Going Backwards - Transformers: All Hail Megatron #2 review

Transformers: All Hail Megatron #2 goes under the Fanbot microscope today, courtesy of Going Backwards reviews. First off, Trev Hutchison's cover, shown left. Trev is a masterful cover artist with great symbolic talent. Not exactly sure of the exact symbolism for this one, but Megs looks very important and dominant while the humans are all out en force but are still puny compared to him. Anyway, it looks awesome. On to the review...

Synposis: At a house party being thrown by his wife, Colonel Danny Witwicky is startled by the arrival of a helicopter with orders to take him to New York and take command of an emergency there. Within the City, Andy Reid has survived the crash of his F-22 and is being chased by Ravage. Teaming up with a woman named Sarah and a man called Bridge, they manage to escape the Decepticon with the aid of a Molotov cocktail and a sturdy door.
As Colonel Witwicky arrives at the field headquarters he learns the robots are assembled in Central Park and orders the assembled nearby troops to attack whilst he is briefed on the situation. The troops think the four visible robots will be easy to deal with, until Megatron sends just Frenzy to attack them with his ultra sonic frequencies. As the Colonel finishes learning that the robots who caused so much trouble last year were aliens rather than terrorists, he is informed that all the soldiers have been killed.

Andy and company try their best to get out of New York, but the tunnels and bridges are blocked. This turns out to be a good thing for them as the Seekers destroy the bridges whilst Laserbeak relays the images to the world. Then the Constructicons form Devastator, who wades into the Hudson River and delivers a punch that destroys the tunnels, with thousands of fleeing people in them...

The Good: Guido's art is clear and simplistically realistic, with large shadowy areas adding realism to the panels. His new, kibble-free rendition of Devastator is extremely awesome, and Jish Burcham's washed out, warm color paletter enhances and complements Guidi's art very well. Shane's writing seems to be going well, the action sequences and shock technique of Devastator smashing the water is cool.  Well done team, things are going well. Too bad the rest of the series went downhill.

The Bad: On several pages, Guidi's inks look very poorly scannes, grainy and yuck. Not sure if this is his own fault or the fault of the printers, but it is a bit of a disappointment. Once again with Shane, the story has little substance, other than "Cons smash stuff up and kill people". Many said that issues 1-3 could have been squeezed into one issue, and I have to agree. This is nothing new for those of us who have read to whole series.

The Ugly: Hook doesn't know who Frenzy is, despite having met him back in Megatron Origin and both of them being two of the earliest Decepticons. That is all.

Verdict: Awesomely done artwork from Guido and Josh, as usual. Sub-par story from Shane, as usual. But much better than last issue. Rated 8.5 out of 10.

Posted by Fanbot at 1:49 pm, SUNDAY 4 October