Last Stand of the Wreckers. ( Hardback)
James Roberts and Nick Roche
IDW Publishing
 |
Dont make any plans, rookies!
So it turns out that thanks to the wonders of the digital age,
nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be. In the before-time (Pre
internet )it was quite possible to look back on your beloved childhood
favourites with love and fondness saying thing like “ those were the
days “, “ things were better back then”, and “ Those M.A.S.K cartoons
were really good”. Of course that was total bollocks. It was just
childhood memories playing tricks. Those things don’t exist the way you
remember. But at the very least you could bask in the memories of how
great they were without fear that the source material would come back to
bite you in the backside. Sadly thanks to online communities it is
entirely possible to have any possible permeation of Film, comic or song
In mere moments allowing it to be proven quite decisively that the
thing you remembered, and cherished….was a bit shite. The original run
on Marvels Transformers comics are a fantastic example of this
phenomenon.
I don’t know what it was about the story of a bloody intergalactic
civil war that so captured my imagination as a small boy growing up in
the perfectly calm totally terrorist atrocity free state of Northern
Ireland. But it left an indelible mark on my psyche. When I think back
to the stories from the Marvel Transformers comics, I remember a galaxy
spanning saga pitting noble heroes against villainous rebels against a
backdrop of colourful alien worlds. This is actually due to the
aforementioned rose tinted glasses effect . The World Wide Web allows me
to access these stories with the greatest of ease , and what the
Transformers comics really amount to is: a cassette that turns
into a flying rat is plotting to take over the planet by hypnotising
people using a rock and roll car wash . A dinosaur who wears a crown
wants to stop him. A scantily clad paraplegic wants to stop them both. [1]
At least, that was the case for the US. In the UK and Ireland we got
additional material written by the likes of Transformers legend ( and
Holly out of Red Dwarf look alike ) Simon Furman who took an altogether
more adult approach to the comic that essentially pitted two sets of
toys fighting over who was the best toy . Stories like Target: 2006, and Time Wars which,
with hindsight were still not quite what I remembered, but still
light-years ahead of their American counterparts. It was these stories
that really made their mark on me. And seemingly On Nick Roche and James
Roberts whose Last Stand Of The Wreckers was released in 2010
to much acclaim and has now been collected in a very tasty little
hardback edition collecting the limited series plus almost 100 pages
of additional material.
One of the chief complaints I hear about modern day transformers
comics is that there is too much heavy backstory. This may very well be
true. Fortunately in this case it is irrelevant as this book works
perfectly well as a standalone once you understand the very simple
premise
The Wreckers are an elite group of Autobot warriors famed for both
their daring missions, and their ludicrously high membership turnover. A
veritable Suicide Squad, LSOTW introduces us to the four latest
recruits and sends them off on a mission from which it is likely they
will never return. That’s all you need to know. This isn’t to say that
there’s nothing here for hard-core fans. Quite the contrary :as well as
cover galleries, sketches and character profiles, the bonus materials
rather annoyingly include a very detailed list of all the Easter eggs ,
which allows you a momentary sense of self satisfaction for getting all
the ones you spotted and which then evaporates as you see all the ones
you missed . The bastards. Still, it contains one of the most obscure
Bret Hart references I’ve ever encountered in a mainstream comic and
that can’t be a bad thing.
|
|
|
 |
| In the industry we call this “ Fan Service”. |
The closest comparison i can make to LSOTW in comics Terms would be
to the Giffen /DeMatteias run on Justice League International with which
it shares supper sharp witty dialogue, crisp clean artwork and most
tellingly, a real sense of camaraderie between the all too real seeming
characters that make up the rag tag bunch. [2] There’s a real sense of
loss whenever one of the characters inevitably snuff it. In some regards
it feels less like a comic and has it has more in common with a team
up movie like the Dirty Dozen. Actually The Expendables might be the
best comparison, given that the 4 doomed red shirt robots are based on
characters so obscure that their toys were only released in some
European countries long after the heyday of the G1 line.
In truth the new recruits in LSOTW are barely concealed author
avatars for Roche and Roberts, ascended fan boys who now have the
opportunity to walk amongst the giants whom they once watched from afar.
However unlike the doomed newbies in their tale Nick Roche and James
Roberts have already managed something that their comic’s predecessors
have not: Nick Roche and James Roberts make the transformers comics I
remember reading when I was a kid. Well played lads.
[1] . This is the actual plot of Issue 31 of The Transformers:
Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom, easily one of the dopiest
things I have ever read. The mentioned dinosaur and paraplegic do not
actually feature in the comic but are part of the overriding story arc.
It never hurts to make these things clear.
[2] This was initially speculation on my part. Then I saw the
alternative cover to the current on-going “More Than Meets the Eye”
series by the same creative team. That’s one more….for the bad guy.
