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More Than Meets the Eye #2
Liars A to D part 2: Hangers On

Published Date: February 15 2012
Written by: James Roberts
Art by: Alex Milne
Colours by: Josh Burcham
Edited by: John Barber
Cover price: $3.99

Synopsis:

Following the hull breach, the crew of the Lost Light are on a rescue and recovery mission. Rodimus and Ultra Magnus have picked up half of the fallen autobots who are offline since planet fall, while Hoist fishes Cyclonus out of a nearby lake.

Back on the lost light, Brainstorm and Perceptor conclude that the quantum generators malfunctioned due to coming into contact with one of the duo-bots, Ore.

Meanwhile overhead a mysterious shuttle warps into view. On-board is the Autobot Skids but he has a few problems, the most obvious being amnesia. An ominous scrawl on the wall behind him reads “you haven’t escaped, they’re all around you”. Skids switches off the shuttles mode lock, and ejects to safety before the shuttle crash lands – all done on instinct it would appear. Before he can comfortable he is engaged by the remains of the shuttle – 3 giant robots armed with swords.

Thankfully for Skids, one has been destroyed on impact. As he engages the other two, the robots only communication is the numbers 1984. Skids uses the remains of 2 fallen autobots – Polaris & Hyperion to take down one of the robots but one still remains.

Back on board the Lost Light, Ratchet tends to Rung, Tailgate and Whirl. After a small altercation between Whirl and Rung (his psychologist), Ratchet allows Swerve to inform Tailgate that he had been buried underground for over six million years. Naturally enough, this doesn’t go down well.

Rodimus confronts Cyclonus about coming on board as a member of the crew. Rodimus agrees to give Cyclonus a chance but can’t forget about Cyclonus’s role in the attack on Kima. Ultra Magnus is less positive about Cyclonus but tries to organise a truce between Whirl and the former Dead Universe Soldier.

Planet side, Swerve and Tailgate meet up with Chromedome and Rewind. As they head back to the Lost Light they encounter Skids in combat with the remaining robot. Chromedome removes the inhibitor claw attached to Skids back, along him to unleash his full arsenal on his assailant – impressing Swerve immensely. Chromedome is curious why Skids never used the gun in his right hand. Skids didn’t seem to notice it. Tailgate inspects the head of the defeated robot and overhears it still saying “1984”.

At a general meeting of the crew, Rodimus outlines his plans to set a course for Crystal City and locate the Circle of Light. However another snag rears its head. Red Alert has discovered the body of the other duo-bot, Shock, with his spark ripped out. It looks like a Spark eater is on board…

Characters featured [in rough order of appearance]:

Brainstorm, Perceptor, Ultra Magnus, Rodimus, Ore, Chromedome, Cyclonus, Hoist, Rewind, Skids, Ratchet, Rung, Whirl, Tailgate, Drift, Swerve, Polaris, Hyperion, Blaster, Sunstreaker, Inferno, Grapple, Cosmos, Huffer, Brawn, Gears, Hound, Trailbreaker, Powerglide, Red Alert, Shock



Notes:

This issue is the first to include the “meet the crew” at the end of the issue.

The robots Skids encounters are called Legislators. Keep an eye out for them in future issues. They may be important. All they are heard to say is “1984”

Tailgate has a very, very slow transformation speed. At first, it’s attributed to being offline for 6 million years. This is not the only reason

Skids is unaware that he is always holding a gun in his right hand.

Most of the Autobots who fell through the hull breach have been recovered, with Hyperion and Polaris being the only 2 main casualties.

Along with Hyperion & Polaris being dead, both duobots (Shock and Ore) are also deceased.

This is Ratchets first time to repair Rung and he remarks how well kept the psychologist is.

Goofs:

I may be reading it wrong but Brainstorm is said to have found Hyperion and Polaris in among wreckage of the ship, but we know that they’re bodies were used by Skids in his fight against the legislators. Either this is a mess-up or Brainstorm kept the discovery of the defeated Legislators to himself.

Quote / Unquote:

“Never stand next to a Quantum Generator when it’s about to flout the law of physics.” – Brainstorm gives some good advice that may come in handy.

