3 out of 5

A much more informed review can be found on the tformers site, versus the following, which is written by a goober affectionately referred to as ‘me,’ who’s still getting his feet’s wet in this whole ‘formers universe.

But: It seems our end conclusion is the same: That this feels like a somewhat hasty wrap-up to the main Transformers series, necessitated by the IDW crossover Revolution event (…what’s that, a company-wide crossover fucking up the ongoing titles it touches?  Shock!).  However, to writer John Barber’s credit, not only does he keep the deep mythology-waters navigable for relative new T-formers noobs like myself, he also keeps the series, in general, above water, despite the various plotlines and quick resolution to what was apparently, at some point (per some info in that linked review) going to be a much larger storyline.

I can’t even begin to summarize much of what’s going on here beyond the ‘titans return’ subtitle, but in the wake of Optimus proclaiming his Prime position and finding his I’ll protect y’all’ claims questioned by the humans – and G.I. Joe, the fomenting battle with which seems to be the focus of revolution and gets cut to here every few pages – a new wrinkle in the Titans / Earth history suddenly manifests, space-bridges Optimus and Soundwave away to do some several-page expositing to explain stuff that probably would have been scripted over several issues (during which Soundwave gets pseudo-killed and resurrected, also seeming like a likely several-issue plot beat candidate, compressed here).  It reeks very much of getting-it-done, as this is the scheduled last issue of the series before it re-boots as a different book post-Revolution, but again, hasty though it be, its a smooth a process as possible, thanks to Barber.

Livio Ramondelli’s art is a strange beast.  The ‘Formers are recognizable but his perspectives and framing are all off, making the scope of battles very hard to follow, and even dialogue scenes a bit confusing, requiring mapping balloon tails to the speaker to figure out who’s saying what – meaning that the art doesn’t naturally suggest a focus.  The simplistic (and very rough) human artwork suggests that Livio’s art just might not be all that detailed in general, which colorist Carlos Guzman then tries to gussy up with computer colors, which unfortunately just makes the pages very glossy and messy looking.  I don’t mean to make the art out to be worse than it is, but it’s definitely hard to follow at points, and not very dynamic at others.

While I remain eternally confused as to the Why of crossovers (seriously, does anyone genuinely like them at this point, decades past their novelty and so clearly just bids for collect ’em all dollars?), whether owing to Barber’s direct involvement with this year’s event or solely to his writing skills, he navigates the (for now) close of his Transformers title to an acceptable, if exposition-heavy, conclusion.