Gold Digger 02

Gold Digger  2 

Summary :

Brittany, Gina and genn  have to find their way out  of the temple, but it's never  quite that simple is it ?

All the major exits  are guarded by  death traps, while the  only  trap free path is guarded  by  the beast of Caerbannog  !  ...Or something similar. 

While the  curse  piles misfortune on and on and with the beast of Caerbannog in hot pursuit, can  the sisters escape with their lives  ?!

...Well this is still an ongoing series  you know  ?

And you can read along by getting issue 2 here

Best way to read it, is to download .  Comic-rack

And install  Ghostscript

Notes :

The beast  of Caerbannog  !!  will be back  !

Credits: Writer \artist : Fred Perry. 

Editor : Ben Dunn.   

Review  :

Gold Digger 2  has one of my favourite covers of the series. 

Not because of  Brittany's  dubious clothing,  but I mostly  like the pose and how she bemusedly  looks at the crab in her hands.

 

We get to a look in to one of Brittany's dreams, which is, uhmm interesting.

And Gina  watches along  helped with Genn's  esp, much to Brittany's disgust. 

I don't blame her.

It once again  reinforces the sister dynamic between the two. But Gina  takes up the bratty  annoying  role,  that's usually reserved for younger sisters. Brittany is the younger one here. 

But the dream on display here, is kinda risqué for a series that  tries to bring the cheese cake  (  and occasional beefcake ) But  also  censors it self  and  doesn't  use swear words.

Its a bit of an odd  dichotomy, because this comic is obviously not aimed at children. 

...Not young children anyway. 

We don't get to see much of the curse as of yet. But Gina explains that it snowballs. It starts off small and escalates, until it becomes so ridiculous, the Hubble chooses their foreheads to crash upon. 

And Brittany's shorts are sagging, which is an early indication of the  curse

and sadly a plot point. 

Off course  after  all the traps have been activated, last issue all exits have a huge amount of traps around them. 

And Genn's magic cant help them. There is only one  exit  that  isn't guarded by  any traps and that's  guarded by a most terrifying  guardian. The worst of them all  ! 

It's also 5 inches tall. 

Naturally  they choose for that  one and things  go as well as  you expect them to be, 

with the guardian being a mouse  !

The mouse guardian that turns out to be fearsome, has NOTHING  to do with the Beast of Caerbannog from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, y'hear  ?!

Nothing  !  *   ( *lie)

Back in the USA, we get another look at the Diggers mansion. 

Take a good look, because while it looks fairly normal here, it wont stay normal like that  for long. 

And a new sub plot  and character as if  the sisters don't have  problems enough as it is. 

It's the high priestess  of  El Dorado, who would have been Strype's partner if he had not chosen one before, becoming king.

Yes how dare he have a free will and a mind of his own, eh  ?

As you can tell, this is not a plot point of a story in general, in any form, I care much for. 

Hopefully Perry  wil do something interesting with it.

Though the priestess  muttering  to her self and  cursing Brittany, for daring to be not home while she lies in wait is amusing. These two pages are mostly  a waste of time and effort. 

Back in Iran, things go from bad to worse. The mouse is trashing them 

and their bad luck escalates  and I didn't notice until now that Nrittany's Nike's  have  ...bunny tails on their ends.  ..I bet  their are pink and white too. 

As if the Monty Python  reference isn't made clear enough, the Digger sisters and Genn turn tail  with a  RUN AWAY  !!!  Not unlike King Arthur and his most valiant knights. 

What follows is ridiculous, hilarious over the top  deranged  and  so very much this comicbook. 

The stairs to  freedom  !! (  ahem  )  prove to be booby trapped or at least not curse proof and collapse. 

The grappling gun fizzles out.

The deamon can throw fireballs  !!!  

The nylon cord, which can carry 3000 pounds snaps. 

As Gina and Brittany fall, Gina activates her  balloon back pack  and it  gets wedged in between  two walkways and bounces them back up. 

Brittany uses the  gun  as a  grapple and they finally get  somewhat save and sound to the other side.

And through it all  they  are remarkably unconcerned about falling to their death they just argue about  their misfortune. Even commenting about how deep this  temple is.

This sequences is ridiculously hilarious, with  fluid action.  In animated from it would be  gorgeous, but even  in comic form it's glorious. 

