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I continue to alternate volumes of Panini's DWM reprints with volumes of IDW's Transformers UK reprints, and the Transformers UK comics continue to weave in and out of the American stories I read a few years back. This is kind of a lot to wrap my head around at times, to be honest (my memories of the fine details of Bob Budiansky's Transformers run are foggy at best), but I am enjoying the experience. James Roberts argues in his editorial commentary that this is where Simon Furman's writing on Transformers begins to come into its own, and I agree.

Like with volume one, what makes this work is the more character-based focused on the UK comic, which I think it kind of had to have, given the big plot events could only transpire in the US comic. In this volume, the big thread is the Dinobots, who come into the spotlight in "The Icarus Theory," "Dinobot Hunt!", "Victory!" and "In the National Interest." We see their hidden desires in "Victory!", we see them break out and undertake action in "In the National Interest." This latter story was probably my favorite in the volume, as it effectively draws together threads from a number of recent US and UK stories in a way that makes it serve as an effective "season finale" for the volume. The Dinobots frustration meets Robot Master meets Triple I meets tv reporter Joy Anderson meets frustrated scientist Professor Morris. A lovestruck Dinobot is a fun concept.

We also get a little plotline involving Buster, the Autobots' human friend, across "Robot Buster!", "Devastation Derby!", and "Second Generation!" Thanks to his time hosting the Creation Matrix, he begins having visions of the future, foreseeing the coming of the Special Teams, those Transformers who can combine into gestalts. Buster, alas, has never done much for me; give me more Sparkplug and Jesse. These stories are no exception, but I did like the way Furman reconciles a plot point Budiansky dropped from the US comic, explaining how Megatron and Shockwave came to share Decepticon leadership. (Continuity-gap plugging becomes a bit of a theme; James Hills's "The Return of the Transformers" indicates why in volume one, Optimus Prime was opposed to creating new, more powerful Transformers while here he initiates development of the Special Teams.)

The lowlight is definitely "To a Power Unknown!", a daft story of a morality-reversing energy pulse that feels more like the mediocre cartoon than something from the more grounded(!) comic, but the other highlights are two text stories from the 1986 Annual. "State Games" by James Hill is okay as written, but once I read it, I realized how hugely influential it was: this is the origin of the IDW version of Megatron, for example, and many incarnations as well. "The Mission" (by future Hellblazer scribe Jamie Delano) is a neat little standalone tale about Jazz and Hoist on a desperate Arctic mission.

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