Combiner Wars Windblade 1

[Professor Smooth]

Interested to see where things go from here.

When did Optimus get the Matrix back? And when did it start working again?

[snarl]

I was wondering that too.

But all in all, I thought that was pretty good.

Some of the Prime stuff reminded me a bit of Senior, especially the last panel.

[Metal Vendetta]

It's possible that something happened off-camera at the end of Punishment... Prime whipped out the discoball and made a cryptic reference to it being broken, like Cybertron was, before going off to make a pilgrimage to where he first received it. Maybe we'll get some sort of flashback that explains it, though Rodimus's half was definitely destroyed, I remember Prime giving him grief about it.

I have to say while I like the art generally, it veers into the cartoonish a little. Maybe if Swindle had been reeled back in a little bit, it wouldn't bug me as much but he's basically Animated Swindle in a G1 comic. Eh, I suppose he's appearing alongside Armada Starscream, and whatever bodies the rest of them are in now, but it's a bit jarring alongside gestalt action. I like the expressiveness of the art, I just think dialling it back just a notch would have made it better, more... I'm trying to think of another way to say Roche-like, but I think that's a really good balance and where most of the comic sits. The photoshop blurs also made it feel a little bit Dreamwavey in places :/

The story's got me hooked well enough - I like Starscream being at the centre of everything and properly scheming, I really like that Blackjack is an undercover agent within the combiner and the reappearance of the "Badgeless" secret police is welcome. The rest of it's handled well enough, obviously there's a fair amount of Hasbro-mandated nonsense but it's always fun to meet new Transformer societies even if they do seem to go a bit starry-eyed religious at the mere hint of a Matrix.

[Yaya]

Not nearly as bad as the prior RID stuff. That's because Scott is writing this and not Barber.

But was hoping for more to the Superion vs. Menasor battle than, well, Sup's pretty much just whooping Menasor's arse. I mean it's a toy centered story, so go all out. They've always been sort of combiner 'rivals', but this was pretty much a schalacking.

Hmmm......me thinks it's time for a certain Donny Figs to make his return. Nobody does action like the Don.

[Best First]

Totally time to bring Donny Finkleberg back.