Going Backwards - Transformers: All Hail Megatron #10 review

A shocking thing occurs in this issue--something actually happens! After five or so issues of pissing around doing bugger-all, Shane McCarthy finally gets the Autobots off Cybertron and the Cons fighting with each other in a poor attempt to tie up the series with what little time he has left. Read on, fans, for Fanbot's review of All Hail Megatron #10...

SYNOPSIS: A synopsis of this comic is available here at TF Archive. Sorry, it's just too much to fit into one review and let's face it, you don't really want to read that much, do you?

THE ART: I'm in two minds about this issue. For the first thirteen and last four pages the art are great--Guido is back with Emil and their art styles don't clash at all. The fact that Emil did sequences on a totally different location makes the creative team slip less blatantly obvious (a la issue 9). And because Josh Burcham colors both artist's lines, the transition is almost seamless. But for pages 14-19, TF Ongoing colorist James Brown (whose colors leave something to be desired) has to step in and screw it up with his fluro, badly-Fotoshopped background colors. The art looks terrible and ruins the issue for me. But wait, there's more!

THE STORY: Shane has outdone himself this time. The story is perhaps the worst seen in this franchise . Once again Shane gives an extremely convenient plot device--Omega Supreme, a thousand times bigger than in Spotlight: Optimus Prime, swoops in and slags the Swarm. WTF??? And the dialogue between Screamer and Megs on Earth is clunky and unrealistic. The good thing about comics is that the character are always good actors, but these two sound like they're improvising like in those cartoons where the goodies try to trap the baddies by speaking very unconvincingly. This is a big disappointment Shane, you have let the fans down with this one.

ERRORS: On the inner cover, "grisly" is misspelled "grizzly". On page 10, Scavenger's chinplate is purple like the rest of his face when it should be silver. In All Hail Megatron issue 8, the point of Sunstreaker's bridge-detonating sacrifice was that it destroyed "the only way to and from" the Autobots' bunker. Yet now Kup says that the Insecticons have "found their way around as expected." Worse, Emiliano Santalucia accidentally drew the Swarm crossing... a bridge. Doesn't that kinda make Sunstreaker's sacrifice for absolutely nothing?! What the hell?

FAVE QUOTE: Wheeljack: "[This gun] was never designed to be removed from the Trion so the power relay is bound to fry in seconds. You'll only have a few shots, so make them count."
Roadbuster: "Do you think we should give it a name? I think we should give it a name..." [Roadbuster reminds us of his mad love of blowing slag up.]

VERDICT: Even worse than last issue, which is saying a lot. James Brown ruined it with his amateur colors. Next month: Next stop, Earth! Rated 6.5 out of 10.

Posted by Fanbot at 4:09 pm, THURSDAY 19 November