Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Transformers Spotlight: Drift
IDW Comics
McCarthy, Coller & Lafuente
Drift is a character that has gotten a lot of face time in the All Hail Megatron arc from what I understand and he gets his own back-story told here. This one shot shows just how he went from a Decepticon named Deadlock turned man in the middle named Drift to joining up with the Autobots. The issue is a good isolated story that has interesting moments with the toughie, Kup.
The set up is real simple. Drift finds a Decepticon ship that has Autobots held captive. He sneaks on to the ship only to find that Kup and his team have already initiated a rescue. The Decepticons find them and a battle breaks out. Drift is caught in the middle as the ship he finds himself on is the very one he served as second in command on when he was a Decepticon.
The story has moments where it really needs to convince the reader that the Autobots could and would trust Drift despite his background and it does so very well. Kup plays a good role where if he can be convinced of the new Drift, then the rest of the Autobots would have no choice but to trust him as well.
The comic has a lot of story to tell with regard to Drift and loses something as a result in terms of other character’s involvement. For example, one of the Autobots is hit during the battle and eventually Drift’s actions towards that Autobot lead to him being trusted, but the Autobot isn’t really introduced and besides being recognizable, what’s to say he isn’t just a character in the book to serve the purpose of dying?
Another area that struggles with telling a tight story is the lack of pursuit by the Decepticons. At one point Kup and Drift fall through a hole in the floor. It seems to take forever for the Decepticons to find them, assuming they were ever really looking for them. They all knew Drift was there and then went missing, wouldn’t they take a peak at the hole in the floor?
The artwork does a great job with using gray tones to help illustrate the character of Drift. He truly stands in the gray area of the war. At first I struggled with the way Drift looked because I felt he resembled Jetfire way too much but as a read on and saw his face more I began to see just how distinct he is. The art does a good job of making all the background bots unique, which helps as well.
The comic is a fun read. It’s not the tightest story ever but it does help to make Drift a genuinely interesting character. The story could have used some caption boxes to let me know some of the other bots names but beyond that the comic was good and did a good job actually spotlighting Drift and his story.
3 out of 5 geek goggles
