Void Rivals #23: End of the Beginning

Void Rivals #23 is the penultimate issue of what feels like the first large chapter of this sprawling epic. At the end of the previous issue, the warring factions on The Sacred Ring were beginning to undergo the great Unity that has been a lingering plot contrivance since the start of the story. This issue picks up with what that means for all of these characters while also catching the reader up on what the Cobra-La agents and Skuxxoid are up to on the other sides of the galaxy.

One of the more frustrating elements of this series has been the intensely slow burn. If any comic coming out right now is exemplary of “writing for the trade,” it is Void Rivals. For example, the plot with Cobra-La has been lingering in the shadows for several issues now, with the characters slowly traversing the galaxy and running into members of the cast for brief interventions. This leads them to their stop in this issue, Quintessa, where they meet the Autobot Wheelie. At this point, anyone up to date on solicitations will know that the next major arc of this series is the Quintesson War, which is clearly going to spawn from whatever these characters end up doing. This makes it feel almost cheap that we have been following them for so long in the background just to see them set up a plot that the main characters in the book are completely unaware of. This is definitely reflective of the way writer Robert Kirkman has approached longer epics in the past, but for someone reading this title monthly, it can be frustrating to see a group of characters take up multiple pages only to set up a story separate from what the main cast is doing at the moment.

It’s also worth noting that this issue furthers another major side plot of the series: the happenings of Skuxxoid. This side story feels a bit different because, at least for now, it does not seem to be intimately connected to any main upcoming plots. Additionally, this has been one of the smaller side stories since the series’s inception, and its inclusion here acts more as a palette cleanser the reader checks in on every once in a while than anything else.

The main content of the issue is the repercussions of the Unity that the residents of The Sacred Ring have brought about by coming together for this “final” battle. As it turns out, Darak’s father was correct in his assumption that the Unity would also bring about the destruction of The Sacred Ring altogether. In an odd twist of fate, it is revealed that the characters can easily prevent this apocalypse by simply moving away from one another. This really makes you wonder, what was Zerta Trion’s plan this whole time? Of course, these characters are going to value their lives over whatever ambiguous cosmic threat Zerta is attempting to destroy. Did she really think they would all willingly die to assist her cause? Hopefully this is addressed in the next issue, but as of now, it just seems like something the elder Cybertronian should have considered from the beginning.