Comic Review - Optimus Prime

Haven't noticed an existing thread for this series. Mods please merge if such a thread exists.

Picked up #5 yesterday and I was shocked to see that the Barber's command of English (or lack thereof) has, unbelievably, gotten worse. I am utterly convinced that English cannot be his first language and even for a second language English speaker, the level of literacy in this issue is just bad. Barber continues to demonstrate his lack of understanding in using the subjunctive mood or conditional clauses - that's nothing new (but always disappointing). What did take me by surprise though was the multiple omissions of prepositions. It's as if Barber has never heard of them! :eek: And this is such a simple part of English grammar. :eek: Trying to read text devoid of prepositions is just nauseating, as reading this very post may have been before you clicked dragged your mouse over the text! :o

Storywise I do like how Soundwave is carrying on by supporting Optimus Prime with Megatron's teachings. It's cool that he hasn't necessarily compromised the Decepticon dream in allying himself with the Autobots. It also lends greater credence as to why the Sharkticons would/should listen to Soundwave and betray the Junkions. But a lot of this otherwise incredible drama is just ruined by Barber's poor writing. Barber seriously needs to take some more English lessons, and Carlos Guzman needs to wake up and do a proper job editing Barber's work. As fans we often criticise Hasbro for cutting corners by omitting paint apps but charging us the same RRP for the toy. It feels as though IDW are trying to save a few drops of ink by omitting prepositions, but still having the audacity to charge us $7 a pop. :rolleyes:

It's also because of shipping you get the mark up. I buy digitally now but I still pay cover + half because of the exchange rate :/

Hopefully comixology unlimited will be available in Australia this year (especially seeing as Amazon will be opening in Australia in September!)

Barber... Where to start? His TF stuff is so mundane, he spent the latter half of Transformers trying to be Roberts and now with the retitled book it's still, "meh." I'm only buying it for the artist.

Yet his Revolutionaries is actually fun, diverse and they're bringing TF's from Hearts of Steel (no idea how that works) and the Predacons are joining the team.

Obviously my problems with Barber are his interpretations of characters rather than grammar but I also have a feeling that Hasbro has hand in that...

I think there were a few comments in one of the other comic threads. I seem to get frustrated sometimes because I feel like often things don't seem to get anywhere or build to anything or get resolved issue after issue. This series also seems to keep rehashing the theme of Optimus struggling with the burden of the Matrix or something. It seems like every other panel he is bemoaning something while holding his part of the matrix in his hand.

I think I enjoyed 'catching up' with the hardcover volumes and trade paperbacks more because I didn't feel like I just read 25 pages where nothing happened :p

So Unicron has finished the Optimus Prime series (Bar Prime #25, out next week).

This was a massive 48 page issue that really felt like it was wiping the floor with almost every main G1 character, leaving the new or completely re imagined characters to carry on in the no longer published future.

I cannot say I was a fan of any of it, the deaths seemed cheap and more to remove the backstory and history of well known characters more than out of necessity, other deaths went along with the in joke that has been running in Prime for a while now: That Cybertronians love to sacrifice themselves at any and every opportunity, there were so many sacrificial deaths and fake outs it is not even funny.

It was yet another event that went out with a whimper and not a bang. I won't go into yet another "crossovers and shared universes maimed the Transformers license and hastened the end of the series" rants right now, but this event just had too many pieces, too many name calls, too many insignificant nobodies that for most of us, we don't care about in the slightest (looking at you Slide, Spike). In the end some of these made up characters became techno-babble important... I think.

I won't go into much detail for now, but I do not appreciate this series being called Unicron when it was not Unicron at all irks me. Barber weaved wonders with previous tidbits and story leftovers but in the end he could not get Unicron to be Unicron in anything but name... they may as well have had a Quintesson running the end game.

Milne did a stellar job with the art and I know Gok will find plenty of problems with the naming (there are a few mistakes I picked up, and I try to ignore them...), spelling and punctuation but overall this comic was a burnout for me. I struggled to finish, struggled to care and really I think that, more than anything proves that a reboot for the continuity (after the horrible reboot with Costa that seemed to have killed off the groundwork of Furman and the reboot of "Death" of Optimus Prime that started to bring it all back...) was much needed. The heast became too big (thank Primus it was not a return of D-void!)

I am not sad to see this series go, I am glad. Lost Light could not have kept going on alone in it's own universe, but I am sad that this and the Prime #25 will be the last of ten years of a mostly amazing series. They do not live up to standards set in the last decade.

I was not a fan of this issue.

At all.

I think I'll hold comments until after Prime #25 though.