TransFormers/G.I. Joe #4

December 20, 2003

Quick Rating: Good
Title: Wolves

The World War II era battle of man and machine heats up.

Writer: John Ney Rieber
Art: Jae Lee
Colors: June Chung
Letters: Benjamin Lee
Editor: Roger Lee
Cover Art: Jae Lee
Publisher: Dreamwave

With two issues to go in this miniseries, I must admit, my enthusiasm is beginning to dwindle. John Ney Rieber is still serving up a good script, but it’s beginning to feel quite padded. The battle scenes are getting more drawn out and, while there is some development of the plot in this issue, it’s starting to feel like it’s taking too long.

This is not to say that the battle scenes aren’t good. The battle with Scarlett and Bumblebee versus Rumble was one the best bits in this issue – particularly the part where the robot begins to develop a little crush on the human woman – and the bits showing the friendship between Roadblock and Grimlock also worked very well. The scheming between Starscream and Destro makes for a very good use of the characters, and there’s a good spotlight in this issue on the two “combined” robots, Superion and Bruticus.

Other things aren’t working as well. The Storm Shadow/Snake Eyes fight has been going on for four issues now, and it feels like it could have been wrapped up in one. Lee’s art isn’t quite top-notch here either. While one appreciates the style he is attempting, there are simply too many shadows and sometimes it makes it difficult to tell one character from another. Particularly with the redesigns of the characters for the World War II-era, this is bad. You can get away with more of this if the characters were in their classic costumes and configurations — in unfamiliar ones, it’s more important to differentiate between them. In the aforementioned Storm Shadow/Snake Eyes battle, where there is no dialogue to differentiate one combatant from the other, the shadows make it hard to figure out who is who, and I found myself needing to look back at earlier issues to remind myself so that I even knew who won the fight. (Hopefully, it’s over.)

Zartan and Bumblebee are the standouts in this issue, with Zartan posing as a Joe leading up to his battle with Flint. Bumblebee is not only developed well, but we also get a great look at his new form in this alternate world, a clever alternate shape that suits the story well.

Like a lot of comics this days, this book seems to suffer from a desire to stretch out a story that could be told quicker. People may criticize earlier writers, but Stan Lee could tell more story in one issue than a lot of today’s crop can in four. This is a book that will almost certainly read better in a collected edition, where you won’t have to wait a month (or longer) between installments only to read a book where not much has happened.

Rating: 7/10