Make a list of every single Decepticon. Remove the warriors, the high-rankers, the loyal foot soldiers, the over-achievers, and anyone who’s ever made even a modest contribution to The Cause. You should now have five names left. Welcome back, guys.
The Scavengers return! Click the jump for a review and preview pages of IDW’s More Than Meets The Eye #45!
I’d almost forgotten about the Scavengers; they were introduced way back in issue 7 but we haven’t heard much from them lately. The Transformers Wiki has a great description of the Scavengers, but in short: they’re five of the most hapless, useless, well-meaning but completely in-over-their-heads Decepticons you could hope to meet.
Not surprisingly, they’re all incredibly likable.
If you’re wondering what they’ve been up to lately, the first page of the issue gives us a brief “Previously on Transformers THE SCAVENGERS” series of clips, including a trip to a planet where their words were turned into song, an adventure where they saved the universe with a game of Jenga, and an escape from a two-dimensional dimension.
That’s why it’s called a Perspective Trap! Try to think in three dimensions while I build a makeshift vanishing point!
Oh, and also a planet where they were turned into HasbroTM toys. Between that and someone quoting lines from the 1986 Transformers movie, this comic gets more meta by the issue. And I love it.
(Also, side note: the toy photo was brilliantly done by Maziar Shahsafdari, but chime in if you’d like to see more of that kind of thing done by The-Starhorse; her Transformers photo comics are epic.)
Currently the five of them are involved in a very serious matter: a game of tag inside the ship. This is one of the things that makes them so fun to watch: they get so completely serious about minor things, and they have no patience with each other at all.
“Whenever we play Shoot Shoot Bang Bang you –”
“Hey, I’ve copyrighted the name! You have to pay me whenever you say it or invent your own!”
“Whenever we play Crankcase Doesn’t Understand How Trademarks Work…”
Obviously I could quote half the issue in this review: James Roberts’ writing is fantastic.
And while a game of tag is fun, Misfire has a bigger project: trying to rehabilitate Grimlock, who they rescued from stasis lock ages ago, and who barely knows how to spell his own name without emptying his tank all over the floor (and if you’re wondering if that actually means what you think it does; yes it does.)
The five (six, counting Grimlock) land on a planet, and receive an offer that some of them would like to refuse. This is where you remember that as much as the reader may like them, some of them have been known to shoot dying Autobots in the face. They’re clumsy, easily distracted, and not always very bright, but they’re also Decepticons, and saving an Autobot isn’t a choice they’re going to make without a lot of thought. And possibly money.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Alex Milne’s art is as awesome as always. Misfire is my favorite part: Milne knows how to make a very mobile facial expression still look like it works on a robotic face. Without any dialog at all you’d still know when Misfire was being thoughtful, ticked off, frustrated, or just disgusted. (See my earlier comment regarding “emptying his tank all over the floor.”)
And yes, all the bots had noses. That was my screw-up in the last MTMTE review: the art there was done by Hayato Sakamoto, not Milne, and Sakamoto likes a more Transformers Prime nose-less look, which is a perfectly fine thing to do. But I was happy to see all the noses.
In the end their business contact has been found the bot he’s been running from for ages, someone he’s incredibly, almost irrationally terrified of. Who it is will probably surprise you, and I’m wondering how the Scavengers will react.
Badly. They’re probably going to react very badly.
What do you think? Shout out in the comments!
James Roberts – writer
Alex Milne – pencils
Brian Shearer and Alex Milne – inks
Joana Lafuente – colors