IDW - Rom: Dire Wraiths #1

Writer: Chris Ryall

Main Story Title: One Small Step for Dire Wraith-Kind, Part 1

Side Story Title: One Small Step for a Spaceknight, Part 1

Main Story Artist: Luca Pizzari

Main Story Colourist: Jim Boswell

Side Story Artist: Guy Dorian Sr. & Sal Buscema

Side Story Colourist: Ross Campbell

Letterer: Shawn Lee

Editor: David Mariotte

Main Story Plot

It's July of 1969, and the Apollo 11 shuttle is heading to the Moon to make it's passengers famous as the first men to walk on the Moon. The crew go into radio silence with Earth and make contact with their companion team, the crew of a orbital base designed to watch the Earth for alien threats, who they are planning to meet with on this mission. 

Unknown to either team however, there is a third faction on the Moon, some members of the evil alien species, the Dire Wraiths, who have been stranded there following a portal (from the side story). They notice the landing module and decide to make their move, they head towards the landed astronauts, whilst one of the Mystics heads to the newly arrived shuttle belonging to Adventure-One, the second Moon team.

On  Earth, NASA begin to get worried about the unexpectedly extended radio silence with Apollo 11, but chalk it down to a solar flare.

On the Moon, the Apollo Team are taking photos and making the most of their time on the Moon's surface, when they are attacked by the Dire Wraiths, who have jammed the lander's communications.

Four of the Adventure-One Team members head out to meet with the Apollo Team, unaware of the attack, and leave Hank alone in their shuttle, where he is attacked and assimilated by the Mystic Wraith, who drains Hank of his essence and takes on his appearance and memories, and uses his skills to take off and take over Adventure-One's base...

Side Story Plot

On the planet Marn-33 one of the Solstar Knights, Dhorian, has been captured by a group of Dire Wraiths, who intend to kill him, and use his life force to open a portal to Earth, so they can join in with the invasion there. Dhorian manages to kill one of the Mystics, but is killed himself by the Soldiers in revenge.

Two fellow Solstar Knights, Rom and Nikomi are flying nearby and see a signal fired by Dhorian before his death and head to the site, however they are too late as the Wraiths walk through the portal, and leave Dhorian's corpse behind them... 

Characters

NASA

Neil Armstrong

Buzz  Aldrin

Michael Collins

JoAnn Morgan

Kennedy Space Center Crew

Adventure-One

Dr Herman "Hank" Armstrong Killed, Assimilated and Replaced by a Wraith Mystic

Dr Sandra Shore

Dr James Brightside/Dodger

Colonel Anatoli Kiev/Arsenal

Dr Elmo Aubreyson/Scalpel

Dr Martin Flannery/Mixmaster

Dire Wraith

Mystic Aby'Ss

Mystic Sky'Sm

Axlar

Sulor

Third Mystic (Side Story Only) Killed by Dhorian

Third Soldier (Side Story Only)

K'Allor (Mentioned)

Solstar Order

Rom (Side Story Only)

Nikomi (Side Story Only)

Dhorian (Side Story Only) Killed by Wraith Soldiers

Other Human

Rick Ruby/Bulletman (Mentioned)

Mike Power/Atomic Man (Mentioned)

Neil Armstrong's Father (Mentioned)

Ray Bradbury (Mentioned)

Isaac Asimov (Mentioned)

Ralph Ellison (Mentioned)

"The Russians" (Mentioned)

Other

The Inhumanoids (Mentioned)

Notes

• This story marks the return to the original IDW Hasbroverse, although it's a prequel to most of the action in the series
• At this point in history, the Earth already has a load of Dire Wraiths living on it (as they arrived in the 1800's originally) and there should be only Centurion still alive on Earth of the Maximal team he was a part of, so we shouldn't likely see any robots in this series.
• Considering the brief knowledge of Cybertronians existing, it's not too shocking that this universe has an outpost near the Moon monitoring space for aliens. It's very likely that the Adventure-One we see here will eventually become the Skywatch we are introduced to in the main series time line.
• The Adventure-One team are, quite unexpectedly, based on characters from the Inhumanoids franchise. Sandra Shore's name is taken directly from her counterpart there, Herman Armstrong's counterpart went by the nickname of "Herc" instead of "Hank" in the original, and Anatoli Kiev was "Anatoly Kiev", a male character in the original.  The other characters seem to be new characters, but still sport uniforms coloured to match the original series'.
• The Inhumanoids themselves are referenced, as Kiev apparently encountered them in Russia. The Inhumanoids were originally set to appear in issues 4 and 5 of the Sitterson GI Joe series (the one with Skywarp as a team member), but they were replaced with the "Fatal Fluffies" as Hasbro didn't hold the licence to the property any more. It's currently unclear if the rights have been bought back by Hasbro, or if the human character tweaks mentioned before were to accommodate to the property ownership change.
• It's unclear which of the Mystics attacked and assimilated Hank this issue, as they look identical (trust me, I examined both of them in detail and found no visible differences in them, or their personalities)
• This is the first time we properly see a Wraith assimilation, and it confirms that they kill the humans and mimic their appearances, rather than possessing their bodies, something only really hinted at before with their ability to copy Joe Colton, despite his survival. It does bring to question how Camilla ended up fusing with a Wraith though...
• Amongst the Wraiths we see in the Side Story are 3 Soldiers, and 3 Mystics, one Mystic is killed during the story, but the third soldier isn't present in the main story...did he die on the way to the Moon, or is he still on the previous planetoid?
• We keep hearing mention of a "K'Allor" in a god-like fashion. Could this be the real name for the Wraith-God "The Presence"?

