Review: Megatron Origins TPB (1 spoiler)

[STL]

I can't say I regard it with the same amount of affection. When it was first announced, I had high hopes for this project. Ultimately it fell apart quickly. I'm may review it later on as a part of TF TPB reviews that I intend to do but having read the TPB again yesterday the art was clumsy and convoluted at times which heavily detracted from the story. Storytelling is an art. Alex Milne didn't have it here.

Did you know what was going on in Chapter 4, DD? It's notorious for its flubbers.
- The scene with Grapple and Inferno, do u know what was happening?
- The voice box to Ravage when Soundwave enters Ratbat's office is supposed to go to Ratbat. It doesn't make sense.
- Where does Starscream's cannon come from? Considering they were afforded the highest level of security, how can he bypass such security.
The story is also more about the rise of the Decepticons rather than the oriigin of Megatron. It gave us very little on how he developed into the leader he is. I mean, there's a few flashbacks and Megatron trying to come to terms with killing but his motivations are rather base and don't take us ahead any further than we already know.

So in terms of a Megatron story, this flubbered immensely. It's mediocre at best. I do like it b/c of the many appearances of favourites but really the artwork was terrible to follow.

[kup]

Megatron Origin had incredible potential and an awesome concept for a kick ass story. Unfortunately its execution was very poorly done in my opinion.

Much of the art is messy to say the least, you have to concentrate too much to work out what is going on. The transitions from square to square are also confusing and sometimes feel random. Most of the comic seems to have the same shades of gray all over it which only makes the art even more confusing and sometimes frustrating. It would have helped a lot if important aspects in a certain scenes were highlighted with color but everything just blends in.

The dialogue is not only strange and poorly done but also lacking as there isn't much of it! This is the main flaw in my opinion, the comic relies heavily on its visuals to tell the story as there isn't much text but the art is so chaotic that it becomes counterproductive.

Overall it's alright for a Transformers fan as it does give you a few cool things that only fans would appreciate like what DirtyDigger mentioned but as a comic itself, its rather poor and the weakest IDW book to date.

[TheDirtyDigger]

Ok lol...I think I know what's going on with some stuff but I've only read it once and don't have it in front of me for reference.

- The scene with Grapple and Inferno, do u know what was happening?

Decepticons attacked a Cybertronian version of the Love Boat...I assumed Grapple and Inferno were on the cruise together robosexual style, or they were part of some rescue effort. Also I thought that Grapple there may have been Hauler as I was reading in dim light.

The voice box to Ravage when Soundwave enters Ratbat's office is supposed to go to Ratbat. It doesn't make sense.

Have to double check that at home....

Where does Starscream's cannon come from? Considering they were afforded the highest level of security, how can he bypass such security

I figured that to be the stuff Soundwave was offering when he was first introduced. To me I assumed that SW was offering a higher level of tech that had previously been developed so that's how SS got his weapons past.

The story is also more about the rise of the Decepticons rather than the oriigin of Megatron. It gave us very little on how he developed into the leader he is.

Yeah totally...thats exactly how I saw it so I didn't bother giving much credence to the title. Like I said, I would have liked for it to go into much more detail. And where was Shockwave?

Much of the art is messy to say the least, you have to concentrate too much to work out what is going on

I do find this slightly irritating but find with alot of TF comics things are like that just because of the nature of the character designs.

Megatron Origin had incredible potential and an awesome concept for a kick ass story. Unfortunately its execution was very poorly done in my opinion.

I agree to the point that anything can always be improved upon and it did have massive potential but this is the 'Con origin story we got so I appreciate it totally in that sense.

Overall it's alright for a Transformers fan as it does give you a few cool things that only fans would appreciate like what DirtyDigger mentioned but as a comic itself, its rather poor and the weakest IDW book to date.

Yeah...as a Transformer fan I Loved it with a capital L and have accepted it into my belief systems. I would pay good money to see some more detail from that era. Although not my favourite IDW book I enjoyed it far more than say 'Infiltration' with all it's puny humans running around.

[Gutsman Heavy]

Decepticons = Australian Labor Party is what I took form this book.
Its cool seeing Megatron kill Cy-Kill

[TheDirtyDigger]

Its cool seeing Megatron kill Cy-Kill

Hell yeah!!!!

[Lord_Zed]

Afraid I must also register my dissapointment about that series. I found it to poorly ploted, and to cramped to follow easily. Kup pointed out the confusion with Inferno and Grapple when the spaceliner got shot down, on its own I wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but there were just to many confusing moments, and the whole thing just felt vauge, like the writter was afraid of meshing out the continuity. The whole things feels ethereal and cloudlike with to many unanswered questions, Inferno and Grapple, What happened with Senator Ratbat? and why? Did sentinel Prime die? How did Megatron organise the whole afair??? All in all reading it becomes a chore. Though I must admit I really did like Issue 2.


I figure Starscreams guns were designed to be concealed from high level security, though I did find the ease with which they escaped a bit much, would have prefered if Soundwave had played a bigger part helping them from the outside.

[Paulbot]

If I recall correctly Soundwave turned on Ratbat, extracted his spark, and enslaved him in the cassette form we're familar with.