Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Transformers Spotlight: Arcee
IDW Comics
Furman, Milne, Perez & Carter
To be fair, I couldn’t have told you one thing about Arcee prior to reading this issue so at least I know something about her now. She is after something named “Jhiaxus” or basically the one who made her a “her”. She wants revenge at all costs. The issue starts with her trying to be stopped by Ultra Magnus.
It’s at this point I get lost. Ultra Magnus appears to lose an arm in one panel and has it in another one. The art wasn’t clear enough for me to determine if this was a second Autobot or if he just didn’t lose the limb. Magnus gets the best of her and then two other robots appear to watch him take her. I couldn’t figure out who these guys were and who they were ultimately talking to. For a one-shot I would have liked a little more of an obvious plot development.
Magnus drops her off at Fortress Maximus and his penitentiary. There we see all the captured soles, like Ransack, Skyjack and Bludgeon. Some of them had been captured earlier in these stories. It was a nice way to tie some of the other stories in a little bit. We also see that Jetfire is hanging around, which is interesting because he has been seen in a few issues thus far doing different things on different planets. We also find out that the Autobots are tampering with the prisoner’s wiring in an attempt to rehabilitate them.
The Combaticons show up and bust into the jail. Sounds like a jailbreak, eh? Maximus has one last resort: Arcee. He unleashes her. In the end of a good battle, they escape with the Monstructor dudes. Arcee is sent after them.
A very average issue. It shows all the sides of Arcee’s personality. However, the story and the art to go with it is where I have problems. It was very difficult for me to place this story in the overall Transformer arcs. Was this in the past? Is it during Devastation? It was bugging me the whole time I read this.
Also, with the Autobots tampering with the wiring, why would they take all six of the Monstructor’s at the same time to mess around with them? That’s seems risky in the event of a jailbreak. Also, how does a few Combaticons knock out the whole jail? It seems tough to buy.
The art was very hard to follow. Sure, the close-ups of Arcee and her facial expressions were great. You could see the emotions very clearly. Beyond her I couldn’t tell who from who. It was so difficult to follow everything. Also, we are dealing with some fairly fringe Transformers here, it wouldn’t have killed us to get some type of still shots with their names. I couldn’t figure every one out until I hit wikipedia.
The bottom line is I spent more time researching and scratching my head than enjoying this story. I can’t even say it was necessary reading for those that pick up the main series. As far as Spotlights go, they get better than this one and you could probably pass on this one if you stack is already too high and not miss much. If you are dying to know more about Arcee then pick this up.
2 out of 5 geek goggles.
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