The Transformers - Escalation #2

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The Transformers - Escalation #2
By Hervé St-Louis
February 12, 2007 - 23:26

IDW Publishing
Writer(s): Simon Furman
Penciller(s): E.J. Su
Cover Artist(s): Klaus Scherwinski

Trying to recover the dead husk of Sunstreaker and his human passenger, Autobots Jazz and Wheeljack stumble upon a plot bigger than the Autobots ever feared. Are the humans working with the Decepticons to stop the Autobots from protecting planet Earth? And what about the false staged war that Megatron is planning in Lebanon? Could he succeed in pitting humans against humans and conquer the spoils?

Although action-based, this issue feels padded. The entire action is centered on two Autobots retrieving an old comrade. 20 years ago, Furman would have told this story in less than ten pages. The focus on the Autobots is not even fun as Prowl, Jazz and Wheeljack don’t even feel like the originals. And what about Optimus Prime putting humans, whether they are clones or not in danger? I guess this is not my father’s Autobots.

The less we see humans, the better the artwork is. The Transformers look fine, although I would encourage the SU to add so ink to his line work. It seems a bit thin. He does use shadows, but only on background objects and never on Transformers. The colours continue to be poor as the artist spends too much time on soft edges. Robots and Transformers, particularly, always look best with limited and contrasted colour palettes.

7/10