The curse is already kicking in to effect  and getting worse by the second. 

The sequence after  that one is a bit  more ..so so. 

Mostly because  the  black arms dealers are back again and Nrittany falls flat on her face  because her shorts slipped again. 

The car not starting however and Brittany's  reaction to that, which kick stars the car is what  you could expect  from  a comic that riffs of  cartoon cliché's. But its still funny even if it's expected. 

We also learn that Genn has no true gender and as a shape shifter can be whatever he wants to be. Male, Female, his normal form  or  something more playgirl worthy, 

which kicks Gina's hormones off.

And we  end with  Brittany  getting off another insult,  in the form of "You nerdy basket of raging biological urges  !!!"

...Bit wordy  for Brittany, especially  considering how her personality  becomes  more valley girl as we progress. 

And  it doesn't hold a candle to "Shrimpy nerd based  heap of hormones"   but  its still in the same vein. 

Genn being gender fluid is  only briefly touched upon and  doesn't play much of an role in the stories to come. But its an interesting notion  that shapeshifters don't have any  gender, that's rarely touched upon in any comic. 

Issue 2  is  better then issue 1,  but it doesn't introduce  the new reader to much of anything. You are just expected to pick things up as they go along. 

It's still fast paced, but  lingers a bit too much on the tomb. I don't really care much for tombs  in any sort of  fiction.

Now temples, especially of doom on the other hand  !

I could have done with out the dropping shorts gag or the  black arms dealers again,  but  at least we never get to see them again. 

As things  go by in a breath taking fast pace, you get the feeling that the  24 pages of the comic can barely contain everything Perry wants to tell. 

And this is just  part  2 of a 4 parter. 

Probably a  hold over from the  mini series. Curse actually feels more like a mini series on its own, then  an ongoing.

And maybe it was before Perry decided to go in the monthly ongoing direction. 

Which may explain why a single page, with a hohum storyline was inserted. 

Or maybe I'm just wrong and what we see was always the intent. 

Next:

Grave Digger. 

Sounds lovely doesn't it  ?

Oh and incidentally, yes that is the Thundercats sword of omen that gets  skragged  there 

  

Transformers Spotlight 3 Hot Rod

Transformers Spotlight 3

Hot Rod 

Summary:

Hot rod rides a meteorite down to travel to a moon, with the Decepticon  jail complex  Styx. 

His landing is rough  and  as he floats in and out of unconsciousness, he flashes back  again, to his very  first mission with  team Red Shirt ! ..ahem  To infiltrate the omega bunker and obtain the magnificence. 

The mission naturally goes awry  and team Red Shirt is killed. 

hot Rod manages to  grab the magnificence  and follow his orders, if  it all  went to hell 

get out and hide the  magnificence, leaving Dealer to the Decepticons tender mercies.

Which he did and  has regretted ever since.

Right now, Hot Rod has found that Dealer is still alive and found his location and he is here to get him out. 

He succeeds in that endeavour and later on Hot Rod tries to apologise  to Dealer, but Dealer states that he understands. 

However, later in a secret conversation with Banzaitron, we learn that  dealer double crossed  the  team  and was responsible for everybody's deaths. He is confident that Hot Rod eventually will trust him enough, to tell him where the magnificence has been hidden. 

Banzaitron dubs Dealer, Doubledealer because of his double crossing nature.  

Notes: Released in November  2006  along side Escalation 1.

And one month after Stormbringer  4,  leaving  no month to  go by with out at  least  one  Transformers comic. Even though,  even in this early stage  IDW's  transformers output was  quite prodigious.

All the  characters that are  not  name  characters, might as well be called ensigns, redshirt 1 2 and  3.

As a consequence we never see them again.

Banzaitron  was a  late  G1  Actionmaster.

Transformers that do NOT  transform,  wrap  your head around that. 

Instead their  guns  transform. 

Credits:

Writer : Simon Furman

Artist : Nick Roche

Colors : Liam Shalloo

Letters: Robbie Robbins

Editor : Dan Taylor 

Review :

Well, it was inevitable wasn't it ?

For Hot Rod to get his own spotlight, what I didn't expect was for it to  come so soon as the third  spotlight. 

