Got the issue last night, and I really wanted to like it alot, but I cant. The series is still poorly paced, and the cutting around from Cybertron, back to the pages with Human focus (which still feel wasted and overlong) is jarring.
So far all the "human" focused pages could have been condensed down to about 6 throughout the 5 issues, and not have lost anything relative to the plot. I am not at all opposed to having humans in the series, its just so many pages are wasted on nothing featuring them that could have been far better used showing more Decepticons or Autobots.
Jazz and Mirage were quite nice in this issue, its obvious that Jazz has no issue with trusting Mirage like Ironhide does, so that makes me wonder who he believes the traitor to be, I have to think that the traitor is amongst the bots now on Cybertron, but who knows it could be a left field bot.
Anyone else think it odd that Drift seemed to be smiling when Mirage appeared?
Kup added some much needed spice into the mix, and having a slightly less angry leader bot among the team cannot be anything but good. Prowl has taken a back seat, while Jazz has really been thrust forward, and I expect we will see more of the same from this issue if McCarthy is indeed writing the Jazz Spotlight issue.
Cliffjumper's face when Jazz was challenged was fantastic, the little guy has had more characterisation in the past 2 issues (and all of 5 panels) than any other character in this series. Most of it due to Guido's fantastic art, I do not know if I would even be bothering with this series until the trade if it were not for Guido's art.
So Megatron has the Matrix, something that miraculously appears, maybe it swapped with Ore-13, Headmaster Sunstreaker and The "-tion" kids, in a matter transfer machine or some such ilk?
This issue was better than the others, and the past two have been vastly improved on the first three, but it's still such a meh series, It's almost as if McCarthy had enough story for 6 issues and was told to drag it out to 12, the exact opposite of Furman, who had enough story for 24 issues, but was forced to condense it into 4.
So overall the issue itself wasn't bad, it still moved forward, although at an alarmingly slow rate, much will have to occur in the last half of the series, so it seems like we will have a 2 paced series, the first 6 too slow, the last six, too fast.
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