‘Transformers #27’ Review: Old Friends And Surprise Pacing

It’s old home week in Transformers #27, an issue which sees a bunch of classic characters introduced to the Energon Universe. Though the issue continues to further the book’s ongoing plot threads — in some cases, in significant ways — the influx of characters creates a sense that the book is marching quickly towards something approximating the classic cartoon status quo. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in a mid-issue sequence in which the Combaticons attack a hydroelectric dam and pillage it for Energon. It’s a scene right out of the old cartoon, which often used the Decepticon’s hunt for Energon as the inciting incident to the larger plot of the episode. It’s really just an amuse bouche to that status quo here, though, a quick scene that doesn’t (immediately) have any bearing on other events. It’s also the only appearance of any Earthbound Decepticons in the issue.

Less direct an homage but still adding to the feeling of the classic status quo coming to fruition is the variety of Autobots introduced to the series in this issue. Brawn, Blaster and Sideswipe all make their Energon Universe debuts. Jetfire — the Transformer who kicked off this whole Energon Universe in the first place — is back. Even the departed Bumblebee gets remembered in the open panels, in a scene that sure reads like writer Robert Kirkman affirming that dead means dead, at least as far as Bumblebee is concerned.

In and amongst all the reunions and cameos, a pair of the book’s ongoing subplots experience some notable developments in surprising ways. I noted in my review of last issue my dismay that the Autobots have entered into an alliance with General Flagg, the same military leader who tortured a captive Ultra Magnus, and Ultra Magnus himself has yet to react to this. To Kirkman’s credit, that gets addressed here, as Ultra Magnus confronts Flagg directly about the situation. It would have been easy for Kirkman to just whoosh past that plot point, especially given it was from before his run started. Instead, he tackles it head on — and in the way Flagg’s response is presented (ie it’s a lot of mealy-mouthed BS about having to protect his country), it seems pretty clear this won’t be the end of the simmering tension between at least some of the Autobots and the US military.

Similarly, while anyone with any passing familiarity with M.A.S.K and/or the ability to recognize “Miles Mayhem” as the name of a likely super-villain knew from the jump that Flagg’s ally within Shadow Watch was up to no good. But I did not expect that fact to come to the surface as quickly as it did, with the detente between Flagg and Mayhem breaking down in this issue. While Flagg maintains the upper hand, this clearly isn’t the last we’ll see of Mayhem, and the way Flagg carries himself throughout that encounter, goading Mayhem into exposing himself, adds to the aura of suspicion about him which the Ultra Magnus scene already engendered.

All in all, Transformers #27 is an effective “pot simmering” issue, one which spends a little bit of time on a bunch of different subplots, moving each forward incrementally. While doing so, it also furthers expands the cast as the book settles into something more closely approximating the old cartoon. But it’s also not without its surprises, small though they may be, in the pacing of some of those subplots’ developments. General Flagg’s ongoing presence in the book and the way he acts almost like a chaos agent within it, shows that Kirkman and company are interested in more than just playing with their favorite toys in familiar ways.