IDW Optimus Prime #14 Artist Edition Variant Cover by Andrew Griffith
Saturday, September 30th, 2017 12:53PM CDT
Category: Comic Book NewsPosted by: Va'al Views: 17,649
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OPTIMUS PRIME #14 CVR C ARTIST ED GRIFFITH
On Cybertron, Optimus Prime battles the Dinobots over the first new Cybertronian life to emerge in four million years! But does he stand a chance when the Dinobots’ newest member is two miles tall and eats cities?
• Part of IDW’s Artist’s Edition Cover Month!
• Optimus Prime deals with the fallout of the First Strike event!
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Posted by Stormshot_Prime on September 30th, 2017 @ 10:34pm CDT
Posted by Randomhero on September 30th, 2017 @ 11:31pm CDT
Stormshot_Prime wrote:Trypticon as a Dinobot? Can we please get a TR Trypticon in dinobot colors?
I’m more baffled by Slag on the cover since he’s dead
Posted by Kurona on September 30th, 2017 @ 11:39pm CDT
Posted by partholon on October 1st, 2017 @ 4:05pm CDT
nicks designs for em just dont work with other artists IMO.
Particularly swoop who always looks god awfull.
its the dinobots for gods sake, they should look awesome charging into battle. instead im always left feeling a bit "meh" . thats a bad sign considering theyre my favorite sub group.
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 2nd, 2017 @ 10:34am CDT
Posted by Va'al on October 4th, 2017 @ 2:32am CDT
With Optimus Prime trapped on Cybertron, the Autobots track down their missing friend, Jazz-and find themselves under fire from humans armed with Cybertronian weapons.
Bullet points:
* While First Strike blows up Cybertron, the Autobots must keep the peace on Earth!
As the consequences of the First Strike event reverberate, Optimus Prime ventures into the wilderness of Cybertron to search for the first new Cybertronian life to emerge in four million years!
Posted by Bounti76 on October 4th, 2017 @ 3:50am CDT
Posted by Relic Dinobot on October 4th, 2017 @ 5:34am CDT
Bounti76 wrote:Who's the Autobot on the cover with Optimus and Arcee?
I believe that's Sovereign, Alpha Trion's temporary Headmaster/Titan Master in the IDW continuity.
Posted by Va'al on October 4th, 2017 @ 5:38am CDT
Relic Dinobot wrote:Bounti76 wrote:Who's the Autobot on the cover with Optimus and Arcee?
I believe that's Sovereign, Alpha Trion's temporary Headmaster/Titan Master in the IDW continuity.
Sovereign is technically Blackrock, not Alpha Trion's head, but that is also my guess!
Posted by Daniel Adkins on October 4th, 2017 @ 6:52am CDT
Posted by Kurona on October 4th, 2017 @ 7:45am CDT
Posted by ScottyP on October 4th, 2017 @ 10:43am CDT
It'd make sense to drop them off in Barber's hands. Of course, I can also imagine a scenario where they sideline some of those characters for a while.Daniel Adkins wrote:Blackrock! Looks like he’ll be staying on Cybertron after First Strike. Will the rest of the Revolutionaries be joining him?
Posted by Daniel Adkins on October 4th, 2017 @ 12:25pm CDT
Posted by The Lonely Cracker on October 4th, 2017 @ 3:29pm CDT
Posted by DeadCaL on October 4th, 2017 @ 3:51pm CDT
Posted by Va'al on October 5th, 2017 @ 4:45am CDT
On Cybertron, Optimus Prime battles the Dinobots over the first new Cybertronian life to emerge in four million years! But does he stand a chance when the Dinobots’ newest member is two miles tall and eats cities?
Posted by Big Grim on October 5th, 2017 @ 5:37am CDT
Posted by ScottyP on October 5th, 2017 @ 11:54am CDT
Springer's already been sidelined for a year+Daniel Adkins wrote:They can't sideline The Greatest Hero of Them All.
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 6th, 2017 @ 10:50am CDT
Posted by ScottyP on October 6th, 2017 @ 11:59am CDT
I've been waiting to see what they'll do with Bludgeon since Stormbringer :rimshot:D-Maximus_Prime wrote:That is an awesome cover!! I've been waiting to see what they would do with Bludgeon and Slag after the Dinobot trilogy
Posted by Va'al on October 7th, 2017 @ 12:18pm CDT
Optimus Prime #11
John Barber (w) • Sara Pitre Durocher, Fico Ossio, Paolo Villanelli, Kei Zama (a & c)
With Optimus Prime embroiled in the FIRST STRIKE event, the Autobots on Earth set off on a mission to find one of their own—before anti-Cybertronian humans get to him first!
