Transformers: More than Meets the Eye

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The name or term "More than Meets the Eye" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see More than Meets the Eye (disambiguation).
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What's needed: Omitted Action Master vehicles and accessories; careful check for errors. We're getting close now!
True to form, Oiler looks like he's about to pass out.

Transformers: More than Meets the Eye is the first of a series of profile books published by Dreamwave Productions in 2003. The book introduced readers to every character within the Generation 1 continuity. A sequel series was published for Armada, and the same was planned for Energon.

The series has no known physical weaknesses.

Overview

Originally conceived to be a 4-issue series, Transformers Profile Book One was scheduled to be released in December, 2002. After a name change and a delay of over four months, the series was released as eight issues in 2003. The series was also released as a 2-volume trade paperback edition in December 2004, which included introductions by the authors, and bonus artwork, though not the intro and conclusion story.

The series profiled all characters that were released by Hasbro between 1984 and 1991, as well as a few characters that appeared only within Marvel Comics/Sunbow Productions animated projects between 1984 and 1987. The series also introduces new content in order to establish parameters for stories within the Dreamwave continuity, particularly in the "special topics" issue. A number of personalities were created from scratch for the Micromasters, many of whom were little more than names and mottos prior.

The profiles follow the same format as the original 1980s Marvel profile book, Transformers Universe. A characteristic quote leads off each bio, followed by Bio, Weapons/Abilities, and Weaknesses. Many profiles are told from the perspective of another character ("from the datatrax of"); Grapple, for example, narrates the profile for his friend and associate Hoist. Despite initial reports that the profile book would be re-creating the entire Transformers universe from scratch, most established characters stay close to their original profiles, with some occasional massaging when a character's popular fictional portrayals clashed with their profile.

Artwork was done by numerous artists. As such, there are stylistic differences among the various profiles. Some of the original art submissions were rejected as not being consistent with the Dreamwave "house style", i.e. that of Pat Lee. Lee's hand and/or influence is particularly visible on some of the earlier and more popular characters, who often feature his characteristic rounded, swollen limbs, tiny heads, and enormously thickened metal panels. Don Figueroa drew a huge number of profile entries as well, including many of the best known characters. Lesser known characters were apparently left to other artists, who were allowed a freer hand; however, attempts at conveying a character's personality through their profile art were generally quashed.

Issue #1

Bumblebee has the odd feeling of being followed.

Issue #1 opens with a one-page intro story in which Beast Wars Megatron (or the Dreamwave universe's version of him) gains access to Vector Sigma, with the intent of reading all these files.
Originally published: April 30, 2003

Issue #2

Dudes, we're free - FREE!

Originally published: May 29, 2003

Issue #3

By Primus, they're everywhere! Don't let them touch you with their fat greasy hands!

Originally published: June 25, 2003

Issue #4

Attack of the Stay-puffed Transformers

Originally published: July 30, 2003

Issue #5

Shockwave makes any cover awesome!

Originally published: September 4, 2003

Issue #6

Originally published: September 24, 2003

Issue #7

Originally published: October 29, 2003

Issue #8

Oh yea Galvy, you know how I like it!

Originally published: December 3, 2003
Includes a one-page conclusion to the Megatron story begun in issue 1.

Omissions

"Don't worry pal, I know who you are."
  • While More Than Meets The Eye featured Action Masters, it did not include Action Master versions of pre-1990 characters and therefore also not their partners. Thus the guide omits the following US characters entirely: Fistfight, Scorpulator, (Turbo Board,) Tyrannitron, and Wingthing. This becomes goofier with the collected editions; due to their choice of artwork, Wingthing appears on the back cover but not in the actual books.
  • Gasket and Grommet are not shown as separate vehicles, only in their combined form as Cog.
  • Base mode is not shown for the ATV.
  • Only one-half of the Cannon Transport is shown (the same half, in mobile artillery mode, is shown with both partners.) Its base and combined transport modes are not shown at all.
  • Mobile artillery and combined transport modes are not shown for the Missile Launcher.
  • The Tanker Truck is not shown at all, either with its respective Micromasters or in the Micromasters reference section.
  • Powermaster Optimus Prime's smaller robot form is not shown.
  • Flattop's aircraft carrier is shown but not its 'interstellar jet' mode.

