Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye #19 (IDW)

Rating: 4/5 – Oh, those wacky Space Robots

If you love wacky space adventures, this series is for you.

Seriously, this is a fun book.  From the beginning, we have a group of Cybertronian misfits led by Rodimus who go on a wacky quest among the stars.  The cast alone is just incredible.  A transformer who has been buried underground since before the great war, a Decepticon, an anal retentive peace officer, an Autobot psycho, a bot without a memory, one that wants to own a bar, and that’s just the beginning.

This issue we come off the events of last issue where a scrawny robot has revealed himself to be the great Ultra Magnus.  How and why this is weaves a whole new dimension to the Transformers mythos.  And the events up to this give us a new peace officer, the great (and probably insane) Star Saber.  We also have moments of our resident psychopath, Whirl, teaming up with the former Decepticon, Cyclonus, against current Decepticons and also keeping a kill count.  Then there is the former medic who went insane and disassembled Ratchet, then challenged him to a best medic contest by putting together robots who have been cut in half.

James Roberts has been giving us an extremely fun title with lots of twists and turns every issue.  One can’t help but keep reading to see what he does next.  And Alex Milne is doing complimentary work on pencils.  I was not too bought into his work because it is very loose and rounded which I though was fr from what a Transformer book should be.  Yet without much transforming at all, his art actually works well.

Why this book doesn’t get a 5 is that it still relies heavily on past events.  I know that is partially necessary but even as a hardcore Transformers fan, I get lost sometimes and need to go back into previous issues to make connections.  But it really is a fun ride.

Reviewed by: Chris Stark – chris@comicspectrum.com
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