Transformers #18: Lube Up Your Running Shoes

This is certainly one of my favorite issues of Transformers in recent memory. It’s definitely in the top percentage of the stories told in this run. Finally, author Brian Ruckley gives us a good, solid story that just happens to feature Transformers. Personally, those are my favorite Transformers stories. This issue is kind of one of those stories where the characters are running through the whole issue to get to one place before something happens. Ruckley managers to tell a lot of story this issue and make us really feel for the characters. And speaking of the characters, they don’t suck this issue!!!! It’s not characters we haven’t heard of doing things we don’t care about. In fact, it’s characters we care very much about doing important stuff, and the best part is that we get more of the story in a different book a little later on. Believe me, they found the perfect place for this story to continue, and I can’t wait to see it. I’m hoping it has the same creative team, but if they do hand it off to another one, they’re left them in a really great place for the new team. I will always be inclined to like the Transformers books because I’ve loved these characters since I was 10 years old, but I hope that the editors continue to steer these books back to greatness. Right now they’re good, but I want to read stories with Optimus Prime and Megatron and Starscream, and everyone else that we know and love. This story was really a step in the right direction.

All I can say about the artwork this issue is WOW!!!! Artists Umi Miyao & Bethan McGuire-Smith really do an outstanding job this issue. Honestly, sometimes your eyes start to hurt after reading Transformers books because to a certain degree everything looks the same. You can only look at robots living in a robot world for so long without getting a slight pain in the eyes. That’s not the case here. They make the characters and world unique from each other and it’s a great chance of pace. Again, when this story continues, I hope the same artists are attached to it.