Strika a Pose
(Spoiler free-ish)
SynopsisAs Windblade and her team fight their way through Elita-1’s Titan, Carcer, they face opposition at every turn to stop them from awakening the sleeping giant… and they soon find out why!
eeepTill All Are One is still keeping up the tension and the storyline that was so quickly done with in the Titans Return mini-arc (the trade was only out these past weeks, with
MTMTE and
Transformers joining the
One-shot - all of these, their casts, and the covers and credits can be found in our database entries), and it does it in a very natural way, not forgetting its other sources and bringing in some very intriguing twists.
Fight meThe major players, as we know are Starscream and Windblade, the Council and Cybertron on one side, Elita, Obsidian and Strika, and her crew on the other (there is also the faction of undead titans, I guess, like whatever - again, full cast can be found
here, though beware of some spoilers), and it's in the contrasts between the characters and the writing of their interactions that the meatier stuff comes out.
With the ever-present BumbleghostIn particular, Strika and Obsidian get a nice dose of spotlight each this month, with the latter already playing a fairly major, menacing role on the Council as the bearer of bad news (backed up with facts and data), and we also finally see what the former can do, dipping into both of their seeding in the Beast Machines series.
..dangWhat we also get in the issue, which is exciting and almost a little surprising, I'll admit, is a direct link to information and story development that were achieved in the Revolution tie-in issue for this series, in the form of the issue's resolution/cliffhanger... and more on that below.
ArtSara Pitre Durocher delivers yet another pearl of linework and layouts, with some truly memorable Starscream and Elita-1 condescending looks, and some impressively expressive faceplated faces (Obsidian and Strika are but two). The concluding pages echo the very first Windblade series, too, with some other hints towards the Revolution tie-in, again.
He so smug, SO smugJoana Lafuente adds to the excellent linework performance, once more, too - the panel below I believe proves it marvellously: the lighting, the shades of purple, the way they work with the inking beneath them, almost drowning out everything else in the image, all goes to show how the visual language of the medium can be fully employed.
kchoom indeedLikewise, the lettering in the example above is an integral part to the frame (and the storytelling), actually adding weight to the word itself rather than just remaining sound - Tom B. Long does this often, and still well. The covers are also this month a full IDW TF grouping too, with Pitre Durocher on main, Priscilla Tramontano on Chromia's criminal cover, and Joana Lafuente (thumbnail) joining the theme of her other two pieces this month.
ThoughtsSpoilerish aheadTill All Are One was ramping up the tension since issue 5. It took a potentially good story seedling in Titans Return and made sure it took roots in the ongoing series, while also connecting previous aspects of Transformers lore, the expanded mythos we are encountering across IDW, and bringing in a new-but-old major player, if the last page is to be believed.
there's those dead Titans I mentionedWe will not know what makes Elita and her crew so adamant to protect their Titan-ship, until another month at least, but we can enjoy just how hard, how strenuously, how viciously, how well laid out and constructed each scene is, and how the visual and verbal languages are co-deployed for this month. Very, very good indeed.
i deffo wanna see a pic of Starscream as a llama, & maybe a toy made 