Errors and critiques

The shame of it is, that's perfectly good art of G2 Eagle Eye.
Surrrrrre he can turn into that truck.
The perfect disguise: a panther box.
Pat Lee's Starscream. Wait, why's everyone laughing?
  • In the trade paperback edition, the picture of Wingspan in robot mode has an Autobot insignia.
  • The character models for Blackout and Spaceshot were reversed, so that Spaceshot was portrayed as the front half of their combined vehicle mode and Blackout as the rear half. This error carried over into the bio text as well, so it is entirely possible that the personality assigned to Spaceshot was intended for Blackout, and vice versa. This error was never corrected, and may account for Animated Blackout's Spaceshotty color scheme.
  • Not an error per se, but the alphabetization is inconsistent. Earlier subgroups like the Dinobots, the Insecticons, and the combiner teams are alphabetized by their subgroup names, while the Micromaster teams are split up by individuals.
  • Likewise, Micromaster bases are inconsistently shown. Some appear with their owners; of these, many are only shown in one configuration. Others only show up in the special topics issue.
  • Many characters had their art drawn by multiple artists, with Dreamwave's editors picking the versions they liked best or those that fitted best with the profile. For example, Blades also had artwork drawn for him by Matt Kuphaldt that was not used for the final product.[1] That doesn't necessarily mean what ended up being published was always the best quality art, though that's a highly subjective matter.
    What's not a subjective matter, however, is the fact that what was ultimately selected by the editors often resulted in different artists' artwork being used for the same characters' robot and alternate modes in many instances, leading to some glaring incongruities when the two modes appear side-by-side. For example, the angled windshield on Oiler's robot-mode chest (pictured at the top of this article) is a nearly-flat windshield on his truck mode. Optimus Prime (pictured above) has a similar problem as well as differently styled windows. Goldbug is drawn by Joe Ng as a very angular robot, whereas the vehicle mode is a very accurate rendition of a classic Volkswagen Beetle. Bumblebee's alternate mode, by contrast, bears only very vague resemblance to both a classic Beetle and a New Beetle. Even the clones, Cloudraker and Fastlane, appear very different to each other, though their respective poses (Cloudraker stood up straight and calm, Fastlane in a rather haphazard action pose) don't help either.
  • In addition, artwork for characters' alternate modes is, on occasion, a maddeningly literal drawing based on their toy, instead of any kind of accurate, in-universe representation of the actual object they transformed into. Ravage's tape mode, for instance, is more of a folded-up-robot mode than an actual cassette tape.
  • Octopunch's crab mode art is traced directly from his packaging art.
  • Most of the Pretender shell penciling and colouring is ridiculously basic, but yet the Pretender Monster shells feature highly detailed pencils and colours (though their robot art suffers from the "literally being based on the toy" problem).
  • Frustratingly, some of the best-known characters such as Megatron, Fortress Maximus, Starscream, Jetfire and Octane have some of the poorest artwork.
  • In the IDW collected edition, at least, Darkwing's robot mode art has been incorrectly photoshopped with one image over the other, leaving him with an extra-thick torso, too many fins on the back and four arms, amongst other errors.

Notes

  • More Than Meets The Eye was originally to be outsourced by Dreamwave and meant to be written by Destination Entertainment, under the title of Transformers: Profiles. Destination's rather grandiose original plans involved weaving their own take on the Dreamwave timeline passively throughout all the character profiles, seizing this opportunity to shape some of the then-contemporary fiction since presumably they were being kept well away from contributing anything in the main books.

    Destination's timeline was to have been a remarkably convoluted creation, having each original year of Transformers characters originating with each millennium of the war (with even the very definition of millennium here being stretched to "every million Cybertronian years"). The 1984 characters would originate in the first millennium, the 1985 ones in the second, and so on, despite this idea already being contradicted by books Dreamwave had already published at the time.[2] (and not making even remotely one lick of sense either way, as it would mean that, for instance, Kup would have been younger than Bumblebee).

    Additionally, explanations as to how characters such Galvatron, Goldbug and Powermaster Optimus Prime could exist at the same time as their original counterparts were not forthcoming. Needless to say, three months later Destination was removed from the project and the entire endeavor was re-solicited as a far more modest and uncomplicated series of Transformers: Universe-style profiles.[3]
  • The original version of issue 3's cover depicted Goldbug, whose profile was published in issue 2, rather than Huffer.[4]
  • During the time that the Dreamwave were releasing the individual issues it became known that they only ever had the rights to release Transformers comics in North America. With immediate effect supply of Transformers comics to foreign countries was stopped. This left international Transfans with only a partially completed run of MTMTE, and having to resort to other methods to acquire the remainder.
  • As alluded to below, the covers for the collected editions are... odd. Megatron and Optimus's bios are both in Volume 1, but Megatron is on the cover of Volume 2. However, Optimus does have a profile in Volume 2 for his Powermaster form. Likely, Optimus was used first for marketing reasons.

Collections

Unsurprisingly, Megatron's bio is actually in Volume 1.

Dreamwave released two trade paperbacks (TPB) of the entire collection. Volume 1 contained issues 1-4, Volume 2 contained issues 5-8. No changes were made to the order of articles, and as such the same criticisms apply. Both volumes are quite rare, and as a result can be expensive to acquire. It is much easier to obtain the original individual issues.

  • DW Volume 1: October 27, 2004 (ISBN 0973381760, ISBN 978-0973381764)
  • DW Volume 2: December 8, 2004 (ISBN 0973381779, ISBN 978-0973381771)


IDW Publishing have reprinted the Generation 1 guides. Despite the considerably different IDW-specific plots (such as the Dead Universe, Galvatron's new origin, and the considerably different history, geography and political landscape of Cybertron) the collections have been released unchanged from the Dreamwave originals (and thus reference the DW plots of the Great Shutdown, Shockwave's inventions of the Triple Changers, Duocons etc).

  • IDW Volume 1: September 29, 2008 (ISBN 1600102506, ISBN 978-1600102509)
  • IDW Volume 2: December 25, 2008 (ISBN 1600102956, ISBN 978-1600102950)

References

  1. ↑ Artist Matt Kuphaldt's online portfolio, containing profile art for MTMTE not used for the final book.
  2. ↑ Destination's original interview previewing Profiles at Newsarama
  3. ↑ Newsarama reports that Profiles has "transformed" into More Than Meets The Eye
  4. ↑ Mark Brooks' original cover artwork for MTMTE #s 3 and 4 on Deviantart
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