“Aww, look at the widdle Twansformer trying to stop me Grimlock. He’s so cute.”
The Transformers #59
Marvel (Mid-November, 1989)
“Skin Deep” WRITER: Simon Furman PENCILER: José Delbo INKER: Dave Hunt COLORIST: Nelson Yomtov (He has a full name?) LETTERER: Jim Massara EDITOR: Don Daley
Grimlock, Jazz, and Goldbug (restored to Bumblebee because Ratchet prefers him that way…jerk) fight the Decepticons on Cybertron while Ratchet attempts to use the portals to clear the explosives from the Ark. He also screwed up Megatron’s plans by leaving a piece of the old Starscream that, despite kicking the bolts out of Optimus and Scorponok’s Decepticons by himself and with his Pretender shell, reasserts himself, and the coward begs to rejoin the Earth Decepticons, which oddly Zarak agrees to. As you can expect, Megatron isn’t happy about this but his plans to scrap Ratchet are halted when he sees all the active bombs that used to be on the Ark and tries to escape through the portal. Ratchet grabs him just as the explosives go off.
What they got right: I still don’t like the art style but the action scenes weren’t too bad. I like Ratchet’s ingenuity. When it comes to the comics, I think he’s more Megatron’s nemesis than Optimus. Ratchet’s foiled more of his plans than Optimus has. Although as I think about so has Sparkplug. Optimus fairs better against Shockwave, doesn’t he?
What they got wrong: Starscream’s alleged cowardly nature is something from the cartoon but never shows up in the comics or on his tech specs. (In fact I just checked his tech specs at TFU.Info. Screamer’s courage jumped from 8 to 9 with his Pretender shell.) He’s arrogant, sure, but not a coward. Again, that was the cartoon and not the comic. Also, what was the point of bringing Megatron back? He wasn’t a Classic Pretender figure and the Action Masters were way off. Finally, I don’t like super mode Optimus (they still can’t stop drawing him in super mode exclusively) with pupils. It just looks weird.
Recommendation: The only reason I would recommend this issue is because it prepares events to come (one of them really stupid but we’ll get to that). Otherwise, there really isn’t much to these few issues under Furman’s run. At least they’re not as bad as they will become, though.
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