Hey guys, it’s your ol’ pal Crooker back again for another Skybound Transformers review! This is issue #18 with Daniel Warren Johnson’s writing and Jorge Corona’s drawing, as per usual. I’ll admit that my mind has been elsewhere as of late, not much focused on the robots in disguise as usual (Ninja Turtles kinda year for me, you understand), but I’m always happy to take a look at what Skybound’s cookin’ month to month. Let’s get into it.
Much like previous issues, this particular entry juggles a couple of bits of story. The preview pages we got actually don’t lead the issue, and instead, we follow up on Arcee and the gang finding Ultra Magnus and explore that little bit of narrative. We get some good, heartfelt conversational moments between the crew and Magnus, like Carly’s being able to talk down and relate to Magnus’ struggles. It’s excellent stuff, calling back to the first few issues where both she and Spike effectively lost everything so quickly after meeting the Autobots. It is a nice tender moment before all hell breaks loose, with G.I. Joe showing up to attack the Transformers and ending up kidnapping an injured Carly.
We leave off that story there as we get back to the big city battle, the “Combiner War,” if you will. This sequence is pretty much one big, knock-down, drag-out action beat. It’s a pretty good one, but there’s not a lot to really say about that narrative other than “it’s well done and has some good dialogue,” so let’s talk about what we’re REALLY all interested in.
Megatron.
Credit: Skybound
That’s right, Megatron is BACK, fully, in the… flesh. Ahem. Ol’ Megs has finally made his proper debut to the rest of the characters after some short teases in previous issues. He sure makes an impression, especially with wires streaming out of his eyes and down his face, making him look immensely ghoulish. An oddity I’d like to note here is that Megatron appears to share Optimus’ ability to heal wounded Transformers, finally fixing Ravage after nearly 2 years of that subplot hanging in the background. But he does that with a mysterious Matrix of Leadership-shaped purple glow… Hmmm… a Dark Matrix, perhaps? While not a notion unheard of in Transformers… it’s not common either. I’m curious about where we’re going with this.
Credit: Skybound
Art wise, lots of good stuff to pick through here! The intensity of the combiner battle is IMMENSE! Super weighty and destructive, like two skyscraper-sized robots duking it out SHOULD be! Gotta love it. I think with action sequences like this, Corona as effectively surpassed the early sequences set by Johnson in terms of scope and spectacle, what a brawl. And that’s only one part of the issue, all the stuff going on around it and the awesome Shredhead sequence back on Cybertron are all really damn cool. Gonna take a lot to top this one next time, I think.
Credit: Skybound
Skybound’s Transformers #18 is another winner, I’d say. Honestly, if nothing else, I can say that I’m very intrigued by the implications of this issue. I don’t want to speculate too much, nor do I want to be too much of a purist fanboy and start decrying such potential massive deviations in the traditional canon. Change is a good thing, you know? And I think the more wacky ideas we let get thrown at the wall, the more fun this will end up. Safe to say, we’re very much past the “this book is just another soulless nostalgia reboot of the G1 cartoon” allegations from vocal detractors by now.
Oh, also, my review of Void Rivals is out today, so maybe head on over there if you wanna keep up to date on the Energon Universe. See ya, Autobots.
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