Transformers ’84 #2: Master & Servant

Younger readers of this may not remember, but creators used to stay on books for, believe it not, hundreds of issues. There was a reason for that, and this issue of Transformers ’84 is a perfect example of why. Author Simon Furman isn’t trying to bring the Transformers into 2020, there’s another team trying to do that. He’s telling stories of characters that he created and knows better than probably anybody else. This issue is largely about the Decepticons and the lengths in which some of them go to overthrow Megatron. The answer might not surprise you, but it will shock you. One thing that stands out in this book is how much story there is. Sometimes you read a current comic and go “Hmm. There wasn’t really that much that happened that issue,” but after reading this issue I thought, “All the stuff that happened in this issue would fill up a trade paperback by today’s standards.” And, it’s a perfect balance of action and dialogue, Furman never over-explains situations or events happening in the book. You get a smart but not confusing story that you can read multiple times and take something different away each time.

Artist Guido Guidi is the artist’s artist when it comes to these characters. Not surprisingly, he does an excellent job here, there are some surprise characters that I don’t want to spoil, but to see him draw them is a real treat. BUT, he doesn’t do it alone. Everything about this book looks like it’s a comic from 1984 (I know because 10 year old me was reading comics back then). My hats off to colorist John-Paul Bove for doing an excellent job in making the colors seem like they were done almost forty years ago. They’re not as slick as today’s colors, he almost goes with the four-color model, which is a pretty cool effect and a nice change of pace. Even letterer Jake M. Wood gets in on the action, using fonts and a style that propels your eyes back to the time when Johnny Lawrence was a jerk, not the hero of Cobra Kai. This book, as a whole, is the very definition of teamwork.