When you’re into a specific genre and you consume media of said genre for over a decade, chances are that it becomes hard to surprise you. Tropes can become embarrassingly obvious, you can predict absolutely everything that happens next and sometimes, no matter how open-minded you are, you can’t seem to get as much enjoyment from something you know you would’ve probably loved ten years ago.
For me, that genre is horror. And MTMTE fucking nails it.
I’ve said before that I believe a lot can be learned from how MTMTE does character development and world building, and today, because I feel like it, I’d like to give my opinion on something that is especially important to me: Unique threats.
I will use More Than Meets The Eye chapters 48 and 49 as an example, so spoilers for those two. This will contain body horror, mutilation, robot gore, brainwashing, death and so, so many unhealthy relationships and treatment, so please be cautious if you’re interested in reading this but sensitive to any of these topics!
Alright, so.
Sunder.
So before we begin, there’s something I absolutely need to clarify:
Horror, like comedy, is a highly personal thing. Something that has no effect on you might be the worst nightmare for somebody else, while something that scares you, another person might find ridiculous. So for this (and any other horror discussion to be quite honest), keep in mind that you’re not a coward for being scared of stories, and you’re not a badass for not being scared of stories.
This is my personal opinion, and I hope you can find something of value in it!
I also apologize in advance for the lack of structure in this, it’s mostly gonna be rambling, I’m afraid.
Let’s do this.
MTMTE is no stranger to horror elements before 48. There’s the Delphi episode, Shadowplay, Domestication, Slaughterhouse - hell, the series basically kicks off with a monster let loose on the ship, and while they’re all great, I think they honestly deserve their own little essay (and now I know what to write about next time) because of the sheer amount of possibilities they open. They’re worth mentioning right now though since as far as I’m concerned, they’ve been a big part of building up 48 and 49.
There’s several individual and connected things I adore about this story and there’s a lot more that can be talked about, but I decided to choose a couple of favorite ones for now.
(I could write an entire essay about these things alone, after all)
The Classic Horror Story and the Value to the Series
Let’s begin by only answering two very simple questions: What happens, and why is it in the comic? On the surface, it’s a pretty classic horror story: Two characters establish in a conversation that something awful happened to one of them in the past, but they don’t remember what it was. Somebody believed to be long dead, who has a history with one of these characters, visits them out of the blue and soon turns out to be dangerous. A monster is released that not only attacks the main characters, but also turns on its own ally and goes on a rampage. During their fight for survival, dark pasts and horrible memories are uncovered more and more. In the end, the monster is defeated, one of the characters quits his job and the other’s blocked memories are revealed to us, and it turns out everything is much worse than it initially seemed, with the last frame being pure hell.
^couldn’t put it differently
This chain of events is why I consider it a horror story to begin with.
Are these two chapters important to the overall series or are they pointless, all things considered?
During this episode, we learn what the thing that happened to Skids is, something that has been teased since the first chapter, and why it might be very dangerous for him to remember it all. We see what happened to Getaway after what he did in the prior chapter. We see that Tailgate has a new set of skills, we learn more about Rung’s past, that Rodimus is still encouraging Chromedome to use his dubious technique, that Tarn’s cruelty and sadism knows no end and that Megatron is trying desperately to change even if it means death for him.
There’s quite a few things to take away from this, so yes, there is a point to all of this, and it’s right to include. It’s not filler.
Now that we’ve scratched the surface, let’s look at a few topics.
Non-human Fears or Making Use of your Universe
The reason I am writing this right now is this point, because this is what makes this unique, this is why I was surprised in this story, why the horror tropes were not distracting: this story doesn’t exist yet.
Now, when you read a story that has non-human main characters, is about or includes non-human species or takes place in a made-up world, one of the most simple „mistakes“ is to write it human and keep it there. It doesn’t have to backfire, of course! Sometimes, it’s interesting to see non-human characters experience human stories or be in situations and scenarios we’re familiar with from other shows, but personally, I prefer it when these characters aren’t treated as humans.