With Grimlock being Furman's pet character you'd expect him to be one of the  first to get a spotlight, but this is not so. 

In fact, Grimlock's spotlight is 11 issues away. 

And Grimlock  has a remarkably small role to play  in  the IDWverse so far.

What is also surprising is what  kind of a  grim and dark tale, Hot Rod's spotlight is. 

Hot Rod has always been characterised as being reckless and carefree. 

But there is a  dark undercurrent in this tale, that's not the usual for a Rodimus free Hot Rod. 

That's not to say that Hot Rod isn't reckless, far from it. 

The rescue mission on it's own is dangerous, but the way he infiltrates the  planet is  down right insane. 

What else would you call  surfing on a  meteorite and jumping off  just before impact pretending to be space debris  ?

Off course there is the prerequisite flashback, to tell us why Hot Rod  exactly is here  to  make a daring break in and then escape, in a Decepticon penal colony. 

And off course it  features a botched mission. 

And off course its his first.

Genre conventions demand it  ! 

It has to be his first  mission, it can't be any random one, but this is just nit picking.

Unfortunately the characters on display, other then Hot Rod and Dealer, might as well be painted red and called Red Shirt 1, 2 and 3. They don't have much personality  and even  less impact on the story other then to die. 

Which is a bit of a shame,  because Backbeat's robot design isn't half bad. 

But because there characters are virtual unknowns, their deaths have no meaning and do not resonate. We know they are going to die regardless, because Hot Rod tells us,  this mission was a failure. 

If they were  "name" characters and established characters we know from G1, their deaths would have more meaning. 

This is a whole new continuity and there is no need to  push  toys, characters can actually die as we have  seen before and will see again. 

Several Decepticons in Stormbringer 3  look like they have very much died. 

So why the coyness here  ?

Generation 1 and 2  have had  at  least  600  characters  and a lot of them haven't been seen in years. 

Even if they were culled  from any of the Japanese shows, there would stil be fans that recognize them, instead of these faceless nobodies. But that might be going in to  Dreamwave fanwank territory.

It doesn't help that the alt mode of one of them, most likely Download, looks like a  submarine on wheels. 

The botched mission that killed team Red Shirt,  is all about the Magnificence, which looks suspiciously like the pearl of Bahoudin from the  G1 cartoon. 

What it exactly does  or why they want it, is not made clear but the Magnificence will  play a  part of sorts later on .

As perfunctory as the story is so far, it does come with a surprise in that Hot Rod follows orders and abandons his team when it all inevitably  goes wrong and hides  the pearl ...the magnificence, in a location  known only to himself. 

Leaving the only other team member left alive to the Decepticons tender mercies. 

Which is why Hot Rod has been beating himself up over this mission all this time.

Which also brings us back  to the present and the more interesting  part of the spotlight, 

Hot Rod's infiltration missions which is a lot more  tense and interesting, then the demise of team Red Shirt. 

It may seem like I am coming down on this spotlight, but there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

It's just that stories  like this have been done before and there are very few revelations nor surprises

The fact that team Red Shirt are nobodies and that their  deaths  are telegraphed from the start  doesn't do them any favors either.

The fact that Dealer turns out to have double crossed the  team  and sold out to the Decepticons comes less then a revelation and more like the expected story beats. 

Especially if  you  know the character and his actual name.

DOUBLEdealer and then the surprise, what little there is, melts away. 

But all this, does open up an series of  potential storylines, in what exactly is Hot Rod  willing to do to assuage his guilt over Dealer's capture and presumed torment. 

Which is subverted in an interesting way later down the line.  

Speaking of the torment, Dealer doesn't look so hot when Hot Rod finds him in his cell. 

Which makes you wonder  how  deep of a double agent, dealer is anyway. 

Was all this a set up or has he actually been tortured for years  ?

If it's the latter he must be dedicated to whatever ideals or master, he serves other then profit.

The comic however doesn't make this very clear. 

Regardless the risks Hot Rod is willing to take, the length he is willing to go to, to fix his mistakes and the infiltration of the penal colony are at a whole much more interesting to read.

Then the umpteenth, for Hot Rod at least, retread of that fatefull first mission with team Red Shirt. 

Nick Roche is back on art duties, we will see him next for spotlight Kup and after that  as a fill in spot on Devastation 3 

His art  is still cartoony, but  more subdued  befitting the more downbeat storyline.

