“Infestation”
Writer: James “Brad Mick” McDonough & Adam Patyk
Artists: Don Figueroa (p), Elaine To (i)
Publisher: Dreamwave
Oh god, this is shit.
The reason why Marvel UK’s version of Transformers was better than Marvel US’ version was because Marvel UK fleshed out the characters, and then told stories about those characters, whereas Marvel US didn’t know what they were doing and desperately shoved the characters into a variety of bizarre situations in order to try and muster up an interesting tale. Highlights included the Decepticons (forty-feet high evil killer robots remember) opening a holiday resort for humans, the same Decepticons running a Car Wash Of Doom that brainwashed people into stealing petrol , and my personal favourite, the tiny (in comparison) Autobot Micromasters running away from the Autobots in order to join a professional wrestling group.
This issue of the latest Transformers series sees the Autobots (apparently working for the US government now, in a bizarre continuity glitch) investigating a town that has been taken over by robotic insects. That’s right, the Autobots have been plunged into a paranoid 50’s sci-fi movie. So guess from which side of the Altantic Dreamwave are taking their inspiration from?
It’ll be hypnotic car washes and trips to the space-circus next month, then…
To be fair, the insects are established Transformers characters, and one of their abilities has always been mind-control, so this is less of a reach than some of Marvel US’ efforts, but it still stinks of a lack of inspiration. The funny thing is that apart from some garbled philosophy and murky continuity references, the previous storyline was actually pretty good on this level. It had some new ideas, and they were ideas to do with the Transformers concept, rather than generalised plots with some robots thrown in for contractual reasons. For whatever reason, that inventiveness isn’t on show here, even in a confused form.
I can’t even enjoy the art this issue, as Figueroa and To’s always-fine work is concealed beneath enormous and bloated speech bubbles which seem to suggest that just as Brad Mick was a pseudonym for James McDonough, so too James McDonough is a psuedonym for Chris Claremont on a particularly verbose day.
I was thinking of dropping this title with #12, as while the previous storyline had its problems, I wouldn’t mind a year of stories at that level of quality. But this issue makes me think that Dreamwave really don’t have a clear grasp of what they’re doing after all, and I don’t think I’ll be getting many more issues.
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