Is it More Than Meets The Eye Time?
You bet! With Robert Kirkman’s Void Rivals having launched Skybound’s Energon Universe, noted writer/artist rolled-into-one Daniel Warren Johnson takes the reins on the linchpin of this initiative, the flagship Transformers comic series! Well, he maintains the reins on the writing of this series at least, as does Mike Spicer on colors. Jorge Corona has taken over regular penciling duties with a style all his own. However, this thirteenth issue sees Jason Howard step in to pencil a sort of one-off story.
We last saw Starscream gravely wounded and thrown to his death by Soundwave. As he lies in disarray, here we get an origin tale for the treacherous Seeker that plays out in his memories.
Starscream’s origin?
That’s what I said. The being known as “Starscream” is born here, as we flashback to his more idealistic and youthful days on Cybertron. Then known as “Ulchtar” (a nice deep-cut reference to a pre-production name for the character), he pals around with his best buds Jetfire and Genvo (Skybound’s first original Transformer character!)
We see how Ulchtar planned for his life to go and how it turns out as war grips Cybertron. While not the first exploration of Starscream’s early days in fiction, I do appreciate the writer’s willingness to take us back there and unlock hidden facets of a character.
“Ulchtar”? That’s weird.
Yeah. So is “Genvo”.
As far as my own feelings on this issue go, frankly I’m not too impressed. There’s a lot of tropes that Transformers fans will have seen before and the origin of Starscream’s name is just kinda… stretchy. Again, I do applaud one-off stories like this, but they’ve also gotta grip you quickly and this one did not. Also, the way Starscream’s past is presented seems kind of at odds with how he was portrayed in the modern era. Are we really supposed to feel sympathy for this guy after we saw him try and shoot up a hospital in issue 3? Yeah, no.
The end presents a tie-in to the larger Energon universe as some non-Transformers characters arrive to recover the damaged Starscream. That might be of note to a different book’s audience, at that.
Cube?
Kind of a dud for me, and the art didn’t help matters. Jason Howard does a serviceable job filling in, but I didn’t really care for his take on the characters, particularly the facial expressions on Transformers.
Buy Transformers # 13 this week, and you can rename yourself “ComicBuy” I guess.
