Autobot City concept art (part 4)

Here is the third of four close-ups on the Autobot City concept art posted last month.  You can see creases, and where some of the many sheets of paper that make up this monstrosity don't quite line up.  Notice how massive the city is, compared to the already quite large shuttles.  This thing clearly dwarfs the old volcano headquarters by a good order of magnitude. 

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 22

The Raising of Lazarus is the twenty-second episode of War of the Worlds, the series. It features some intra-governmental agency squabbling between the Blackwood Project and Project 9, an Airforce taskforce in charge of, among other things, attempting to weaponize alien technology.  The catalyst: an alien scout pod recovered intact in remote northern Wisconsin near an experimental nuclear facility.  Nicolas Coster guest stars as Colonel Fredrick Alexander, one of two (and, eventually, two of two) main antagonists of the episode.  His bluster flusters Ironhorse and (quietly) infuriates Blackwood.

Alexander quickly establishes himself as dangerously unstable, when he takes an alien cell sample with the intention of injecting it into himself. Things go from bad to worse when the alien revives and begins to make its way around the base.  It makes contact with Alexander, through his computer, and offers him some helpful tips on how to insure cellular compatibility. It then intercepts communications between Harrison and Norton, learning all that they know.  Thus armed, it acquires some nuclear material and attempts to flee, though not before appropriating Alexander's body.  With the team sealed in by radiation, all seems lost. However, Ironhorse uses a laser, which was earlier used to attempt to open the alien craft, to blow up a fleeing alien/Alexander hybrid.

The Good:  It's about time we saw something like Project 9. If the world actually repulsed an alien invasion, you'd better believe that the military would do everything in its power to adapt and adopt that technology.

Alexander injecting alien cells into his tongue was nicely visceral. First the ear, then the tongue? Perhaps future episodes will give us eyeball injections.

I also liked how quickly the alien got the run of the place. It was extremely methodical in his approach, first getting food, then making contact with a potential ally, then arming itself with knowledge, acquiring nuclear material as both a weapon and as a way to stave off bacteriological infection, before finally getting a host body and fleeing.

The tuning fork makes its very last appearance in the series.  Goodbye, tuning fork!

The use of the laser, set up early as a potential way to get into the pod, to finally slay the escaping alien was rather clever. 

The Bad: Alexander's motivations were murky at best. Here, an alien craft fell into his hands, giving him a huge potential for research. Why, then, would he choose to start injecting himself with alien cells? I'd think that such a radical and dangerous step would be undertaken only when all other avenues of research had been exhausted.

The alien, too, seemed a little inefficient in his approach. Why not just take over Alexander's body immediately? Why all the jazz about cell matching? You could have made the episode a lot tighter by just having the alien make contact with Alexander and taking over his body immediately. While injecting cells into his body seemed like too much, attempting peaceful contact is much more reasonable.

I didn't care for the effect when the alien took control of the computer systems.  There was a glowing green field that seemed to be projected ABOVE the monitor. Why would it manifest itself like that? On the monitor, maybe, but floating above it? It seems like magic.  We also see a new alien ability, interfacing with computers by holding a few wires.  On the whole, I don't care for that one. It doesn't seem in keeping with the abilities they've demonstrated in the past.

The alien seemed to trap our heroes, by using radiation to systemically shut down every room in the compound, awfully quickly. Our heroes, in turn, seemed fairly willing to just allow themselves to be trapped. Also, it seems like they should have soaked up an awful lot of radiation. Perhaps they'll be having decontamination showers a little later, I dunno.

The Ugly: Surprisingly, not much at all. There was a murdered nuclear technician that had ... something ... going on with his mouth, we'll go with that.

Overall, a fairly weak episode.  There was a lot of time devoted to the alien skulking around the air ducts that seemed somewhat wasted.  While Project 9 is an intriguing notion, sadly the change of production staff means it never goes anywhere beyond what we see right here.  Alexander wasn't a particularly compelling villain.  For the penultimate episode of the season, I was hoping for better.   War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season is available for purchase on DVD.

Review: Marvel G1 #53: Recipe for Disaster!

Recipe for Disaster! is the fifty-third issue of the US G1 Marvel Comics run of Transformers. It was written by Bob Budiansky, drawn by José Delbo, inked by Dave Hunt, colored by Nel Yomtov, and lettered by newcomer Jade Moede.  The cover is by HOLY CRAP ... JIM LEE?

