Beast Friends Forever
(Spoiler free-ish)
(Spoiler free-ish)
Synopsis
THE RETURN OF GALVATRON THE BARBARIAN! Optimus Prime meets with Alpha Trion, the ancient sage, who reveals a tale of Cybertron's earliest days, when the original Thirteen Primes united the world. But even then, the warrior known as Galvatron was a wild card... shaping the future in unexpected ways.
That's a Prime Cameo
Story
It's been a while since Galvatron died, pretty much for good, in this IDW continuity - so it only makes sense that we'd be going into a flashback involving him to gather some more information about the shape of the universe as we currently know it, before stories became lore, and before lore became fully-fledged belief. So here we are.
Deep or Burn?
The Primes from the Aligned continuity have been making their way into this side of Transformers fiction, between Till All Are One and references to them in previous xRID and The Transformers series - but this issue brings them all back together for the first time - before they're even considered to be what we know them to be, and in a way that John Barber finds that is actually really delicious.
plus general slaughter
The framing of the story - told by Alpha Trion to the current three Prime or, let's face it, equivalents (Starscream and Pyra Magna) - also may look like nothing major in terms of plot, but we do get some follow-up to last issue's emotional resolve, and finally the lead-in to First Strike (see our review here and here!). And it also allows for some extra sassy Alpha Trion and Starscream.
so there's that
Galvatron, in fact, is not the most prominent of the characters in the book, thought clearly at the centre of most of the action here - if you take it as a way in to what is happening around both him and his brother seen in the preview - but trust me, there is a lot to be enjoyed in barbarian style if that's what you're going for in the issue.
Art
The art duties are split between current day setting - in which regular Kei Zama and Josh Burcham team take the lead, and doing some really nice work on characters we haven't seen in a while, but also giving us a very nice Starscream in the mix. The staging of the frame does everything it needs too, especially in tone.
And just more old(er) dude beardface
Whereas the olden days of pre-Thirteen Primes Cybertron are entirely in the hands of recurring artist Livio Ramondelli, whose grainier style of colouring on his own lineart is actually extremely fitting to the landscapes that surround the cast of the 'flashback'. His takes on the Primes are also very intriguing visually, though I'm still not utterly convinced on all the designs.
Alchemist drinks. A lot.
Tom B. Long is on letters for both the sections, though the most fun is had in the central part of the book, between battles and the now trademark wider scope for him to use lettering within Ramondelli's art almost as part of the art layer itself. As for the various covers for the issue, most of which we have already seen, they can be found here - and enjoy the Andrew Griffith / Josh Perez used in the thumbnail of this story, too.
Thoughts
may contain minor spoilers
As someone who works with stories and has taught writing and has had a fascination with myth-to-fact/fact-to-myth narratives, Barber's approach to this issue is really intriguing to see play out - and using the still not entirely trustworthy Alpha Trion as the vessel for it all is probably the best choice that could've been made - along with having specifically Optimus, Pyra Magna and Starscream as his audience.
probably the most important panel of the whole iss-- hey Talisman
For the readers, on the other hand, that may be more interested in the Galvatron style of stories we've seen in previous sections with the purple maniac so far, there is also plenty of that (visually and narratively): action, beheadings, struggle, precarious balances and long-reaching plans are not being shied away for the sake of story. A shame, perhaps, that it ends directly into First Strike.
. 
out of
out of
