Review – Transformers More Than Meets The Eye #47

Friendship ISN’T magic. Tailgate has a choice to make—and if he had any idea what was at stake, he’d think twice before making it. The crew is ripped apart as More Than Meets The Eye begins the sprint towards its shocking 50th issue!

Click the jump for a review of More Than Meets the Eye #47!

Short review this week everybody, and late, many apologies; the holidays have a way of messing with our comic book reading. But this one was worth the wait. As usual, James Roberts “drip feeds history” into our favorite Cybertronians, giving us an extremely intimate look at the rituals of relationships of Transformers.

Not surprisingly, once you break down the ceremonies, they look an awful lot like our own: a familiar surrounding, sustained physical contact, an act of disclosure (or weakness,) gift giving, and then…an act of devotion. It’s the last point where things get interesting.

Much of this story deals with the question “do the ends justify the means?” Is it okay to keep someone at a distance if it keeps them from being hurt? Is it okay to pair up with someone you don’t know to keep from being alone? Is it okay to pretend to love someone if they can take out a monster? Even if it kills them?

This was a nail-biter of an issue. There’s a plot going on, but you have to be paying attention to see all the details. Here’a hint: the girl with the eye-patch is Whirl’s avatar. Why would Cyclonus see her?

I love that James Roberts has done such a great job of expanding the character of Cyclonus. As a G1 fan I really only knew him from a handful of scenes in the’86 Transformers movie. He could easily remain a background baddie, a backup to Galvatron, a Decepticon reluctantly paired with the Autobots of the Lost Light, a roomate to Tailgate just because all the other rooms were taken.

This story makes him so much more.

I probably don’t even need to go into Brendan Cahill’s art. But I will anyway. It’s not just the action shots or the dramatic lighting, or the fact that he (along with some of the other IDW artists) can depict emotion in characters that don’t have mouths and noses; he just nails the most poignant, emotional scenes of the whole issue, the ones that some “shippers” (and I won’t say which ones) have been hoping for. For a long, long time.

Honestly, the second-to-last page killed me, it really did.

Preview images and description courtesy of IDW.