And in these two chapters, this is executed wonderfully. It would’ve been easy to have this be a „human“ horror story, with a killer on the loose, maybe torturing people or something. However, the story makes full use of the fact that none of these people are human beings, and the things that happen to them can only work for robotic creatures.
And this is why I love it so much.
You can’t apply this story to humans or even a lot of other creatures in fiction. Being manipulated into executing a certain task your body is made to forget how to do properly and thus turning your insides out, not killing you but making you experience unspeakable pain through it, that’s not something you can do with a human or pretty much any organic life form. And it works not because it’s cruel, but because this is unique to Transformers. Horror should never be about how much blood there is or how much pain you can inflict upon how many people, or how tastelessly you can murder somebody - to me, it’s about if I’ve seen it before or not. And this? The image of Froid being split up and curled into a ball? That’s not something I’ve seen before.
And it’s awesome.
Guy carrying the eyes of his monster around his neck to throw them into its eye sockets later?
Awesome, made better by the fact that it’s not immediately evident at first sight that they’re eyes.
The Monster using his space ship which is also his dead brother as a punching suit?
Transformers, I love you
As disturbing as this whole Sunder & Froid episode is, it’s also a lot of macabre fun, because it’s different and exciting and so much can happen! When a guy chases someone with a knife in a movie, there’s limits as to what he’s gonna do. When a giant robot who can access people’s minds and eat their memories and turn them into organ balls and also judge the shit out of them to hurt the soul some more goes loose on a crowded ship, all doors are open, this is new territory, and I’m all here for this.
There’s also the parallel running story of Skids’ past in Grindcore, and I honestly love that this is in the same two chapters as the Sunder story, because it’s the exact opposite kind of horror. Where Sunder is, at least to me, kind of fun in how messed up and exciting he is with his goal to eat and not to kill, Quark and the other prisoner’s fate is deeply disturbing. It builds up differently, it’s slow and creeping up on you, and when it happens, at least in my opinion, it works, and it’s made so much worse by the fact that it happens so by-the-by. Tarn treats his prisoners, funny enough, like robots, melting them to make new ones - and I love that this is a thing that happens, because recycling is not an evil thing to do for us, but when a robotic alien does it to fellow robotic aliens, this innocent act becomes completely fucked up and cruel. Again: Something robot-specific. Also, I think it should be noted that we as the readers knew Quark was going to die in Grindcore, this has been established years ago, we know he’s dead, so there is also that ominous notion looming above the entire story, because we know he’s going to die.
Now I might be a bit biased because this shit hit my exact worst fear (watching yourself and others being physically destroyed, knowing you can’t escape), but yeah this hit the spot. Which is also why I’m not gonna post a screenshot of that panel, I’m sorry.
The image of the melting prisoners and the thought of their horrifying last moments disturbed me to no end and made me physically sick, which hasn’t happened in years and while I know that’s just my personal experience with it, I do want to mention it, because as disturbed as I was, I was also excited that a comic book could evoke such a strong reaction from me, especially after being used to horror stories. Yeah it haunted me and made me lose my appetite for days, but that’s not even the first time MTMTE has done that to me, so. Ha!
I think it’s very interesting to see how well these two stories work together. One is strange and unique and kind of fun and exciting while the other is a non-horror thing (recycling) turned cruel and macabre by making use of the fact that the people are all robots. I love that, at least to me, these two stories don’t take away from each other by being a bit different in tone, and that they work together to make these two chapters like a big ol’ fear fest.
It’s fantastic.
In short: When you have non-human characters or your own universe with different rules, don’t stop when it gets to threats. Make up new things, think in what ways conflict and fear and pain can happen. Even if you don’t plan on going into dark territories, it can still be a good idea to at least be aware of the possibilities. A throwaway line can have a lot of effect already and nothing has to outright happen, but letting people know that it COULD happen can have an impact.