Ahem. Yup, Jim Lee cover.  Keeping in mind that, back in 1989, he was still pretty new on the scene, it's not THAT surprising, really. It's a rather lovely depiction of a huge, armored-bikini-clad amazonian woman, holding Cloudburst's head by some wires with a sword held ominously in her hand.  There's a nice contrast between the soft lines of the woman and the hard and detailed lines on Cloudburst.  It's not Jim Lee's best work, far from it, but it's a rather nice cover for Transformers.  "NEXT!" she says as she looks right at the reader.  Despite the decapitation, I can't help but imagine that many young readers would have like to be next.

The cover does seem a bit disconnected from the cliffhanger we were left with last month, but the opening page dispels that notion. The action starts where we left off, with Cloudburst and Landmine restrained and about to become dinner.  After a brief bit of back-and-forth exposition about what happened last issue, they pull out an electro-magnet and forcibly separate the Pretenders from their shells. This proves to be an oversight, though, as the shells are now free to engage in battle. Even still, though, the Mecannibals manage to corner the good guys. Cloudburst, though, once again manages to reason his way out of things. He describes a delicious meal of robots marinated in mercury, garnished with lead sulfide crystals and sprinkled with iron filings. Incredibly, the Mecannibals go for it, offering to spare their lives in exchange for cooking their next meal.  This rather silly plot twist is derided by Hi-Test and Throttle, perhaps as a way for Bob to acknowledge that it's a bit weak.  We keep the theme of Landmine wanting to fight and Cloudburst wanting to talk going, but in a way that rather strains credulity.  Ah, well.

Soon, our heroes are sent to the nearby planet Femax, where they are to gather the crystals they need. Berko remains behind as collateral. Hi-Test and Throttle don't want to risk letting Autobots go, and so follow them. Sky Lynx, skulking nearby, in turn follows them.  Oh, what a tangled web! Sky Lynx observes as the Nebulon engines combine with their Decepticons allies, but sticks to the shadows.

On Femax, the Autobots find some primitive giants, all men.  The crystals that they want are inside a mountain with a massive steel door.  Rather than go through the door, they decide to go under it and soon discover a verdant paradise within.  Artificial sunlight and climate control are at work to maintain the environment.  Before long, they are beset by amazonian women wielding spears (really, they've got artificial sunlight but are using melee weapons?) and speaking in a strange tongue.  Landmine keeps them at bay while Cloudburst figures out the translation.  Once he does, he expresses peaceful intentions.  The women decide to bring the Autobots (still disguised as humans) back to their leader, the First One, to decide their fate.

The First One, the leader of the Amazons, languishes in her throne and listens to Cloudburst's words. She decides to give the Pretenders the crystals they seek ... if they can withstand their physical tests.  Landmine tries to be the champion, as after all, he's the more physical of the two Autobots, but the First One only has eyes for cloudburst.  She watches, rather suggestively, as he wresles with monsters, dodges missiles, and jousts on lizard-back.  Finally, impressed, she takes Cloudburst away for his reward.Once again, Delbo's artwork is strong during depiction of alien elements, such as the horse-like lizards ridden by the contestants or the green horned monster he battles.  The choice of making the first one mostly bald, with cascades of hair in one long plume, is an odd one. It makes her appear rather severe.  Lee cheats by putting her in a helmet that disguises this fact, but it does diminish her sex appeal a bit.  Perhaps if Delbo wanted her to appear tough at first but softer later, he should have given her a more conventional hairstyle and hid it with a helmet during her first scene.

She leads him to her private chambers, where she asks him to doff his armor. He rather blankly looks at her when she informs him that he can have the crystals, and "much, much more."  With him still not getting it, she tries to kiss him and offers him the position of Second One, her mate. He decides that the time for deception is over and reveals himself to her. She does not take this well. Even as she accuses him of tricking her, she draws her weapon. Over his protests, she lops off his head in one blow. KLONK! I love how clueless he is about the whole situation. Even the most naive of readers will have picked up on her interest in him, but as a robot the idea of this kind of relationship never enters his mind.