The way he depicted Dealer's battered and beaten body is particularly disturbing.

This issue also has a nifty piece of technology we never see again. 

Namely holographic camouflage insignia's  that make a Transformer look  like  a different transformer.

This is a nifty piece of technology and would really fit well in the cold war  atmosphere of  the current IDW verse and it's a shame it was never reused.

But it's one time appearance here makes good enough use of it.  

Spotlight Hot Rod is a perfectly fine example of a spotlight that aspires to do more, but  can't quite reach it.

It doesn't do anything new, but it doesn't need to do so either. Under the trappings of a well worn set of storybeats, it lays hot rods personality,  and  why he does certain things bare.

Why he is a loner and a reckless risk taker. 

And that on it's own is enough. 

It's enough to see that  under his bravado and recklessness, beats the fuel pump of  somebody who is insecure and doesn't trust himself  and wonders if those under his command trust him at all, because of his past mistakes.

And he prefers to take risks alone because when it comes down to it, if there is a price to be paid, he alone will pay that price. 

And this is a great subversion of Hot Rod's previous character take, as  well as an exploration  for his  personality as a whole. 

It's just a shame that Spotlight Hot Rod is less then the sum of it's parts.

The parts are perfectly fine on their own, but don't quite gel  together, mostly due to  team Red Shirt  being non entities.  

The Savage Dragon 6

The Savage Dragon 6

Summary:

This issue opens with  6 panels representing  TV screens and the news, discussing The Shrew who was left off the hook, because he was apparently possessed by a leech in the back of his neck. 

An unidentified alien left to the police by Supreme, the image universe's  analogue  to Superman. 

Superpatriot who has attacked the pentagon,  R Richard Richards, who has written another article  condemning super powered beings in general, and officer Dragon in particular.

Pete Davison, also known as Cesspool presses charges against the city of Chicago, for  excessive force

And finally a live report about the fracas going down  in the lair of the annihilators, which is where we left off  last issue.

And that's where we come in. 

The fight goes about as expected for Horridus, she gets pasted. 

Dart is fed up with rules and regulations. She throws 3 darts in some guys neck,  (  !!!  )  knees him in the groin and then kicks him in the face.

Maybe she has anger management issues.  

Dragon is picked up by some  transparent skull freak with  telekinetic powers, who forces dragon to beat himself up.

 But its not long before Dragon  punches his lights out. 

Rapture handles things well enough, but  is totally unprepared when a freak made from  shards, launches shrapnel at her.

Dragon  jumps in again and takes the shrapnel to the chest, telling her to get ready  and fast. 

Dung in the mean time hoses people down  with  dung, oh dey  !

The tide turns against the police forces, until Mighty Man himself  flies in to save the day  !! Oh, devy !!

And Dragon finally realises that  this worlds mightiest man is still alive. 

The tide  is quickly turned again and the annihilators  quickly turn tail to  the  handy dandy teleporter room.

Barbaric goes after them and nimrod that he is deals, with the situation by hitting the teleporter, with the most ridiculously huge sound effect ever seen. It's so huge, it nearly  takes over the whole panel. 

The annihilators disappear and Barbaric surmises that he may have killed them. 

Cyberface however, is taken in custody.  

Dart reads Mighty Man the riot act about him abandoning her and Star in issue 3 

and he explains himself as best as he can. 

In the mean time, Mrs Schwartzblatt meets up with her boy Rodney  !!

The tearfull  reunion is however less then she had  hoped for. 

Things with Freak Force however  come to the inevitable boil and the whole  group resigns, fed up with rules and regulations. 

Together with Mighty Man and later on Superpatriot, they form a  freelance

bounty hunter group. 

Despite this, Frank meets up with Dragon. 

Cyberface decided to sing and they have a warrant for Overlord. 

They can finally nail his ass. 

Credits :

Story and Art : Erik Larsen

Letters : Chris Eliopolous

Color : Steve Oliff and Reuben Rude

Editor : Jannie Wong. 

Josh Eichorn's title: Drone from sector 7 G

Notes :

The alien reference, refers to Vanguard issue 1. Where Supreme, beat up Vanguard and left him  at the police station. 