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
Bullet points:
While First Strike blows up Cybertron, the Autobots must keep the peace on Earth!
Variant cover by Marcelo Matere!
Posted by Randomhero on October 7th, 2017 @ 4:52pm CDT
Posted by Deadput on October 7th, 2017 @ 6:22pm CDT
Randomhero wrote:Am I the only one super confused by the art credits? This first couple pages look like Alex Milne(the humans especially) and later it looks like Zama’s stile of humans.
God damn it I did not notice this until you said it now it's bugging the hell outta me.
Posted by Randomhero on October 8th, 2017 @ 12:14am CDT
Deadput wrote:Randomhero wrote:Am I the only one super confused by the art credits? This first couple pages look like Alex Milne(the humans especially) and later it looks like Zama’s style of humans.
God damn it I did not notice this until you said it now it's bugging the hell outta me.
Maybe it’s just the inks and colors but it doesn’t look like Sara’s art at all. Those faces just scream Alex Milne especially the noses and eyes. Even the proportions don’t look like her style.
It’s just throwing me off so much. I’m not saying it’s not her but it’s apples and oranges compared to Till All Are one. I know she hasn’t drawn humans in IDW but those also look like Alex and like Zama’s styles
Gotta be the inks and coloring. Especially unlike TAAO transformers who are all pretty much one color. Sorry but I don’t understand why everyone is pretty much one color except Starscream and Windblade. For the love of god make Elita, chroma, circuit and obsidian more than just one blob of color.
Posted by Deadput on October 8th, 2017 @ 1:21am CDT
I prefer an actual book as well since the constant art shifts are annoying it's like if a cartoon changed styles every few episodes.
Posted by Randomhero on October 8th, 2017 @ 10:24am CDT
Deadput wrote:These inconsistencies are a part of why I consider comics to be inferior to shows animated or live action.
I prefer an actual book as well since the constant art shifts are annoying it's like if a cartoon changed styles every few episodes.
Well that’s actually most cartoons. For transformers G1 had three different studios drawing episodes. 2001 RID and animated and Armada did as well.
Posted by ScottyP on October 9th, 2017 @ 10:16am CDT
Again, just noting some complete, probably nonsense speculation. I'd prefer a little more consistency as well.
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 11th, 2017 @ 11:33am CDT
A Seibertron.com review of IDW Optimus Prime #11
Synposis
With Optimus Prime embroiled in the FIRST STRIKE event, the Autobots on Earth set off on a mission to find one of their own—before anti-Cybertronian humans get to him first!
Story
Arriving a smidgen late, we finally catch back up with the Optimus Prime cast who are on Earth, while the title character has been involved with the First Strike event, which is shown to kick off this issue to our characters.
And overall, we definitely had some good content to the issue. I appreciated the way things were handled leading up to the first explosion on Cybertron and then the loss of communications, with appropriate reactions from everyone present on Earth. I also liked the way we got the small colonists team to assemble and head off, and this group provides us with some great insights into the current Optimus Prime and how he is perceived.
The in-fighting of the group has some interesting moments that I appreciated, with Slide still holding a massive grudge, Aileron showing the signs that she no longer believes in the Prime, and the other colonists starting to question themselves and everything happening as well. Considering everything that has happened in this book so far, and with the IDW world concerning Earth as a whole, I feel everything here is real, believable, and overall provides some great tension to the book, enough so to keep interest in the book and to keep a good pace going. A lot happened in the book, with First Strike, Earth and Cybertron reactions, the C team, and the Jazz and Cybertronian weapons storylines. There was a lot of material tied together with appropriate character tension and a very good pace.
One final note to the story: the cameos are brilliant in this story. I loved that we got both positive, negative, and neutral perspectives from so many characters in this story. And the character choices were pretty great too. Dirge finally showing back up, Serena Bharwaney after all this time, some more Jimmy Pink (wonder when he and Verity will meet again? No reason why they shouldn't), the Action Man program, and many others. 3 pages were dedicated to interviews/cameos, and they contributed to the story without holding it down and while still provided us with some great catch up moments for some of these characters.
