Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, folks. This Christmas, I’m given the gift of Hot Rod being on the cover of this book, so go me! Anyways, this is issue #15 of Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici’s Void Rivals. This one is a whopper of lore, so let’s just dig right in; we all got places to be on Christmas.
This issue brings us a lot of new stuff to chew on, so much so I don’t know where to start. I guess the obvious thing to point out is that this is probably the most Transformers this book has gotten so far. We’ve firmly established ourselves here as being smack dab in the middle of a classic G1 cartoon episode, with Quintessons, Hot Rod, and Springer visiting an alien world and the massive new lore drop that is VECTOR THETA!
Now, those of you familiar with Transformers will immediately be like: “Oh shit! Just like that other thing!” And yes, this seems to be exactly what us massive nerds think it is, an adaptation, or maybe more accurately a remix, of the classic Vector Sigma from the G1 cartoon. Something very often associated with Alpha Trion, a character that seems to serve as the inspiration for the unseen “Zerta Trion.” This, the Quintesson’s vague, hushed way of discussing the aforementioned character, and the appearance of that suspiciously legally distinct looking Unicron silhouette a couple of issues ago… hmm!!! Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
The point is, Kirkman is going full nerd on this book now, more than ever, and I’m super happy with that. This is a really fun way to include some beloved lore with a new twist, and it has both newbies and long-term fans in mind. I imagine that this must all seem exciting and somewhat confusing for people who don’t know Transformers. To that, I say, welcome to Cybertron, friends! You’ll fit right in.
Credit: Skybound
Now, the highlight for ME in this issue is my favorite character in Hasbro’s vast IP pockets: Hot Rod! Kirkman’s favourite character (as he told us in an interview quite some time ago), and those who are regular readers of my reviews know to also be MINE as well. And he’s perfect here. This is pretty much the ideal cross-section between the “Hot Rod” persona we see in the seminal and classic Transformers: The Movie and the more responsible, learning-on-his-feet “Rodimus Prime” that he becomes in the subsequent third season of the show.
Season 3 clearly is Kirkman’s biggest influence on the setting and tone of Void Rivals. This isn’t to say our regulars don’t get anything to do with this issue; they do, but the robots are the big pull this time. My boy is even on the cover! I hope we get more of a team-up in the following issues between Team Hot Rod and Darak and Solila.
Credit: Skybound
The art, of course, is great, and Lorenzo does a great job rendering the transformers in a way that feels very true to the G1 cartoon aesthetic. It is a bit rounded and a little less meticulously detailed than DWJ or Jorge Corona, but it still feels like how the Transformers LOOKED in that show. Delpeche’s coloring helps that a lot, too, with the palettes feeling really subtle and almost Star Wars-y in a cinematic kind of way. That might sound like a weird comparison, but if you get it, you get it. I think, given that this is a story about the Transformers sort of intruding on this isolated world, being outsiders, it’s fitting that they manage to look so alien in their relative simplicity compared to other tech in this book.
Credit: Skybound
It’s kind of funny that Void Rivals #15 manages to zig in all the ways that the last issue of Transformers managed to zag, at least for me. Whereas that book was starting to betray a start retreading of a number of well-trodden ideas, this book revives some rather obscure and ill-discussed lore that’s been largely left behind by modern stories and reinvents it, making it feel wholly fresh again.
I hope that Kirkman keeps doing his thing because this Void Rivals is definitely going to start getting a lot more attention from core Transformers fans soon enough. And if you are a Transformers fan who hasn’t read this already, what are you waiting for? GO! GOOOOO!
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