The Not Knowing
A Review, Maybe
Spoiler Heavy Throughout
A Review, Maybe
Spoiler Heavy Throughout
With our charming and prestigious Comics Editor and News Administrator Va'al otherwise indisposed, it's fallen on me to take up the reigns for this week's review of IDW's More Than Meets The Eye #44. As warned already, this one will be spoiler heavy throughout, because there's no way I can adequately review this thing if I'm trying to not tell you things about it. Since some of the text gets front paged, I'm just typing up things to delay the start of the actual review. This is your Swerve recap. Need a review with no spoilers? Here it is: stop reading my stupid words and go buy this. Now. Stop, really, and go spend $4 right the hell now on this book. I'm serious, if you want to read this issue (you do), and you read this review beforehand, you will regret it. Don't have regrets, the internet can wait.
So with all that out of the way, let me tell you what author James Roberts has done here. This is an issue about the value of life, dogma, love, hope, expectation, and consequences. Oh, and Transformers, I suppose. Strap in your feelings, we're going for a ride.
We'll start with Rodimus, like you do when writing about MTMTE. We're joined on the first page with Rewind attempting to tell Rodimus a story, this time about the mysterious, legendary Necrobot. Rodimus, naturally, seems to not care. There are more important things that can be done, like get attention for being The Best Guy because he's carved a map to Cyberutopia on a table. Forget this side-quest, The Best Captain has done a thing, so naturally, we have to follow up on this.
Only this doesn't go to plan for him, as Megatron, The Other Captain, thinks one more little side quest isn't such a big deal. Under the guise of continuing to be very, almost unusually, caring about Rewind, off they go to look for the Necrobot. Why do they do this?
Well that's something, isn't it? So off they go, eventually landing on the Necrobot's planet. Without going into too much plot summary (much of the above was in the previews anyhow), and without spoiling too much of the absolutely stunning art by Hayato Sakamoto, colored by Joana Lafuente in images, there are some other themes and points worth serious note.
First, the buddy cop duo that never was/is likely never to be: Nightbeat and the Necrobot.
At the start of this issue, we know positively very extremely little about the Necrobot. Within the confines of this one single comic, we learn a gigantic ton about him. The Necrobot, through his interaction with Nightbeat, is wholly fleshed out as a character. The storytelling here is simply marvelous, touching on Nightbeat's expectations that maybe, just maybe there's something more to the ideas of religious dogma, or supernatural powers existing in the universe. It turns out that the Necrobot doesn't live up to this, he's really just a guy (I told you there would be spoilers) named Censere. Censere tells him, in my favorite panel of the book, that he should still hope anyhow if he wants to. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Oh, and his cape. I want one. Just go read it, you'll see what I mean.
Next, but not last, it's time to reflect on the latest goings on in my favorite romance in fiction these days: Chromedome and Rewind.
Salt in the wound
As a guideline, I'm never much into fictional romance. Love is a fickle thing and it's extremely hard to make a compelling story about it without falling into, literally, a gillion tropes, cliches, and stretches of cringe-worthy dialogue. Roberts continues to utterly avoid all of this and provide a story about two souls on a journey that deeply care about one another to their core. I should also point out that this is yet more consistent, meaningful, and impacting character development that's handled in just the fewest of pages. It doesn't take a lot of time to be satisfying, and this is where I point out that the lettering of Tom B. Long really helps in setting the dialogue's tone appropriately. The voices in your head won't emphasize the wrong words, which can't always be said in comics.
Finally, the least obvious (until the end, that is) featured story in the issue. Who is this issue about, really?
To think, I once thought that smirk would never conceal anything except "evil"
The renaissance of Megatron is continued here, and he's always there in this one, just off to the side, sometimes being snarky, but then... well, I'm not going to post the last two page spread because it's incredible. With the last sentence of this book, any emotions I had to spend were spent. Sometimes consequences aren't as material as you want them to be. Instead, they end up being something more, something worse - true guilt.
Verdict
This one's an embodiment of Samwise Gamgee's very famous lines from Tolkien's The Two Towers, but everyone knows those, I think. Is this the best comic I've ever read? Probably. As I said at the start, go buy this. Maybe buy one for a friend too.
. 
out of
out of Bonus! James Roberts' soundtrack suggestions for this issue:
- The Smiths - Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
- A Camp - Song for the Leftovers
