THE REVOLUTION has started

Back Cover Tease:

Explosions rip across Earth—and all sides blame OPTIMUS PRIME and the TRANSFORMERS! G.I.JOE refuses to go quietly—and they assemble heroes big enough to stop the invaders! ACTION MAN and M.A.S.K. fight for humanity— but where do ROM and the MICRONAUTS stand?



From New York Times-bestselling writers Cullen Bunn and John Barber—and superstar-in-the-making artist Fico Ossio—comes a collision of worlds, a clash of past and future, unlike anything that has come before.



The Revolution is here— take a stand!

THE STORY:

MORE:

VISUALS:

SLL-SRRRAK!

DIALOGUE:

WRITING:

Being a little obvious, aren't we...?

OVERALL:

Who should try this?

Casual 80’s childhood guy or gal all grown up:

IDW Transformers Familiars:

IDW GI JOE Familiars:

OTHERS:

It’s the end of September, and! The multi-issue, multi-brand crossover has officially begun. IDW does its best to meet big boys MARVEL and DC on the big kids playground, to crossover in a way that they hope is as popular as the big uns’ special events. Will it make the cut? And should you care enough to pick this up?As the resident staff Joe guy (who also collects TFs and vice versa) who has also lived through the earliest iterations of these brands in the 70's and 80's, it fell to me to try to make some sense of this newest comic-based crossover. Well actually, Va’al’s on a sabbatical and D-MACK already handled TAAO, so that’s why it really fell to me. And that nobody else wanted to do it.Forgive me, I write this after a day of teaching 6th grade.Like the tease says, events have happened and they are BIG! Like BIG BEN and DUKE (GI JOE guys for you TF only folks) and ORE-13 BIG. Mount Everest going boom BIG! The supposed ‘melting’ of several Joes (whom most people probably don’t know) big. VICTORION and WINDBLADE… okay, I am not sure what to say. It’s a lot of action, mostly centered around TRANSFORMERS and GI JOE. Humans’ anxiety level is at an all time high over KING PRIME declaring Earth to be a part of the galactic council (I actually believe there is a lot of hard feelings over the no tech sharing thing from OP’s previous visit)—and all the negative attention being considered ‘galactically relevant’ might bring with it (like, oh, a Transformers’ war coming to Earth wasn’t bad enough before this? C’mon Optimus…).There’s lots of human armed military parties running around now, and it’s hard to keep caught up with who’s really on top. ROM’s book has military types showing up to make trouble for him in his series, that seem to be directly or indirectly ordered by General Joe Colton of G.I. JOE fame, but don’t seem to be regular GI JOE. The EDC was supposedly re-made into a new more global version, and now it appears that GI JOE, yes the real GI.JOE, is now the go to gang of military types to become government sanctioned, even after being shut down by that same government previously, it seems (I’m not good at keeping up with IDW GI JOE). The weird thing is, those EDC types, who know a lot about TRANSFORMERS are still around too, but it doesn't matter because their advice and intelligence is almost always totally ignored. And by the tease, it looks like even G.I. JOE will get superseded or at best aligned with ACTION MAN and MASK, eventually.EDC out!Sadly, MASK does not appear in this issue, except in the same short preview at the end that we have had in several other TRANSFORMERS issues, giving us background info (and showing us Miles Mayhem and a badly dissected Blitzwing), but it becomes pretty obvious how they will become a part of it.So that’s this issue in a nut shell. Ore-13 is blowing up. TRANSFORMERS are blamed for it. GI JOE is tasked by the very anxious world leading U.S. President to take on the TRANSFORMERS—instead of the before created EDC military group.Fico Ossio on the art, colored by Sebastian Cheng, and lettered by the nigh-infamous Tom B. Long, is much better than average. Characters are recognizable as who they should be (if you know some of these obscure JOE folks) and portray their emotions well, although heads and faces are inconsistent; from really nice on MAIN FRAME and BIG BEN profiles and 3/4 shots, to somewhat misshapen, cartoonish, and elongated SCARLETT and JOE COLTON faces and heads on full body action shots, later on. The bots are well-detailed, but the artist shows a little bit of difficulty with them at times, especially in their faces, heads, and ‘ears’, but overall does a commendable, but uneven, job. There are some truly beautiful character portraits in there, but also some that are less than, making you wonder. Finally, the ROM images generally all feel a little off, which might be intentional if a theory I have holds up.THE GREAT!THE GOOD!THE UGLYUMM...HMMMmm...The colors and lighting effects are well done, and work well with the line art to create an overall, visually acceptable product. TRANSFORMERS fans have had to deal with (have learned to appreciate) much ‘worse’ (opinion, of course). Tom B. Long does his normal magic with word bubbles, and sound effects, helping to move us through the action and story well.Character interactions feel pretty natural and help us to better understand their relationships. You can feel the coolness and calm that Optimus Prime is trying very hard to convey. You can hear Scarlett’s frustration and fury, and the military jargon that the JOEs incorporate feels realistic enough (even if the facial expressions and body language sometimes seem a little odd). There are character labels to help all of us identify the JOES, TFs, and others, if we did not already recognize them.My opinion on human and TRANSFORMERS current status of interaction, as it has been written, has already been made public and sadly, has not changed after seeing this. This is the story that we’ve seen on Earth since the first early issues in Marvel G1. Humans just cannot understand Autobots versus Decepticons, and believe in the ‘all must be bad, if some are’ over generalization. Now, I do understand that you’re going to be upset if you believe the robots are just there to fight, steal, and destroy without any care for the native inhabitants, or if you’re thinking you are being misled by liars. But members of the EDC were starting to get it--to understand factions, and yet somehow their ideas and intelligence are mostly ignored. Grr… revenge!!!