The Superpatriot reference, refers to the first Superpatriot series, there were two, issue  3. 

Review  :

This is the issue where things come to a head.

The penultimate issue, where  Larsen has been building towards too, where  his world building and  slow character introductions pay off  in. 

And it's also the issue where  lots of plot strands are tied off, as well as new plots kickstarted.

The launch  titles of Images Comics were mostly all sound and fury, with very little story  behind them. 

Lets do something  kewl, and figure it out later.

The Savage Dragon was not like that, it  just looked like it was.

It looked very unfocused and chaotic, but it's not.

It's just very fast paced. 

And the ideas  and stories just  keep coming on. One of the strengths of The Savage Dragon as a comic, is that  a story rarely wears out it's welcome and is usually dealt with in, a few issues. 

There will be long term plots simmering in the background, but everything introduced will be dealt with, one way or another. 

But this issue ties up a lot of things in one go. 

It deals with the long running simmering dissatisfaction of  Dragon's superpowerd colleagues. 

Them breaking their ties and starting up as freelancers in the pages of Freak Force. 

This is one of the longest running  plot points of the comic thus far, with  Superpatriot  introduced in issue 2 of the original mini. 

Barbaric and Ricochet  were introduced in issue 1.  

Dart in issue 3, Rapture in issue 5 and Horridus in issue 4  

Mighty Man was mentioned in issue 1 of the mini and reintroduced in issue 3.

Speaking of Mighty Man, here he comes to save the day. This issue leads off in to the 18  issues of the Freak Force, on going series, where Superpatriot will be joining them.

A series I don't have currently.  

This issue also has Mrs Schwartzblatt finally meeting her boy Rodney !

Ahem, meeting Dragon. 

It's a fairly muted meeting with Dragon confessing that it doesn't feel right to him and that he is not her son. 

This is not the end of it, this plot line will continue for a while, to it's hilarious conclusion. 

This issue is also the big one,  it's where the Frank subplot finally comes to a head. 

It was already  pretty much  busted wide open in issue 5 but this is where  it  really starts kicking in to high gear.

They have a warrant and can finally nail  Overlord himself and take the Viscous Circle down. 

Whohooo  !!

But despite all the plotpoints I just discussed, most of the issue is given over to a fight scene per Image tradition. But even this is a carry over from issue 5 where Cyberface, Overlord's second in command  is captured  and he decided to sing like a canary. 

This issue isn't rushed, it's just very densely plotted. 

New plot points are dropped on the very first page with a device lifted from Spawn and Youngblood and arguably The Dark Knight Returns, the news panels. 

We are introduced to mind controlling leeches. 

Vanguard being dropped off at the police station,  a plot point from the Vanguard mini series. A mini series I don't have on  hand currently. 

Superpatriot being taken over by The Covenant Of The Sword in his own four part mini series. 

Introducing R Richard Richards, a parody of  J Jonah Jameson with the same kind of  zealous yellow journalism, against super powered beings. 

And finally Pete Davison, better known as Cesspool, suing the city  for being  hit by darts, as per issue 4  touching again on the difficulty the  new  officers have with  abiding by the rules  and dealing with regulations.  

Issue 6 is a great issue, in a series already building up steam. Its densely plotted, with  old stories coming to a natural end, while new ones are introduced.

The Dragon comics are one great big huge serial comic, were each issue flows in to the other. There is no natural breaking point.

No easy, to break them up for the trades, arcs. Each issue is a story on it's own with  ongoing storylines in the background. 

Issue 6  is a  great example of that. 

When people argue that early Image, was nothing more then empty action with no story,  the first 10  issues of The Savage Dragon are a great counter argument.

Spawn used to  have the same upwards momentum as the Dragon albeit with more purple prose and then it hit a brick wall around  issue 32  and  contended with merley the illusion of  forward momentum and spinning it's wheels. 

The Savage Dragon  has always continued to move onwards and upwards. 

There are a few cracks however. 

This is the first issue that pushes forward the idea, that each issue of The Dragon takes place in real time and covers one month. 

That doesn't always add up in practise though. 

Issue 5 and 6 take place the same day for example, but on the whole it does  work  if you  squint. 

It also explain the at times rapid  and  apparently  random cuts.  

