Transformers Ongoing 9 – Can I speak to your manager please?

I’d like to know who is in charge please.

Generally, when I am dealing with a pan-galactic mechanoid army I think this is important. If I don’t direct my memo to the right robot how the hell will my request for them to “accidentally” steer their next property threatening battle towards the studio where Two and a Half Men is filmed be heard?

Unfortunately when I rang Autobot Headquarters to table this entirely reasonable petition I was faced with the following;

“Thank you for calling the new Autobot Headquarters. We are no longer in a cave. Woop Woop!

If you would like to speak to Autobot High Command, please press 1

If you have a complaint about consistency of alt-modes, please press 2

If you suspect that Tank is actually a Deception, please press 3

If you are secretly calling about one of Prowl’s underhand schemes, please press 666”

Ok. So far so good - Beep! 1

“Thank you for selecting Autobot High Command.

If you would like to speak to our new leader, please press 1

If you would like to speak to our old leader, who still sort of seems to be our leader, please press 2

If you would like to speak to the human who actually seems to be running things, please press 3”

Hmm, that’s a bit odd, I guess I’ll go with 3 if this human dude is in charge – Beep!

“Thanks for calling! I am currently off banging chicks or pumping iron or on a secret mission involving Fairy Liquid or something else AWESOME. Please call back later... Unless you are my Dad.”

Hmm.

That was basically the stand out point of issue 9 for me – Bumblebee is sort of in charge, but Optimus seems to be kind of in charge, but really Spike is in charge. The final panel, with a bunch of Autobots looking a bit baffled while Spike strides boldly towards the camera with A Plan™ sums up the rather miserable state of this comic for me.

I don’t have an issue with humans in TF stories, but here the presence of Spike seems to emasculate the Autobots en masse. I’m morbidly fascinated with what Mike Costa is trying to achieve with Spike, is he supposed to be cool? Likable? Are we supposed to relate to him? Or is he supposed to be a bad action cliché who makes you want to punch walls? And if he is supposed to be as obnoxious as he comes off, why is making him the focus of the comic that is supposed to be about big fighty robots considered a good idea?

Obviously there is some other stuff in this issue as well. We get a bit of TF action with the Combaticons. It’s not as exciting as it should be – the fact that there are two panels where Onslaught essentially shoots some mud sum up the action levels nicely. And while I am usually a big fan of Guido Guidi he doesn’t deliver the goods for me here – the cartoony and slightly simplistic feel to the art underlines the lack of terror that sadly accompanies the Combaticon’s arrival.

Basically it’s got to the stage where I feel like I am paying whatever $3.99 is in UK Sterling to rubberneck as the franchise ploughs in slow motion into a wall.

Boo.

Story 3/10
Art 6/10