“I’m going to kill you. Not Today, Maybe not for a While. But I will kill you. And don’t think you will see it coming” – Cyclonus’s whispered threat to Whirl.

“The truth. We've lost contact with Cybertron, we can't find ourselves on the map, Ore is dead, Hyperion and Polaris are dead, but Cyclonus is happy, so that's okay” – Magnus weighs up the pros and cons.

"'The Crusadercons.' The more you say it, the cooler it sounds."
"Someone hears that, they're gonna think we're Decepticons."
"What, so it has to end in 'bot'?"
"Well... yeah. Omnibots, Monsterbots, Duobots... it's kind of an unwritten rule, isn't it."
"Forget the rules! The war's over—it's time to reclaim the suffix!"
- Swerve suggests a new group name.

Review:

This is very much a set-up issue. Lots of different seeds are being sown, which is great for future issues but as an issue itself it has a pretty jumbled feel. Lots of good scenes but they don’t link together as well as they maybe should. That’s to be expected as MTMTE features many characters we really haven’t seen that much of so many are new and need a bit of space to make an impression. But it doesn’t make for that good a comic.

There are a few problems with the narrative as well. The big cliff-hanger of the last issue is somewhat underwhelming at the start of this issue. Most of the fallen autobots survive and just took a few knocks and went offline. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have a few more casualties considering many of these ‘bots are minor characters. It also marks a start of a problem that will run through both the on goings – namely that death (and more importantly the drama caused by it) is thrown about to loosely and begins to lack impact over time.

Another problem I have with this issue is Skids. It’s not the way he is presented or his character as both are done really well. There’s a strong wolverine vibe to him without being a direct copy, but we do have an ass-kicking fighter who has a degree of amnesia. Sound familiar? Well, no biggie. The problem I have with Skids is that he arrives battling a strange looking robot and no-one seems to be too bothered. He’s on board and mixing in the background without so much as a second glance from the higher ups. Especially odd as Cyclonus has to justify his place aboard the crew this issue and last issue Ultra Magnus makes such a big issue over who gets let on board.

It’s still an entertaining read but it’s not one of the better issues. However it does have one amazing thing going for it.

This issue marks the start of Alex Milne’s run on the series. I had to admit, when this was announced my heart sank a little. Milne had improved from his earlier work with his recent run in the on-going but I still didn’t think he was the right artist to fill in for Nick Roche. Roche’s style, while not to everyone’s taste, was a major influence of the character and vibe in the first issue. Milne had always seemed a more serious artist. Even the covers for issue 2 seemed to highlight the gulf between the 2 artists – Milne with a bland, over-drawn Rodimus showing “rage” and Roche with a dynamic visual of Skids ejecting from the ship, smirk of a raconteur firmly in place.

But within the issue, Alex Milne doesn’t just do well. He nails it. Absolutely nails it. The style, the action, the little character touches are all in place and Milne will go on to be my favourite artist of IDWs batch. Sure, every now and again a face will start to slip back into his previous style but for the most part his character designs are great and the panels look wonderful. He also does some great comedy moments too – Tailgates slow transformation is a great little moment, but done subtly.

Not a bad issue then, but a tad disjointed. MTMTE is still very much in set-up mode which will hamper it a little. But only a little.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Yay MTMTE reviews! Can't believe I missed it.

I really like this issue as well, thought it's pretty good, especially as part of a trade, but I agree that compared to some of Roberts' other work in the series it's pretty weak due to being a set-up. Skids' arrival, I think, is the weakest point. Not that it's a weak entry, not at all since Skids' entry into the story is like the most awesome thing ever, but the fact that it's only followed up on last month, nearly one and a half year after this issue is released... I'm not saying everything must be resolved quickly, but I thought it was kind of awkward to introduce Skids and just have him hang in the background and deliver some slight exposition before melding back into the background.

I like the fact the scores are fairly judged and are relative to the series being covered. As much as I enjoy listening to the Underbase podcast it tends to get very giddy in it's ratings (so you have things like five issues in a row of MTMTE getting five out of five with each being better than the last...) to the point they're basically useless because virtually everything is a four or a five.

An average issue of MTMTE may be better than certain other comics (hello Reg!) but should still get an average score when weighed against it's own series.