Today’s Comic> Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #1

There are 7 covers for this comic. That is so unnecessary!

Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #1

IDW Publishing (January 2012)

Rodimus gathers a group of Autobots, including Ratchet and Ultra Magnus, for a trip to find the famed Knights of Cybertron. Rodimus is sure the map found in the shell of the Matrix (see The Death of Optimus Prime) will lead them there and they plan to find others along the way. The crew includes Red Alert, Whirl, Cyclonus, and Tailgate, an Autobot who has lived underground in stasis lock since Nova Prime’s mission took off centuries ago. Meanwhile, Prowl gets a message while away from his quarters that seems to indicate the mission is going to go horribly wrong.

What they got right: In concept, this could be interesting. A group of Autobots on a mission into space trying to get along might be a fun story.

What they got wrong: Right out the box there are problems. Ultra Magnus and Prowl are way too extreme in their personalities, even more than they have been. (Which means we have a worse Prowl than under Furman, and I didn’t think that was possible.) Whirl has the corpses of Sweeps in a secret spot and when Cyclonus comes across it accidentally, Whirl attacks him to keep his secret, and then tries to make it look like Cyclonus was keeping the corpses. Whirl was a scumbot in the flashback stories, and now he’s lower than most Decepticons. Why does this character exist? What an insult to any fans he had from the original toy and the UK run. Red Alert is also nuts. Rodimus still wants to run his victories in Bumblebee’s face. There is literally nobody in this comic worth liking with the exception of Bumblebee and Ratchet, and that’s only because we learn little about Tailgate.

(And don’t get me started on the variant covers in which the first four form one long cover, which is also available together as a gatefold cover. Stop making people buy multiples of the SAME ISSUE to get the full cover. The gatefold is a retailer incentive so a lot of people won’t be able to get it! I hate these kind of variant covers, and dislike variants in general without being a re-printing.)

Recommendation: It’s the first issue and already I’m seeing plenty of reasons to hate this series. Will this be the first Transformers comic series I DON’T collect willingly? Only future issues will tell.

One of the few actually funny moments. Actually, the only one.

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• Today’s Comic> Transformers: Death of Optimus Prime