so.....AHM #6

What another fizzer. Nothing solid is added to the series in this issue, purely conjecture from characters within the story, and a very forced 'ZOMG Drift is teh Awezomes!!!1!!1!'.

It's taken half of the series to not quite setup the rest of the series, and all of this setup could have been done in about 3 issues had the useless script and terrible pacing been rectified. This issue alone only sees Kup and Starscream speculate on things that have happened and things to come, while Skywarp alludes to something I fear we will be seeing more of in the next few issues.
Kup mentioned that Megatron has killed two Primes, I assume that the second he killed is the Zeta Prime mentioned in Spotlight Blurr, further distancing the AHM universe from the Furmanverse.

Sure there are some rather nice one lines and such, again Cliffjumper shines, but thanks to Perceptor we also get a good line from Tracks. The fact this occurs after the forced "hey how cool is my character Drift" moment does sully it a bit. The fact the Drift moment mirrors what we got with Mirage only last issue also blunts it even further.

However there were 2 pages that stuck in my mind, and not for any good reasons. I love Guido's art, and think he is among the better artists IDW has to call upon, but his work on the two Megatron and Starscream pages that feature a central 'action' shot of Megatron surrounded by poorly placed dialogue panels featuring the two is some of the worst art and indeed worst layout of any transformers comic released by IDW, including Origins.

Not only did the quality in art take a dive, the writing also took a serious nosedive with it, both pages were painful to read and the fact that I had to re-read them 2-3 times before they started making sense did not help.

It almost seems that Prowl was drawn by another artist, at the end of his main scene, all he needed was the giant 'sweatdrop' on his temple to be a sterotypical anime style drawn character, totally out of style with the rest of the cast. The rest of the art is nice, but nothing really outstanding this issue, hopefully we will get more art that looks like the cover for issue #7 featuring Ironhide.

Pro's:
- More good one liners for characters like Cliffjumper and Tracks
- Nice gentle introductions for Roadbuster and not so gentle Perceptor
- A nice bit of insight into the Seekers, who never really get much characterisation, as well s the Insecticons
- A smart Starscream, this isn't the dolt from the Cartoon
- Inter team factions within the Decepticons, are also shown to perhaps be forming in the Autobots
- Kup
- No real focus on Humans for 90% of the book

Con's:
- Terrible pacing and scripting issues continue
- clunky dialogue for Megatron and Starscream
- Too much discussion of events that happened in the break, that will barely have time to be expanded on
- Poor art on various pages, and panel layout on same pages is terrible, design and execution of purple 'thing' leaves much to be desired
- McGuffin of Energon to appear
- Humans in book are boring, and the final line of the comic is so very cliche.
- The final 6 issues have too much to close what the first six opened.

And I'm also slightly peeved that once again the Trade (due Feb) will contain added extras, it's kind of a slap in the face to the people who are buying the single issues.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good idea in books that deserve to be bought twice (like Infiltration), but I shouldn't have to buy this crap twice to get bonus items, as compensation for how crap issues 1-6 have been IDW should have been putting all extra cover art, sketches and the like into each issue.