Comic Review - Transformers Prime: Rage of the Dinobots #1

            Transformers Prime: Rage of the Dinobots is being marketed as a four part mini-series that bridges the gap from the Fall of Cybertron videogame (a review can be found here) and the Transformers Prime television show that recently wrapped up its second season (and that Goose is madly in love with).  It, like all other Transformers comics is an IDW publication and is written by Mike Johnson and Mairghread Scott, with art by Agustin Padilla.

Cover:

            There was only one cover available for this title, unless you count retailer incentives which is hard to do in such a small market like Syracuse (not to mention the fact that most retailers keep those covers and sell them for elevated prices after the fact).  The regular cover by Ken Christiansen is the best of the bunch anyway.  The Dinobots are in the costumes and color schemes that coincide with their video game characters, as well as a heightened level of detail that is much more interesting than their initial, cartoon designs.  Unfortunately the Dinobots mostly consist of a red, yellow and grey color scheme, which tends to get muddled when you put a group of them together.  This lack of separation leads to a bit of a mess, especially as it is a painted cover and therefore devoid of lineart.  The painted quality is nice, don’t get me wrong, and Christiansen is great at what he does, but I have to think that a holding line or two would have helped the characters separate a bit.  The overall design of the cover is well done, and the character placement in the image is spot on in terms of who should be where (Grimlock is the central figure, Sludge and Snarl are the base while Slag-who is called Slug in this-is Grimlock’s right hand.  Swoop hangs over them taking up the rear.  The symbolism, whether intentional or not, is not lost on this fan.

7/10 – I like it, but the central part of the cover is just a jumbled grey mess that could use some deeper shadows or holding lines.

Story:

            I love that the mythos of the video game is being expanded upon as it was a captivating story to begin with.  Combine that with the appeal of the Dinobots and you would have a sure hit on your hands. 

            I like the idea of having Grimlock be a sort of “narrator” for this as he is the leader of the group profiled in the book.  The problem I have is that he is inherently an unintelligent sounding character, which is only partially used in the story itself.  It is wildly inconsistent, not only from his narration to his actual speech, but also within the word balloons themselves.  I am fine with changing up his speech pattern a bit to make him sound unintelligent, it would fit his character, but it has to be done across the board to be successful. 

            Another discrepancy I noticed was that, in the videogame that this was supposed to follow, Sludge is nowhere to be found, and is assumed to be deceased.  To the best of my knowledge (and it’s been a while since I played so I apologize if I am incorrect) he never returned; so why is he here now?  Sure, it’s possible that that will be explained by the end of issue four, but such a big change should probably be addressed right away.  I understand that you want to have the whole Dinobot crew together for a book that focuses on them, I get it, but the fact that he was assumed dead prior to this is not addressed at all.

            I also don’t like the fact that they had to change Slag’s name to Slug because a group somewhere found it to be a racially insensitive term.  First of all, it’s too close to Sludge in terms of the way it sounds; second, it was created in the mid-eighties and was just recently revised.  Shouldn’t things like this be grandfathered in to our public lexicon, especially since (according to dictionary.com) it is a British derogatory term for an abusive woman?  That’s right, we are apparently rewriting childhood memories to avoid offending the abusers!  

            Sorry, got off on a bit of a tangent there.

5/10 – The writing could have done with a little more backstory and a little less “show me three pages of Grimlock fighting something.  If I wanted mindless fight scenes with no real value or backstory I would have invested my time in Avengers vs. X-Men over the summer.

Art:

            I have just started drawing Transformers for Goose, a lot; and I can tell you that it is no easy feat.  I am drawing mine for a five year old, mind you and not for pay, so I can only imagine the kind of internal pressure that Padilla must feel to get things right.  That being said, he does an admirable job with the Transformers themselves, they all look great.  Where he fails to measure up is through the storytelling itself.  While I am not sure if he is designing the contents of the panels himself or whether he has direction from the writers (the old Marvel vs. DC style) I am often perplexed by the page layouts.  Much of it feels like bad pacing on the part of the writers but I am not 100% sure who’s fault it is.

            Another thing that bothers me is the fact that a lot of the panels in the book focus too much on just lineups of characters.  This gets very static and boring after awhile.  While this may be passable normally, because this is a bridge between an incredibly well done videogame and an equally impressive cartoon, the flaws are magnified.

I get that we are in the midst of introducing characters here, but why not change up the panel designs a bit, especially since the color schemes on the Dinobots are all so similar. 

For all the negative things I have said about Padilla's art, I love the layout of this page.  It pulls your eye through in a masterful way.

Not sure why these two panels needed a full page, especially the big panel that is just the face of Ultra Magnus.  Seems like a lot of wasted space to me.

 

This two page spread just makes no sense to me.  Regardless of the differing corners on the panel borders, it doesn't do enough to tell me that that is a flashback or dream sequence, and I don't understand where they are, and what the spiky things signify. 

5/10 – For a “fight book” the art is okay and the characters are incredibly well done (especially considering the increase in detail that drawing the video game characters entails), but the overall lack of storytelling ability shown by Padilla hurts the final output.

Overall:  5/10 – The premise was great but the book fails to deliver (for now at least).  There is obviously still time for it to redeem itself, and hopefully Padilla becomes more comfortable with drawing the characters and can focus on good storytelling, but I rarely hold out hope for a series that starts out flat like this.  Luckily it is only four issues and won’t be a huge money sink by the time it’s done.