Dinobot. Oh Dinobot. Never change.
Transformers: Beast Wars #3 opens with some good old fashioned torture! Nyx has been captured by the Predacons and genius sadist Tarantulas has been employed by Megatron to get all the information he can about their Maximal foes. Dinobot, being the honourable bot that he is, isn’t happy that they’re resorting to torturing a helpless prisoner but Megatron ignores his protests at first. When Dinobot directly interferes, Megatron decides that rather than simply torturing Nyx, he will allow Tarantulas to use her for an experiment.
While all this is going on, the Maximals are remarkably laid back about the fact Nyx hasn’t shown up back to the ship even as night falls. This Optimus is apparently a big fan of personal responsibility. Despite Cheetor’s protests otherwise, Prime wants to wait till daylight to send out a search party
READ MORE: Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures #3 – Comic Review
Nyx awakes to find herself outside of the ship, but hobbled by a transformation lock, trapping her in her robot mode and ensuring she will die a slow, horrible death from energon poisoning unless she can shift into her Beast mode, a process made all the harder as the Predacons amuse themselves by shooting at her, making her expend more energy and hastening her demise. Will she get out of this? Will Dinobot stand by and simply allow the prisoner to be brutalised? Will poor Waspinator ever catch a break? These questions and more will be answered in this issue! Except the one about Waspinator. He NEVER catches a break.
There’s even a (possibly unintentional?) nod to The Princess Bride in this issue with Nyx saying something not entirely wise around Megatron. No reference to the sound of ultimate suffering, sadly. I would also just like to point out that Skold’s Beast mode bears more than a passing resemblance to Anguirus, the kaiju from Godzilla Raids Again who is a sort of cross between an Ankylosaurus and Styracosaurus. Perhaps one of the artists is a Godzilla fan!
READ MORE: Blade Runner 2029 #4 – Comic Review
The scrappy cartoony art style used for the majority of the comic continues to not really do it for me, but the same can’t be said for the consistently gorgeous cover art. Cover A (art by Josh Burcham) and B (art by Dan Schoening) both have Tarantulas front and center, but my favourite has to be the Retailer Incentive cover by Josh Perez which is a gorgeous ensemble cover showing off all the bots.
The story definitely isn’t in a great hurry to get anywhere, focusing instead on these small, character-centric skirmishes and events rather than broad storytelling strokes, allowing readers to settle into a setting which is quite unlike anything else in the TF canon. The writers are doing a great job, capturing the essence of the characters really well and while still following the broad story beats of the TV series, this comic continues to tell its own story.
Transformers: Beast Wars #3 is out now from IDW Publishing.
