Daniel Warren Johnson’s run on the Transformers reboot comes to an end in this 24th issue, with a massive showdown between Optimus Prime and Megatron. Prime gets to show off his nobility and empathy, while Megatron gets to truly be the bad guy we know and love to hate.

Though this issue starts off in spectacular fashion, with a brilliantly crunchy, and very impactful, extended fight sequence, it does go off the rails a bit when it concludes.

Two characters pretty much come out of nowhere in real deus ex machina moments and wrap everything up, leaving Optimus Prime looking weak (and robbing him of agency) as the bad guys are defeated, and making Megatron look like a fool for not killing Optimus when he has the chance.

Though this is somewhat reminiscent of the classic 80s cartoon, and countless other media when it comes to villains choosing to delay killing their heroic nemesis, it goes against the more modern feel of this Transformers series, which has put a contemporary spin on the nostalgic G1 Transformers characters and storylines.

It’s also so frustrating to see certain characters just pop up and solve the crisis immediately, in  such quick and clean fashion at that; it’s not even all that clear exactly what happens in at least one of these decisive moments either.

Still, with Johnson’s run coming to an end, I think I’ll be leaving it there. Robert Kirkman is taking over writing duties as of issue 25, and his work has really not interested me for a very long time now. So with even Johnson’s storyline running out of steam before he hit this climax, I can’t say I’m interested in continuing to read Transformers, particularly as Kirkman seems hell bent on awkwardly shoehorning in shared universe stuff to these comics. Maybe it’ll be my loss, but if it turns out I’m wrong, I can always pick up the trade, right?

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