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2nd Apr '13 7:33:58 AM Klaudandus

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''All Hail Megatron'' is the overarching title of a widely-promoted ''event'' in the IDW Comics Generation 1 universe in 2008–9.

The event spans the 12-issue All Hail Megatron maxi-series, a 4 issue "Coda" (appended to the main series for publication) and various Spotlight-series tie-ins. A standalone sketchbook and preview comic, "Focus on Decepticons", may be considered "All Hail Megatron #0".

The first twelve issues were written by Shane [=McCarthy=] and take place on an Earth under Decepticon control.

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!! This series contains examples of:
* AbortedArc: In issue 6 Starscream makes a clearly meaningful comment about Scourge and the possibility that he might try and overthrow Megatron. However ExecutiveMeddling prevented Shane Mcarthy from using Scourge or the subplot that was planned for him forcing Mcarthy to fall back on the stereotypical "Starscream betrays Megatron" story.
** Andy Reid is searching for DJ's girlfriend Meg, after [[spoiler: he dies]] the plot and all connotations to the main story are lost.
* AlienInvasion: The first couple of issues is basically the Decepticons invading Earth and destroying whatever they want, specially New York. 
*  AuthorAppeal: Drift is pretty much only there because Shane [=McCarthy=] wanted to put his fancharacter in. He has gone on record as saying that Drift was essential to AHM's story ([[spoiler:he isn't.]]) and that he doesn't know what he would've done without him in it.
*  AuthorFilibuster: Sideswipe's TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to his fellow Autobots is basically there because Shane [=McCarthy=] did not like the idea of the Autobots abandoning Earth for the greater good of the entire universe (ie stopping the Decepticons from getting their hands on Combiner technology) in the previous mini-series.
* AscendedFridgeHorror: Some fans have pointed out how the Transformers are basically walking ParanoiaFuel because of their ability to transform into Earth vehicles. One could be hiding near you at any moment. Mcarthy realized this and included ''two'' scenes where Astrotrain pulls a horrifying trick and pulls into train stations in train mode before transforming and slaughtering all the civilians inside. Even the [[NightmareFuel ''children'']].
** Sparkplug's group is attacked by Dropshot, who was hiding as one of their missile launchers all this time, and panicking he asks if they can be under their noses all the time, where else can they be? [[spoiler: Then it cuts to the plane with the Nuclear bomb, and inside a Decepticon symbol flashes, as Tankor heads to New York.]]
*  TheBadGuyWins: Allegedly, The Decepticons pretty much win the war. Prime is near death and his crew are trapped on Cybertron, and Autobot bases around the galaxy are overrun. Unfortunately, [=McCarthy=] did not really sell the idea to a sizable portion of the fanbase, due to OffStageVillainy.
*  BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler: The Wreckers originally and later on, Omega Supreme]].
*  BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Hunter. To begin with, he's missing [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe his lower body]], his right arm, and has several cables going into his [[EyeScream right eye]] and the back of his head, which has most likely rendered him comatose, if not outright vegetative.]]
*  BookEnds: [[spoiler: Almost all the events in AHM can be traced to Sunstreaker and what he went through in the Escalation miniseries, as seen in the Coda Flashbacks, with one of the main and most iconic flashbacks being Sunstreaker's disembodied head asking for a MercyKill (albeit [[BroadStrokes a truncated version of the original scene]] so that Sunstreaker is only seen asking for a mercy kill rather than agree to work with Hunter). How does AHM end? With a vegetative Hunter, or what's left of him, hanging from cables, much like Sunstreaker once did.]]
*  BreakTheHaughty: [[spoiler:Sunstreaker. Incredibly arrogant and dismissive of humans and even some of his fellow autobots. Is reduced to a ShellShockedVeteran during the events leading to All Hail Megatron, and eventually commits suicide, or [[FateWorseThanDeath tries to]].]]
*  ContinuitySnarl: Created by the BroadStrokes treatment of Furman's run and previously established characters, revelations, etc. Just for starters, the fact that the Transformers' existence had been [[TheUnmasquedWorld revealed to the world]] in ''Transformers: Devastation,'' but here the world has apparently forgotten about the revelation of giant alien robots. It was {{Hand Wave}}d by saying that the government blamed all of the Transformers' antics on the human organization The Machination, but this still creates problems when the man on the street's first reaction to the Decepticons is to ask if there's a movie being made. 
*  DarkestHour: Megatron has conquered Earth, Optimus is in the brink of disrepair, the Autobot ranks are badly battered and the morale is at its lowest with the knowledge they have a mole within their ranks.
*  DeathTrap: Megatron and his troops defeat lure the Autobots into a trap and defeat them. So do they shoot them then and there? No! They send them through a spacebridge to Cybertron to be devoured by the Swarm. The Autobots manage to survive long enough to escape. To be fair, Megatron and his troops had planned to follow them through and see to it that they died, but like many overly complicated plans, that plan fell apart.
