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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Struggle for the Matrix, 31 Aug 2002
Matrix Quest continues the story begun in Primal Scream: Primus, creator of the Transformers, has briefly awoken from his long slumber, unfortunately alerting the world-destroying Unicron to his location. As Unicron steam-rollers towards Cybertron, the Autobots learn that the vessel of Primus' sacred life-force, the Creation Matrix, is the only thing that can stop Unicron. Unfortunately, the Matrix was blasted into space three years earlier along with Optimus Prime's corpse (although Prime has since been resurrected in a different body). Thus four teams of Autobots set out to locate the missing artefact. However, newly-elected Decepticon commander Thunderwing takes an interest in the search and is soon hot on the tail of the Autobot search teams. Matrix Quest's problems are obvious: the episodic nature of the story, the variable art (Geoff Senior is good, Jose Delbo is semi-adequate, Dwayne Turner sucks big time) and the downbeat ending. However, Furman's superior talents as a writer shine: Longtooth's obsession with the Klud being a tribute to Moby Dick, Grimlock's team inadvertantly wandering onto the set of 'Aliens' and so forth, again proving that Furman wasn't writing just for kids. The 'Rhythms of Darkness' story saves the collection from its faults, though, showing a horrific alternate future where the Autobots have just seven warriors left (out of millions) and the Decepticons rule most of Earth. The ending is pure cheese, though. However, it is just all set-up for the next two stories, All Fall Down and End of the Road.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as I remember - but still great., 21 Jan 2004
How time changes your perspective on things. When I first read the stories collected here, when they were reprinted in the UK Transformers comic, I thought it was the greatest Transformers storyline I'd ever read or was ever going to read. To understand this it must be put in perspective - 'Matrix Quest' occurred over the course of five issues in the US but in the UK, by this point, it took four issues to get through one US issue - and not only that, but after the first chapter of Matrix Quest ('Bird of Prey', actually featured in the 'Primal Scream' volume), there was a sixteen issue break in the UK reprint to allow the US comic to catch up. Naturally, this made 'Matrix Quest' seem even more epic than it was - appearing over the course of 35 weeks between issues 262 and 297 - but, collected here, its faults become more apparrent. There's no way it poses a serious threat to 'Target: 2006'.It's actually a very fractured storyline - five chapters tied together with the hunt for the Matrix as a theme, but each focussing on a different group of Transformers - presumably to advertise the toylines by giving them centre stage. The stories also appear to be attempts by Simon Furman to parody movie styles - 'Bird of Prey' is film noir/'The Maltese Falcon', 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' is a Western, 'Deadly Obsession' is 'Moby Dick' and 'Dark Creation' is so close to 'Aliens' that I'm amazed Marvel weren't sued. This isn't to say that I don't still like 'Matrix Quest' - as indicated by the four stars I gave it, this is definitely not the case. Simon Furman's scripting throughout is great and I actually like the movie parody element, especially in 'Dark Creation'. There's a strong villain in Thunderwing - Furman had a knack of taking a minor toy character and bringing him to life as a major player - and throughout you can sense the urgency with which the Autobots are acting - something BIG is on its way... 'Rhythms of Darkness', a post-'Matrix Quest' story printed here - is, if you discount the pretty shoddy TV adaptation 'The Big Broadcast of 2006' (a story brilliantly dealt with in its UK reprint), the first true US story to deal with the future Autobots and Decepticons, and is on the whole pretty good (although not so much as the UK stories). 'The Human Factor', on the other hand, is let down badly by possibly the worst artwork ever to appear in a Transformers comic. Simon Furman seemed to enjoy being freed from the restrictions of the UK comic, where he had to write compact stories to fit into the US storyline. As soon as he moved to the US title he began an epic storyline which would last two years, and by the point of the stories collected in this volume, his masterplan was well underway. 'All Fall Down' and 'End of the Road' show where it was all heading...
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1 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
cluttered art ruins story shock, 17 Jul 2002
By A Customer
Even though I'm a Transformers fan, I'm really not sure I can reccomend this. It's been released to complete Simon Furman's run on TRANSFORMERS US and, that seems to be the only reason. The Transformers themselves are often hard to make out (even if you know the ones in the picture) and the plot is ridiculously convoluted. Buy only if you need to.
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