Merry Christmas Eve, folks! It’s Crooker here, and the holidays aren’t gonna stop me from chatting new Energon Universe comics. Here we have Void Rivals #25, by Robert Kirkman and Andrei Bressan! The start of the Quintesson War, right here, right now!
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For what it is, this issue is doing a lot of what you’d expect from the first issue of say, an event comic. All seems more or less normal (even if “normal” on the Sacred Ring is anything but) when an intervening event sets off a chain reaction that gets all parties involved. This is to say, it’s the setup issue, and as such, it does its job well enough. I like how we get the inciting incident almost right away, with the waves of it spreading out slowly as we hop from character to character, scene to scene, as they all slowly hear about this mysterious threat that’s popped up out of nowhere. The moment we start to learn more, jump to the next scene! It’s effective, building a lot of anticipation for the inevitable full reveal of the Quints themselves.
Of course, I would be remiss not to point out that we’ve already seen the Quintessons a number of times in this very book alone, not even mentioning everything we learned about them via flashbacks over in Transformers. So, the impact of trying to hide them away is kind of muffled to a degree. It works better if this is a jumping on point for a new reader, one who may not be as familiar with what the hell a “Quintesson” even is anyway. It’s a double-edged sword, is what I’m driving it. Not that good effort shouldn’t be put into building tension, but it would have hit just a bit harder if we as readers weren’t already privy to what’s going on.
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I like the smaller character moments we get, especially the one with Handroid and Darak, which really helps crystalize their very Luke/Artoo-like dynamic (or Han/Threepio, take your pick). Darak has always felt like a Star Wars character to me, and the Handroids fit that idea very well. I have some friends who would be very annoyed with me if I didn’t point out a strong resemblance to the X-Wing pilots and their droids of Star Wars’ expanded material. The revelation that Darak has an uncle is also a short and fun little moment, and I like that we’re getting a bit more into the lore and hierarchy, which has at times felt a bit understated next to the Transformers connections.
Bressan’s art is great, still feeling like it’s in that exact sweet spot of “Saturday morning action cartoon with a bit more detail” that Void Rivals has been really great at maintaining a tight consistency with. The double page spread of the Quint ship is the standout here, with some really awe-inspiring scale to remind you of just how friggin’ BIG all the Transformers stuff is to us lowly, 5-7 foot humanoids. Really great opening action scene too, great all around.
Void Rivals #25 is a good start to something hopefully spectacular. If there’s one thing I know Kirkman is good at, it’s mass destruction, and regular, albeit Star Warsy, humans vs. a full scale Quintesson invasion sounds like the makings of something explosively huge, potentially even on the level of DWJ’s brutal and devastating look at robots fighting among a human population. While I do think that maybe all the suspense would perhaps be better utilized than by trying to hide an enemy we already know, I can’t deny it’s still extremely well executed, so I guess that’s just a matter of perspective.
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