Comic Review...

Cover "B" by Nick Roche

Transformers: More Then Meets The Eye #2

Writer: James Roberts
Artist: Alex Milne
(covers by Alex Milne, Nick Roche)


Summary: The new TRANSFORMERS direction blasts off! Trapped in space, their ship critically damaged, the Autobots try to rally what's left of their forces. And to complicate matters, Skids arrives on the scene, guns blazing! Who is he? What does he want? Where does he come from? Unfortunately, not even Skids knows the answers...


Comments: I was surprised to see Skids show up this issue. Where he came from is not clear in the story but it seems to infer he was already on the planet that Rodimus and the others crashed on. To Roberts credit, Skids is given an interesting and flattering appearance here (sometimes it seems like so many G1 characters get relegated to boring background roles so this spotlighting of him was nice).
   In general, the story for issue two is more stream-lined then issue one's (no need to introduce everybody this time around and set it all up). It appears like most of the people blasted out of the Lost Light at the end of issue one were saved after all (disregard my rant about Rad, Fizzle, etc. from last time). It did seem like at the end of last issue that the ship was heavily damaged and they might be marooned on the planet but by the end of this issue they're already repaired and ready to go.
   I'm still not crazy on the whole late 80s Justice League-like banter in these comics (humorous asides and little jokes littered in places). It's cool in some comics but I'm not sure I like it here for Transformers (I'm not saying it's bad per se, just that it doesn't quite fit with my personal view of TF fiction. Your mileage may vary).
   I noticed the art seemed a little different this issue and wondered if Roche had changed his style or something. As it turns out, Alex Milne actually drew this issue (oops. Well, I read the issue late at night and because I had the Roche cover just naturally assumed he drew it all). Anyway, Milne does a fairly good job here (although I wonder if Roche will be back soon. They made a big deal about Roberts/Roche on this series so I assume he'll do more then just one issue. Perhaps they'll alternate issues to lessen the workload?)
   All in all, a slight improvement on issue one. (I know I said I wasn't planning to get more of this series but I saw one solitary issue of MTMTE #2 when I went on my comic run and got it out of habit while getting RID and some other stuff).

Verdict: Good.