Comic a Review: Sins of the Wreckers

[Paulbot]

Maybe the slow release schedule killed some of the momentum, but curious what others thought of the conclusion. Can't say this series won me over at all, maybe it'll read better as a whole?

[prjkt]

, maybe it'll read better as a whole?

that's what I'm hoping... will read the whole series again soon when I get the chance and then decide if I like it or not

[Lord_Zed]

I need to re-read it from the start too, before I pass final judgement. But it was a different kind of story to LSOTW

Overall for my first reading I feel it lacked the oomph of the first one.

One reason for that I feel is the more ambiguous morality in this series. I thought Tarantualas was a good villain and he had reasons for the evil he was doing, but he wasn’t the irredeemable sadist that Overlord was, so there wasn’t the same level of payoff when the badguy got taken down. Also I found many of Prowl’s actions just as cold and evil. For me Prowl was also a villain in this comic who once again for the good of the Autobots has escaped judgement or reprisal from his fellow Autobots (though Guzzle tried). For that reason I found the epilogue at the end with Impactor interesting, I wonder if they ever make a third series will it be Wreckers vs Prowl? Aren’t they getting tired of dying for him?

Another reason the first one is such a classic is it had Ironfist who was written as a very relatable character for the reader to easily become attached too, while Stakeout and Hubcap played a similar role in this series they were killed maybe a bit too early, once they got down to the big names who may be more popular but less relatable and kind of untouchable the suspense vanished for me.

[GoktimusPrime]

The true identity of Ostaros came as a complete surprise to me!

New theory about the meaning of the name "Ostaros": the word "ostaro" means "skeleton" in Esperanto. This may be a reference to Ostaros being the first of a new breed having been built from "bare bones." Or perhaps a reference to Ostaros being the underlying structure for Springer.

Anyway, I now know two words in Esperanto, the other being the word for 'yoghourt' (Yakult).

[SMHFConvoy]

So does this mean that Rattrap handed Prowl over to Tarantulas after the Combiner Wars epilogue in Transformers? (formerly RID)

[i_amtrunks]

I want to know what Ye ramifications are for Springer now.

Is this why he came to just in time for Prowl to be saved? Is he programmed to obey Prowl much like Kup had been?

More questions than answers again. It's a good story, a very grey one, another one making Prowl super shady which was only touched upon really in the main books. I think it will read far better in one sitting than it did piece by piece.

More of an espionage thriller as compared to the all out action vibe of Last Stand.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

So, I just finished reading this (the whole bunch at once), and yeah...a bit of a mixed bag. What it did well it did very, very well, but what it didn't do well was not good. And unfortunately gets worse the more I think about it.

Spoilers btw.

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Tarantulas was great. Really well done. I loved Tidal Wave. Carnivac and friends were pretty sweet too, and the beasties' design was also very, very good. Up until the end, it was well-written, and I was genuinely interested to see where it was going.

But.

It kind of seems like it was trying too hard, and - in contrast - the story didn't really take advantage of the already ample resources it had. Tarantulas' designs/inventions are/were revolutionary by Cybertronian standards, but they all just get blown up with his base/the Noisemaze. Prowl's glimmers of conscience are potentially a really interesting topic/character trait/narrative feature, as is the relationship between Prowl and Mesothulas, but neither ever really gets explored in all that much depth. The biggest thing that annoyed me, though, is that the series seemed to just throw away a lot of significant stuff for not all that much impact. Kup/Prowl's mind-link thing? Nup, it's gone now, and the only real consequence is Prowl getting punched again. Hey, Guzzle's still gunning for Kup for his pals all getting killed, he's been waiting all this time for his revenge, and...oh, wait, he's dead. Verity Carlo's dying from radiation exposure, from the Wreckers' previous mission to Garrus-9, and...oh, look, she's better now! Thanks, creepy scientist guy, I sure didn't want to see how something like that might have gone down with the tight-knit Wreckers, especially not their feeling-responsible-now leader Impactor. And Springer...Springer. Springer's mysterious new origins just didn't 'feel right'. Springer isn't a minor character, he's a major character from the G1 cartoon series and one of the major Wreckers. He has a well-established personality and role, which just doesn't work with the cheerful-looking tabula rasa we see in the comic. The TPB notes say that the original draft was going to have Prowl kill Ostaros, and that Nick Roche rewrote it after the editor pointed out that Prowl doing bad things wasn't shocking anymore. That left him with Ostaros as a loose end, and he tied it up with Springer. But it just feels forced somehow, and also sort of messes with a pretty iconic character. I really think the potential of an artificial Cybertronian could have been put to better use, and that Springer was sort of a poor fit for the smiley little protoform. Heck, Roche could have used Stakeout, which would have added to the tragic aspect of how he wrote Tarantulas.

It's less that it was bad and more that it had so much potential, which ultimately just got wasted in a rush to wrap things up and/or for the sake of having a plot twist. I can't help but feel that trying for a better story and more consistent characterisation with bit less 'significance' and/or shocking reveals would have resulted in a better comic all around.