Mike Costa, Zander Cannon (w); Guido Guidi, Chee (a); Guidi, Chee (c)
What they got right: Ending this series. While I loved Shane McCarthy's original "All Hail Megatron", most of the "Coda" finisher stories have been just awful. Starscream undid all the characterization he had at the end of the main story. Most of the stories had little to nothing to do with actually filling in the gaps caused by turning this story into the new direction for the IDW Transformers Universe. The art was pretty good in this issue's first story, and I wouldn't mind seeing the original black and white version of story 2 to see if the coloring is to blame (Baumann just colors too dark for my taste), but there's not much to say positive about this issue.
What they got wrong: Spike's story doesn't really do anything. Humans hunting Decepticons using version of Shockwave's arm cannon. So? The second story could have done the same thing easily. Sure it sets up a UN organization to monitor Transformers (because "obviously" the US can't be trusted, even though only the US was attacked if I recall correctly), but that's it. Bumblebee's story is a blatant set-up for the upcoming miniseries that Cannon is going to be writing, and I really wanted to see those soldiers put into their place by the brass. Or are we going to have the military treating both sides as the enemy again? Marvel overplayed that one, and there should be at least some evidence that the Autobots are on our side to create something closer to NEST from the Movieverse. Please don't leave us with RAAT 2.0. That was the OLD Skywatch (although they were more like Sector 7 from the first movie).
Recommendation: I really hope what was horrible about the "Coda" comics are missing from the ongoing. Look to the good stuff of the original 12 "All Hail Megatron", strip out what won't work in an ongoing, and build off of that. Please, IDW?