The First One storms out, sword in one hand, Cloudburst's head in the other, and comes for Landmine. His first instinct is to fight, of course, but he decides to do things Landmine's way for once. He manages to talk the First One down. She decides to make amends. Before long, a repaired Cloudburst and Landmine are receiving crystals, as well as the friendship of the Femaxian women.  As they exit the mountain, they are beset by Darkwing and Dreadwind, but Sky Lynx gets the drop on those goons. They return to Master Mouth with the crystals, but negotiate a new deal. Rather than cook their next meal for them, the Autobots will leave with Berko in exchange for not destroying the ship of Hi-Test and Throttle, their robo-spotters. They ALSO demand that the Mecannibals repair all of the robots they digested, rather than keep the 500,000,000 microchips. The Autobots wouldn't want to live at the cost of other lives. The Mecannibals reluctantly agree, but to put a cherry on top of this Sunday, the Autobots THEN inform the Mecannibals that the Dreadwing ship is in fact a robot.  The issue ends with Sky Lynx (who we'll never see again) and Cloudburst flying back to the Ark, and the Mecannibals chasing the Decepticons.  Once again, the negotiation with the Mecannibals rings false. Are their contractors, the robospotters, really worth THAT much to them? And why would the Autobots then TELL the Mecannibals that the bargaining chip that they JUST played was based on deception? Are they THAT sure of the Mecannibals' word? 

Overall, it's an ok issue on its own, a bit weak in the context of the two-parter that it concludes. The Femaxian story is a decent vignette, but it feels thematically and tonally disconnected from the Mecannibal story surrounding it. Landmine's story arc feels rote, by the numbers. Yes, he comes around to Cloudburst's way of thinking, but we don't really see why. Also, Cloudburst never really sees his side of things, which makes that arc feel a bit lopsided. Finally, the odd business practices of the Mecannibals are a distraction. It's not a terrible comic, but it never transcends mediocrity either.

Next month, we're promised "The newest -- and Smallest -- Transformers yet: The Micromasters!!" It dosn't sound particularly promising, but we'll see. Recipe for Disaster! is included in IDW's Classic Transformers Volume 4, for sale at Amazon.com.

Autobot City concept art (part 3)

Welcome to part three of my ongoing exploration of the concept art of Autobot City.  This is the right side of the paper, which includes Floro Dery's signature and the date (8/16/85).  It also includes the information about the city closing up like a fist.  Neat stuff!

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 21

So Shall Ye Reap is the twenty-first episode of the War of the Worlds series.  It depicts the alien's attempt to infiltrate the human drug scene with a designer drug that turns humans into homicidal maniacs.  The scientists responsible for developing the drug have run into problems, prompting the Advocacy to send an Envoy to speed things along. Soon the head scientist is replaced, to presumably die a grisly death off-screen at the caverns, and the aliens are making real progress. They even send one of their victims, former vice detective Jack Sawyer, (shades of Lost pop into my head inevitably at his name) into a strip club where he proceeds to tear up the place.

Meanwhile, with strange drug overdoses all over Chicago, the team attempts to infiltrate the Chicago police departmentas DEA agents. Lieutenant Novak doesn't trust them, though, and soon manages to break their cover story. A call from the ever-referenced but seldom seen General Wilson (drink!) straightens things out with a new cover story; they're an anti-terrorist unit. But soon even that proves insufficient and Harrison tells Novak the truth. With some help from her mob contacts, they locate the alien base and storm it.  What they find is a host of dead aliens and drug-addled victims of alien experimentation.  The drug, you see, turns humans indiscriminately violent, and so the aliens abandon this line of attack as too risky to themselves.

The Good: There were some nice touches here and there.  I rather liked the alien who was collecting human specimens. We first realize for sure what she is when she goes to press a button in an elevator and you see the rash on her arm.  When we next see her, she's streetwalking and having much worse luck; her burns have gotten worse. "Can we call it a night? I'm falling apart," she complains, almost literally.

There was a nice transition, too, from the aliens experimenting in their makeshift labs to the nightclub where the above alien was dancing about, looking for victims. A human was hooked up to a contraption that rapidly showed him erotic and violent imagery, to test the efficacy of the drug on his systems. After he dies, the camera shows the images with some incongruous music. The scene then fades to a nightclub where said music is playing.  A subtle touch, but well done.