The Best and Worst of the IDW Hasbroverse!

So, this post may get me a bit of hate, but with the conclusion of the current IDW Hasbroverse, and the upcoming reboot, I thought I would have some fun and talk about what I feel were the best and worst stories from this line.

Here's a few ground rules for my list:

• Only comics from the confirmed IDW Hasbroverse will be included, so nothing from the Movie comics, the alternate universe stories or even Clue (since there's no evidence in story for it to be in continuity)
• Only single issues, mini-series or multi-part stories will be included. So I cannot say "All the Wreckers comics" or "the entirety of All Hail Megatron", but I can select an entire Mini-series, or a storyline clearly marked out with parts or chapters.
• I have decided to limit both lists to 10 entries each, so there are many on both lists that could have been included, but this would go on forever otherwise!
• This is my own personal opinion, so if any of these choices offend you or upset you, just remember that these are my choices, and I will try to explain them. If you feel strongly about my opinions, please leave a comment below, or even make your own list!

THE BEST

#10 - Transformers Holiday Special

The Transformers Holiday Special is, as the title may suggest, is a special issue released around Christmas, with stories loosely based around the time. In "Choose Me" Starscream wants to force the population of Cybertron to give him gifts of adoration, but it goes wrong. In "Silent Light" the crew of the Lost Light need to prepare for a journey through a dangerous region of space and antics ensue! Finally in "The Thirteenth Day of Christmas" Thundercracker has written a Christmas story for Marissa and Ayana to enjoy.

Of the three stories, only Silent Light ever gets directly reference again, so it feels a bit like filler in the long run.

#9 - Rom vs Transformers: Shining Armor Mini-series

I love Transformers, and I love the Rom franchise so far. This was a no-brainer to go on the list for me.

Shining Armor is set about 200 years ago and follows a young Cybertronian named Stardrive being found and raised by the Solstar Order, eventually coming across the Cybertronian war and having to decide where her true future lies.

This series features great artwork and further development of the Solstar Order and their role in the universe.

#8 - More Than Meets The Eye: Revolution

MTMTE: Revolution is, as you can guess, the MTMTE issue for the Revolution event. Now since the Lost Light is in deep space, and at this point in time the main characters were stranded on Necroworld, they needed an alternative for their part in the event. Enter this!

The Scavengers, a recurring team of Decepticons in the series arrive on Earth for Crankcase to meet with someone he met on the Decepticon's internet and mis-adventures follow! This story is full of jokes and jabs towards the idea of crossover events and even gives us a few great images (like Misfire and Spinister trying to create human holo-avatars)

#7 - Windblade (Volume 1) Mini-series

This was the first story to focus upon the newly fan-designed character, Windblade and pits her in a mystery story trying to discover what Starscream is plotting and even dealing with a murder mystery. The artwork in the series is beautiful and sets up the now staple character of Windblade very well (especially after her "fill in the blanks" appearance in Dark Cybertron)

#6 - Drift Mini-series

Drift, another new character created for the IDW universe gets his own series, showing how he converted from a violent gun wielding Decepticon named Deadlock to a sword-wielding Autobot. This series gives us some great art and visuals, and gives us some much-needed insight into Drift's backstory and beliefs. It also sets up the Circle of Light, who are an important plot-point in the later More Than Meets The Eye series (before being written out in the Lost Light finale)

#5 - More Than Meets the Eye #50-55: The Dying of the Light

The Dying of the Light is the finale to the More Than Meets The Eye series (excluding the Titans Return and Revolution tie-ins) and brings to head most of the plot lines in the series. It gives us a clear answer to whether Megatron has seen the error of his past ways, resolves Skids' whole story-arc, deals with the DJD and even sets up for the plot and finale of the next series, Lost Light amongst many other things.

This entry would be much higher up, but it was severely let down by the Lost Light comic continuation which has somewhat soured the experience in the long-run...

#4 - Optimus Prime #22: Unstopped and Unstoppable

Unstopped and Unstoppable is essentially an extension to the Unicron event, but shows the emotional reactions of the characters being hurt by the destruction of the colonies. This issue quickly acts to bridge the previous "The Falling" storyline and the Unicron finale for the Hasbroverse and does so beautifully.

I genuinely teared up when I saw Rom curled up following the destruction of Elonia, and when Circuit's voice cracks when he is reporting the destruction of most of the other colony worlds, which also includes the reactions of the Autobot colonists!

If you plan to read the Unicron event, I seriously suggest reading Optimus Prime #22-25 for extra context, but this issue is the stand-out of those issues.

#3 - Transformers: Unicron Mini-series

This is the end of the Hasbroverse and features the permanent deaths of hundreds of characters and several established worlds. This series pulls no punches, starting with the destruction of Elonia, the capital of the Solstar Order, a literal paradise of a world, and ends with an all-out battle above and on the planet Earth.

Again, the artwork is amazing, and except for a few continuity bumps or plot holes, I feel it was the perfect way to conclude this chapter of the franchise.

#2 - Last Stand of the Wreckers

Last Stand of the Wreckers follows an Autobot black-ops team try to liberate a captured Autobot prison facility from the insane Decepticon Overlord. Death and gore follow very quickly.

