As a child of the 80s, practically raised by toy adverts disguised as cartoons, the Energon Universe should be the most exciting thing happening in comics right now.

However, titles such as Transformers have become much less interesting in the last year or so, and GI Joe just hasn’t grabbed me. I made an attempt to keep reading Void Rivals but the glacial pacing and uninteresting backdrop (plus Robert Kirkman’s trademark need to cruelly abuse his characters) meant that I gave that up too.

Now that another 80s cartoon property is joining the lineup with MASK, have things become more exciting?

Well, the main story in this Special sets up MASK really well, but I can’t help thinking that the stupidly named characters will constantly clash with the serious tone the series seems to be taking. It was bad enough being introduced to Miles Mayhem as a military man in Transformers; now we have more obvious villain names being introduced amidst the action.

Still, tonal issues with the fact that this originated as a toy ad aside, I really enjoyed this prelude to MASK, and the offbeat colour scheme was particularly effective too. Simon Parr’s art gets a little too John Romita Jr for my liking when it comes to some facial expressions, but he does a great job with action and various bits of techy hardware.

The wordless Transformers story is great, if a little brief, though Kirkman’s Void Rivals short here is marred by an annoying child character.

Finally, the GI Joe story was surprisingly good, with an origin for Master of Disguise, Zartan, as well as setting up the ongoing storyline in the main comic.

There’s a lot of good stuff here, and it’s a decent enough taster to whet the appetite of fans who may be on the fence about picking up these titles, but I think MASK intrigues me the most and I’ll be checking out its first issue at least, when it arrives.

Hi! I’m Jason, and I write for midlifegamergeek.com, every single day. If you’re interested in supporting original, regularly published, human created content (which has never been plagiarised or otherwise copied from the hard work of other writers), you can donate and help me to keep this site running.

Not only do I earn no income from my writing here (though I may earn small fees from affiliate links posted on my pages; as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from these links), but it seems that my work has, at times, been stolen and re-used by lazy, morally bankrupt idiots.

There’s no pressure of course, but I’d be truly grateful for any support that you could offer – and it’s easy to do so at either of these links: Ko-Fi.com/geekmid or PayPal.

Any donations are truly appreciated – and I also appreciate you taking the time to read my articles. Remember: this whole article was by Jason Brown, and appeared on midlifegamergeek.com. Take that, Skynet!

Hi! I’m Jason, and I write for midlifegamergeek.com, every single day. If you’re interested in supporting original, regularly published, human created content (which has never been plagiarised or otherwise copied from the hard work of other writers), you can donate and help me to keep this site running.

Not only do I earn no income from my writing here (though I may earn small fees from affiliate links posted on my pages; as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from these links), but it seems that my work has, at times, been stolen and re-used by lazy, morally bankrupt idiots.

There’s no pressure of course, but I’d be truly grateful for any support that you could offer – and it’s easy to do so at either of these links: Ko-Fi.com/geekmid or PayPal.

Any donations are truly appreciated – and I also appreciate you taking the time to read my articles. Remember: this whole article was by Jason Brown, and appeared on midlifegamergeek.com. Take that, Skynet!