Art
Now while the story side of the issue was pretty great, the art is where this issue gets some points deducted. The story made things fairly good to follow, but the art was hard to follow. There were 4 artists who worked on this issue, with Sara Pitre-Durocher handling the majority, covering the first 8 pages. Fico Ossio, the artist of Revolution, covered 5 pages, while regular series artist Kei Zama covered 3 pages and artist Paolo Villanelli covered 4 pages.
While all 4 are very capable artists, the differences in styles were really jarring for the issue, and at times confusing. The first 8 pages under Pitre-Durocher were really well handled, with everything fitting in right, well drawn characters, and good expressions. the 3 pages featuring the interviews were done by Zama, and those 3 pages were covered very well too. I enjoy Zama's art, especially with Burcham doing the coloring, and those pages really shined. And those 8 pages of continuity and the 3 pages of interviews were the only real smooth part of the art, and it didn't help that the interview pages were all separated by several pages.
Ossio did his best, but I am still not a fan of his art with the Transformers style, especially with the faces. Slide especially seems to suffer in this department, which is unfortunate considering her major role in the story. It also did not help that Ossio's art was broken up by a Zama page. Villanelli did his level best, and he got off a little better considering his art was for the last 4 pages, but his style was a good bit different from Ossio's, who immediately preceded him. His art also felt a bit plain, with very sort of flat and featureless expressions and styles for his Autobots.
Throughout the whole issue, Josh Burcham provided colors, and he did his level best to keep things running smoothly. I've always been a fan of Burcham's work, and the fact that his colors work with 4 quite different artistic styles and still look good are a testament to his abilities.
Tom B. Long once more tackles the lettering, and once again we are not disappointed. He does a great job with the different speech tones and speech positioning, making sure never to block any potentially important part of the art and letting us really enjoy it while keeping the speech space to a minimum.
Final Thoughts
This issue of Optimus Prime was overall a good experience. While it wasn't the best issue to write home about, it set the groundwork for the First Strike crossover (already underway), it set up a good story about the colonists and their relation with Prime, and it got a lot accomplished making sure everything First Strike related was ready. There was a lot happening, yet the issue was not overcrowded or rushed. Pacing was perfect. The real thing holding the issue back was the combination of artists and the differing styles making visuals a bit harder to follow, but coloring managed to mitigate that as best it could.
In conclusion: pretty good story with some interesting character directions set and some great interactions between characters of all races and factions. I am excited to see how this arc continues with Jazz, the colonists, and Prime.
Posted by Daniel Adkins on October 11th, 2017 @ 12:33pm CDT
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 11th, 2017 @ 12:36pm CDT
Daniel Adkins wrote:I love how they established a living descendant to John Henry from Hearts of Steel. Hope he isn't just a one-off character.
i liked that too. Had to throw that in there after Hearts of Steel became canon
Posted by Randomhero on October 11th, 2017 @ 4:20pm CDT
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 12th, 2017 @ 11:26am CDT
Posted by ScottyP on October 12th, 2017 @ 11:52am CDT
As for Aileron, I need to go find an image. Bbl.
Posted by Randomhero on October 12th, 2017 @ 12:45pm CDT
ScottyP wrote:I've seen complaining here and elsewhere about the characterization of the colonists so far in this book, and I think some impatience is happening. They've barely been around until this issue and this is the surface of breaking them out of their one dimensional starting point as religious zealots. Give it time!
As for Aileron, I need to go find an image. Bbl.
Slide has been complaining and singing the same song since issue 6. It just comes down to "if you don't believe in why you're here anymore than why are you here?" That's the question to ask. This isn't like pyra manga who shares the same ideas toward Optimus, she's there because she wants the matrix.
She gets ticked they they bury Oiler on New Cybertron but doesn't stop them. Sideswipe was taken back to Cybertron to be buried or whatever they do with their dead and yet Oiler is buried on earth and she just complains about it
Posted by Va'al on October 12th, 2017 @ 12:59pm CDT
As Scotty says, this is the beginning of their actual development since that disillusion happened, and I feel that the complaints (from Slide, not about him) were the bookmark from Barber to come back to the point once he had the space to write more about them without involving the entire Hasbro Universe.
Posted by Randomhero on October 12th, 2017 @ 3:10pm CDT
Va'al wrote:But Slide has every right about feeling torn apart by her disillusion.
As Scotty says, this is the beginning of their actual development since that disillusion happened, and I feel that the complaints (from Slide, not about him) were the bookmark from Barber to come back to the point once he had the space to write more about them without involving the entire Hasbro Universe.