I've got a thing for alien deaths - in this case, an alien guard gets killed by a prisoner with a toilet. It seemed very appropriate during a prison break somehow.

I rather liked the method of drug injection; in through the ear.  It's nicely creepy and not at all how humans normally do things. It's also nicely dark when humans voluntarily bite down on glass containers of the drug, cutting up the insides of their mouths. 

There were a lot of interesting ideas in this episode.  It's clear that the writer wanted to explore the connection between sex and drugs and violence, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of the erotic and military imagery in the beginning and then the rampage at the strip club.  There were also some odd parallels between the aliens and the Blackwood team; both of them were faced with challenges from a female authority figure.  However ...

The Bad: None of those elements ever really gel together well.  The sex and violence connection was touched upon, but never really explored in depth.  Meanwhile, the parallels between the Envoy and Novak weren't used to illuminate anything about the differences in alien and human relations.

The alien's seemed a bit too human in this episode.  Whether it was the pasty and constantly leaking (his eyes, ears and nose were always running) head scientist, or the trio of aliens collecting humans for experimentation ("We did pretty good tonight." "'We?' All you did was drive the van!") they seemed more petty than usual.  It have been interesting if it went somewhere, long or short term, but as it is it just felt inconsistent with what had gone before.

Also, the vice cop, the same one who gets sent on a rampage, gets captured when trying to arrest one of the aliens for prostitution. It's true that she picked him up in a bar, but she never propositioned him, so what's the deal? A minor nit, but it bugged me.

When Sawyer goes bonkers in a strip club, the girl on stage keeps dancing.  This strikes me as highly unlikely. I tend to think she'd have gotten off the stage the moment the dude with the baseball bat started swinging.

Also, why would it bother the aliens that the drug turns humans against each other AND aliens.  Humans outnumber aliens by, what, 600,000:1?  Besides that, what was their distribution model for this drug? It seems to turn people violent in moments, so how are they expecting to get it into the hands and ears of junkies everywhere?  The plan doesn't seem well thought out.

Finally, the pacing seems really odd on this episode. I found myself wondering when it was going to be over.  I think perhaps it's because of all the elements present. You have a lot of characters and a lot of themes, but overall the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.

The Ugly: There were many disturbing images in this episode, but I think the shot at the end of the addicts clamoring about the floor to drink up as much of the drug as they can, their lips and tongues bloody from the glass shards, is going to get my vote.

 There you have it.  An episode with a lot of potential but, unfortunately, it fails to live up to that potential.  Oddly, while the show seemed to hit its stride around the middle of this season, that energy seems to be slipping away somewhat as we barrel towards the endgame.   War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season is available for sale on DVD.

Review: Marvel G1 #52: Guess Who the Mecannibals are Having for Dinner?

Guess Who the Mecannibals are Having for Dinner? is the fifty-second issue of the US G1 Marvel comics run of Transformers.  It was written by Bob Budiansky, penciled by José Delbo, inked by Dave Hunt, colored by Nel Yomtov, and lettered by Manny (not The Hands of Fate) Manos. Delbo also drew the cover.

The cover is a mixed bag.  Landmine battles some bizarrely-designed toothy monsters with multiple legs, standing on some kind of mechanical web.  The Mecannibals look great, I have to say.  But Landmine seems off.  His pose looks like it should be dynamic, but there's no energy to it.  It also looks like Delbo couldn't decide if he's standing on a web or leaping.  There's no sense of vertical motion, which argues for the former, but he doesn't actually seem to be standing on the web either.  The decision to color the background under the web whit similarly robs the image of any sense of depth.  "Menace of the Mecannibals!" it tells us.

The issue itself suffers from analogous flaws.  It can't quite decide what kind of story it wants to tell. It starts off in a Cantina-like bar on the Grand Central Space Station.  (Since Bob lived in New Jersey and worked for Marvel in Manhattan, he'd be very familiar with Grand Central (train) Station, which he is nodding to here.)  Cloudburst and Landmine, in their giant human disguises, witness a wimpy robot get tossed out of the bar and into space.  Impulsive Landmine tries to stop this from happening and gets into a nice brawl.  Cloudburst bemoans how complicated partnering with Landmine can be.  They have a quick flashback about their mission, to buy microchips on the black market to try to reverse some of the damage caused by Starscream.  We also learn, somewhat redundantly, that GCSS is not robo-friendly.  Finally, we see a pair of diminutive (read: normal-sized) human figures in cloaks, observing the happenings with interest.  It's an odd opening, one that emphasizes the relationship between two characters that we've never really met before.  I'm willing to run with it, though.