Just, you know. Go wild in every direction, there’s so much you can do!
Jolly!
Alright, now that we got this out of the way, I’d like to talk about a couple other things too
Introducing a villain: Teasing and Surprising
Our villains for tonight are Froid and Sunder, two characters who have only appeared in flashbacks and haven’t appeared at all. I’ll talk about Sunder first because I wanna save Froid for later. Sunder shows up only in these two chapters, so I’m going to call him a Bottle Villain. Froid mentions him at the beginning of 48 and he’s put out of commission by the end of 49. Maybe he’ll come back like Pharma did back when, maybe he won’t, but for now, that’s all there is to him. We haven’t heard about Sunder before this story, he’s never mentioned or seen. Now usually, I’m not too big of a fan of monsters being thrown at you out of the blue, but in Sunder’s case, I think it works, mainly because he’s a bit of an extension to Froid in my opinion whom I’m gonna talk about later, but also because his set of skills is so intense and awesome that I kinda appreciate we weren’t warned about this. All we know at first is that he’s a mnemosurgeon gone killer, that Froid was taken hostage by him in the past and that both him and Froid survived a deadly attack that killed his brother.
What I love about this is that it gives a bit of a false expectation. He’s both a serial killer and a mnemosurgeon in this introduction, a truly scary combination for a dangerous person, but when we meet him in person a couple of pages later, he’s a lot more. He has remote access to people’s brains and all the other scary shit I talked about earlier, and I can’t help but love how quickly this first introduction is upstaged by how much more horrifying Sunder is. Also, his speeches are great because they’re unlike any other villain in this series so far and I appreciate the shit out of characters having their own speech pattern.
We’ve had killers and mnemosurgeons before, and now we have a guy who is even more than that. Would it have been better if he had been teased earlier on? Maybe.
But personally, I like how it is, because to me, the true shining star of a villain is Froid.
And I apologize in advance, but I might gush a bit because I’m still not over how perfect Froid’s introduction is. We as the audience have known Froid since very early on He’s mentioned by some people in the past and he’s even seen briefly in a flashback.
And it’s established pretty much immediately that he’s an asshole.
Rung says he plagiarized his work. He’s cold-hearted and lacks compassion when we first see him back in the past. Nobody likes him.
Now I’ll be honest, I don’t know how this experience was for other people, this is still all my personal opinion. And I think I need to say that this whole thing might be a lot less impactful if a reader is fairly new to the series and is reading all the chapters in a short span of time.
But for me, who has known about Froid for years, it was a punch to the face. A weird punch, granted, but still a punch. It felt like finding out that the kid who stole your lunch in elementary school once just got arrested for murder.
Froid has always been an asshole, but here is now, alive, and the moment he hugs Rung it’s clear that something is up and that he’s way beyond that. He’s keeping Sunder with him, has no care for the wellbeing of completely innocent people, he feeds Sunder with the dark memories of others - he’s actually evil, I can’t find another word for it.
And I love it so much, because he’s been teased for years. This complete dick of a person that nobody really has anything good to say about, and now he’s here and attacking Rung and Skids. This is a good pay-off. He developed behind the scenes, away from everyone else, and when Rung meets him again, he has changed so much and it’s gloriously macabre. I love that the extend of how horrible he truly is hasn’t been spoiled by any direct hints. I love that it’s absolutely acceptable and not out of character that he’s such a monster now.
Froid, you’re a dick, and it’s wonderful.
Surprise indeed.
Punishment in Grey
I will keep this one a bit shorter because this is getting really long.
Now, these issues are filled with horror being inflicted upon the regular cast, but there’s also some good little and not-so-little horrifying things the main characters do.