For a long time, this was my favourite Transformers series, which spawned 2 sequel stories and has gained multiple re-releases, often with additional content. This is easily a series that you can recommend to most Transformers fans (unless they are particularly squeamish)

#1 - Optimus Prime #9: The Life of Sideswipe

Oh wow....I love this issue so much. It works in every way possible, the story is strong, the artwork is amazing, and the symbolism is spot-on. This story concludes a sub-plot that began in Transformers #49, about a year earlier, which I will spoil here, as this issue works best if you know the twist. Sideswipe is dying and this is mostly set in a virtual reality fantasy to help him to finally die in peace, aided by his best friends Arcee and Sunstreaker.

When you read this issue, keep a close eye on the backgrounds and you'll notice the clues about Sideswipe's mind-set and even the mirroring of events. When he is angry or in pain the colours and city are dark and grimy, but when he is happy and about to die, everything is bright and clean.

This story also gives us some major progression to Arcee's ongoing story, showing how she can now express her emotions better over the death of someone close to her, which she couldn't with Hardhead and Galvatron.

If you have someone ask you to recommend a Transformers comic to introduce them to the franchise, give them this one.

THE WORST

#10 - Transformers: Continuum

Okay, to start things off, we have something of a joke. This comic was designed to help new readers get into the series, but was filled with so many continuity errors and needless omissions that it was quickly laughed away. Look this comic up on TFWiki to see just what was done wrong and have a good laugh :D

#9 - The New Avengers/Transformers Mini-series

Yeah...this happened and it was in continuity with the IDW universe as well! It is set between the events of Infiltration and Escalation and even had some edits made to the characters and plot to accommodate it (such as Ramjet being put in, instead of the badly injured Starscream).

It is a weird story that due to licensing issues is never really mentioned or referenced again following this story (such as, where are the Avengers during the Decepticon invasion in All Hail Megatron, or during Unicron's attack on the planet?)

It's not a terrible story, but is a major headache when you try to justify it's existence...

#8 - MASK Annual 2017: The Deathstone

Take the pilot episode of the MASK cartoon and throw in some GI Joe characters and a dead Astrotrain, and you have this confusing story. 

I don't really have much more to say about this, except it was very underwhelming and just boring. Maybe it would have worked better for a MASK fan?

#7 - First Strike: GI Joe and MASK

These two issues act as one story for the First Strike event, showing what GI Joe are up to during this event....yeah, not the MASK team, despite the covers and the title, just GI Joe. It was made in anticipation for the majorly ill-fated Scarlett's Strike Force comic series, which kind of tells you all you need to know about it. The artwork was ugly, the story was unintelligible and despite a lot of explosions and noise, nothing really happens.

This story suffered with the same problems as the prior GI Joe comic and Strike Force, where it felt separated from the Hasbroverse, despite being set on Earth, where most of the other stories are set. They barely mention the main storyline happening in First Strike, and focus on a museum theft, to set up for some future aborted plot lines.

#6 - The Transformers #1 (Costa Run): ...For All Mankind

This story launched the start of the post-All Hail Megatron era helmed by Mike Costa, and it had a bad start. The characters were all redesigned to look like hybrids of Movie and G1 designs, which do not mesh well and several characters seem to be out of character or make stupid decisions. Also, this issue ends in the death of Ironhide and Optimus being imprisoned by the Humans. Neither of which are permanent, so were just used to garner interest in the new series (really, these two plot twists were featured in the previews for the series!)

The series does get better starting with the second story-arc and leads to the fun Chaos event, but it just has such a weak beginning that I can't forgive it...

#5 - Bumblebee Mini-series

Another weird choice made in the above Costa Transformers run, was having Bumblebee elected to be the new Autobot leader. This was released during the early years of the Transformers Movies, and so Bumblebee was generally unliked by most fans due to his over-saturation in the franchise, so having him made their leader was very controversial.

This series told the story of his first few decisions as leader and also features his new movie-styled body design, which lasted until the end of the series and spawned a couple of new toys. The artwork was very sketch-like and was basically made to give a reason for Bee to be the new leader, and it didn't work. (FYI, he gets badly injured at the end of the second story-arc and is essentially replaced by Optimus in all but name again)

#4 - Till All Are One #10: The Price of You

Oh wow...I know this one, and the remaining issues on this list will get me a lot of hate, but I can't help it. In general I loved the Till All Are One series, just like the other Windbalde centred stories, but this issue features a disturbing scene that makes me hate it and the characters involved.

Blast Off and the other Combaticons have been rendered somewhat comatose following their recent combination into Bruticus, and so Starscream decides to use this to control them into being his personal enforcers. To do this he makes a deal with Blast Off to alter Onslaught's mind into believing he is in love with the former, so he'll be more complient....AND BLAST OFF IS OKAY WITH THIS!!! WTF?!?!?

What makes this worse is that there is never a real resolution to this decision, when Starscream and his envoy are imprisoned, we see ALL of the Combaticons in jail, so Blast Off is in jail with his victim, and we never see any of them again (except Starscream of course). This is just the creepiest story I've ever read and has so many dark undertones, which has also led to some very disturbing fan-art and slash fics between these two! 

#3 - Transformers vs Visionaries #5: The Curtain

The Transformers vs Visionaries series was very interesting to me, it gave us a view of magic in this universe and gave a real threat to the Cybertronians (despite the threat being easily stopped if the Cybertronains were willing to just squish the organics, or remove the oxygen from the cave they lived in...).

