Nick Roche

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

I suspect of Sins of the Wreckers what I also suspect of the story to which it is a sequel, Last Stand of the Wreckers: it will improve on a reread. There's a lot going on, and though I've gotten a lot better at reading Transformers comics than I was a couple years ago, I still struggle when a book throws a ton of new characters at me. Sins of the Wreckers picks up from the events of The Transformers, Volume 8, where Prowl show more went missing: Arcee has found him, and he's on Earth for some reason. Plus, Verity Carlo is back!

The Wreckers are reassembled to track down Prowl. Like Last Stand, this is a messy story in a good way: a lot of secrets, a lot of screwed-up people in a screwed-up world. I've been getting pretty sick of Prowl over in the series formerly known as Robots in Disguise, but put him in the murky world of the Wreckers, and he works much better. (Nick Roche's more sophisticated writing probably doesn't hurt either.) Prowl is as messed up as Kup and the Wrekcers. Arcee is messed up too-- she's a good fit for the Wreckers, and I'm surprised it took IDW this long to put her in combination with them. And Verity's messed up too. Not that she was ever terribly well-adjusted, but this war has screwed her up as much as it has all the Cybetronians in this story, and she can't escape it any more than they can... even though it's over.

If there's a complaint that I have, it's that it's mistitled. Though everyone in this story has sinned, the focus is not on the sins of the Wreckers, but Prowl and Verity and a couple others whose appearances are spoilers. The Wreckers themselves are kind of background players in this drama. If Roche does another Wreckers story in another five years, I hope Impactor et al. can step into the foreground more.

Everyone in this story has some kind of desperate plan to try to free themselves from the sins of the past... none of them work. Every character from the key players to the bit-part antagonists has a goal and a meaning within the larger picture, that lines up thematically to create a greater whole. More than Meets the Eye might be the best-written Transformers ongoing story, but Sins of the Wreckers is probably the best self-contained Transformers comic. Last Stand tugs at your heartstrings more, but Sins is better crafted, showing the effects of five years' artistic development for Roche.

Roche is a good writer, but he's a great artist, and Sins of the Wreckers has got to be the peak of his work, especially when you combine it with Josh Burcham's colors. Horrific, dynamic, touching, he creates Arctic vistas and nightmarish hellscapes with equal ease. I wish it was getting the same deluxe hardcover treatment as its predecessor, because it deserves it.

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Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Having enjoyed IDW's first two Wreckers comics, somehow I still missed the existence of a third, Requiem of the Wreckers until it was too late: the one-shot wasn't at my local comics shop, and wasn't even available at my usual aftermarket web site. It was collected in this trade paperback, but this trade paperback also collected the first two Wreckers miniseries, which I already owned, and I wasn't about to pay $20 for a show more collection of eleven issues that I already owned ten of. But then the collection appeared in my LCS's $5 discount pile on Free Comic Book Day, so of course I went for it.

I'm actually really glad I did. I liked Last Stand of the Wreckers and Sins of the Wreckers the first time around, and I'm not going to re-review them here, but I liked them even more a second time around, with a firmer grounding in Transformers lore, and knowledge of where the stories were ultimately going. Small details became significant with foreknowledge in mind, and reading Last Stand and Sins (and Requiem) back to back made how it's all one big story much more apparent. (Poor Guzzle.)

Requiem is a fitting end for the whole saga, bringing together the villains of the first two stories, and tying off a lot of emotional and character threads, especially for Impactor and Springer, whose relationship is one of the backbones of the series. Kup is dead, so he can't feature like he did in the first two, but Roche turns that into a virtue.

I also appreciated the presence of Verity Carlo throughout. Verity was there when IDW's continuity began, so I'm glad Nick Roche kept her character going once Simon Furman left, and gave her an ending as IDW's entire universe drew to an end.

Roche is oft-praised by Transformers fans, I think, but probably still not praised enough. Of course he knows his continuity and stuff, and we like him for it, but even better, he understands character and theme. This is a saga about the damage war does, and how we need friendship to overcome it, and what the appropriate bounds of friendship allow for and what they do not. How do you forge an identity that meets the expectations your friends place upon you when the entire universe seems to be conspiring against you? This informs every character arc, every story beat. He also has a way with big crazy ideas, and his art is incredible stuff. James Roberts (co-writer on some of Last Stand) justly gets a lot of praise, but Roche is surely the talent of the IDW era. I hope IDW keep him involved in their new era, or that he goes on to do his own incredible stuff. Or you know, both.

Wreck and rule!

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My new favourite thing. Transformers as queer romance/quest novel with many quips and twists.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Long before the Transformers Humble Bundle came along, I'd heard of Last Stand of the Wreckers. It was described in hushed tones, as one of the best Transformers comics of all time-- and even one of the best comics of all time, full stop. And what I knew of it indicated it would appeal to me, as it is about a group of second-string robots fighting for their lives. So when I got the IDW Transformers Humble Bundle and Last show more Stand of the Wreckers wasn't in it, I took a gamble and purchased it-- not just in paper, but in hardback, so confident was I that I would like it.

Thankfully I was correct. Last Stand of the Wreckers takes a group of some of the worst Autobots out there and assigns them to the Wreckers, the amoral Autobot commando team with the highest mortality rate of any Autobot unit. My favorites were Pyro and Ironfist. Pyro's toy was a "redeco" of Optimus Prime's, and so the writers turn this into a point of characterization: Pyro modified himself to look more like Optimus, and spends his time making dramatic poses and trying to come up with mottos. Ironfist is a fanboy who writes up detailed accounts of Wrecker missions under the pseudonym Fistiron... only despite that, there's something darker going on with him no one knows about. (Except for Prowl, because Prowl knows everything.) Plus Verity Carlo, the young human who befriended the Autobots in Infiltration, is there too.

These characters are sent into a former Autobot prison that's been conquered by a depraved, rogue Decepticon. A lot of them don't make it. I don't think it's as amazing as people say (probably because I still struggle to distinguish robot characters on sight, and this volume has more than most), but it is very good. The real heroes are the people who don't think it matters, and do the right thing anyway, even if they're not always doing the right thing for the right reason. This is definitely a book about heroes.

It's made even better by the fifty-plus pages of backmatter, which includes multiple prose short stories adding depth and nuance to the characters. These I read over a few days after finishing the main comic, and they left me wanting to reread the book all over again with these new insights in mind. These stories show that, like the best characters, even second-stringers are more than meets the eye.

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