Revisitation 154: Mind Games.

6/1/2024

Happy New Year! Kicking off 2024 with a key John Barber issue as Prowl refuses to believe two guys can have the same name, Dirge gets to explore his kinks and Arcee turns out to be the least kill hungry person on Cybertron.

All in my look at a comic that will linger long in the mind, Robots in Disguise issue 4!

2 Comments

Llama God

11/1/2024 01:38:00 pm

Another great issue from Barber, showing just how good his usually-eclipsed-by-Roberts writing actually is - especially so in these earlier issues.

This issue works really well on a couple of fronts. For those of us not paying attention (look, we'd just come off a couple of years of Costa - I wasn't expecting to experience competent writing) it's a really good look at how well a control freak like Prowl absolutely wasn't dealing with current situation that Cybertron finds itself. His actions towards the end of the issue, in concert with what we've seen of him in the previous issues, works really well as a study of someone finally snapping. And with the foreknowledge of what's actually going on it works very well in that respect, too, So a great piece of writing here.

Although I can't remember (and can't bring myself to try to dig out later volumes to discover) when it is that Prowl is actually compromised. I assume that it was at some point earlier in the issue, and that the latter half of the issue shows him slowly succumbing to that. But I could be very wrong. It'll be interesting to find out, anyway. If I remember to look for it. (I don't need a cerebro shell to distract me or make me forget things these days...)

One of the things I will say though is that I don't actually mind the internal narration for each issue. I find that it actually makes the experience feel, for want of sounding too pretentious, a little more literary, since it's general practice for chapters of a novel to be written from a different character's point of view. And I do also miss the narration boxes from older comics - just look at any comics from before the '90s, and most of them will be littered with descriptive boxes and thought bubbles, and I miss that. It's bringing a little of the "book" back into "comic book".

The start of the politics arc is also intriguing. And even though it never pays off in the way that Barber presumably planned, it still influences all the Cybertron-based stories from here on until the end of IDW 1.0, so it's still a good one to watch, and I'm looking forward to witnessing more of Starscream's machinations.

The main takeaway from this comic when originally reading it though (considering I'd missed the mind control connotations) was how much it had changed things by killing off the Constructicons so early on - and this in the wake of Bombshell and Ratbat. So many iconic G1 characters off the table so soon. It certainly promised something different going forwards. And although we will come to learn that the truth of the situation was somewhat different, there is nevertheless an impact that is felt until the end of the run. So there's some fairly key events happening here.

I also shouldn't forget to mention how good Griffith's art is in this issue. He's still doing a great job of depicting post-war Cybertron, and his character work and the action sequences are all great.

So, in general, a great issue. Let's see if next week's one can live up to these standards.

Um.

T-Wing link

14/1/2024 04:39:11 pm

Upon subsequent rereadings, it's obvious something's gone wrong with Prowl, but I always appreciated Barber playing the reader's expectations of Prowl's NORMAL, non-mind-controlled behavior against any suspicions that might be brought up. While "Bombshell's controlling them" is pretty old hat at this point, at least Barber found a new wrinkle to it.

I remember lots of people being upset the Constructicons were apparently killed here at the time, but I always felt it was kinda vague, since there's just mostly explosions coming from their necks instead of the utter head-erasure that Horri-Bull suffered.

Revisitation 154: Mind Games.

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