The finale however is utter bullshit, the problems are solved when Galadria uses some healing magic that she has never shown before and that saves both Cybertron and gives plant-life to Cybertron too....great. It just feels like a lazy cop-out ending which could have been resolved with something that made sense.

Also, the series didn't end with Virulina being assassinated by Action Man for killing Kup, so it fails for me on principle :)

#2 - Lost Light #6: This Machine Kills Fascists

The first storyline of Lost Light, the sequel to More Than Meets The Eye, was very good, it explored the alternate Functionist Universe created by accident by Perceptor in the previous series and even sets up the new characters and plots for the series to come. However this issue gives us one majorly bad piece of story-writing...they brought a dead character back from the dead.

Anode somehow uses her Blacksmith abilities to turn some dead Sentio-Metalico into a new body for her long dead friend Lug, and somehow managed to create a new spark for her, using a trace of energy from a flower that the Necrobot had that stored a tiny part of Lug's spark inside...AND LUG WAS ALIVE AGAIN!?!?! 

Before this point, being dead in this continuity was permanent. There were a few exceptions, but those were explained with off-panel healing or the Dead Universe being involved, but when a character is shown fully dead and we see their body, they stay dead.

This issue has a character that has been dead for about 500 years in story, brought back to life as if nothing happened. There are no mental scars or any physical problems, despite her centuries of death or even that a literal trace of her spark was used to revive her. I was expecting her to have a zombie-state storyline in the future, but it never happened.

What is most insulting about this, is that they had to kill off Kaput in the next issue just to stop this from happening again, and NO-ONE ever asks Anode if she can try this with anyone else...like I don't know...Skids? The guy who Nautica was willing to give up anything to revive just a couple of issues later. Such a stupid thing to put in the series just to avoid being criticised for "fridging" a character!

#1 - Lost Light #25: How to Say Goodbye and Mean It Part 2

This is the issue we were waiting for for years, and it was awful!

This issue marks the final issue of More Than Meets The Eye and Lost Light and it just feels like a spiteful story complaining about the series being cancelled and replaced with a new one.

This issue is framed by a flash-forward to Ratchet's funeral, where everyone has had a horrible life, Swerve started and lost a franchise, Rewind is now trapped in his alternate mode, Chromedome has to look after him all the time, Megatron is either in indefinite prison or is dead, Brainstorm is dying and is on constant life support, Rodimus is a drunk and Drift is now a widower, just to name a few.

The present day storyline shows that Prowl has come to take the Lost Light's quantum engines so they can use it to repower New Cybertron, which leads to Rodimus getting a final lap of glory for him and the crew, which leads to them recreating the original accident that created a duplicate Lost Light, hoping they can duplicate themselves again, and continue their adventures in a new universe.

This story is full of very on the nose symbolism for the series ending and how the writer is unhappy with it, such as his OC Rung being erased from the memories of everyone (Despite canon showing that that shouldn't have happened), how everyone in the future is depressed and having bad lives without the Lost Light, the Lost Light being dismantled rather than letting someone else getting their hands on it.

The ending scene, where we see that their plan worked and they were duplicated should have been omitted as that would have left it open to interpretation, and allowed the readers to make their own stories, as the final three words of the series stated "Over to you"....or rather it would have, if the writer didn't remove that because of the reboot.

Overall, this story was a poor and insulting finale to the "meh" series of Lost Light and the fantastic More Than Meets The Eye, especially when the other two IDW finales, Optimus Prime and Unicron were so good!

Just avoid this issue, and pretend the series ended with issue 24, that'll leave you with a better lasting impression on the series.

So that's my list, I hope you enjoyed, or at least didn't hate it too much and let me know what you think about my listing or your own additions to it!

Transformers Trading Card Game

What is it?

So, Hasbro have released a card game for Transformers! If you know me, you know I love both Transformers and card games, so this is the perfect product for me. I figured I'd give my opinions of this game and even how to play (since the rules are a bit hidden on the website).

The game's cards are split into two different kinds, battle cards and character cards. The battle cards (the smaller ones) are placed into a deck of at least 40 cards, and have illustrations from various Transformers comics (so far only from the IDW era). The character cards (the oversized ones) use the same artwork as those used in the Transformers: Legends online card game (at least so far anyway).

The boosters are about twice the size of a normal pack of cards (a Cardfight Vanguard card is given for size comparison above). Inside the packs are two pieces of cardboard, to keep the character cards from bending so easily, and a packet of seven battle cards

In the battle card packet you get four Common cards, two Uncommons, and one Rare. In Wave One, there are 30 Rare cards, 27 Uncommons, and 24 Common cards to collect. Since you can get a total of 30 packs in one booster box it is therefore possible to get one of every battle card in a single box, albeit with loads of commons going spare.

The characters cards however are another story altogether! In Wave One, there are two Super Rare cards, ten Rares, sixteen Uncommon, and twelve Commons, making a total of forty cards, meaning you need at least two boxes to get the complete set....HOWEVER! The Super Rare cards are available in approximately one in every THREE boxes...so....they'll be fun to get!

For me, after 18 booster packs I got a good variety of battle cards, with only a couple of repeated Rares, but my selection of Character cards are a bit more muddled up. I have six Commons, with 2 of those being duplicates, eight Uncommons, with no duplicates, and four Rare, with one duplicate

As well as Wave One, there is also a starter set with four unique character cards, and a selection of battle cards from Wave One. There is also a packet of promotional cards from conventions like Gencon 2018 and hopefully more in the near future. There hasn't been any news of future releases yet, but hopefully there will be soon.

