There’s a saying…In a lot of different languages that something that’s good is well worth waiting for. With this latest issue of More Than Meets the Eye; I was starting to doubt that. With over a month to wait for the resolution to the cliffhanger and story hooks from last issue, I was going a little loopy. Well, the wait is finally over and here is the promised end to the first mini arc, where we would finally find out how Megatron ended up where he is right now and let me tell you, it’s made me like the character in a way I did not think possible.

Spoilers ahoy!

Let’s get right to it then, flipping past the page where Swerve mocks us for being so keen on answers to begin with, and see what Megatron was thinking, suddenly pleading innocent. Here I thought that the guy was ready to pay and atone and all that stuff, turning a new leaf. Then bam, we also get a mad rescue operation with the Sea-Cons and oh, my god how is this going to…Oh, Megatron just lets his rescue party go up in flames, smoke and laser fire. But the guy was being sneaky in that he had the trial intentionally moved to Luna 2 for one reason; if a guy is displeased with how things are going, he can fall back on a really ancient law that says he can be judged by none other than the Knights of Cybertron.

Well, now…

Okay, so Megatron really was ready to call it quits, final curtain time, but the deal with Starscream making him seem so lousy didn’t sit right with him…or basically anything that would make him be remembered as something less than he would like. Megatron, he knows he screwed up along the way, major road to hell paved with originally good intentions and all that, so he’s not looking to be acquitted for his crimes…He really does want to atone. And what better way to atone than to find a new haven for the citizens of Cybertron to go live in: A little haven called “Cyberutopia”. This coincidentally is the exact place where the Knights hopped on off to. If he could just do that, make amends and fix that much, then he would walk himself up to the gallows with a smile on his face, if everyone still wanted him dead.

I got to say, that the almost childish look of hope on the old war veteran’s face did something to my emotional bits.

So, Optimus says, okay, I guess I will let you go on the Lost Light, BUT…You have to read out this speech that basically has you discard the entire Decepticon…everything you helped build up and create, your entire life’s work if you will (I’m sure a certain DJD will have issues with that). And Megatron does it, that’s how badly he wants to find the Knights; that’s how confident he is that he can do it. It still doesn’t make the scene of him in his cell afterwards any less painful to see. With no spectators around, this feels like the most open and genuinely emotional moments for Megatron and it almost makes me want to give him a hug. Megatron has burned all his bridges now; all that’s left now is the mission to find the Knights of Cybertron.

And speaking of people who might need a hug: Rodimus.

Yeah, yeah, I admit it. Roberts, you really, truly tricked me there and I know a certain special person who likes Rodimus more than me and she really did not appreciate getting tricked like this. 😛

But no, Rodimus, our Rodimus isn’t dead.The only reason we haven’t seen him is…as Megatron puts it: He’s been sulking over the new…leadership arrangement (Optimus made Rodimus Co-Captain though, to be nice). Still that leaves us with another mystery, who is this Rodimus corpse and where did he come from?

Eventually the gang, the special squad Rodimus assembles to solve this quandary (and I am more than a little excited to see Nautica as a part of it), eventually seems to settle on the possibility that this is Rodimus from the future, sent back to present day as a corpse for some reason. (And about characters you want to hug…First-Aid, so ruined by the thing with Ambulon that coming out to do an autopsy is a treat for him.) Rodimus, in a very delightful, yet goofy scene decides he will cheat fate by cutting his arm off, but is stopped as another more freakish event than getting to identify his own corpse occurs: The Lost Light begins to disappear right behind him.

So, it seems like the strangeness with Nightbeat’s hab suit was not a one off thing. No, this is a serious problem and suddenly the entire ship is on high alert, interrupting a sweet scene in Swerve’s where Getaway makes a wonderful reappearance where he is being super nice to Tailgate and even Bomp-ing him (why the jealous look Cyclonus?), cause this is not a drill. Soon everyone is all tucked into shuttles, the entire crew divided up into chunks and…The Lost Light is just gone.

Well, if that’s not a pretty epic cliffhanger, then I don’t know what is. The entire story of MTMTE has centered around the Lost Light, the enormous ship that is a community of charming and loveable oddballs on an epic quest and now that home has been taken from them. I’m sure it will be returned to them in good order, but first…They have to find it. And in the meantime…do I sense a “bottle episode” coming up?

There is a lot of stuff to like about this issue, from the small things, like the return of the holoform Avatars (Whirl uses his to get out of being confined to quarters…and braiding his hair) and Getaway (who has been sorely missed), as well as the character moments, big and small. Other than the Megatron scenes (may Roberts get to write old Bucket Head for a very long time) I am very fond of the last of the Six Months Ago scenes, which not only ties up the last threads neatly (like the Special Energon for Megatron that actually weakens him and the illegal list of people who voted for Rodimus to stop being captain), but also has a nice moment between Ratchet and Rodimus. And again, it is in the character moments that Roberts really shines, with more than a little help from the ever growing art skills of Alex Milne.

If I get to meet you at a convention in the future, I’m buying you a drink.