There’s something that MTMTE is extremely good at, which is grey morals and flawed characters. Sometimes, the characters get called out on something shitty they do, but sometimes they don’t, and I think this is extremely important, because something can still be wrong if everybody agrees it’s okay, and with MTMTE, I always felt like the author is very much aware of that, and that’s wonderful. I personally feel respected as the reader when morals and right and wrong aren’t hand-fed to me, when I have to use my own judgement and knowledge of the series and as a person to decide if I agree or don’t.
A Good Guy character doing something wrong and not getting called out on it doesn’t mean that the story is saying this was okay to do. If it’s done right, and I feel like it is here, it simply means that we as the audience are supposed to think about what we’re reading.
I mention this because, oh boy.
Getaway.
Oh, Getaway. I don’t want to open this can of worms, but I feel like I have to.
So in 47, Getaway’s plan is fully revealed: He manipulated Tailgate into trying to impress Cyclonus for his marriage proposal by essentially attacking Megatron with needles, fully aware that Megatron, who is traumatized by needles, would in turn panic and attack and probably kill Tailgate, which would mean he’d get imprisoned or executed and therefore, the Lost Light would no longer be in his hands. In short: Getaway wanted to sacrifice an unknowing Tailgate and get rid of Megatron.
I won’t go into this whole thing because that’s a topic for another time, please understand. I want to focus on horror here.
So in 49, we find out what the crew did to lock Getaway away: They removed his limbs and his lower jaw and keep him suspended in the air, completely unable to move. Now, it’s completely understandable why they do this. He’s Getaway, he can flee from absolutely anything, and this probably is the only sure way to keep him from escaping.
However, it’s also pretty damn messed up.
And, I’ll be brutally honest, I don’t really care where one stands on this debate, on whether this is appropriate or out of proportion, because I think it doesn’t matter if this was the right choice or wrong. The image of him in that cell? It’s a simple, effective way to visualize and, if needed, remind everyone that the people on this ship aren’t flawless goody-good shoes. They’re all violent, grudge-holding characters who are not heroic, I think this really needs to be emphasized: main characters and heroes are not the same thing. Rodimus Prime, for example, is not a hero, but he’s not a villain either. He doesn’t set out to do bad things, but he makes a lot of bad decisions and gets people killed, fuck, even in this chapter he’s once again super enthusiastic about using mnemosurgery.
He then proceeds to get fucked up by a mnemosurgeon.
However, and I know this is starting to sound a bit ranty, but I need to get this off my chest:
A main character doing a bad thing is not hypocritical on the author’s part, especially not when said author has proven time and time again that he’s very much aware of what he’s doing.
Rodimus is a hypocrite, not the story.
There’s a difference.
And the same goes for Getaway’s treatment. Nobody at any point in the story says that this was heroic or even the right thing to do, and this is why I think it’s such a great moment. It’s disturbing and unsettling and it’s done by the main characters, but none of the characters gets confirmation that this was a good thing to do. Sometimes, you get why a character does something, but you also know that it’s not necessarily a good thing just because it makes sense. And in my opinion, this is a perfect example for that.
So in conclusion, we have the full-on unfiltered horror of Froid and Sunder, the absolutely disgusting showcase of just how cruel the fanatic Tarn is, the Lost Light crew once again being morally dubious, and Tailgate throwing a ridiculous space ship at a guy riding in his dead brother - all in two chapters.
(and a lot more to fuck you up)
And personally, I can’t repeat it enough, I fucking love it. It’s a solid horror story, it’s genuinely unnerving in so many different ways but it never felt too overcrowded to me or like the different horror elements clashed or something.
It’s unique, it’s short, it’s memorable (and quotable. I love „you stink of sin“ so much, my friends) - and it only works in a Transformers comic. If I sound a bit too happy about these things, it’s because, again, horror is my favorite genre in fiction and even when I get disturbed, I enjoy a good scare. So when I find one, I can’t help but be enthusiastic about it.
And this is why I personally think 48 and 49 are wonderful.
I thank you for reading! If you agree with this or have found that you’re looking at it differently now, that’s great! If you disagree with it, that’s good too, we’re all friends here!