IIRC it was pitched as a one off Spotlight: Megatron before becoming two issues and part of the ongoing at Hasbro's request as they wanted Optimus Prime to coin the term "Autobot" (though in the final issue he more sort of reclaims it rather than inventing it).zigzagger wrote: If I'm remembering right, that is. Thought Roberts said that at a panel or something.
So, in the end only RID actually felt like a proper Dinobot story with the other two comics feeling more "Oh, ffs OK, here's Grimlock as a contractual obligation, now go away". In the event any floating buyers did pick up this or Reg specifically because of the heavy Dinobot promotion chances are they'll be cheesed off enough at the false advertising not to bother coming back.
Bad points about the issue first:
As with last month, the virtual ignoring of the lead characters and ongoing plots in order to incorporate a side show worries me in the long term. Effectively everything that matters in terms of the balls already in the air across both issues could have been covered in about six pages (Rung and Red Alert, Chromedome and Skids, the DJD finding Overlord and maybe the OMINOUS DEATH FORESHADOWING).
With IDW's history with long running plots I'd much rather the book focus on finishing old business before starting new. Especially as it looks as if Krok's Crew (that's what we should call them and I'm going to keep doing it till you all do) are heading off to RID (at least long enough to bring all the Dinobots back together) and won't have much more bearing on the events of MTMTE.
The DJD were fairly useless, against a bunch of useless nobodies they have far, far too much trouble. Overlord will make a toast rack from their bones in about three minutes.
There was also a recurrance of that Furman oddity of "Well, I've like totally won this fight and could kill you right here right now and it would only take seconds but there's this... thing I've got to go do. So I won't. Even though it's taking me about the same amount of time to deliver my Next Time Gadget! speech as it would to actually just kill you". See Trypticon in War Within 2 and Sixshot in Devastation.
The Misfire/Flywheels/Necrobot FUBAR was annoying as well. [According to the Wiki Roberts has said an error in this two parter will be fixed for the trade... Considering for the irony to work it should be the seeker the Necrobot finds will Flywheels be redrawn into that role in issue 7?]
The good:
All of Krok's crew were well written and hugely likeable and basically carried a fairly light plot.
Alex Milne continues to come along in leaps and bounds, he's really on top of his game now and seems a million light years away from the chap who did work so muddled and messy he deserved to be repeatedly tricked by Pat Lee into not getting paid for it.
The Necrobot amused me as I like to think it took 18 months for him to get around to Flywheels because Prowl has been keeping him busy by killing everyone on Cybertron.
EDIT: Oh, and it turns out Skids is the John Simm version of the Master, with all that music going on in his head. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.