Transformers: Bumblebee #2
IDW Publishing (January 2010)
WRITER: Zander Cannon
ARTIST: Chee
COLORIST: Moose Baumann
LETTERER: Chris Mowry
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton
EDITOR: Andy Schmidt
COVER “A” (shown): Guido Guidi (art) and Josh Burcham (colorist)
cover B by the regular art team
Although forced to capture Blurr, Bumblebee decides that he won’t turn him in. His badge damaged during the attack, Horiuchi is unable to control Bumblebee, but Ratchet convinces our hero to keep that a secret. As the only Autobot besides Blurr who has free reign, Bumblebee comes up with a plan to disable the badges and come up with their own stealth screen. During his mission, he encounters the Decepticon Scavenger, who has a few plans of his own.
What they got right: The story is getting interesting. In some ways, this is how Rodimus Prime could have worked, but instead they gave it to baddest Autobot there is. (Yes, fan worship plagues my review again.) The Autobots are simply letting themselves be taken over, and there’s a lot of decent planning. The Autobots are finally working as a combat unit, which sadly doesn’t happen enough in the comics.
What they got wrong: OK, IDW wants to give the artists the freedom to work as they want. Outside of only one artist not following the traditional character models, I can adjust. However, when Blurr has too completely different alt modes (Cybertronian here and Earth in the ongoing), there may be a bit too much freedom. I’m also still not a fan of Baumann’s darker colors, although it does work for the nighttime and cave scenes, and you can tell when they’re out in the sunlight.
Recommendation: At the very least, this is more enjoyable than the main series, although I got into this game for the Autobot/Decepticon war, not robots versus humans. This isn’t Transmorphers (thank the Matrix) after all.
Yeah, definately a theme this week, and poor Bumblebee got caught in it.
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