THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

TRANSFORMERS TITLES FROM TITAN BOOKS / MAGAZINES

Revenge of the Fallen #2 [UK]: Deadlock
Reviewed by Inflatable Dalek

Well, I’m a sucker for Hitchcock so this issue didn’t have to do much to win me over. It’s nice to see a Transformer with a different realistic alt mode that’s not a car, and Furman seizes Ransack and makes the slightly unhinged fanatic the most standout character since Stockade.

Davis-Hunt really comes into his own here. Lots of crisp clear travelogue art and the biplane sequence is extremely well done.

It has to be said though; Bumblebee’s speech gimmick is not something that works on the printed page. They might be better of fudging it or fixing him again (they can always damage it once more in time for the third film) before not to long.

This is still a fun little chase story though, with the Twins continuing to impress as leads.


Canada seems to be a favourite place of Furman’s; he put the Autobot’s secret base there in the Marvel Earthforce stories.

Ransack claims to be one of the Seekers, though he hasn’t become inert like Jetfire. One of the picture of possible Seekers Simmons has in the film is of a ye olde airplane, this may be Ransack. It’s not clear if Ransack was deliberately designed with an anachronistic alt mode with the Seeker idea in mind, or if Hasbro were just trying something a bit different and the spin off writers have run with it.

The chase through the fields is a direct homage to North By Northwest, previously done by Furman in Devastation issue 3. File this under likely coincidence, but the plot of a wacky car chase through rural Canada is not unlike that of Emily, the final episode of The New Avengers.

A full two years after the comic launched Sam finally makes an appearance, and he’s brought the folks with him. We also see Bumblebee communicating through song in a Titan strip for the first time. Songs sang by Bumblebee (with slightly different copyright dodging lyrics) include: Should I Stay Or Should I Go? by The Clash, Here Comes Trouble by Dangerous Toys and a song with the lyric “White light, dead sight” (if anyone knows…).

Skids and Mudflap here take their funky car modes. This might be a tough fit with what we see in the film, but there’s nothing to say they couldn’t have gone for the ice cream truck as a cunning disguise for that mission before switching back. Though they act as if they’re taking the car modes for the first time in the films, the vehicles they scan already have their names on the licence plate so it’s likely they’re just having a bit of wacky banter in that scene.

Sam is presumably at some sort of open day at the University, meaning this is probably towards the end of the previous school year (assuming American students go to look at potential uni’s around the same time as we do in the UK). Though the film shot at Princeton and the novelisation refers to it as such, it was unnamed in the movie and Furman here places it in Albany, New York.

The IDW reprint returns to piecemeal publication, despite the letters page last month claiming All Hail Megatron will last 12 issues.


Apparently no one in Canada notices the CN tower being crashed into, or two driverless cars going down the freeway the wrong way. They also don’t seem bothered by a giant robot battle next to the road as well. Canadians really are as unflappable as Frazer from Due South.

Without being insulting to our rural Canadian readers, but aren’t the cars Skids and Mudflap scan a bit fancy for Hicksville?

There’s either a massive time jump somewhere or Bumblebee gets from New York to Canada in five minutes. If there is a time jump, how do Skids and Mudflap hold their own for so long?

They’re reprinting All Hail Megatron.


A desktop launcher. That’s to say a launcher you put on your desktop rather than one that launches your desktop at the cat.


A Sideswipe profile;
More Than Meets the Eye quiz page;
Competitions for the Harry Potter films on Blu Ray and Lego Battles and a DS to play it on;
All Hail Megatron issue 2 cover poster;
Competitions for the Spooks book series and an Apollo 11 model kit;
Why Jetfire Likes Being an SR-71 Blackbird;
Top Gear plugs various Wii games with competitions;
Law and Disorder’ a little shorter than normal and includes Starscream’s Stars.

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