Review: Transformers - More Than Meets The Eye #2

I'm back to reading Transformers after taking a small break.So after picking myself off the floor from laughing about the cover, I read the book. Well it's a very detailed story so lets dig in.

First let’s introduce the cast of characters: Rodimus and Ultra Magnus who are leading their crew to find The Knight of Cybertron. Next, we have Whirl and Cyclonus, who are enemies to the end doing whatever enemies do to the end. Then they throw in Ratchet (the doctor) Swerve (the comic relief) and Tailgate who was trying to make it on the original ark 6 million years earlier. The last character and only one I cared about and who is pretty bad ass...is Skids. 

Now the story picks up after the spaceship has crashed and Rodimus and Ultra Magnus are looking for all of the survivors that has been sucked out during the crash. The reason for the crash was due to the quantum generator malfunction; when one of the Duobots stood too close to the generator and was spliced into it. As for the rest of the team, they are recovering from the crash.

A ship appears from nowhere carrying Skids, who is still trying to remember who he is and why he's so paranoid. He slowly starts to remember everything and in the mist of that he crashes his ship...intentionally. To his surprise the ship changes into two large bots caring swords and chanting "1984." In the end Skids demolishes them like nobody’s business.While this is happening, Swerve reveals to Tailgate that he missed the ark by 6 million years. Meanwhile, Ratchet is attempting to repair the other bots but because he is so old he has to fix himself by smashing his hand to get his hand to work properly which may indicate that he's not as functional as others think.

The art in More Than Meets the Eye is looking better; it's not as cartoony like the first issue but it's still lacking that classic Transformer feel. The cover looks like every other superhero comic cover after the main hero conquers his or hers foe. The cover doesn’t work well for Transformers because it doesn't match the type of book that it is. The action and fight between the massive bots and Skids was good and really well drawn. It made the fight a real treat to read.

The story has too many players and because of that you get lost in it and we are not talking about being lost in the plot because you're captivated by it. It jumps back and forth between characters so much that you have to read the same part over to really get what’s going on. I know the main point of the story is about the journey to find the Knight of Cybertron but that never feels like that's what we are here for. It just reads like Rodimus came up with all of this because he’s bored.

This is by far not the best Transformer story out there but at least the art in the book is looking better and now we have Skids to keep my attention. If anything, I might give the third one a shot to see where Skids is going in the story, but all in all this really is a sub-par effort to keep Transformers going without Optimus.

Score: 2/5 (Thank you Skids for keeping my attention).

Writer: James Roberts
Artist: Alex Milne
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Price: 2.99
Release: 2/15/2012