How to play?

If you want some quick guides for how to play, here's a link to the official "how to play" video series, which includes a link to the game rules: Rules here!

I'll give a brief summary of it here, and give some tips and tricks for building your deck/team, which aren't really gone into in the videos linked above.

First off, when you build your battle card deck, you need to use at least 40 cards, and you may have up to 3 copies of any card (regardless of image). Whilst there isn't an upper limit, you should probably keep your deck to as close to 40 cards as possible, so you have a better chance of getting the cards you want.

Your team of Transformers on the opening field, made from the Character cards can also be made of any number of cards, so long as the combined total of stars on the bottom of the alternate mode image do not exceed 25 (ie, you can have two 12 Star characters, or five 5 Star characters on your team). You can either use a lot of low star characters, meaning you get more attacks and effects in total, but have weaker cards, or have fewer characters, but are much more powerful.

When you build your deck/team, take a look at the effects and abilities of the cards to see if you can build any decent strategies, and to make sure you don't get too many dud-cards. Also, keep a track of the colours in the corner, and try to get a good variety of blue, orange and white, so you can get extra attack power and the such during the game itself.

When you build the deck, you should use some card sleeves (standard size, like you would use for MTG or Pokemon) and a deck box to keep the cards together. You are able to get deck boxes for oversized cards, but you could just keep the characters inside a folder, book, or even one of those containers you get with MTG Commander decks (My one, seen below has been decorated with stickers from the Signature Publishing magazine :D)

The game play is very simple, you begin the game with all of your characters alternate mode up and draw the top three cards from your deck for your opening hand. Each turn the player draws the top card of their deck, and can transform one of their untapped characters. You may also play one of each type of card (Action or Upgrade) during that turn. Each character may have only three upgrades active, and only one of each type attached (Armour, Utility or Weapon) at a time, if you play another one, then the earlier one gets scrapped (sent to the discard pile)

The player who goes first may not play any battle cards on their first turn, and the second player may only play one, after that, all other turns are played as described earlier.

The goal of the game is to scrap all of your opponent's characters. The main process to do this is to attack them. To attack, you tap one of your characters and target an opponent's character (if they have a tapped card, then you must attack them first) When you attack, the attacking player reveals the top two cards in their deck, and if there are any orange symbols in the corner, then you add that many symbols to the attacker's power, the defending player does the same, but is going for the blue symbols to add to their defence. If either player reveals a white symbol then you can reveal two more cards, but only once per attack (ie, if you reveal two whites in your attack, then you still only get two more cards, not four). The cards revealed are then sent to the scrap pile.

If the attacker's power is higher than the defender's defence, then the difference is applied to the defender's health (you can keep track of it with counters or dice). One they have used up all their health, they are scrapped and sent to the discard pile.

Unlike with most games, if you use up your deck, you simply shuffle the scrap pile and put it back in the deck zone, meaning that mill-decks are not a thing in this game.

My Thoughts?

Honestly? I love this game (so far). I've only seen cards being sold online so far, here in the UK, but hopefully I'll be able to get some brick and mortar stores selling this soon. This game kind of reminds me of Cradfight Vanguard (my favourite current card game) but also, since it was made by Wizards of the Coast, has a feel of MTG or Pokemon to it as well.

The gameplay is simple, but also has room for a lot of strategy, without it currently having a meta game or any broken mechanics (to my knowledge). Let's hope it stays a fun game, and that future waves get released before long, so we can have some variety in our matches!

If you see me at any events (like TFNation 2019) and want a game, just find me and I'll be happy to play anyone.

Let me know any future updates you'd like to see from this game. Personally, I want some themed sets to be released (like a Lost Light theme), some non-G1 sets (perhaps to help promote upcoming series/movies?) and perhaps a way to bring in combiners (maybe have all five team members being low stars, but they get a power boost if they're all on the field. Perhaps their alternate modes could make up parts of a shared image of their combined form?)

Aubrey Sitterson's GI Joe - A Retrospective

So this is a bit different to my normal format of comic reviews. I decided a while ago that I wanted to give more article-based posts a go, and have been trying to figure out a way to start them off...then all the crap regarding the current IDW Hasbroverse GI Joe series started and I had a subject (hooray!) So this post is not an information piece or in depth analysis on the comics involved, but rather an overview to look at what was done well and what was done badly.

So first off I'll give you a bit of personal background. I am not a GI Joe fan, however I do have a working knowledge on the franchise due to me having to research characters etc for the various Transformers crossovers that we've had over the years. When the Revolution event was going on I made the decision to collect ALL of the Hasbroverse tie in issues and decide based on those which series I would actually continue to read. Of all of them I only decided to pass on GI Joe and MASK, I just found their one-shots to be the least interesting of the series and what I read about the issues when they started just led me to agree with that decision. However I have been collecting the TPB's for both these series (as you can see for GI Joe in the picture above). I made the same decision for First Strike to see if anything had improved (it hadn't) but I figured I would collect the Scarlett's Strike Force series due to it only being a couple of issues long. And that's all there is up to now!

You may be wondering why I am doing a "retrospective" before the series is completed, but to be honest having read issue one of SSF I can pretty much guess how the rest of the story will go, and even if I can't, this series and even storyline will be incomplete due to external issues for the series (more on this later).

