Alright, got it an' read it. Thoughts:
Foil effects on the cover! Hoohah! (I really did laugh, honestly.)
Okay, I honestly really wanted to like this one. Roche blew me away back in Spotlight Kup, and hasn't stopped doing so since. And Roberts has knocked his out of the part too; he wrote 'Chaos Theory', which was my favorite comic of last year! But this first issue of MTMTE just left me...cold, somehow. I think it really is the references. Don't get me wrong, I *love* cute little nods, not just in Transformers, but in any media I'm enjoying where I also happen to be a fan of the franchise. But there is such a thing as too much, and Roberts crosses it here. Just within the first third of the book, he name-checks so many different names, places, and concepts that it stops feeling like an acknowledgement of the franchise he's writing for, and starts to feel like he's just showing off. Yeah, James Roberts could kick my ass at Transformers Trivia, I get it, can we get on with the story here? Thing is, we really don't get on with the story that much. For as dense as this issue *seems* on account of all the (admittedly well-written) dialogue flavoring things every step of the way, at the end you realize that not much has actually happened. It's really just twenty pages of characters parading by, introducing themselves, and getting on the ship, and then in the last couple of pages the actual premise rather violently asserts itself. It feels like Roberts and Roche started assigning guys to the cast, and then just couldn't quit. "Ooh, this guy should be in there too! And we gotta have this guy! And this guy!" It makes you wonder where, in the future, they're going to find time to *do* anything with all of these characters, and if it'll have been worth spending the whole issue playing show-and-tell with all of them. This also brings me to the issue of this...issue as a jumping-on point, which copy in the back of the book and Roberts's letter at the end seem to imply that this is supposed to be. If that's so, it's not a very good one; this issue suffers from some seriously brutal continuity lock-out. Asterisks referencing past issues abound (I thought we were supposed to be phasing that crap out?), the aforementioned references are likely to leave new readers feeling lost and excluded, and the dozens of characters thrown at the reader would likely be a nightmare for new people to keep track of (I mean, people like us have no trouble with it, since we already 'know' who Red Alert and Chromedome and Brainstorm and Rewind are, but can you imagine how someone new to Transformers is going to react to all these guys being shoved in their face at once?). The rest of the 'plot' of this issue doesn't do a good enough job of distracting from the overbearing character-introdump either. I saw the 'plot twist' with Tailgate coming a mile away, and it mostly comes off like another disparate element that Roberts felt like he *just had* to get in there, and frankly just raises too many questions about how Tailgate survived down there that long, despite apparently not being able to get to his Energon. The surprise message at the end I'm not exactly fond of either. While it does kinda negate the 'Aimless adventures in space' concept I was worried would be the main feature of this book, it just comes off as too heavy handed a way of foreshadowing mysteeeeeeeerious consequences, and putting an ongoing story on an apparent deadline like this *in the first issue* is really not a good move, in my opinion. Despite what Roberts and IDW may say, this book comes off like it's squarely aimed at the fans, to the point that it feels like pandering. And even if you're the one being pandered too, it never feels like a good thing.
tl;dr this issue disappointed me because Roberts wouldn't shut up about Transformers long enough to write a story about Transformers.
Rant aside, this issue doesn't *totally* disappoint. I'm already quite fond of Cyclonus; Roberts takes Furman's annoying, contradictory Cyclonus and straightens him out into a more level-headed, likable character, and actually gets some good mileage out of the Autobot heritage this version sports. His reactions to Whirl are priceless (on the flip side, I get that Whirl is supposed to seem dangerous and edgy, but he just comes off as a one-note annoyance). Also, if Roberts and Roche had been painting Prowl as an overly pragmatic, but ultimately well-intentioned character, then they push him into full-on heel territory on this one.
I'm sorry, but you don't just up and try to murder 200 guys because they were going to leave the planet. That doesn't actually solve the problem, and it just makes you look like a colossal dick.
The thing, though, is that I actually *like* this direction for Prowl. I've thought they should just take him all the way for a while now, and they've created some interesting characteristic and story opportunities by doing so. It'll be interesting to see how much RID follows up with this. Finally, Roche is in top-form, art wise, on this one. He's smoothed out the sketchier, skinnier style we saw him trying out in Death of Optimus Prime, and the resulting look is one that I quite dig. It's a solid blending of G1, Animated, and War for Cybertron aesthetics, and it works quite well, letting him keep the numerous characters distinct and expressive. The art, at least, can keep me coming back for a few issues while I hope Roberts finds his footing with this story.
And, a token Dom-ish moment: Roberts's fan-character gets officially introduced in this issue. I find it interesting that Roberts and
can stick their own personal characters into the canon with most of the fandom cheering behind them, but McCarthy doing it was enough to destroy his run almost from the outset. Ho-hum.