The Smelting Pool and The Bridge to Nowhere, a 2-issue story (#17,#18) are outstanding. They make up significantly for what is otherwise a jumbled mess due to the need for Budiansky to constantly introduce new toys with progressively more whacky plots. ( )

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Even within the bounds of what you can or should do with comic books based on a toyline, The Transformers is not and never will be great. There are just too many characters with too little personality to distinguish them from one another, and more are constantly being introduced, meaning you never get to know anyone long enough to care about them. Plus, Bob Budiansky's plots range from bizarre to far-fetched: this volume features a Decepticon plot to steal music from a rock concert, an out-of-work comic book writer hired by the government to pretend to be a terrorist controlling the Autobots and Decepticons, a group of Decepticons who go rogue to leave graffiti on human monuments, and Optimus Prime committing suicide when non-player characters are accidentally killed when he has a videogame duel with Megatron. This isn't great comics; it's not even great hokum.

(You do, I think, have to give Budiansky credit for never settling into a repetitive status quo: the Decepticons are always shifting their leadership and plans throughout the series. I'd take Shockwave over Megatron as leader any day.)

That said, every now and again, Budiansky hits it out of the park; each volume of The Transformers Classics usually has one story that sticks out above the rest, and vol. 2 actually has two. The first is "Return to Cybertron," a two-part tale that shows what life has been like on Cybertron since the Ark left three million years or so ago. In a word, it's completely terrible: it's a huge contrast between this and the kind of wacky hijinks this title is usually populated with. It's a gritty story of a world where the Autobots are barely hanging on under the cruelty of a Decepticon dictatorship, where most robots don't even have the energy or parts to resist. Characters can die here, and their deaths have real emotional consequences. If only Budiansky's run was always like this, it would have been incredible. (Though, perhaps, not very uplifting.)

This volume actually has two very good stories, the other being "Showdown!" After a big Autobot/Decepticon battle, the Autobot Skids is left for dead, stuck in his vehicle mode (a van), where he's found by Charlene, a grocery store cashier who dreams of a better life, and who needs a new car. Charlene has Skids repaired, and, tired of war, Skids decides to lay low and just act as her van. Of course, circumstances force him to reveal himself to her-- but they decide they like the arrangement and become fast friends. It's a story of two different sides. In one sense, it's a cute slice-of-life tale. In another sense, it's the story of a wounded soldier trying to escape an endless war that has caused him nothing but pain and anguish. It's at once adorable and weighty, and it's probably Budiansky's second-best work on the Marvel Transformers title.