True but this also isn't the first time in johns book where people stand around and complain about someone's views and leadership -COUGH METALHAWK-COUGH BUMBLEBEE-COUGH-
For me it's just the first year of RID again withthe nails standing around complaining.
For a better way of handling people doubting Optimus would have been Slide actually leaving and breaking up the colonist autobots. She Yoko Onos the group and seeing one of their own lose complete faith and abandon their cause. For me that's more compelling because like i said I don't know why she is still there other than to be a negative Nancy
Posted by RacerCheetor on October 14th, 2017 @ 5:13am CDT
Posted by Kurona on October 14th, 2017 @ 8:54am CDT
Yup! They're part of the little rag-tag group of characters that make up the colonists; being fairly obscure characters from all corners of the franchise. You've got Gimlet and Bump - like you said - from Japanese BW, Rail Racer from RiD, Slide (and previously Oiler) from the G1 Micromaster Combiners, and Roulette from 2003's OTFCC (essentially the Botcon of back then).
Posted by WreckerJack on October 19th, 2017 @ 7:08pm CDT
Description
With Optimus Prime trapped on Cybertron, the Autobots track down their missing friend, Jazz—and find themselves under fire from humans armed with Cybertronian weapons!
If you are a fan of TF comics and live in the UK, James Roberts and Jack Lawrence will be doing an autograph signing!
Posted by Randomhero on October 19th, 2017 @ 7:59pm CDT
It's funny to see slugslingers little titan master arms on the side of his head. He's not a Titan master obviously but it's funny to see
Posted by SG Roadbuster on October 19th, 2017 @ 8:15pm CDT
d'awwwwwwww Buzzsaw.
Posted by President-prime on October 19th, 2017 @ 8:34pm CDT
Posted by President-prime on October 19th, 2017 @ 8:35pm CDT
Posted by Twitchythe3rd on October 19th, 2017 @ 8:47pm CDT
Posted by Kurona on October 20th, 2017 @ 5:07am CDT
I honestly think this is my favourite TF book now. Though I might be biased since we're back to the Decepticon Colony; one of my favourite parts of the OP side of things -- and especially that we're there with Thundercracker and Cosmos, who I love with all my heart
Posted by Randomhero on October 20th, 2017 @ 7:02am CDT
Kurona wrote:"Master of Targets". Hah! Cute.
I honestly think this is my favourite TF book now. Though I might be biased since we're back to the Decepticon Colony; one of my favourite parts of the OP side of things -- and especially that we're there with Thundercracker and Cosmos, who I love with all my heart
I very much agree. I enjoy the situations in OP but even I'm starting to feel it's getting stale and while I don't want the war to return I want to see more Decepticons than Soundwave especially if we're not gonna get a scene of Optimus apologizing for full blown blackmailing him. THAT NEEDS YO HAPPEN! They're friends now and Soundwave is without announcing it his second in command.
Plus I'm still waiting for Galvatrons return. His head is still somewhere and I still don't believe he was ever alive. He came out of the Dead Universe and could always survive out of it and theres never been any indications that he came back fully alive so I think he'll be back.
Posted by Va'al on October 29th, 2017 @ 3:28am CDT
New threats emerge, both on Cybertron and Earth, as the saga of Optimus Prime and the Autobots continues. What new future will the Transformers face?
With Optimus Prime trapped on Cybertron, embroiled in the First Strike event, the Autobots on Earth set off on a mission to find their missing friend, Jazz. But anti-Cybertronian humans are after him as well, and they're armed with Cybertronian weapons!
Then, in the wake of First Strike, Optimus ventures into the wilderness of Cybertron to search for the first new Cybertronian life to emerge in four million years! And, as if that's not enough to deal with, he soon finds himself facing off with the Dinobots, whose newest member is two miles tall and eats cities!
Collects Transformers: Optimus Prime issues #11-14 and the Optimus Prime: First Strike and Transformers: First Strike one-shots.
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 30th, 2017 @ 10:07am CDT
Posted by Va'al on October 30th, 2017 @ 10:51am CDT
D-Maximus_Prime wrote:I'm wondering why they used that cover for the TPB. It doesn't really look connected to the IDW-verse
Looks good on a shelf though!
Posted by D-Maximal_Primal on October 30th, 2017 @ 10:57am CDT
Va'al wrote:D-Maximus_Prime wrote:I'm wondering why they used that cover for the TPB. It doesn't really look connected to the IDW-verse
Looks good on a shelf though!
Eh, true. But a cover with the throttlebots or dino/trypticons would have looked good too!