So let's get this started and hope it at least makes sense! 

(PS The pictures used here are going to be random scans of "iconic" moments in the series and may not really match the content of that section)

Series Background

First things first, in case anyone reading this doesn't know about this series (and from the sales figures it is possible) I'll give you a bit of background for it.

When Hasbro and IDW decided to work their magic and create a shared universe for Hasbro's various properties under the IDW banner they decided to base it mostly around the existing Transformers comic series, and inserted the GI Joe comics into the continuity by fudging that all the events of the various comics happened in the time between the Transformers leaving Earth for the Chaos event, and returning following Dark Cybertron (a little less than two years). A few Joes started showing up as cameos for the Transformers and Rom comics, but were properly reintroduced in the Revolution event, for which they received a tie-in comic for the event and have made a few extended appearances in the other Hasbro comics including a team led by Talon in Optimus Prime having a regular role, the Joe member Countdown being a Dire Wraith and Beachhead and Grunt wanting revenge on Rom for "killing" Joe Colton in Rom's series, and various appearances from the Joes in the MASK series and finally a Joe named Mayday being a main character in the Revolutionaries series. Along with this, a solo series for GI Joe was launched and lasted for nine issues (excluding specials), which will be mostly covered in this post

Following Revolutionaries the Joes were the co-stars of the next Hasbro event, First Strike, which had them deal with a threat to Cybertron being committed by Joe Colton, their founder, then leading into the planned Scarlett's Strike Force, originally named "GI Joe: Unmasked", designed to be an amalgamation of the GI Joe and MASK series', much like how Rom and the Micronauts have now been merged as well.

Originally SFF/GI Joe: Unmasked was solicited as an ongoing series, which soon changed to an eight-part maxi-series, and then was reported as cancelled for "low sales" following issue three (before the series had even begun). And that's where we are! I will only be talking about the events and characters of the main GI Joe series, and not the event comics, or their appearances in other lines. If people would like me to, then let me know...

The Creative Team

The series has been written by Aubrey Sitterson throughout Revolution-Scarlett's Strike Force, and to put it nicely...he's a controversial figure, and this is one of the things that people blame for the decline of this series. Rather than just using ad-homonyms, I'll just post this screen-cap of one of his most controversial tweets:

Yeah...coming from the writer of a book that is about a patriotic group of military members...this wasn't taken too well. Several GI Joe fan groups refused to post about his work or support it, leading most people to attribute it to the failure of the book, as if people have no interest in following a book by someone who insults people like this, then it will affect sales, leading to IDW/Hasbro to drop the line or the writer at least.

The writing in general is clunky and filled with logic and continuity mistakes (I'll get to those later) with nothing really mattering in the storyline for the grander scheme of things.

Getting onto nicer things, let's talk about the artwork! The art credits for GI Joe: Revolution, and issues 1-4, 6-9 of the main GI Joe series go to Giannis Milogiannis with colours by Lovern Kindierski, and honestly I like the artwork, at first I was a little put off by the simplistic look, but it works pretty well. It just seems a bit out of place to have a relatively simplistic art style going next to the other Hasbroverse titles which have relatively detailed art.

Issue 5 of the main series was covered by Aaron Conley, with colours by Kindierski again. From what I can tell Conley is an alternative cover artist for the series, and I HATE his art style. The characters look ugly, they have weird proportions and all make goofy faces. That is all I will say on this matter.

First Strike: GI Joe and MASK (a two parter story to lead into the planned crossover title) had the art provided by Ilias Kyriazis with colours from Mark Roberts. This style pretty much emulates the art of the main series, but gives a few extra details, which kind of places it in a weird uncanny valley place where it seems to be trying to be simplistic like Giannis' work, but also trying to match the others titles in this universe, which kind of works, but also kind of fails.

Finally the art for Scarlett's Strike Force is covered by Nelson Daniel with colours from Ryan Hill...I don't like this artwork. It's not as bad as Conley's art, but I would describe it as inconsistent. It looks like the artist is trying to emulate the previous artists, but keeps forgetting which one he is emulating so it turns out to be a mess. If I had to give some direction for this stuff, I would say that he is good at wide shots with indistinct details, but HORRIBLE at close ups (just look at Quick Kick below!)

The Plot

Uhhhh....I honestly cannot remember the overall plot to this series, and I literally read it last night for notes! This is a bit of a problem, since in my mind, if you cannot give a basic plot for the series, as their ongoing mission, then the series is messy and confused. 

Just as an example from other IDW comics, Rom's story is that the titular character is on Earth to fight the Dire Wraiths, along the way he finds the planet to be unusual so he investigates, shenanigans ensue! In this series, the Joes just do things just so they can have an action scene.

Okay, here's an attempt to explain the plot of the series:

Following the Revolution, GI Joe are investigating criminal activities on Earth, as well as hunting aliens and remnants of Cobra, along the way they discover the "Fatal Furries" and start to investigate them (neglecting their original goal at that point) after that they discover that Cobra has reformed under the Baroness and try to stop them from stealing some Cobra-themed artefacts from museums, after failing with that they start going after random mutated beasts on Earth and go after Cobra again....That is seriously what I get out of this series!

There are other sub-plots in this series, but most of them either go nowhere and just get forgotten about or they are just nothing plots. Two interesting sub-plots in this series are that Doc Sr is a Dire Wraith, thus his daughter, Doc Jr is a hybrid. However this story is mostly ignored except for in the profile cards after issue seven.