“That one guy killed several of my good buddies way back when…DESTROY ALL OF THEM!”I do like the idea of DIRE WRAITHs causing a lot of the misunderstandings, for their own ends that we are not entirely sure about. But ROM just showing up and doing what he did, without a word, where as in his own series, he’s been quite the chatty Cathy, making me and probably others believe that some of the events in ROM (this AXIOM dude that started out as a human in armor before ORE 13 was added to make him a superfreak) are most likely meant to drop clues about what may actually be going on here, with the JOES, and several other humans.I’m interested to see what part MASK plays, and VENOM of course, even if we know where they get the tech.In different writing decisions, the GI JOE forces seem ready for immediate action even though they had seemed to be decommissioned (I have to re-read to look for time passage), but don’t seem to know anything about their target. They don’t come equipped with any weapons that do more than annoy the Transformers (except Jazz—why, must everyone always pick on Jazz?). How do you not know what kind of equipment and weapons you will need to even get close to winning a battle with them? Just ignore any EDC intel whatsoever. Now, yes, I do know that Soundwave's Operation Incapacitation took out MAINS’ (GI JOE Main Frame- I actually really dislike that nickname - MAINS- ugh), anti-Soundwave fryer, but before that the JOEs weren't really getting anywhere either. And... they don’t know that ‘the pink one’ uses swords??? What exactly have the GI JOE members been doing lately? And who was in charge of the intel for them? Or was this just sort of a run off half-cocked type mission (which is a bit confusing because Main Frame insists he was working on his Soundwave killing device for months using EDC intel—yes, he was paying attention!)?I’m interested, but with the few pieces we have along with this issue, I really, really, really hope that this overly lengthy and perhaps somewhat overused humans vs.TRANSFORMERs is resolved quickly and that everyone moves past it to work together against the DIRE WRAITHS and bad MICRONAUTS (Baron Karza, et al— who do not appear in this issue either), or some such thing like that (maybe it’s UNICRON!!!!!…)The ORE-13 piece is probably the most interesting thing about the series for me so far, other than the official (finally) admittance/re-imagining that MASK vehicles are TRANSFORMERS based (see the DARK OF THE MOON for the first hints that it was coming, I really liked their Stealth Force attack car/alt modes.). Hasn’t been exactly said…yet, but highly hinted at.Hell yeah! You’d probably get a kick out of this with Transformers, GI JOE, ROM, ACTION MAN and coming up…Micronauts, and MASK! My childhood hath been brought back alive again! If only VISIONARIES would make an appearance! Ore-13 won't mean anything to you, but you don't need it to.You may be a bit more hesitant. 'Our guys' are a focus for sure, but we’re not quite sure how they will come out when this all shakes out, and there was a lot of awesome stuff to like going on before this. They are the elder statesman and most successful comics of the bunch, and readers are not interested in losing the awesome ground that we have gained over recent years. There seem to be inconsistencies with current comic continuity, but not so huge that it can't get cleaned up. AND...we do get this ORE-13 thing to finally seem to finally, finally, shake out in full, so there's that!You may just feel good that GI JOE is coming back, again, but are probably frustrated that GI JOE is coming back, yet again, seemingly rebooted, yet again (I’m not as good and up on my IDW GI JOE). I feel very badly for hardcore JOE fans. I really hope this helps to get them the great fiction that they deserve (and hopefully more of a toy line too).Tons of action! Aliens, robots, human elite army operatives, and end of the planet Earth peril, plus some cool new sophisticated TECHIE vehicles. Recognizable big name characters. Sounds like a try out to me! It reads like the big boys crossovers so far, with satisfactory art, I'd give it a go.The race has begun. The journey and the finish are still in question. When the dust settles, let’s hope we all have the pieces to pick up where our favorites left us wanting more.Generally, I believe that large crossovers are upsetting to most fandoms--or at least wanting to be mostly ignored or believed to be in another continuity. Especially when new directions are promised and ramifications can wreck what one might have been really enjoying in a separate monthly title prior to said crossover. We shall see.TRANSFORMERS FAN SCOREout offor this first issue.