Another busy week at work had me just posting a bunch of trailers this week. Work can be a real bitch sometimes, ya know? But I didn’t want to miss out on the good comics this week, like Transformers and The Ultimates.

Comic Book of the Week goes to X-Men #1 for a solid, enjoyable start to the new From the Ashes relaunch. I hope it all goes well!

Meanwhile, I did read the Absolute Power stuff from DC last week, I just didn’t get around to reviewing it because of the week I had. I enjoyed it well enough, though the first issue and tie-ins haven’t pulled me out of my general malaise towards Big Events. I’ll probably stick with it for the time being.

Comic Reviews: Transformers #10, The Ultimates #2 and X-Men #1.

Transformers #10
Writer: Daniel Warren Johnson
Artist: Jorge Corona
Colorist: Mike Spicer
Letterer: Rus Wooton

Once again, I am asking for comic book companies to put a character glossary at the front of each issue!

Beach Comber is in the house, having just arrived on the scene to rescue Spike after spending a few millennia on the moon. The Autobots have retreated to lick their wounds and regroup with some of the heroes from space, like Elita One and the heavily-damaged Ultra Magnus, while the Decepticons use their technology to just straight up bring Cybertron through a portal to orbit Earth.

Comic Rating: 8/10 – Very Good.

I’m sorry, I’m not a diehard Transformers fan who has every character’s name and appearance memorized. They say a couple of names, but this comic is now bursting with characters on both sides, and I’m losing a bit of track here. It doesn’t help that Arcee and Elita One are both pink girl robots who look nearly identical. And then Beach Comber randomly shows up…how does that name make any sense in the context of Cybertron?! But nitpicks aside, this is a solid issue for the most part. The stakes are as high as they’ve been all along, and getting higher by the issue. The bad guys are in a near constant state of winning, while the good guys still get some good moments. The bad guys even get some good moments, like when Shockwave (Soundwave?) sees some whales.

And then slaughters them. It’s a trip.

This comic successfully sets up the bad guys are just really, really, really bad. Their threat is very real. And it sets up the good guys as the ultimate underdogs. It’s rather easy to see why the Aubobots lost the war for Cybertron. The characters we do know and can remember remain strong, and the artwork has easily held up after switching from Johnson to Corona. He’s doing a great job keeping this comic alive and kicking. So yeah, the momentum is still there.

But now I really, really need to nitpick that they’ve already screwed up the timeline of their Energon Universe! The G.I.Joe comics take place at least six months after this Transformers comic, but they make no mention of CYBERTRON APPEARING THROUGH A PORTAL ABOVE THE EARTH! How are they going to make this make sense?! Why did they even jump forward 6 months in the Duke comic to de-align the two comics? How are the Transformers still under wraps when the Decepticons are doing stuff like this?!

Make it make sense, Energon Universe!

TL;DR: The comic is getting a little too overloaded with new characters (though it’s probably not a problem for longtime Transformers fans), but it remains an exciting and entertaining read with great art and strong character moments.

The Ultimates #2
Writer: Deniz Camp
Artist: Juan Frigeri
Colorist: Federico Blee
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham

Thank you for the character glossary! Though it doesn’t help when you don’t include the new characters in your comic who don’t (necessarily) get named dropped.

The Ultimates storm the White House and fight the guy in charge: Midas, a braggart who wears a solid gold Iron Man armor. He taunts the team, especially Captain America, about how the United States are dead and how the North American Union and Regional Subsidiaries is all about greed and capitalism. It’s a tough fight and they take it down to the basement, where Midas has a mystery cosmic woman held prisoner. But our heroes win the day and save the woman, who might just be America Chavez.

Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.

Alright, let’s get my main nitpick out of the way: I’m only guessing that the bad guy’s name is Midas. He says it…but he also says it in a way that, like, he’s just comparing himself to King Midas. The problem is that everybody acts like he’s somebody we’re supposed to know. I’ve read pretty much all the major issues of this new Ultimate Universe and I have no memory of them establishing who was in charge of North America, but did they? I dunno. This is probably all on me. He’s probably just a new bad guy named Midas who wears a solid gold Iron Man armor. That’s a good enough villain for this comic, to be sure. It’s just written like we’re supposed to know him, I feel like, that we’re supposed to know who is under that armor. Maybe I’m thinking about it too much.

Beyond that weird problem that probably only I had, this is still a solid, enjoyable issue. I liked the trip down memory lane, as Iron Lad gave Captain America a movie-esque history lesson of what happened to the United States in this universe. Then contrast that with Cap leading the team to try to save America (only to end up saving America Chavez! See what they did there?). The Ultimates team is a fun one; I liked seeing Giant Man in action after last issue. But Midas’s speechifying goes on a bit too long for my tastes. And the Ultimates sure do a whole lot of standing around listening to him talk. But I applaud the boldness of using the second issue to have the team try to topple the pseudo-president. That’s pretty cool.

Now I’m just left wondering if this America Chavez is the same as 616 America Chavez. Didn’t MCU America say there was only one of her in the Multiverse? Does the same apply to the comic version? I don’t know her character well enough to know.

TL;DR: Good, strong, big swing of a second issue that mostly hits the mark, though it’s a bit wordy and the villain is a bit abrupt.

X-Men #1
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colorist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles

From the Ashes begins here, the next era of the X-Men. I’m excited because the Krakoa Era really lost me in the end, despite how excited I was at the start.

This issue has two parallel stories: Cyclops leads a strike team to rescue Wolverine and some new mutants from some leftover Orchis nincompoops, while Beast takes the local town police chief on a tour of their new HQ in an effort to put her and the townsfolk at ease. The strike force discovers that the new mutants are actually Orchis goons who somehow manifested their mutant powers in adulthood (and also have a secret benefactor), while we learn the new HQ is a former Sentinel manufacturing plant and the X-Men moved in after saving the town from what appears to be a giant, possibly out-of-control Sentinel.

Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.

This is a good, solid start to this new series and new era of the X-Men. There’s a bit of a fuss and there’s a bit of a muss, but it’s still good comic bookery, in my opinion. We’ve got action, we’ve got some solid character beats, and then there’s the B-plot to help ease us into the new status quo. It all comes together nicely to make for an enjoyable comic. All of the characters are written well and the artwork is fantastic. I’ve always been a Ryan Stegman fan, and the issue, the action and the characters look great. The story is a nice mix of post-Krakoa clean up and new mystery, even if it’s not too electric quite yet, but that will fall under my nitpicks coming up. Overall, this is a clean enough, fairly straight forward, well-set-up first issue of these new X-Men.

And if I may nitpick, I have a few. I think there’s maybe one or two too many characters crammed into this team. MacKay does his best to give everybody some good dialogue and action, but there are still a bunch of characters fighting for some spotlight and no one really gets a big, show stopping moment. So the issue is a bit cluttered, but not painfully so. I would say Psylocke gets the shortest end of the stick. They don’t even clarify that it’s Kwannon and not Betsy. Along with all the characters filling up the issue, there are also a number of little bits of connection to the Krakoa area through dialogue that, personally, stink up the joint. A lot of characters drop little bits of exposition about past crazy storylines, and it feels weird in an issue so focused on being a fresh, back-to-basics start. I guess I would have liked a cleaner start.

TL;DR: Good, solid, enjoyable kick off to From the Ashes, though this first issue lacks any real ‘wow factor’. It’s just solid X-Men relaunching with some dynamic artwork.

The comics I review in my Hench-Sized reviews are just the usual comics I grab from Comixology any given week, along with a few impulse buys I might try on a whim. So if there are any comics or series you’d like me to review each week, let me know in the comments.

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