  

Transformers Stormbringer 2

Transformers Stormbringer 2 

Summary:

Jetfire is interrogated by Bludgeon who is leading a team who found Thunderwing and intend to continue his work in more then one way. 

Jetfire appeals to Bludgeon, reminding him that  it was Thunderwing who brought Cybertron to the brink of destruction. 

Bludgeon reminds Jetfire that Thunderwing, who predicted  the  catastrophic event that hit Cybertron, warned Jetfire and other scientists regardless of allegiance and they did nothing.

Optimus Prime  receives a message in regards to the  destruction of the Calabi Yau,  send by Nosecone and Afterburner.  He calls in The Wreckers in case Thunderwing indeed is back.  

Thunderwing  is  restored to power by the pocket of  energon that brought the Calabi Yau to Cybertron in the first place and Bludgeon reveals that he plans to use Jetfire and the Technobots as raw materials  for the grafting process, that  turned Thunderwing in to what he is now. 

Bludgeon uses an  axis cradle, to briefly control Thunderwing and  turn him to the next  planet  to destroy. 

Nebulos. 

Where Bludgeon wil let Thunderwing  loose. 

Nosecone and Afterburner manage to get out of their escape pod  and barely functional, make their way across the surface of Cybertron. 

However, they don't get far. The radiation plays merry hell with their systems and they are easily rounded  up by a group of centurion drones.  

Pptimus Prime  travels to Cybertron, telling The Wreckers to rendezvous with him.

Springer tells Prime that  he may want to consider to just destroy the planet, if Thunderwing is indeed back. 

Prime reluctantly considers this an option. 

Prime reminisces  back to when thunderwing was apparently defeated, when Megatron advocated the same course of action. Prime vehemently disagreed. 

An infiltration unit on Nebulos witness Thunderwing  exiting foldspace, 

and ready to bring Armageddon to Nebulos. 

Notes : Stormbringer  2 is issue 8, in the short lived sub numbering. 

It's not said with so many words, but  one can  assume that Bludgeon uncovered  Thunderwing  while looking in to Shockwave's  research and whatever else he was busy with, before he disappeared in Spotlight Shockwave.

Credits :

Writer : Simon Furman

Artist : Don figueroa

Colors : Josh Burcham

Editor: Chris Ryall and Dan Taylor

Review:

Portents : ominous, prose : purple. 

That's how Stormbringer 2 opens, just as ominously as 1. 

We get to see our first  glimpse of yet another alien  planet, and this one is  rather  well known to any Transformers fan, especially G1. 

Nebulos 

Unfortunately, it's the Nebulos of the cartoon, which means that  they are  bald green aliens. 

While this helps selling the  alien part of  the world, it  also makes everybody  look the same. 

We also get to see  another infiltration unit, consisting of Dreadwind, Darkwing, Ruckus,

Skullcruncher, Thrust, Crankcase and Roadgrabber. 

Not exactly a group of individuals  you'd expect to  infiltrate and  slowly destabilise the  political climate of  any given world. 

Ruckus and Skullcruncher were never much of the subtle sorts.  

Thunderwing himself  continues to be a hollow empty shell, what's worse  he  has been reduced to a drone. 

Something that can be pointed at a target and fired and forgotten about. Untill its done and ready to come home, which is exactly what Bludgeon is doing this issue. 

What is more interesting about Thunderwing, is what he has done to himself. 

And that Bludgeon, who looks like a self mutilator in this  universe, plans  to replicate 

the grafting process. 

The pretender process in other words. 

In G1  the pretenders were one of the  umpteenth gimmicks, Hasbro threw at an exasperated Bob Budiansky, who had to  work it all in his running narrative of the US Transformers with  ...varying degrees of success. Reducing the Autobots  to  20 foot tall humanoids because the Decepticons  would  never suspect  them being Autobots, oh no  just giant humans. 

Not one of Budiansky's better stories.

The conceit worked better off Earth, where it was established that  most of the universe are Transformers sized  and  humans are just very small.

an idea i  rather  liked after all why should the rest of the universe  conform to human standards  ?

The Japanese series, Masterforce handled the pretenders better still, by having the  pretender shells be actually human sized and the  internal Transformers  grow to  Transformer size, when they left the shell. 

The pretenders were  quickly pushed aside for the mostly human cast in that series though, but that's neither here nor there. 

