THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CLUB AND CONVENTION TRANSFORMERS COMICS

Crossing Over, Part 5
Reviewed by Blackjack

This is really getting old.
Good god, the dialogue here is really, really terrible. Skyfall, landquake and Breakaway's introdumps are banal, repetitive and monotonous. Optimus Prime and Megatron's dialogue are by far the worst of the bunch, though, reading like something from a kid's story, a large contrast from the sometimes undecipherable large words of the candy cane combiner team. The battle between the surface guys are stunted and redundant, while the action with the candy cane combiner team is so boring I had to reread the thing a couple of times to get the gist of things. Even Cliffjumper is duller, with the crazy triggerhappy guy from last issue missing. The energon-pool-whatever-it-is is also uninteresting since it's really not used at all. A terrible boring mess. The winning shot of this, however, is Grimlock. "Grimlock will help you regroup, Decepticons!" -stab, throw- and then at the end, "Megatron, catch!" the only winning grace that stops this from being a rubbish installment.


The talking plot device is called the Caretaker. Apparently, according to its dialogue in this issue and the next, it is sort of the equivalent to the Vector Sigma of the Marvel continuity.

The carving is obviously the combined form of the candy cane dimension hoppers (that's what I'm calling them until someone comes up with a better name). It also reveals that the other two members are repaints of the Energon Barricade mold and the Energon Combaticon helicopter mold. Guy's name would be Nexus Prime, or Nexus Maximus depending if you prefer fiction or the unfortunately-named toy packaging.

Primus is mentioned. Cliffjumper knows who Primus is, reinforcing that this is in the comics continuity where Primus is well known by every Transformer at the end of the series. See goofs.


Long Haul and Hightower are both coloured as Hightower in the first page. I think. Maybe the other Constructicons are miscoloured too, but I'm not really convinced.

The carving of Nexus Prime has the head of the Energon Bruticus, not the remolded head that Nexus Prime would eventually have. Not so much as a goof as working from unfinished designs.

Astrotrain has no face on his single appearance.

Of course, Primus is dead in the Marvel universe, so that bodes ill on the whole 'Primus is the center of the multiverse' concept.