Hey all, Crooker’s here with another review for Skybound’s Void Rivals #17 by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici. Did you get here from my Transformers review? I am also dropping it today. Did you? Yes, no, maybe so? Anywho, speaking of Transformers, this is a pretty lore-dense outing in that regard… so let’s talk about it.
Okay, wow, first of all. Quite a lore dump and quite a deep cut of a pull on Kirkman’s part. I’ll give you this, Robert, nobody can accuse you of being a casual, that’s for damn sure. This issue takes a more or less nameless character, the green female robot “Beta” from the Transformers season 3 episode “Forever Is a Long Time Coming,” and reveals HER as the mysterious Zerta Trion, friend to famous Alpha Trion (maybe “Beta Trion” would have sounded too silly? I dunno).
Never heard of it, or her? Wouldn’t blame you, season 3 is not the most popular even amongst the hardcorest of the hardcore Transformers G1 die hards, further proving Robert Kirkman is a complete madman and exactly my kinda guy. This is such a shock of a pull that I’m honestly surprised I didn’t see it coming. I mean, it was all leading to a deep-cut Season 3 reference, and I know that’s been this book’s entire deal so far. Regardless, I adore it, taking a basically nothing character and reshaping them into something brand new and cool is so awesome. Speaking of.
Credit: Skybound
The new stuff is where it really gets good. Goliant is a completely new idea, as far as I can tell, a very Unicron-esque being known for being trapped in a black hole’s singularity for millions of years and the key to the Sacred Ring’s entire society. It’s a familiar notion that lets the book play with the idea of a Galactus-type destroyer much in the same way Unicron is, but without wasting such an important and iconic franchise villain this early into the canon’s life cycle.
That’s pretty clever and kind of feels like a no-brainer. This IS a Hasbro (mostly Transformers) universe, and the number of big cosmic-level bad guys is pretty low. In general, Transformers has never had a very diverse pool of bad guys to play around with outside of bigger and worse robots, so while this has that familiar flavor, it offers potential for new ideas, too, especially with the Void Rivals original characters being integral to the whole deal.
Credit: Skybound
The art is great as usual obviously, and I really enjoyed the flashbacks that really did a good job in replicating that G1 cartoon style and general vibe. Lorzeno De Felici has a great command of mood and tone that helps sell the gravitas of the reveals we’re getting. The framing of Solila and Darak’s respective confrontations with their authority figures as they get the full picture are both really cool. Oh yeah, did you guys see they’re getting toys soon? Rad.
So, Void Rivals #17. Pretty good! If you’ve been digging the slowly budding lore connections between the Ring and Cybertron, you’ll love this issue as much as I did however, if you DON’T love the fact that this book didn’t turn out to be as much of a standalone experience as you may have thought… uuh, sorry, I guess. That’s a criticism I see a lot for this book, actually, and while I do love the connections to Transformers and other things, I can understand the other side of that coin. I think the book’s original elements outside Transformers are pretty cool and more than enough to carry things, but the connections are part of the fun. I guess your mileage may vary.
Anyway, it is a good book, and check out my Transformers review, also out today, if you haven’t! See ya next month.
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