Transformers: All Hail Megatron TPB 3

This was a bit tricky. This trade is packaged as the third volume of the All Hail Megatron saga, but it actually is a collection of Transformers Spotlights that really don't relate to that overall story. IDW's choice is especially interesting when they released a TF: Spotlight that wrapped up Simon Furman's long dark universe epic, but this spotlight book gets wrapped up into an unrelated tale. I'd bet it all boils down to sales, but it is frustrating and will make it difficult to read all of these books in order someday. As usually happens with these spotlight collections, the book varies according with each collected book. This trade collected the following:

• Blurr - by Shane McCarthy and Casey Coller - this was pretty good. We haven't seen much of the celebrity culture of old Cybertron, so it was neat seeing Blurr living totally oblivious to the upcoming civil war. The cooler part was watching the peaceful part of Cybertron slowly shut down as every single bot chose sides and the war took over. It's a neat glimpse at that old world. This also had the best art in the trade. Good


• Jazz - Josh Van Reyk & Shawn Knowler and E.J. Su - I'll take any Predacons I can get. I'm a little shocked to see Jazz turning into this special forces dynamo, able to take out a top tier group basically by himself. Jazz is my favorite Transformer, so I like seeing more of him, but I don't want him to lose that fun nature he had in the old cartoon. I really dug seeing more of Tracks too, he's a blank to me, so getting anything on him was fun. I may have missed the point at the end. Was Jazz not really there? Or he was and Tracks knew it? I'm a tad unclear. Fair


• Cliffjumper - by Shane McCarthy and Robby Musso- Musso does better on robots than humanoids. The humanoids featured in this story kind of turned me off, they looked way too cartoony. I like Cliffjumper as a tough guy, but putting him up against all guys I don't know lowered my interest. Average


• Drift - by Shane McCarthy and Casey Coller - Once again we have the main antagonists as new (to me at least) and fairly generic Decepticons. Drift's background as a former Decep is cool, but I would love to see him holding a grudge against some Decepticons I know. Kup and his strike team come off as pretty damn cool, and I loved how quickly Kup starts respecting Drift. I'm of the Han Solo school on swords (give me a good blaster) but I suppose having just a couple melee guys makes sense. Fair


• Metroplex - by Andy Schmidt and Marcelo Matere - This is really more a spotlight for the Throttlebots, but I still dug it. Metroplex is given an appropriate amount of gravitas and I'm intrigued about his mysterious duty. What could be so important to take away this powerhouse from the main Autobot army? I felt bad for the big lug; certainly he could have taken the Throttlebots with him into space? It's pretty cool seeing Sixshot as this engine of destruction too. Metroplex couldn't even stop him permanently! Fair
  

Overall: Fair