Transformers #19: The Fall Guy

This issue of Transformers is finally one that people who’ve never read Transformers can grab and get in on the ground floor. Author Brian Ruckley gives us a great recap page every month in this title, but this issue is the first chapter in what I’m sure will be a game-changing story for this title.  Things are heating up in a big, big way. Well shit, since the cover lets you know what’s going on in the issue, I guess I’ll break my no-spoiler policy a little and tell you that the main point of this issue is to get across that a small faction of Autobots are breaking away because they’re unhappy with the way things are going. Not only that, but they know that Bumblebee is doing some undercover work for Orion Pax (the big guy who will go on to become Optimus Prime one day) so they dispatch a couple of their gang to “take care” of BB. Ruckley does a fantastic job of doing a soft introduction to each character and where their loyalties lie. Add to that, this is the beginning of a new story, so there’s a lot of action and other things going on. Oh, and it’s a good comic, too.

We get artist Anna Malkova for the WHOLE ride this issue. It’s so nice to have 1)a great artist on the book and 2)consistency!!!! She’s been part of the creative team for a while now and she’s a really great, solid, artist. Her style is somewhere between a really smooth, direct, interpretation of the toys and the original Transformers cartoon. Her sequential storytelling skills are really amazing. Machines don’t normally have emotions, yet they do when she draws them.