THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CLUB AND CONVENTION TRANSFORMERS COMICS

Balancing Act, Part 1
Reviewed by Blackjack

All he needs is a small bit of assistance to destroy Primus and reign supreme over a multiverse of unending chaos!
Quite a lot happens within a short number of pages. We are introduced to Ramjet and Nemesis Prime, both heralds of Unicron that are, frankly, quite interesting. Nemesis Prime is basically the dumb muscle, while Ramjet is the scary-ass powerful guy with wacky death aura powers. Ramjet trying to recruit the two redshirt Decepticons is a well written scene, and Ramjet is quite a big ham himself during his meeting with Vector Prime, which is a good thing. Vector Prime and Alpha Trion’s conversation piles up the references to G1 material, which sadly means that what should be a story set in the Cybertron universe would be an expy of a G1 universe. Personal preferences aside, I think it is unprofessional to shoehorn every other universe into basically the G1 cartoon. Sentinel Maximus, after his grand introduction, proves to be ineffective, unable to even stand up (even though he can still speak, the lazy bum) while Nemesis brutalizes Alpha Trion. It’s a good installment, but for the sake of the story I do hope that we don’t go at this breakneck pace with character introductions and stuff.


Ramjet and Nemesis Prime are heralds of Unicron that we’ve never seen before. Ramjet’s profile reveals that he was trapped in an alternate dimension, which caused him to spontaneously decay, have the touch of death and have badass-looking speech bubbles. Ramjet’s personal fleet of Mini-Cons are alternate doppelgangers of Skywarp’s Mini-Con Thunderclash and the Air Military Patrol (Thunderwing, Gunbarrel and Terradive). Supplementary material would reveal the Mini-Cons to be soulless troops. Ramjet and the Mini-Cons is a convention exclusive pack, while Nemesis Prime is a repaint of Big Convoy released under the Universe banner some time prior.

Nemesis Prime is an evil clone of an Optimus Prime, and carries with him the Dead Matrix, which does to Primus what the Creation Matrix does to Unicron.

Alpha Trion is based on the G1 character, but this is a Cybertron version of the old coot. Vector Sigma is likewise an imported aspect from G1, in the vein of Cybertron being a multiversal singularity.

Sentinel Maximus come from the (as of the time of writing) unfinished conclusion of 3H’s Wreckers storyline. The conclusion of that storyline was later published by Fun Publications, which reveal that Sentinel Maximus is the combined form of Beast Machines-era characters Primal Prime and Apelinq. Sentinel Maximus has Apelinq’s ability to summon digital weaponry out of nowhere. According to Nemesis, Sentinel Maximus registers as a Matrix bearer even though he doesn’t carry one. Alpha Trion makes use of the space-time distortions caused by the Singularity to pluck Sentinel Maximus from his extradimensional prison.

Iacon and Maccadam’s Old Oil House, both elements of G1 (Maccadam’s is exclusive to the Marvel comics in particular) both appear here.

The generic Jackhammer is heavily based on G1 Rumble and Frenzy, although his jackhammers are on his shoulders rather than replacing his arms.

Vector Prime states that the Cybertron-era Autobots have located one of the planets (presumably the Speed Planet here), so this takes place some time after ‘In the Beginning’, and some time near the first ten or so episodes of Cybertron.

Safeguard has an adorable little sword of his own.

The extent of decay in Ramjet varies from panel to panel, so we’ll attribute it to his crazy properties rather than art goofs.


Thunderwing is block coloured when Vector Prime battles Ramjet, and the Mini-Con that Safeguard attacks is unrecognizable.

The Autobrands on Sentinel Maximus disappears from panel to panel.