Actually, Fort Max is probably Impactor's biggest fan.
Denyer: could definitely see Prowl's captivity being mental rather than physical
Hey, didn't think of that. The one eye and physical damage might say otherwise but that could easily be a red herring.

Re: Warcry: I also hope that this is Prowl's last outing. He's mined out completely as a character now. Roche should be the one to put him out of his misery.

Burcham has really learned some good lessons on colouring - there's none of the unnecessary flashes and glows here. It was a weirdly big relief to finally see some eyes that aren't glowing like searchlights.
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