*  DidntSeeThatComing: [[spoiler: The revived Autobots arriving to foil Megatron's plans.]]
*  DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Hunter [[spoiler: plugged to a machine, missing his arms and his lower torso and basically catatonic looks quite a lot like Colter Stevens's fate in SourceCode. They even get a MercyKill]].
*  DroppedABridgeOnHim: [[spoiler: Andy Reid]] was the human point of view for three issues, saving survivors and untiting them. Then Astrotrain dropped an entire Subway ceiling on him.
*  DullSurprise: In the Don Figueroa half of issue 13, Don debuted a new art style inspired by the movie's level of detailing. Unfortunately, it left both Optimus Prime and Ironhide with giant gnarling sneers frozen on their faces.
* ExcecutiveMeddling: The reason we don't get see much of the Decepticons trashing cities and conquering the planet. Shane wanted to have more scenes showing the Decepticons conquering the Earth but Hasbro vetoed it. Also the cause of the AbortedArc mentioned above.
*  FateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler: Sunstreaker - In the coda, we find out his head is still somewhat active and his life flashing before his optics, over and over. Same case can be argued with Hunter and the torture he suffered at the hands of Bombshell.]]
*  FlawedPrototype: The Insecticon Swarm is, well, a swarm of these: a thousand [[BodyHorror malformed monsters]] per functioning Insecticon.
*  ICallItVera: Roadbuster wants to do this with an [[{{BFG}} impractically huge jury-rigged cannon]].
*  IncomingHam / PunctuatedForEmphasis: I.AM.'''OMEGA.SUPREME.'''
*  ItsALongStory: Kup's answer to the other Autobots regarding Perceptor's sudden [[TookALevelInBadass Badass Level-up]].
*  JerkAss: Spike Witwicky and his father, Sparkplug. Putting things in perspective, Sparkplug Witwicky loves to be a jerkass to his wife's guests while dreaming of the ways he could kill them all with a toothpick. As for Spike, how about making jokes about button-flies to '''survivors of the freaking Decepticon attack on New York'''? They end up making you clamor for the personas of the cartoon instead. They only get worse (while cluttering up more page time) in the Ongoing.
*  MadScientist: Bombshell, Deluge.
*  ManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler: Prowl, who had Perceptor install some subroutines into Kup, so Kup can be Prowl's proxy when it comes to have his advice being taken seriously.]]
*  MacGyvering: How Bombshell hacked in to the Autobot mainframe. 
* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: Boy, Thundercracker sure dosen't look happy about all the destruction the other Decepticons are causing...
*  MeaningfulEcho: [[spoiler: Optimus and Spike's dialogue while Sideswipes finds Hunter, and the subsequent actions.]]
*  MercyKill: [[spoiler: Sideswipe to Hunter, if you consider the BodyHorror.]]
*  MetaGuy:
** Bumblebee gets elements of this.
-->'''Ratchet''': [[CreatorsPet What about Drift? Isn't he back there?]]\\
'''Bumblebee''': [[TakeThatScrappy Does it matter?]]
**  And later:
---> [[DeusExMachina You have got to be kidding me.]]
*  TheMole: First, we're led to believe it's [[spoiler: Mirage]], turns out it's [[spoiler: Sunstreaker]].
*  MonumentalDamage: Most notably an over-the-top scene in issue 12 involving [[spoiler: Omega Supreme, Devastator, and the Statue of Liberty.]]
*  MoralDissonance: So after delivering a long-winded speech about how Autobots should start valuing life ('''all life'''), what's the next noteworthy thing Sideswipe does in this series? [[spoiler:Pull the plug on Hunter O'Nion's life support. All things considered, however, it was a MercyKill.]]
** The incident underlines one of the major points of the story, and it's no accident that Sideswipe pulls the plug after giving his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. Had the Autobots figured out sooner that individual lives were precious, they might have taken more care to protect Hunter and avoided the events of "All Hail Megatron" entirely. Instead they seem to have forgotten all about him after "Maximum Dinobots", allowing the Decepticons to capture and torture him, and reduce him to a vegetable.
*  NoOntologicalInertia: One moment, Optimus is on the verge of dying, all of the sudden, he's like brand shiny new. 
*  OffModel: Thanks to the fill-in artist, one of the issues is really, really bad, especially when shifting between Cybertron and Earth. 
*  OhCrap: It's full of this.
*  PowerWalk: [[http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/c/c3/Slowmotionmoviewalkahm5.jpg Kup and co.]] ([[FunnyBackgroundEvent Notice how Roadbuster's shoulders are scraping on the ceiling]].)
* PragmaticVillainy: While Many Decepticons go for some grandiose or Sadistic showing, Astrotrain is always thinking about the most effective solutions. When the human ground forces advance, he recommends sending the Insecticons to outmaneuver them, but Megatron wants more finesse, and sends in the violent Frenzy. When hunting for survivors, Spectro and Spyglass like terrifying them and taking them apart, Astrotrain just finds where they're holed up, and instead of attacking them, knocks the ceiling in, burying them before they escape (this doesn't work for Andy's group though).
