Tumbleweed vs. The Magic of Cybertron #4 · 9:25pm Aug 1st, 2021
Yes, I know. I'm late.
Though the good news is, I've mostly gotten settled in at this Real People Job(tm) business, so that's nice? Though on the flipside I can't hit up the comic book shop as soon as a shipment of new books comes in. Tragic, I know. It also likely doesn't help that I've got a bunch of OTHER stuff on my plate-- good stuff, admittedly, but it's a lot to juggle. Though at least I've found the time and brainpower to sit down and tell you about a silly comic book. Which is obviously important given my status as BEST AT PONY and also FAIRLY GOOD AT ROBOT.
Lucky for everyone, The Magic of Cybertron #4 is pretty good!
Again, it continues the 'two stories in one issue' trend ... but honestly these are probably the best two episodes of the miniseries? The first, I admit, I'm a bit biased towards, as it involves Spike (and Smolder too, I guess) hanging out with the Dinobots. Everyone thinks Spike is lame (and rightly so), until a Sombra-possessed Superion attacks! At which point Spike saves the day. It's honestly more or less a retread of the "Grimlock & Spike vs. Devastator" story from the first go-round, but I'm not gonna complain too much. We get a couple pages of robot dinosaurs fighting an even bigger robot made out of planes, and honestly that's great. Though an as an added bit of continuity-fluff it's interesting to note that this Superion has Slingshot as an arm instead of Alpha Bravo, which is modeled after the original G1 version-- and, uh, yeah. Also Spike apparently read everyone's tech-spec bios.
I mean, look at that. It's great.
The second story is the GRAND FINALE, which is ... basically just a big fight scene. And again, that's great! There's a bit where Sombra takes control of a Titan-sized Scorponok, creating SOMBRANOK, which is just the kind of dumb and awesome I like in a comic. It's not quite as over the top as Tom Scioli's glorious Transformers vs. GI Joe, but then again, what is?
Also there's some business with ponies putting on exo-suits that let them turn into weapons? Which, well, makes them Battle Masters now, I suppose. It's fun-- if a bit out of left field. Honestly the kind of thing that might've been nice if they, y'know, mentioned it earlier. But that would require this miniseries to be a bit more structured and not just a bunch of random 'pony meets a robot' vignette and I'm not gonna say I did it better but honestly IDW y'all should gimmie a job already. I promise my OC's won't be as obnoxious as James Roberts', honest! 'Cause really, Tarn and Rung are pretty much at opposite ends of the 'Mary Sue Original Character' spectrum, yet manage to be equally obnoxious, and--
Wait, they're not in this comic!
Thankfully.
So yeah. If you were to only pick up one issue of this series, it'd be hard to go wrong with Issue 4. It even has a brief stinger cliffhanger to lead into a third minseries, which I will undoubtedly pick up if the folks at IDW ever get bored and decide to do another go-round. In the meanwhile, though, I guess I'll stick to other comics. Like, Immortal Hulk is just stupidly good, you guys. But that's another thread entirely.
It's definitely fun, but yeah, an actual coherent story would've been nice. And that's not getting into how this whole min-series apparently took place over twenty minutes.