Pretenders were mostly a disguise and one of the goofier, poorly handled gimmicks of  Generation One. 

In Stormbringer however pretender armor or the grafting process, was meant to become  armor and literally weather the storm of Cybertron's eventual  decay and possible demise. 

That didn't work out so well for Thunderwing. The process drove him insane, as well as  immeasurably powerfull, to the point that he brought Cybertron to the brink  and it took all the combined Autobot and Decepticon armies had and more. 

And here he is fuelled by ultra energon  ! 

Ore 13 by any other name. 

You think the stakes weren't high enough yet ?

Why Bludgeon found it necessary to send Thunderwing  to Nebulos and  raze the place to the ground isn't entirely made clear. What is clear is that he plans to replicate the grafting  process using  Jetfire and the Technobots as raw material ...nasty.  

What we also get, is the  introduction of the Wreckers in the IDW-verse.

The Wreckers were originally introduced in the Transformers Marvel UK comic, specifically in part 4 of Target 2006. 

They were a rat-tag bunch of  obscure toys and comic only characters and were, so I  gather wildly popular.

So popular that they have been resurrected briefly by Dreamwave and they are resurrected here, by the one who created them in the first place. 

The Wreckers on display here are pretty much The Wreckers of Time Wars, sans RacknRuin.

Springer, Roadbuster, Broadside, Sandstorm, Whirl,  Twintwist and Topspin.

Scoop seems to be a temporary member  and as we later learn  the line up of The Wreckers is  volatile and liable to change any given mission. 

The Wreckers here are presented as the last  line of defence. When phase six has hit the fan and when the whole contested planet has been turned  in to a disaster area, The Wreckers are brought in to deal with it. 

We also get to see what phase six  actually means for a planet  ..and well to  quote  Ratchet, it's not anything good. 

We only get  2 and half pages of  The Wreckers in action, but  that's already enough to  give Roadbuster and Springer quite a bit of personality. 

Though mostly they come over as hardnosed gruff,  take no slag from anybody soldiers  that live, eat, breath and sleep war. 

For some reason I always though the way Springer  talked on the communication device and then tosses it  back to Broadside over his shoulder, while Varas exploded around  him, to be darkly amusing. 

What exactly happened the fist time around with Thunderwing, isn't made exactly clear. We do get another flashback, just after the  apparent demise of  Thunderwing.

And Megatron  advocating to nuke the whole planet out of existence. 

A pragmatic if  extremely cold view of doing things, but which fits Megatron's current characterisation. 

Prime naturally  disagrees, but Megatron's cold pragmatism is echoed by Springer in the present, who advices Prime that if its indeed Thunderwing. Both Thunderwing and  Cybertron should  be burned out of existence, underlining the seriousness of the situation. Whole planets could and will burn  if Thunderwing is let loose and all it will costs is your homeplanet Prime. 

What a choice to make. 

Stormbringer 2  is a great  issue. It's all  that issue 1 was and wanted to be and much more. 

The story, while still fairly slow moving, still is packed.

So packed that I haven't even touched Dogfight's youthfull eagerness to get in to a mission, along side Optimus Prime no less. 

Or Afterburner and Nosecone's plight on the surface of Cybertron where they  encounter that other old Marvel UK mainstay, guardian drones named centurions here. 

These ones are not yellow however, nor ridiculously unreliable. 

Everything that was wrong with Stormbringer 1, is fixed  here. The story slowly ratchets up the tension, while we gradually get to understand the seriousness of the situation and what exactly Thunderwing, or rather the shell that is Thunderwing has become, is capable off.

Even worse, is that Bludgeon is sending it out randomly and plans to duplicate the process for himself. 

Throw in the fact  that Thunderwing is fuelled by Ultra Energon and the stakes have  become immeasurably high. 

But issue 2 isn't even done with that. It introduces Nebulos, The Wreckers and several other concepts  as well as Prime's moral dilemma in how far he is willing to go to  destroy Thunderwing. 

Is his homeplanet, even in ruins as it is, worth more then  the countless other planets  Thunderwing can destroy ?

Cracking stuff and the promise of  Stormbringer 1 is fulfilled here and in issue 3  we will see just exactly what Thunderwing is capable of. 

It wont be pretty.