More Than Meets the Eye

How a Transformers comic addresses trauma in a post-war world.

IDW comics launched the comic book series More Than Meets the Eye in January 2012. Headlined by writer James Roberts and artist Nick Roche, the series takes place in IDW’s expansive continuity after the end of the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons.

The narrative thrust is that now that the war is over, a group of 200-ish Autobots and neutral cybertronians (dubbed dismissively by one character as NAILs) set out aboard the starship Lost Light in search of the legendary Knights of Cybertron and the planet Cybertopia. Along the way, adventures and hijinks ensue.

To anyone who is not a Transformer fan, the above likely sounds…odd, perhaps childish. The adventures of giant transforming robots sold as children’s toys would often be considered childish and not really worthy of consideration as quality literature (which has been a common belief about comics in general). This is far from the case. James Roberts had an extensivly plotted narrative in hand prior to beginning the title so there was a lot of thought put into how the story should be told and where it would go.

Moreover, Robert’s writing really focused on the characters in the comic’s cast (of thousands it sometimes seemed). A key aspect of these characterizations is how Robert’s delves into the wounds several millions of years of war left behind, and how some individuals are unable to believe or accept that the war is actually over.

As a former army reservist, this is a subject close to me heart. Although I myself was (luckily) never deployed to a combat zone, I have known many veterans suffering through PTSD or other forms of war trauma. As a fiction writer myself, I have touched on some of this in my military science fiction in a variety of ways. I think it is incredibly important to expose readers to these topics as it informs citizens about the costs of deploying soldiers into combat. In a democracy the choice to go to war is made by those who represent the citizens, and the decision needs to have a mandate from the citizenship. That’s ideal, and while I’m many things, I’m more a cynic than an idealist, but fiction and literature informing democratic citizenry is still a worthy goal no matter how unrealistic it may sometimes seem to be.

From that perspective, MTMTE (and it’s follow-up series Lost Light) as written by James Roberts is an important piece of fiction.

Throughout the story, we see a variety of individuals wrestling with the consequences of their actions, or their circumstances during the war. One key character, a soft-spoken fellow named Rung. He’s an Autobot (the ‘good guys’, although this isn’t always clear cut) and is a robotic psychiatrist, and we see him working with several characters throughout the series to deal with their mental health challenges.

One major arc is with the Autobot Fortress Maximus, the former warden of a prison, who—after the facility was overrun by the Decepticon ‘bad guys’—was tortured for several years before the facility was liberated and spent several more years in a coma due to his injuries. Once aboard the Lost Light he is resentful of being asked to see Rung, feeling that he is being forced into therapy, and holds great disdain for the Autobot he blames for abandoning him to three years of torture. Shortly after a particularly confrontational session, he has what would seem to be a psychotic break, and after shooting several other crew members he takes his therapist, and another Autobot named Whirl, hostage, demanding to go back to their home planet to confront those responsible for his abandonment.

Ultimately the situation is defused, and eventually Fortress Maximus—through the support of Rung and his friends aboard Lost Light—finds himself returning to a law enforcement role in the now mostly peaceful galaxy. Follow-up episodes show he isn’t always as ‘fixed’ as some think, but he’s working on becoming a better person. This character’s arc is redemptive, but not neatly tied off, as—much with real life trauma—the damage never really goes away, you just learn how to deal with it in a more healthy manner.

One of the hostages, Whirl, is a different story. Ostensibly a good guy, he is a violent train-wreck of a ‘bot. At one point he says he commits bad acts “because the voice telling me not to…? He’s not said much for a while.” Whirl’s trauma started before the war, when he was mutilated by the government as a means to discriminate against him. Throughout the series we see Whirl change in subtle ways thanks to the support of his friends, but in the epilogue we see that after the Lost Light was decommissioned, he ended up back in prison. Whirl’s is not a story of hope and redemption, but instead a realistic portrayal of survival in the face of an (apparent) universe set against you—and having given up on himself as a good person, Whirl’s damage psyche takes pleasure in spreading pain—especially when he himself is hurting.

These are just two examples of how Roberts, realistically portrays mental illness. He is sympathetic to these characters—in no way are any of them shown to be completely irredeemable—but there is a recognition that not everyone is able to win the battle against their daemons. His writing also keys into the idea that people with mental illness require support from friends and family as well as therapy to prepare for that battle, and that one should never be ashamed for reaching out for those supports.

Beyond the mental health implications, Robert’s also shows how war is corrosive to a soldier’s purpose, when he explores the stories of veterans—some of whom are characters not aboard the Lost Light—who are now rudderless without the war. Some, like the Decepticon Tarn are fanatic ideologues, who joined the cause after having been radicalized, but now have become sadists hunting down members of their own faction who Tarn determines are insufficiently ‘pure’ in their beliefs. When met with the fact that his own leader has denounced the cause, Tarn’s choice is between suicide and mass murder—and he chooses the latter after having attempted the former. We see in flashbacks Tarns origin as a ‘bot with unusual ‘powers’ who is shunned by most of his fellow citizens before he is radicalized. His story is not redemptive, and he is very much not idealized, but he isn’t completely evil (he cares for the people under his command) and his story is all too commonly tragic.

Another character is portrayed as an ‘alcoholic’ who dreams of doing great deeds, but is envious and dismissive of those he feels accomplished more than he did. He is eventually killed by two of Tarn’s men while trying to help save the life of one of them. His death cuts the captain of the Lost Light deeply. It seems unfair that he survived millions of years of war only to be killed helping a fanatic during peacetime.

The characters I’ve mentioned (and many I have not) and their stories weave through Robert’s broad storytelling tapestry—sometimes the trauma of war is a focal part of the narrative, as one character or another is put in the spotlight, but at other times Robert’s zooms out to the wider tale, while deftly ensuring we don’t lose sight of these more personal stories at the same time.

MTMTE ran from 2012 to September 2016 for 57 issues, and was followed by the series Lost Light which capped off the story lines of those aboard the starship within another 25 issues which ran until November 2018. Roberts was always involved in conversations with the fandom (of which he was a member since childhood) and would post a list of the songs he was listening to while writing. Recently he’s published a collection of extensive notes he used to plot out the series in great and small detail.

As I look at the timelines involved, one thing that strikes me is the parallel the story seems to have with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. During the time the comics were written, those wars were winding down and the veterans of those conflicts were returning home and in many homes people were dealing with the after effects of war and combat—both within the countries involved and abroad. To this day the repercussions of those wars are still being felt and MTMTE reflects the stories of PTSD, radicalization, terrorism and war crimes which populated the news in those days.

Needless to say, I’m a fan of this series and Robert’s other work within the Transformers comic universe, and have been a fan of the toy line and it’s fiction (especially the Marvel comic series) since my youth. During the comic’s run I was a single father who thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgia of returning to the world of the Transformers, but one shown in a new light. One where good and evil weren’t so black and white. One where sometimes the good guys did terrible things, and where even a sadist might worry about the welfare of those who served under him.

Having recently re-read the series, I applaud Robert’s new and nuanced take on these characters and their universe, and hope that, in presenting a story that touches on the trauma of war, through the media of a comic book about giant robots, it has gotten some of it’s audience to consider the price paid by those who are caught amidst the ugliness of war and it’s after effects.

If it’s been able to do that for even a minority of its readership, then it deserves all the accolades worthy of a more ‘adult’ work of fiction.

At least that’s this veteran/writer’s opinion.

Sean