Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
To quote Galvatron, "This is bad comedy!", September 21, 2009
All Hail Megatron Volume 1 was mediocre. Not bad, but it was insanely slow, with very little happening in a story that was far too decompressed. I've enjoyed all of IDW's Transformers output up through All Hail Megatron, and wanted to give Volume 2 a chance before deciding whether to continue reading the series.
Bad mistake. Volume 2 actually moves too quickly, and jumps from scene to scene, even time to time, with no transition--sometimes even in a single page. It's tough to follow, puts too much emphasis on human characters who are even more two dimensional than those in the Transformers film, and presents well-known Transformers characters as almost interchangeable giant robots. It reads like a bad fan fiction story, and is almost as dull and uninteresting as the first Dreamwave miniseries several years ago.
I don't dislike All Hail Megatron because it scraps the intricately-woven previous continuity in favor of a one-note story that, at times, seems like it's trying desperately to be something more than it is, though it is somewhat annoying that the "powers that be" clearly have no respect for the writers and readers of that previous continuity in simply tossing it for a new storyline that's no substance and very little flash. No, I dislike All Hail Megatron because it's not a good comic book by any stretch of the imagination. It's not quite the level of badness of, say, Youngblood in the early 1990s, but it's about as unreadable as much of the other (non-Shadowhawk, non-Dragon) Image tripe from that time. It does have a few moments (Starscream is handled particularly well, unlike any other character), but weak storytelling and a hopelessly dystopian direction undermine what little quality is present in this series.
I hope and pray that IDW will show more respect for the new GIJoe universe they've created, and don't simply dump Hama, Dixon, and Gage for some flash-in-the-pan writer who thinks explosions are better than character development.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
If you bought the first one, why not?, September 23, 2009
All Hail Megatron seemed like a brillant idea. The Decepticons finally win and imprison the Autobots. Now the concept is quite brilliant, the actual follow through was a bore.
The problem with All Hail Megatron is that there doesn't seem to be an active coherent theme throughout. The story seems rush, and it is horrible to be treated to multiple artists throughout the stories. One artists would have kept the story more consistent. The art in this volume starts off well with detailed serious looking art, and then gets into something very cartoony and lazily colored and then goes back to detailed looking art. What gets me sometimes is the exaggeration of the scales the robots are to each other. Devastator is so big he is the size of the Empire State building. They are drawn way out of proportions at times even for Transformers.
The volume isn't all bad. (SPOILERS) We learn the twist here is that Sunstreaker is the traitor and Mirage had nothing to do with it. Omega Supreme returns to save the day and Thundercracker who upholds some noble warrior code saves the East Coast from pure annihilation by stopping a nuclear bomb from dropping and destroying the Autobots and the humans. Thundercracker wants them defeated, but through "honorable" ways. The best part in this series is when Megatron is being overthrown by Starscream, he tells Starscream about how he will one day rule the Decepticons and that command must be taken and not given. Such mutual respect even when they are trying to kill each other.
The book is worth reading, and if you own Volume 1, you might as well finish the story ark. There are better TF graphic novels out there like "War Within",
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Not sure what the others are on about... this is good!, October 17, 2009
I don't usually write reviews, but I noticed that the two reviews for this were bad. I'm not sure why. It told a Decepticon centered story well without, as it might have, rendering the Autobots unlikable or uninteresting to keep the reader's focus on/sympathy with the Decepticons. In making both factions' stories interesting and engaging rather than making the Autobots annoying, irrelevant, or worst of all villainous themselves, it improved on what for me was the major weakness of Megatron: Origin (which I also really liked.) Before I saw those two bad reviews, I would've thought that anyone who, like me, likes the Decepticons and wants to read about more than the 'Cons getting their afts kicked over and over, would like this. As in Megatron: Origin, we see the motivations and desires of various characters in more -- and more convincing -- detail than just "oh, he's conniving/sly/mean/clever/brutish/etc. because he's a bad guy."
I also felt that it did a good job of handling the problem with pacing that the first volume had. Volume 1, as one of the reviewers mentioned, was quite slow, spending a lot of time depicting the destruction and mayhem wreaked by the 'Cons, but very little time on plot. That's fun for Decepticon fans who've been waiting to see them get their chance to trash the place in true Decepticon style (yes, I'm grinning as I type this), but it does get repetitive quickly. This volume picks up the pace considerably.
I think what may be bothering some of the other reviewers is that this story takes place after some other IDW comics. This means that if you read All Hail Megatron by itself, some of the plot twists lose their force because you don't know what happened before. I haven't read those particular comics, so I did feel slightly let down by plot twists that were introduced in a previous series. However, I still thought they were reasonably well done and found myself caring about the characters anyway. Some people might not like AHM because of this (Megatron: Origin does a better job of working standalone), but I don't think it's a dealbreaker.
As another reviewer mentioned, another strike against it is that the art style switches drastically in the middle, from a gritty, detailed style to a cartoonish one. I'm not a fan of the cartoony style, and would have loved to see those scenes done by the other artist instead. Still, the story is the driving force for me, and the story behind those panels worked for me.
I'd recommend this to other fans of the 'Cons especially, but I actually think there's a lot here for anyone to enjoy. As I said before, the Autobots are well-done as well, and suitably impressive when they inevitably show up to save the day (*grumble*)...
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