Ricky Church review Transformers: Till All Are One #7…
As Windblade and her team fight their way through Elita-1’s Titan, Carcer, they face opposition at every turn to stop them from awakening the sleeping giant… and they soon find out why!
Transformers: Till All Are One #7 was an exciting and action-packed instalment of the title. Even though the focus was heavily on the action, the issue had a lot going on in it both story-wise and artistically. It didn’t feel like there was too much was crammed in the story. The conflict in Till All Are One was presented well, making this a fun and great Transformers comic.
Mairghread Scott’s makes good use of plotting in this issue, giving every character a task and moment to shine. Its an impressive feat that she’s able to do so in a limited page count, but no character in its rather large cast feels under-utilized. This may be helped by the fact that the team invading Elita-1’s ship is split in two to provide confusion among her troops, but again both teams are given equal time.
Scott also presents some cool action beats, from Windblade’s and the others use of debris to enter Elita’s ship to the final battle against Obsidian. There’s also a clever use of tricking the readers into a small twist midway through the issue, pulling off a successful surprise. Scott’s handle on the characters, action and use of storytelling is evident throughout Till All Are One #7.
She even gets a bit of time to take us back to Starscream on Cybertron, giving us another intriguing look at his character and the ways he has and has not changed. There’s a nice callback to one of Starscream’s bigger moments from the IDW universe in John Barber’s Transformers: Robots in Disguise when the scheming Decepticon killed Metalhawk, just adding more thought to how much Starscream is willing to change. He only appears in a couple page’s, but Scott’s characterization of him and his complicated relationship with Windblade continues to be one of the best things about the title.
The art in this issue is particularly great as well. Sara Pitre-Durdcher’s work is good to look at. Her choreography during the actions scenes is clear and easy to follow, which is sometimes difficult in Transformers comics when its a bunch of robots fighting each other. She’s still able to differentiate one from the other and places appropriate focus on one transformers when there are several of them in a single panel, showing you who you should be looking at. Joana Lafuente’s colours compliment Pitre-Durdcher’s very well too, using a mix of brights and darks to change up the characters and settings. Both of their artwork combined make this a very vibrant book.
Transformers: Till All Are One is a title worthy of the Transformers lore and issue #7 shows that again. From Scott’s plotting and writing of the characters to Pitre-Durdcher’s art and Laguente’s colours, this is one of the best books IDW is currently publishing. With the twist at the end involving Windblade and the Titan Carcer, or what we thought was Carcer, the next issue sounds intriguing.
Rating: 8/10
Ricky Church
Originally published February 10, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
