Revisitation 169: The Guiding Hand Guide.

26/5/2024

No preamble this week because this has been an all day job (though if anyone who has never commented before has something nice to say rather than just coming straight in with complaining about the stuff I do for free no one has to read, I'll take that, please), so listen to the Web Sacrament as I look at the More Than Meets the Eye 2012 Annual!

8 Comments

Llama God

27/5/2024 07:53:47 pm

Getting this out of the way upfront then, one of the reasons that Roberts' style of writing in More Than Meets The Eye works is because of the way in which the art complements that writing. And it's not that the art has to be tonally identical, either - instead, Roberts' whimsy, humour and rather stylised characterisation needs some grounding, and expressiveness, and that's exactly what Milne's art brings. With his attention to detail, Milne helps to ground the often exaggerated and wacky dialogue, and with the expressiveness that he gives the characters that helps to make them real, and sell the dialogue that they're performing. It's a very delicate balancing act, and very easy to get wrong. Which is sadly what's happened here.

Now I'm obviously not against other artists being given a shot, but you'd expect IDW to have made sure that their styles were compatible with what was being written first. And alas, Salgado and Cabaltierra's efforts have neither the expressiveness nor the detail necessary to ground and carry Roberts' writing. Which sadly nearly scuppers this Annual entirely.

Thankfully, we have Guido Guidi to save things, with his wonderfully Marvel-esque stylings bringing some amygdala-tickling G1 nostalgia, as well as just being some actually decent art. Credit should go to whoever decided that these epic flashback scenes should be in that style. It's much appreciated.

The big thing about this issue is, of course, the first glimpse into the history of Cybetron in the IDW unvierse. Obviously this is a big challenge, with both the original Marvel and the Sunbow origin stories having become iconic, so the danger here was either repeating what has gone before, or just being plain overshadowed by it. Whilst not having the same jaw-dropping impact as that moment of revelation from Marvel UK #150, it's still a pretty decent effort, and the remix was and is interesting. Of course what gives this even greater strength is the idea that this is just one tale, and not the whole truth - and indeed this is something that becomes central to both Roberts' and Barbers' books as both series progress (and which was, apparently, a spot of unplanned synchronicity, at least according to Roberts himself, when I spoke to him at one TFNation).

At the time I was excited to see the first glimpses of this new origin story, and it certainly fits in more with the world that we see in Roberts' own Chaos serieses. The only downside was how, over time, very few of the questions that arise from it were answered. Which is fine in retrospect, now that we know the bounds of the series, but over time it was very frustrating. Indeed, we will never find out the actual origins of Cybertron, which is one way of not getting caught in a trap of repetition or being overshadowed, but which nevertheless frustrated me. (Indeed, I did also ask Roberts' if he'd ever decided on Cybertron's origin, and he said he hadn't, on account of it not being crucial to the story of the characters on the Lost Light. And, annoyingly, he was right.)

The rest of the comic is a fine romp, too, with some important character work being done, as well as some foreshadowing which only becomes apparent that it is foreshadowing on later reads. It's just a shame that the artwork really lets down and fails to actually tell the story. For example, the tragedy of what's happened at the Circle of Light's city is impossible to fully comprehend, just because the art just so utterly fails to convey what's happened. Which is a shame given what we later learn of their ultimate fate.

So, indeed, this is a potentially good story that is massively, critically undermined by some very sub-standard art. Which is a shame.

K4ulio

2/6/2024 02:08:52 pm

Keep going Stu! You didn't hack through the terrible wasteland years of Transformers fiction to get to The Good Stuff & give up mate!

Always enjoyed reading your site from the beginning, though only as a lurker.

gary

10/6/2024 11:06:47 pm

Hi Stuart, really love your stuff and what you do, don't often comment but reading your reviews really make my week, thank you

Med

18/6/2024 06:58:00 am

It's fasincating seeing these issues in hindsight. There was definitely a significant tonal and thematic shift on this book during its early run and there was definitely a feeling that Roberts was far more ambitious with the scope of his plans and immediately upon things like Autocracy and Hasbro's the 13, dialed everything as far back as he could reasonably take things and still have some of his core narrative intact. I often wonder what the run would have looked like if Roberts hadn't gotten demoralized shortly after issue #20 or so (can't remember the exact issue number) and had been able to keep more to his original visions.

John D. link

26/6/2024 12:02:10 am

Hi Stu your reviews are quite often better written than the comics themselves and I hope you know theres lots of appreciative readers. Will soon be 2 years since I got to meet/gently fanboy harass you/buy you a pint in real life at TF nation :-)

Surprised by the reference in the comment above to Roberts being demoralised at issue 20, I don't see any signs of that at all. He was living the dream and writing absolutely incredible stuff up to (at least) the Lost Light rebrand, imo.

Med

2/7/2024 03:28:09 am

> Surprised by the reference in the comment above to Roberts being demoralised at issue 20, I don't see any signs of that at all.

Oh yeah, I'm totally wrong on the issue number, for some reason I thought "Remain in Light" was way earlier than it was (and you're completely correct - at this point we're still getting "living the dream" Roberts). It's around the time of Dark Cybertron / a couple months past Dark Cybertron that this starts to get *overtly* noticeable.

John D. link

2/7/2024 09:12:57 am

I have still never fully understood how James Roberts went from a writer of fan fic n his spare time to writing a full comic on a professional basis. How did he even know how to do it? It's an incredible achievement to have also then written something so brilliant. I never detected him getting frustrated, I could see where he had to change or rush some things but that's inevitable. Reading between lines/tweets there was tension between him and Alex milne but I'm not sure what about. Milnes ability is supernatural.

Doma

21/7/2024 01:07:52 pm

I still can't decide, what was stupider. Attention deflectors, or personality ticks. It's just... So stupid, and not in a funny way.

Revisitation 169: The Guiding Hand Guide.

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