Review: The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 2 by Shane McCarthy, Guido Guidi, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2009)
Acquired August 2014
Read July 2016

The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Volume 2

Story by Shane McCarthy
Art by Guido Guidi, E. J. Su, Robert Deas, and Emiliano Santalucia
Colors by Josh Burcham, Kris Carter, James Brown, Robert Deas, Felix Serrano
Color Assist by Benjamin Maier
Letters by Chris Mowry and Robbie Robbins

Though there were two more volumes of All Hail Megatron after this, volume 2 concludes the main event, as those were prequels, side stories, and codas. This volume opens by explaining how the Autobots ended up in such dire straits as the series began with, though I didn't find the answers entirely satisfying. Much of the problems that plagued volume 1 still plague this one, but I found a lot of the stuff in the last two chapters more interesting than what had come before: Megatron expressing his frustration to Starscream, for example, that Starscream has never become the warrior-leader that Megatron wanted him to be was great, as is the dealing with the idea that everything Megatron does hearkens back to his original revolutionary purpose.

As always, imagine this in David Kaye's Megatron voice to make it even better.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #11 (art by Guido Guidi)

This leads to a pretty good ending, where Starscream actually saves Megatron instead of killing him, and a Decepticon actually break ranks to help humanity-- though not for the reasons that the Autobots would like, not even for the reasons his fellow traitor would like. But this is just the final two issues, and it's taken us a whole twelve issues to get through all this. In the end, All Hail Megatron seems more interesting for the follow-up stories it promises than the story it told itself.

No one likes Drift.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #12 (art by Guido Guidi)

Guido Guidi's work is usually very dependable, but there's also a lot of terrible fill-in artists that look like they came off DeviantArt. It's bad when one artist's humans look less expressive and lively than another artist's robots.

It almost looks to me like something out of Questionable Content, and not in a good way.
from The Transformers: All Hail Megatron #9 (art by Robert Deas)

Next Week: I take a break from The Transformers to read a Doctor Who book set at Christmas at Christmas!