“Now say you’re a pretty pony! SAY IT!”
Transformers: Generation Two #2
Marvel (December, 1993)
“All Or Nothing!” WRITER: Simon Furman PENCILERS: Derek Yaniger, Manny Galan, & Andrew Wildman INKERS: Jim Amash, Marie Severin, & Stephen Baskerville COLORIST: Sarra Mossoff LETTERERS: Richard Starkings & Gaushell EDITOR: Rob Tokar The original comic contained a second story called “Ghosts”, a reprint from a #0 Halloween comic. As it isn’t in the trade I’m using I can’t properly review it.
Let’s tackle each adventure separately, shall we? On the Ark, Megatron is cheering his victory as Cobra and GI Joe can only watch. Spike, having snuck aboard the Ark during the G.I. Joe comic, proceeds to find Fortress Maximus and puts his armor on before being found by Skydive. Who introduces himself by putting a gun to Spike’s head and asking what he did to Max because he apparently forgot what a Headmaster is. Spike has Skydive rescue Doctor Biggles-Jones while Fortress Maximus battles Megatron. While Skydive takes a few shots of his own, Fortress Maximus destroys the Ark’s engine and causes the ship to explode, presumably with both himself and Megatron in it. Skydive returns Biggles-Jones to GI Joe. So they brought Spike and Fortress Maximus back just to kill them off? Skydive could have easily activated the self-destruct mechanism and come up with some other way to distract Megatron (I don’t care how well Megatron looked over the ship, there have to be secrets only the Autobots would know) and still escaped with the Doctor. Why did Furman insist on killing these characters? Actually, I’ll get back to that.
So what were the Joes and Cobra doing? Cobra attempts to flee Midville with the Cybertronian technology, but Hot Spot goes after them. Despite being heavily damaged by Cobra fire, Hot Spot manages to destroy the example of Autobot tech, and then destroys himself in order to keep himself from being studied by Cobra….even though he knew full well the Joes were right behind and even gave him cover to destroy the other examples! Did Furman just decide to kill off every character that didn’t have a G2 redeco? What if Hasbro decided to do a G2 version of the Protectobots? By the way, the Protectobots are my favorite Combiner team so this also annoys me personally.
I also wonder how closely Larry Hama and Simon Furman worked in crafting these crossover tales. Hama had both Skydive and Spike sneak aboard the Ark (although there is no good explanation as to how Megatron got the Ark or how Spike was able to track it down to find Fortress Maximus), while Furman used Skydive to complete the Joes’ attempt to rescue Doctor Biggles-Jones from Cobra and later Megatron. There doesn’t appear to be any further appearances of the good doctor in either comic.
As far as G2 goes…okay, fine it wasn’t that bad in comparison. The art is still terrible but most of my complaints are more personal than critical (except for Hot Spot going self-destruct instead of waiting for the Joes to come to the rescue). I also haven’t read “Ghosts” because I don’t know the actual comic or the Halloween special and it wasn’t reprinted by Titan in the collections I have. I suppose if you’re really curious about this comic or wanted to see how the Joes crossover ended, this might be a comic to get. Otherwise, it’s as worthless as the rest of the maxiseries.
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