The other interesting plot is Rock 'n Roll having his "inner eye" opened by Crystal Ball, giving him a monstrous form and prophetic dreams. The former is rendered inert by the power of friendship, and the latter was only really introduced in the First Strike tie-ins, and thus will not be resolved before the title has ended.

The Cast

Okay, the cast in this series are a bit of a mixed bag, so I think I'll separate them into two groups: The "Main Characters" and the "Background Characters" as even though there is a lot of named and established characters in this series, a lot of them do pretty much nothing. Some of them are written in character and I can see working in other lines, but a few are just unlikeable or flawed in just too many ways, especially when you know the characters they are based on.

Main Characters

First off, the leader of the Joes is Scarlett, and she is written fine here. She is a strong leader, but has doubts about herself. This is more obvious when written outside of this series, but we can see glimpses of it even here. We see her acting a bit irrational in places in the series, such as when she keeps the Baroness as an illegal prisoner or starts threatening her Joes with brig-time if they question her judgement.

The second-in-commander for the team is Roadblock, who is usually seen as a tough guy who likes to fight, but here, he has been reduced to Scarlett's assistant, whose only real story in the entire line is that he's a secret spy for Duke, a former Joe member, who only really uses this to report Scarlett's illegal entrapment of the Baroness

Rock 'n Roll is a former band groupie who acts as the team's main firearms specialist, but as mentioned above he gains some mystical abilities that give him a bit more character. In the Revolution tie-in he cripples Grand Slam when he mistakes him for a Dire Wraith, which he continues to feel guilty for throughout the series. He develops a partnership with Skywarp and they become close friends by the end of the main story.

Grand Slam is the team's weapon's designer who has been building them more laser-based weapons to help them with the newer alien threats on Earth. As mentioned above he is crippled by Rock 'n Roll at the start of the series, and that is pretty much his character...he just complains in every scene he is in...it is annoying. To be honest I was hoping his storyline would come to introduce the Exo-Suits from Transformers into the franchise again, giving him the ability to walk whilst also being protected from further harm.

Speaking of Transformers, Skywarp is a former Decepticon, who made a deal with the humans to help them if they helped to fix his faulty teleportation drive. In general Skywarp is okay, I only have two problems with him in this series, and only one is important. First is just cosmetic, why is Skywarp a generic fighter jet? The last time we saw him before joining GI Joe, he was in a Cybertronian jet mode, so obviously he rescanned an alternate mode and changed. I am fine with that, my only question is...why didn't he take on a GI Joe franchise vehicle mode? Maybe have him turn into a Cobra vehicle and have that as a source of conflict between the group and play it for laughs. DO SOMETHING WITH IT!!

The second point is more serious though...why do the Joes trust Skywarp? Now for those of you reading this that do not know, I am something of a snob on Transformers trivia and media, and in this continuity, Skywarp was a major player in the Decepticon invasion of Earth from All Hail Megatron. In fact, Skywarp claimed to kill millions of people in China alone. Now even if he was being hyperbolic, shouldn't this be an issue for his new teammates?! In another Hasbro series, More Than Meets The Eye, one of the characters, Cyclonus was on the other side of their final battle on Cybertron and even led an attack that killed most of the staff on an Autobot weapons station. During MTMTE, Cyclonus was disliked and mistrusted throughout the series, but slowly he made friends and alliances, and even proved himself to be trustworthy, over a storyline that is still going on now! Why is Skywarp already forgiven for killing a chunk of humans!?

Quick Kick is an extremely arrogant and sociopathic character in this storyline. His main goal in this series to that he wants to prove that he's better than Snake Eyes, which he shows when about half of issue eight of the series is given to them having a sparring match and Quick Kick wins (by doing some stupid Dragonball style weighted clothes shit). Following that he continues to be arrogant and flaunts his win, until Storm Shadow appears and knocks him out, leading to him now being obsessed with proving that he's better than HIM instead. It's just an endless cycle with him!

Doc, Jr. is the daughter of the original Doc, and is the team's medic. She is revealed to be a natural born Human-Dire Wraith hybrid, but as mentioned above, nothing really happens with that knowledge. She appears to have a mutual attraction with Rock 'n Roll, but I doubt that will be resolved before the end of the series.

Shipwreck runs the Lemuria (formerly the Decepticon warship Nemesis) and also acts as the base's cook, which usually consists of algae and other horrible ingredients. He has gained weight before this series, most likely due to him being more of a behind the scenes character in this series.

Duke appears in the series as a background "villain" for the team as he relieves Scarlett of her illegal prisoners and ends up losing them to Cobra, essentially allowing the new Cobra forces to be formed under a new leader.

Salvo is the first of the new "international" recruits for the team and comes from Samao. She is overweight and likes to use big laser guns instead of traditional weapons. This character caused a bit of controversy in the GI Joe fanbase as she is a reimagining of the 90's character of the same name, however it is not that she is a reimagining that is the problem...it's the given reasons by Sitterson that was the problem. Basically he said that the original character looked like a white supremacist and that he was "problematic" for his looks. Now if he hadn't of said that, and just said this was a new character who just took on the codename, as has happened in the other Hasbro series recently, then no-one would have cared. He just caused a "controversy" for the hell of it. (link to archive of the tweets in question: Here)

Spitfire is the second new recruit, who is a British footballer with a past in the RAF. He uses a flight suit, somewhat akin to Marvel's Vulture and Falcon from the Movies, and doesn't do much else. 