*  PrideBeforeAFall: Ultimately the downfall of Megatron, who spends the story talking about how he planned for every contingency and that nothing surprises him. But he didn't anticipate [[spoiler:the Autobots returning to Earth, and didn't think about the fact that the humans might be able to use Transformers weaponry. The end result: the Autobots defeat his forces in combat, and Spike shoots him in the face]].
*  ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Thundercracker, who is disgusted that the Decepticons are no longer a Proud Warrior Race. 
*  PsychicLink: [[spoiler: Sunstreaker and Hunter.]]
*  TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: [[spoiler: Sideswipe gives one to his own people, because he feels the Autobots have strayed away from the ideals they were supposed to represent, and as such, they do kind of deserve the state they're currently at.]] 
* RedemptionEqualsDeath / DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Sunstreaker. Having spent some time as a disembodied head in earlier arcs and becoming mentally bonded with Hunter took his toll on him. He also made a secret deal with Starscream, where the Autobots would get Megatron in exchange for Earth, instead the Autobots get ambushed, Optimus nearly dies and many Autobots outposts fall after a security breach in their access codes -- This becomes too much for him to bear and [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifices himself in battle]] to allow the rest of the autobots escape the swarm. He succeeds in his sacrifice, but fails in killing himself. See FateWorseThanDeath]].
* RedHerringMole: [[spoiler: We're lead to believe that Mirage is responsible for the Decepticon ambush that nearly killed Optimus Prime, it turns out that's not really the case.]]
*  RousingSpeech: Optimus rallies the Autobots to keep on fighting against the Insecticons.
*  ShellShockedVeteran: Just about every Autobot to a varying degree, but most notably [[spoiler: Sunstreaker]].
*  ShowDontTell: As with anything written by Shane [=McCarthy=], this is all over the place. One page shows us Ratchet telling us how risky fixing Prime is and how it will be unbelievably difficult to pull off, especially since Perceptor abandoned science entirely in favor of sniping, and just a few pages later, Optimus Prime shows up fine and dandy.
* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: Starscream poses this question to Megatron. He points out that with Optimus and the Autobots defeated the Decepticons have no real enemy to face on Earth as they can easily wipe out humanity. He also accuses Megatron of only fighting humanity because ''Megatron himself'' doesn't know the answer to this question.
* TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin: Shane Mcarthy noticing this about the original cartoon (and most other cartoons) was his inspiration for writing the story. He felt it was about time the good guys [[BreakTheHaughty got taken down a notch]].
*  TheStarscream: [[spoiler:In issue 10, Starscream attempts to usurp Megatron's position with help from the Insecticons. This doesn't surprise [[GenreSavvy Megatron]], at least until he discovered the Constructicons had allied with Starscream, too.]]
*  TedBaxter: Megatron is supposed to be a [[MagnificentBastard magnificent bastard]], but [=McCarthy's=] lack of talent for protraying villainous masterminds ends up making him look like one of these.
*  TookALevelInBadass: Perceptor went from a NonActionGuy with SesquipedalianLoquaciousness to a [[TheStoic stoic]] expert sniper. One of the more controversial changes to the existing characterization. It also mysteriously meant that he have to give up science for...some reason. 
** We find out the reason in later issues. Turns out it's because Turmoil ''blew a hole in his chest and shot him in the face''. Perceptor took his level in badass because he feared he was useless in combat.
*  UnusualUserInterface: Bombshell basically [[BodyHorror converted]] [[spoiler: Hunter in this, in order to access to Sunstreaker's mind]].
*  WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Andy Reid set out to find his dead pal DJ's girlfriend, who might still have been somewhere in the ruins of New York City. It ends up being forgotten pretty quickly, and then Andy dies and the subplot is never resolved.
**  After the whole event; Sarah Bridge and Charles are never mentioned again, while Spike and his dad become important in the next series.
*  WriterOnBoard: In spite of [=McCarthy=]'s claims that "he's read everything IDW's put out" and "there'll be no disrespect coming from him" and that "there's no way he'd spit over what Furman's done", some fans believe (with good reason) that he went out of his way to get rid of many of Furman's plot elements and characters that he himself didn't like, such as [[spoiler: Hunter O'Nion]], Ultra-Energon, etc.
*  WritingForTheTrade: Which is why the first three issues can basically be summed up as "Decepticons kill humans in New York City".
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4th Feb '13 5:44:59 PM DrPsyche

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14th Dec '12 6:46:01 PM TropeEater

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13th Dec '12 10:50:18 PM DrPsyche

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4th Nov '12 1:30:07 AM chopshop