THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers Bumblebee #3: The Gift Horse
Reviewed by Blackjack

"Bumblebee's state hasn't changed."
A complete waste of twenty pages. The art is so bad on so many counts. They actually block-coloured everybody bar Omega Supreme on the first scene where the Autobots appeared. Chee can’t draw human faces at all, and his art really, really, really needs an inker to go over them. Pat Lee at least had a proper colourist team to make his art look presentable. It looks like a bunch of kids drew them and coloured them with blunt crayons.

As far as the story goes, it’s banal. Heck, it's like a dirge. Doesn’t have the well-written script of the past two issues. Two of the more interesting side characters, Blurr and Scavenger, had been completely put aside, which is a shame. Even Skywarp and Ratchet have turned dull. The discussion via text between Ratchet, Bumblebee and Wheeljack are superfluously long-winded, and it’s a bore to read them at all. Even Zander’s sole strength, namely his monologues, are sub-par this issue. Wheeljack is getting snarkier and more childish with his tantrums. Oh, and another ‘German car’ joke in the span of two issues. Yes, he turns into a VW. We get it. Oh, and Zander Cannon really has a thing with wacky human names, doesn’t he? Klonowski, Colonel Gordon Hori-something, and now Sanjay Balooney.

Ultimately, the character who suffers the most this issue is Bumblebee. Instead of the unsure Autobot leader who’s trying to redeem his mistakes that we saw last two issues, instead of the guy who’s ready to turn Blurr to Skywatch, he’s turned into the brainless emo twat we saw in AHM 16. He’s two steps from abandoning his friends just because he’s lying to a little girl. Lying to a little girl. The issue’s made worse with the completely rubbish [i]deus ex machina[i] of a human-made device. First, the Immobilizer Badges, then, this kill switch control board. Which somehow a highly advanced alien race that can make space bridges and fascimiles and Pretenders couldn’t crack in under fifteen minutes. And just look at the ‘Goofs’ section for more massive plot holes. Complete crap.




The title is a reference to the Greek myth of the Trojan Horse. In context of the story I suppose it’s referring to the little girl.



Blurr is missing, when he could’ve helped Bumblebee steal the control board.

Apparently a human control board can somehow kill transformers not wearing those magical badges when the kill switch is activated. If they have such a powerful weapon, why not use it in the first place?

How do they make such a weapon and not even let the other Skywatch agents know? Surely it would be better than to hand over a kill-all weapon rather than seven measly captured Transformers?

How can Klonowski hack into the Autobot-specific text frequency? It’s not like they’re connected to the internet or something… and the idea of speaking to be monitored is simply daft. What if the Autobots communicate via hand signals or written messages? Huh?

Also, even if he can hack into it undetected, wouldn’t it sound gibberish, like what the 2007 Movie shows? Or are they even talking in English privately?

A top-secret government organization has ‘SKYWATCH PHILIPS BASE’ written in a big sign outside it.

How does Skywarp even know about the control board?

Sanjay Bharlooney, with the decidedly exotic name, is a white man.

On the same note, so is Swati the housekeeper.




Klonowski: “Hey… is that rust? I didn’t think you Autobots got rusty…”

Colonel Gordon: "It seems that Bumblebee has made his bed... and for now, I'm afraid he has to lie in it."

Serena: “Are- are all cars robots? Ha!”
Bumblebee: “No, not all cars are robots, Serena, just special ones. Just… uhh… German ones.”

Bumblebee: “Not sure about this, betraying a friend.”
Wheeljack: “Oh, for spark’s sake, are you serious? You’ve only been friends for 3 hours. If you don’t get this board back to us, we’ll be hunting down our oldest friends until the humans decide we’ve outlived our usefulness.”