Ghosts - The TFormers.com Featured Comic of The Week!

The TFormers.com Featured Comic of The Week is Ghosts, released as a free giveaway Halloween issue during publication of the Generation 2 series and reprinted in issue 2 of Generation 2. Written by Simon Furman, with art by Geoff Senior and colors by Sarra Mossoff.

At the grave of an alien civilization, a team of Autobots led by Optimus Prime clash with the forces of Bludgeon's Decepticons over the riches of ancient weapons and technology thought to still reside there. Faced with a more numerous foe, the Autobots have little hope of winning the head-on battle, so Optimus Prime tasks Hot Rod with employing some of the alien technology to prey on Bludgeon's fears and give the Autobots an advantage they can press. But this world may not be as completely dead as everyone had thought.

The story itself is kept very simple in order to help it be an ease-in point for new readers and so it doesn't overwhelm a seven page format. There's still a good bit of information conveyed in these few pages, and the story is structured with an "in-progress" format leaving a lot of the situation to be explained by narration boxes and character exposition, and that can make it feel a little sledgehammer in its approach. But in the end this is a classic story mechanic of planning to use a ghostly image to frighten someone away, only to have a real ghost turn up instead to get the last laugh. Thanks to Geoff Senior's art the action in the fight sequences is easy to follow, and the robots all look very appropriately boxy and robotic. The art also gives some slightly humorous tone in places, though I can't decide whether that's intentional or not. Bludgeon gets some reaction shots that I can't help but chuckle at, but I'm not entirely convinced they weren't meant to appear more serious than that. Meanwhile I'm pretty positive some of the hilarity in Stranglehold's face is completely by accident. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

"Ah!" indeed, Optimus.

Ghosts by now may be one of the more obscure elements of the US-published Marvel comics. A short story made as a freebie that doesn't tie in to the storyline of G2 itself, it serves the purpose that a lot of what we get now with the yearly Free Comic Book Day does, to ensnare audience to new titles, or give new readers a way to get on board with ongoing books. While reprinted in the second issue of Generation 2, this was omitted from the Titan Books G2 collections entirely, leaving only the option of acquiring the original issue if you want to have a copy of this story. At least so far. With IDW's Classics collections proceeding along steadily, we've got hopes for a new G2 reprint that will properly restore Ghosts among the rest of the issues of the series.