The meat of the plot starts when they walk down asteroid alley, looking for sellers of high-quality microchips.   They meet with little luck and much racism before the two cloaked figures offer to hook them up what they need.  However,.a chance encounter with Berko (remember him?) lets them know that an Autobot, Sky Lynx,  might potentially be in trouble at the hands of those two.  Landmine wants to go try to rescue him, but Cloudburst restrains him; the dozens of Autobots who desperately need microchips take priority over someone who merely MAY be in danger. Once again, the Cloudburst / Landmine tension seems like the most interesting aspect of the story.  The return of Sky Lynx and Berko feels more like tying up loose ends than like something the story necessitated. I am starting to dig the many weird aliens Delbo throws at us, though.

The two figures turn out to be Throttle and High-Test, binary bonded to Darkwing and Dreadwind.  We learn that they are getting paid to feed their shadowy 'bosses,' no doubt the Mecannibals seen on the cover, robots.  They move to collect payment from the Autobot Pretenders, but once again Landmine's sense of morality and willingness to put himself in danger gets in the way.  He demands to meet their bosses himself, something that normally isn't done.  However, apparently five hundred million microchips are a big enough deal to warrant an exception.  They travel to a pretty awesome looking insectile ship where, halfway into the book, we meet the Mecannibals. They are indeed red spidery aliens on a techno-web, lead by Master Mouth.  These rude aliens are somewhat annoyed at having their dinner disturbed.  The appetizer is the Chromite, the robot who Landmine tried to help before.  We're treated to a rather macabre off-panel devouring, but the main course turns out to be none other than Sky Lynx! Landmine rescues him with his inner robot (left behind when the shells went in to conclude the deal. He then shoots the energon that they just used as payment for the microchips and uses the blinding light to recombine with his shell unnoticed.  Ballsy, ballsy plan there, Landmine.

The Pretenders leave with their microchips, then go back for Berko.  This is when things start to fall apart a bit.  Berko won't trust them, because they're 'humans.'  They grab him and take him to a back alley, where they reveal themselves to him to get them to trust him.  Unbeknown to them, Throttle and Hi-Test are tailing them.  Once they know that those two are robots, they arrange for them to be chucked out an airlock at the bar the issue opened with.  When they go back to settle Berko's tab (how could Throttle and Hi-Test know they'd do that, anyway?) out they go.  Soon the combined form of the Decepticon Powermasters, Darkwind, blasts them and they're subdued.  When they wake up, they're back in the layer of the Mecannibals! Of course, it's to be continued from here.  Sadly, while most of the logic of the issue is solid, at the end the characters have to drop a few dozen IQ points to fall back into the Mecannibals claws. 

Overall thoughts: as I indicated before, mixed.  It's pretty clear that Budiansky came up with the name Mecannibals and built a story around them.  They actually work pretty well.  Their brusqueness, the sort of blasé horror surrounding them, their mismatched design, it all sort of works.  The way we get there, though, doesn't quite.  I feel like I should like the extensive characterization given to the pair of Landmine and Cloudburst, but I don't. Maybe it's just the timing of the issue; they'd been around for over a year at this point, so to focus on them now seems a bit strange somehow.  Having four old characters who had been floating in limbo show up also doesn't help.  Again, it feels like there are a lot of potentially cool elements here, but they don't quite gel together into a cohesive whole.  I do love Delbo's art, though. He's at his best when he can draw the unearthly, and there's plenty of that at G.C.S.S.

Next month, "The Main Course!"  We'll see if that manages to weld the many elements present together in a more coherent way.  Guess Who the Mecannibals are Having for Dinner? is included in IDW's Classic Transformers Volume 4, available for purchase.

Autobot City concept art (part 2)

Two weeks ago, I posted some unused concept art from the fertile imagination of Floro Dery. I asked if people wanted to see the original notes on it, which would have been unreadable at the size I originally shared it.  The response was fairly positive, so here we go.  I think I'll break it into four drawings.  Here's the left-hand side.  I hope you enjoy!