It Came From the Dollar Bin – Transformers Generation 2 #1 (November 1993)

                Well, it was bound to happen.  Not getting a random comic every week has caught up with me as there was nothing in my personal “pull list” that was released this week.  Being the resourceful sonofabitch that I am, I took the gift certificate to the vintage comic shop that my girlfriend gave me and spent 1/25 of it on this gem.  And of course, it just happens to be a Transformers comic (boy I hope my kids stick with the Transformers phase for awhile.

It starts out as this...

And then opens up (transforms, if you will) to this!

Cover:

                Hey 1993, I remember you and your awesome comic covers!  This one doesn’t disappoint as it not only has a reflective silver surface, but also it unfolds to depict a battle scene.  Obviously the cover of a #1 issue would focus on Optimus Prime, however there are a couple things about this cover that make little sense to me.  The lower right corner (as you are looking at the cover) features a smoking gun, and not being able to see anything beyond the face of Optimus, I would have to assume that it is his.  However, Optimus also has fresh bullet holes and even instances where there are bullets still lodged in his helmet (head?).  So the question becomes, were these wounds self inflicted?  Is this just an instance of unfortunate cropping of the picture?  It makes for a striking image, even if it is a bit confusing at first glance.  I do find it interesting how sketchy the mirror-surfaced images are.  Everything else seems fully realized while the bullets look very simplistic and sketchy, as if the mandate was “outlines only, we’re not paying for this mirror finish to waste it on an image filled with hatching lines”. 

                Now if that had been the only cover, there may have been a bit of a downgrade.  But this is the ‘90s.  All you have to do is open that cover to reveal a large, double page spread of an Autobot/Decepticon battle.  It’s very dynamic, with lots of moving parts and explosions to heighten the war-time feeling (paging Michael Bay, your source material for the Transformers movies has been found).  The main issue here (and you won’t know this until you read the comic itself, so…twenty year old comic spoiler alert) the Autobots are in space, while Megatron at the very least is still on Earth.  The battle that is taking place on this cover is therefore not from this issue, and presumably not from an issue anytime soon.

                The quality of the art itself (by interior artist Derek Yaniger) is actually really good.  It has a lot of that ‘90’s dynamism with little regard for basic proportions and drawing principles, which is to be expected I suppose.  The main culprits being Megatron shooting at no one in particular (Optimus looks to be behind the supposed path of the bullet) and just the general size discrepancies of the various Transformers.  I can’t really say much about the giant Liefeldian guns either as giant shape changing robots without giant guns would just be silly.  I think the border is an unfortunate choice.  Unless it was editorially mandated that the border be in place, there is no purpose or reason for it to be there.  It removes are that could have been filled up with more setting, plus if you look at it, it is off-center.  I know that, given the nature of the gimmick on this cover, the inside may not have been perfectly centered, but if that’s the case, don’t give us the border at all.  No one would have known that it was off-center if it was just one large image.

8/10 – It’s dynamic and it transports me back to a simpler time in comic books (and life in general, hell I was only ten when this came out).  Nostalgia factor is at a perfect ten, but some of the art decisions (made by either Yaniger or editorial) tend to derail the flow of the images by making you stop and think more about the art than you should.

Writing:

                Writer Simon Furman, who has spent more time with the Transformers in their long history than anyone, save Spike Witwicky, hits the reset button here.  While I have no idea why he did it (or, more accurately, why editorial decided it needed to be done) it feels like the reasoning had more to do with debuting a grittier, more violent version of the Robots in Disguise.  This is evident from the first battle scene.  I do not remember a whole lot about the initial Transformers run by Marvel Comics, but I do know that it was not nearly as violent and brutal as the first few pages here turned out to be.  While I have obviously become desensitized to comic book violence (I grew up during this time and with these comics so grim and gritty is something I know all too well) it still seems to be overkill to me.  This is especially true because it is the Autobots doing a lot of the killing.  I would expect it to be written in to the Decepticon characters, but seeing someone like Broadside murder an unarmed Decepticon feels out of place. 

                That’s another thing, where modern Transformers comics do a decent job of naming the characters right away so that we know who is speaking, Furman takes his time and aside from the main characters that we all know, it is hard to know who everyone is.  All of the Transformers have a grim and gritty feeling to them (which is probably why we don’t see Bumblebee here as his squeaky clean image would only heighten the out of place-ness of the other Transformer’s new personalities) and while someone like Grimlock seems to embrace that and it really works for his character, it is still odd to see in pretty much all of the others. 

                It feels like Furman is starting to build a large-scale, cosmos-spanning epic that unfortunately didn’t have time to finish properly (the series was cancelled by issue twelve due to poor sales).  A more galactic threat is being put into place for the Autobots to fight which gives the series a grander scale.  There is also trouble on Earth as Megatron is reintroduced in his new tank form with camouflage body paint (a cash-grab for sure). 

                Even though Furman has a double-sized issue to play with, it still feels like he takes a nice deliberate pace for about three-quarters of it and then tries to cram a bunch into the end.  It doesn’t make for a bad reading experience, more like an uneven one.

7/10 – Optimus stays pretty true to form, but some of the second-tier Autobots seem to get the Dark Knight Returns treatment a little too much.  I like the scope of the story and the way Furman packs a lot into the double-sized issue (remember when double-sized issues happened all the time?  I miss those days).

Art:

                Derek Yaniger does a fine job with the art duties on this issue.  Just like the cover it has big robots with big guns throughout, and Yaniger obviously excels at the battle scenes.  The smaller, quieter scenes are equally well done though.  One of the main problems when drawing comics about big, blocky robots is making sure that they don’t look too big and blocky to the point of being stiff and boring.  Yaniger does this very well.  He keeps a lot of action and dynamism in his work even though the main subjects aren’t much more than a bunch of cubes stacked atop one another.  That being said, his humans are a bit goofy looking, just in a stylized way, nothing that takes away from the book (especially since they only appear on one page). 

                The difference between Autobot and Decepticon is apparent in the art as well.  Yaniger does a great job of making the Decepticons, especially Jhiaxus, look evil.  Even with the grimer nature of the “heroes” in this series, you can still pretty easily tell which side everyone is on.  I must say that the coloring on this (by Sarra Mossoff) is great as well.  I love the old school coloring that was just about to be phased out right around this time.  It makes everything pop more than today’s oversaturated palette and does a better job of aiding in page design instead of detracting from it by attempting to be too “real”. 

                I’m not wild about the lettering based solely on the word balloons.  I understand that it makes it easier to separate Autobots from Decepticons by having the balloons look a little different, but I think it’s a gimmick that takes away more than it adds to the comic.

7/10 – This was a well drawn, period specific comic book.  A few missteps here and there doesn’t detract from the overall good job that was done by Derek Yaniger and his team of professionals.

Overall:  7/10 – While the overall direction is not really my forte, I respect what they are trying to do.  Building an even bigger, galactic conflict (something between the all powerful Unicron and the more relatable Megatron) is also something that was well thought out and impressive.