At the time of writing, I wasn’t planning to have so many Transformers things at once but somehow that happened. I want to get my schedule back on track and the only thing to discuss is Starfleet Academy is currently up for free on YouTube. I don’t hate myself so I’m not watching it.
This time we’re returning to Transformers: Energon, the second toyline in the so-called Unicron Trilogy, three toylines whose backstory involved the return of Unicron and the first time we got the character in toy form. There are very few Transformers pack-in promotional minicomics. This series was produced by Dreamwave Productions, who were doing the in store comics at the time. That was before Pat Lee tanked his own company because he was using the money to buy cars for him and his family and not paying anyone else. It’s too bad, because Dreamwave made some of my favorite Transformers stories. Dreamwave is for me what Skybound is for some fans now.
Simon Furman was writing the Energon series at the time, but I don’t know if that includes the minicomics, as they lack credits. Thankfully they also lack the shoving in of the same dialog in three languages to match the packaging and save production costs (English, Spanish, and French). Furman, at least in his Marvel US run, didn’t seem to be interested in any of the gimmicks in the toyline at the time, barely using transforming, the whole gimmick of the franchise. His Pretenders were practically Action Masters before Action Masters were introduced. The Head, Target, and Powermasters were as ignored as he could get away with, even rebuilding Optimus Prime around Hi-Q, his Nebulan partner. Given that the animes never really used the Armada and Energon gimmicks to their full play and story potential, him not doing so is within the norm. Energon’s gimmick on the Autobot side was combination, making it my favorite of the trio and one of my favorite lines overall. Like with the Armada Mini-Cons, the idea missed a lot of battle potential beyond “they’re totally stronger now, trust us”. It’s a shame, really.
The minicomics also have only eight pages to make the toys look cool. Transformers using minicomics is rare. The only other time I know of it happening in US toys was a comic strip in G1 to promote their “decoy” figurines that were packaged with the toys at the time. So they don’t even have time to really delve into the gimmick of the toys. Can they at least pull off a good story in eight pages?
Again, no credits for these comics. This should be a short review.
The story focuses on three namesake Autobots, as in these aren’t the Inferno and Prowl you know from G1 or even current toylines. There’s a reason I refer to “Prowl” as the “Bob” of Cybertron. It’s just an excuse for Hasbro to hold onto the name until at some point they just decided to stick with G1 characters in different continuitites. This robs us of potential new characters to go alongside the old ones, though the recent EarthSpark tried. I wasn’t a fan of how they tried it though, and gave up a few episodes into the first season. I hear they fumbled the later seasons.
Inferno is a fire truck like his G1 namesake and Prowl a police car, but they don’t match up with their anime counterparts. Inferno is pretty much the same but Prowl isn’t the nervous kid from the show. He might still be younger, but given this is all we get from him in the comics period (Dreamwave burning before they really got to use him in the store comics) he seems to have more potential. The two of them are exploring a mountain for traces of Energon, in this series an ore that also seems to exist on Earth. They’re joined by Landmine, a name that went to multiple characters just in the Unicron Trilogy as it got slapped into a completely different character in Cybertron, which is a different discussion. I wouldn’t even bring it up here if there wasn’t so little to summarize. It’s an eight-page minicomic. You aren’t getting a lot of story here.
Landmine complains about the hill the duo have been scanning, saying that climbing it gave him a “spark attack”. For those of you new to my take on Transformers, I don’t like when they try to make Transformers too human. They’re trying to reference a heart attack but I don’t think the analogy works. Spark strain, maybe, or the good old fashioned “strained my circuits/gears/pistons/some other mechanical component” would have been more appropriate. This wasn’t a series that really knew what sparks were despite being introduced a few series ago.
Prowl and Infero set up the hologram “blueprints” of the Energon extraction tower (the comics used giant holograms) as Landmine calls in Optimus Prime to bring in the tower pieces to set up. Instead, Optimus warns him that Decepticons are in the area, seeking that Energon. Sure enough, Megatron and his army show up. In this case the army is the troop building Predacon (not to be confused with the G1 Decepticon hunting squad, the Beast Wars Decepticon descendants, or the Transformers Prime dragon faction) birds Divebombs. Interestingly, this name came from the original G1 Predacons, the eagle member, but in Japan they were called Shadowhawks. Not to be confused with the Image comics character and wow, there’s so much confusion for eight pages if you know previous Transformers and comic history.
Megatron and the Divebombs launch and attack. Inferno and Prowl, being part of the same size class and gimmick, combine. In Energon the main Autobot gimmick was what I call the “stacker” style combination. One forms the top and the other the bottom. Fans at the time called it “shirt” and “pants” mode, going by memory. Inferno is wearing the shirt in this combination, though for some reason Landmine refers to the combined robot as “Powerlinx”, which was the name of the gimmick, not the combined robot. They usually went by the guy who was the shirt. Sadly, Prowl’s chest shield is ignored when it should be usable by anyone he’s combined with, not just when he’s the “shirt”. This is what I mean about not using the gimmick’s play value to full storytelling potential. Prowl could also keep his arms untransformed, giving Inferno four arms if the writer wanted to, and he didn’t. Inferno is just taller now. Landmine at least had his own gimmick, combining with his trailer like some Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus figures, now having extra battle armor. I’d blame the page count, but it’s not like the show did any better.
The Autobots maintain ground, but it’s all a diversion. Megatron sent the other troop builder drones, “Insecticons”, to dig under the mountain and take all the Energon anyway, forcing the trio to make their escape. Or to quote another Megatron: “evil triumphs!” That’s kind of strange. Even in the Super Power Collection mini comics, where every toy got an original comic starring themselves instead of one of four waves of the same comic like Armada and Energon had, the villains lose. In Joker’s comic, Joker is stopped. Here, Megatron wins and the Autobots lose. That’s no fun.
For eight pages, they do manage to get a fairly decent short story out of it. The Decepticon win isn’t to my personal taste but you do get a sense of the story involved. Megatron has a drone army (we don’t get a hint of his regular troops, which is too bad but they don’t have the panels to do it if they want to sell the troop builders), they eat Energon to collect it, and we see the Powerlinx gimmick and Landmine’s armor gimmick. Selling the toys is important but they do managed as good a tale as they can in the limited space allowed. The only real complaint comes from the necessary size of the panels making everyone kind of squashed in so you can tell who’s who. Dreamwave had some of the best artists of the time involved with their comics, making an even bigger shame they were treated so badly given how Dreamwave got the Transformers license in the first place because of an art piece in Wizard magazine Pat Lee did. He’s no Jim Lee (no relation as far as I’m aware), but he was pretty good, and the artists he brought in for Dreamwave’s titles are amazing. I’d even say the art in those comics is better than what Skybound is doing, and with beautiful color work you don’t see in comics enough these days. The minicomics aren’t able to do it justice. Look up the regular comics instead unless you’re a completist.
We have two more of these comics, but the rotation is taking us back to the Atari 2600. If you know that classic game system, then you know who’s revenge we’ll be looking at in the next installment.
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