THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

CURRENT TRANSFORMERS COMICS FROM IDW PUBLISHING

Transformers: All Hail Megatron #11
Reviewed by Inflatable Dalek

Oh, SHUT UP.

Remember how, at the end of Devastation a Starscream led rebellion was ended prematurely by the arrival of an outside force (the Reapers in that case) persuading Starscream to reaffirm his loyalty to take out the new threat? Well Shane McCarthy sure does as he gives us a complete rerun of it here. To be fair, this does work better as the Autobots are actually plot related rather than the random nobodies of the Reapers, but that doesn’t stop this being an incredibly lazy rehash. Even if McCarthy was unfamiliar with the prior comic (and despite all his claims, I can believe that), one of the editors should have noticed and pointed out they already did this less than two years ago.

That’s not the only familiar thing of course, the Autobots and Decepticons fighting in a ruined city as a nuclear bomb flies towards them is nicked from the end of Dreamwave’s first mini series. We’ve had a lack of originality throughout All Hail Megatron, the mission statement might as well be “Like the cartoon please”, but this reaches new levels of excess recycling.

The real problem however is the action. For a big dumb fight comic, the big dumb fight should be the highlight. Instead, though the art is nice enough, it consists of characters posing at one another, swapping quips and generally looking as if they’re hugging rather than in a pitched fight to the death. The Megatron/Prime meeting is especially bad; they just talk nonsense at one another in order to pad things out to a 12th issue. It’s hard not to wish movie Prime was here, he’d have ended the whole sorry mess by sticking something sharp through Megatron’s head.

This is a pitiable issue that doesn’t even manage to be staggeringly stupidly bad, it’s just very dull and derivative, derivative of comics that weren’t exactly the best either IDW or Dreamwave had to offer in the first place. Another fine mess.


After 11 full issues, the Autobots finally meet up with the main plot.

Drift, Hound and Sideswipe are noticeably absent from the Autobots forces here, though there are sketchily drawn background Autobots who might include them. As Omega Supreme can transform into his full robot mode, he presumably has some sort of access to subspace.

Starscream is promised leadership of the Decepticons at some point the future. Though considering Megatron’s bullshiting throughout this title, this is likely a false promise. This does however give confirmation of something that the previous ten issues have implied strongly; Starscream and the rest of his unit have undergone a massive promotion at some point. In the Furman material, Starscream was the leader of a lowly infiltration unit, the lack of rank being part of his annoyance. Under that structure people like Banzaitron would be more likely to be the next leader than him.

Prime gets halfway through delivering his tech spec motto before Megatron tells him to shut up. During the same speech Megatron mentions Prime abandoning the planet at the end of Devastation. Prime’s rebuttal of his strategy there completes the arc of making the Autobots more personally involved in the affairs of the planets they fight over.

Though we’ve had several characters adopt alt modes based on their Universe toys, Dropshot is the first “new” character from that line to appear. Though his tech spec implies he’s the Micromaster of the same name, that character has already appeared in the IDW Universe during Revelation and is presumably still on Gorlam Prime. You could, if you like, argue that, as that character was both unnamed and a super evolved cybernetic humanoid, this is in fact the “real” Dropshot. Either way however, it’s still the first toy from the Universe line not visually based on a pre-existing G1 character to appear.

As what may be the only decent bit of foreshadowing in the entire series, Dropshot was seen hanging around the US base in vehicle mode back in issue 5. It’s almost enough to make you think this thing was plotted in advance. Almost.


Megatron is surprised the Autobots have been able to regroup and get to Earth. Did he never wonder why the group he sent to take out Omega Supreme never came back? Did he not think to check up considering Omega is both the most lethal weapon the Autobots have and mass transportation for them? Spotlight: Metroplex reveals at least 6 more Autobots survived the purge. One has to wonder if Megatron ever checked up on that as well (especially as one of them was Metroplex). How many Autobots are out there he totally failed to get killed?

Starscream confidently accepts Megatron’s prediction of his future leadership even though Meg’s efforts to plan things out have just been shown to be completely useless by the arrival of the Autobots [His ego overrides all logic flaws].

Once again New York switches back to being sky scrapper rubble rather than the shinny purple metropolis Megatron’s been building.

Optimus turns down a cast iron chance to just shot Megatron in the back and finish this by instead calling out his name. Megatron in turn doesn’t try and fight his arch foe, but instead has a nice chat with him.

Did the Quartermaster not notice he suddenly had an extra TOS-1 Buratino the day Dropshot turned up? Or has he been undercover for years? Why bother wasting one of your troops on that mission when an electronic bug will spy on the humans just as well?

Despite what this issue shows, even the EU doesn’t use propeller driven aircraft to deliver nuclear bombs (and as with Dropshot, didn’t they notice the new aircraft when it turned up? We’ll have to assume Tankor killed the originally assigned crew).


Megatron: When are you going to realise, Starscream, nothing comes as a surprise to me.
[Autobots Attack]
No…

Megatron: Today the Decepticons are mine. You [Starscream] are mine. Understand that. Your time will come. But now… join with me and bring about a new age. Do this and you will rule.

Starscream: ALL HAIL MEGATRON!

Optimus: Split! Two groups! Down the centre! Go!
Astrotrain: They’re running” HAHA! The cowards are running!
Cliffjumper: We’re not running moron. We’re just making room.
[Omega lands: THOOM THOOM THOOM]