“Will you stop with the shadow puppets?”
Transformers: All Hail Megatron #5
IDW Publishing (November, 2008)
WRITER: Shave McCarthy
ARTISTS: Guido Guidi & Casey Coller
COLORIST: Josh Burcham
SELECTED COVER ART: Trevor Hutchison
LETTERER: Neil Uyetake
EDITOR: Denton J. Tipton
On Cybertron, Team Prime learns how Team Kup (not the official names by the way) ended up on Cybertron, confirming the theory that there is a traitor in their ranks. On Earth, Sparkplug sends in a team to find a weapon that can kill Megatron, realizing he is the leader and hoping the Decepticons will fall apart with out him. However, the team is attacked by Ratbat and the group seemingly killed. What the army doesn’t know is that one of the humans managed to make it past, namely Sparkplug son, Spike.
What they got right: I like the father and son moment between Sparkplug and Spike, and the scene where Sparkplug is saddened by having sent his son apparently to die. They also show smarts in realizing Megatron’s threat. Jazz also shows his skills by having Mirage hide as a sniper in case the enemy shows up and how he handles Springer.
What they got wrong: I’m still not sold on Spike and Sparkplug as soldiers, although my problems with Spike come from later writers. (You can find those reviews from when the comic actually came out. We’re nearing the catch-up point of the IDW run.) And while they try to explain it away later as part of the reason he has his sanity back, Kup carrying that thing in his mouth like a cigar just looks silly. It’s worse for me since I reject Kup’s Spotlight issue.
Recommendation: I’m still enjoying the story, but I won’t mind breaking next week for another Spotlight issue in the rotation. I still recommend checking the maxiseries out.
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