In general I'm fine with Spitfire as a character, but my main issue with him is how he is introduced...it just felt clunky. He gets introduced in an aside scene where he is shown to be a footballer and famous, then again when he gets rid of an IED, then he is just randomly there to save Duke when the Dreadnoks are about to kill him, then he gets invited onto the team.

Would you like me to tell you an easier way for him to have been introduced into the series? Make him an agent for the Action Man Programme...say he was assigned to Duke's team to retrieve Baroness, and have him develop as a character that way, impressing Scarlett to the point that she applies for him to have an official placement on the team with the Action Man Programme. Simple. WHY DIDN'T THAT HAPPEN?!

Okay, onto villains now, there's not many that do much, so don't worry:

Baroness starts off as being an illegal prisoner on the Lemuria, who gets found out about by Roadblock, who informs Duke, and he escorts her to a proper jail After the Dreadnoks rescue her she gets named the new Cobra Commander and basically just orders the others around. She's an okay character and it's a pity we wont see a real resolution to her story here.

Crystal Ball is the mystical expert for the Cobra team and is responsible for Rock getting his own mystical powers and appears to be pulling the strings of the series, despite not really having a position of power of the group.

The Dreadnoks are a biker group led by Zarana and Zandar, who pretty much act as the main "muscle" of this series for the Joes to deal with. They appear to die at the end of the first storyline, but end up alive and well by the end of issue eight...weird

And finally, the VENOM members are brought in as new troops in the First Strike tie in comics, which was literally just so there was SOMETHING MASK related in the crossover, otherwise there was nothing! They end up arrested at the end, and Baroness has no interest in freeing them....yay....

Background Characters

And now for the fun part of the series, the slew of random characters that appear for some important looking reason, only to basically do nothing!

Wild Bill was introduced as a member of Scarlett's team to investigate the Dire Wraiths on Bikini Atoll, but is revealed to be one himself, he dies after a short fight.

Doc, Sr. is the father of the newer Doc, and is in fact a Dire Wraith, he is a friendly one however as he jumped in front of debris from an explosion to protect Grand Slam. He's apparently still alive, but we haven't seen or heard from him since issue 4....I think they dissected him...

Helix and Snake Eyes are two experienced Joes, they go on a solo mission or two to discover the weaknesses to the Fatal Furries, and get sent to the Brig in issue 8, never to be seen from again

Dial Tone is reduced to a receptionist...seriously every scene with her is just her giving a memo to someone else!

Cover Girl likes cars....yup!

Lady Jaye uses electrified staffs to fight with, and Gung-Ho might be gay, he also hates shirts and has laser-powered knuckle dusters

Lifeline is the backup doctor for the team. Stretcher appears to be a nature conservationist.  Deep Six does stuff in the water, Spirit is a tracker and Tunnel Rat seems to use explosives I think? Lift-Ticket appears just to fly the others to the Arctic in SSF, and Matt Trakker joins the team as totally not Gung-Ho's replacement in SSF too.

As for the villains, we have waves of Red Shadow ninjas, Cobranarchists, Dire Wraiths and Fatal Furries as the generic villain cannon-fodder for the earlier issues, with Vipers introduced following the switch to SSF

Dr Mindbender makes a cameo at the end of the Joe series along with Destro, who is strangely on Earth, despite him being on Cybertron during the First Strike event, and is even detained there afterwards. Maybe one of them is a Dire Wraith. Along with Destro, Cesspool is shown as a businessman who works with Cobra, and two new troops are introduced to not do much, Croc Master and Raptor.

Scrap-Iron is brought in to show how the VENOM member's vehicles have been upgraded, whilst Firefly robs the various museums to steal the Cobra artefacts for Baroness to use for her next scheme.

Oddly, the believed to be dead Male Storm Shadow appears at the end of the MASK portion of the First Strike tie-ins just to sucker-punch Quick Kick, then he leaves...I bet this plot will go nowhere too. (This is especially odd since we already have a popular female Storm Shadow in this continuity!)

My Conclusion

Hooray! You made it through my babbling! Now what do I think about this series on the whole? Well...it's a train-wreck! The characters are mostly either unlikeable or just there to be there, and they completely ignore the whole concept of a shared universe. They do not involve anyone from outside their own series in anything.

Just as one example, early in the series Grand Slam and Doc, Sr. are working on a scanner to detect Dire Wraiths. Why don't they ask Rom for help with this? He is known to them, and would even trust them to just copy the Analyzer part of his weapon. The only issue would be that he would probably kill the two Docs for being Wraiths, but even then only Doc, Sr. knew about that at this point in the story.

Other things that would be simple would be my Action Man link for Spitfire, mentioned above, or even just reference other events happening in the world during these events (like the Junkion attack on the world leaders at Autobot City!?!?)

If the writer had of been more professional, or even cared about the product like the other creators in IDW's roster seem to, then this series could have worked, but instead it was doomed to failure from the early days. If I was to choose a successor for the writer's position for this series or whatever comes next for GI Joe, then I would say John Barber of Revolutionaries and Optimus Prime would do great. He has experience with both the Joes and Transformers, and would make this series work fine, if not make it a great series.

So that's my blog on this matter, let me know what you think and give me more topics to discuss in the future!

Byeeee!