In this issue, Starscream does another Starscream. Hey all, your ol’ robot loving pal Crooker back again with a review for Skybound’s Transformers #14 by Daniel Warren Johnson, Jason Howard, and Mike Spicer. This is the second and final part of this mini Starscream arc started last time, where we’re firmly outside flashback and back to the present day. Let’s not waste any more time and get to the good stuff.
Starscream gonna Starscream. You know the drill. Having now been turned into a HISS Tank centaur, our snivelling sycophant has seen better days. This issue takes great pains to give us some fantastic Starscream content; he is completely pitch perfect here. While I felt Johnson hasn’t done a bad job writing him thus far, here in this issue is where he’s REALLY able to show us just how skilled he is at writing this arrogantly lovable bastard. The self-absorbed bravado, the cruelty, the odd acts of mercy where applicable, it all feels quintessentially Starscream. The issue does a good job characterizing the humans who pulled Screamer from the lava Anakin Skywalker style too, and you don’t really feel all that bad for them when he inevitably kills them by the end… well, except the sketch artist and the cat, who seemed compliant and nice enough for him to spare – at his whims, of course. We also get a genuine show of leadership skill and charisma from him, something he very intentionally seemed to lack in the first arc of the book where he failed spectacularly. This go around he seems to have been humbled in a way that mattered for his growth… growth as a maniacal villain perhaps, but still. Progress! Good job, buddy!
Skybound
Starscream is a character who’s always been on the more malleable side, and has in the years since the original cartoon, gained a lot more dimension, especially when it comes to giving him redeeming qualities. I think this arc does a great job placing all of that in the past, showing the slow corruption Megatron instilled within him until he became the arrogant schemer he was back in the source material. I like that approach, showing that while he may have had redeeming qualities, they’ve been long since eroded, and it also serves to add a lot of texture to his hatred of Megatron that casts the first few issues in a new light. Also, Megatron has the power to compel people to violence with mental suggestions, eh? Hm. I wonder who else we’ve seen struggle with that lately….
Skybound
Once again, I really like Jason Howard’s art in this. It’ll be nice to have Corona back next issue, but Howard really proved you could hire on new blood for this run and still feel firmly within the general stylistic range Johnson established and Corona refined. This isn’t one of those cases where a dramatically different kind of artist is brought on for a guest issue, Howard’s style is very much within the right area to maintain stylistic continuity with the previous issues, and is plenty expressive and dynamic in his own way. That’s pretty important for comics in general, but this is a run that is widely praised for it’s artistic chops, so not making people feel alienated by a new guy is vital to keep readers comfortable.
A fairly good issue, and a quick side story that gave us a welcome breather from the “main” action we’ve been following. I really appreciate the book’s commitment to keeping stuff like this firmly in the main ongoing, and not sectioning it off to a four issue miniseries or something, like seasoned comic book readers may expect. It’s nice to take a break once and awhile and see something else going on in the background, don’t you think? Not that Starscream will be comfortable staying behind the scenes for long, anyway…
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