Transformers!

[Tom Foolery]

Yes. He's like a low level maintenance engeineer on the Lost Light.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Wow. RIP You are so weak. I knew you'd cave and read this. I can't believe they're all dead.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

The next Spotlight issue is Trailcutter. Is Trailcutter just Trailbreaker, but they can't use his name on the cover for TM issues, or is this a brand new character?

I suppose I could go look on some TF wiki...

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Wow. So, ummm, three major deaths in MTMTE this week. Well, two big ones, and Pipes. But even the little guy went out with a bang as you watched him trying to gather his last cohesive thoughts as his Spark left him. And his final act was to hit the alarm button, letting everyone aboard the Lost Light know Overlord had escaped.

The other two were...wow. I have a lump in my throat. James Roberts has carefully laid the trail for the last 14 issues to the lake of tears for this issues finale. Kudos sir. Kudos.

[anarky]

I've got one complaint about Regeneration One. The book heavily uses characters who never appeared in the original series, or who were severely underrepresented, often without dropping their names into the dialogue. Sometimes, I'm not sure exactly who I'm looking at. Like the panel at the end of the latest ish, with two Autobots planning to shoot down Magnus' ship. Who are they? One looks like Twintist. The other can't be Topspin; he's on the ship. I've no idea. When they do, sometimes I'm like "Groundpounder? Who the fuck is Groundpounder? Never heard of that guy." Had to look him up. I guess I no longer have the almost-complaint that the Micromasters seem to have been forgotten after their downsizing was almost a big plot point about issue 55 or so.

BTW, tfwiki.net says the two "Autobots" are the Decepticon clones, Pounce and Wingspan. I even had those fucking toys. I still do, in fact. No fricking clue why they don't look identical, though.

The last two issues seemed "decompressed" by RG1 standards, but were still meatier than most current titles. Things are coming to a major head soon, with seven different Decepticon commanders converging on Cybertron, with at least three different agendas. I'm going to guess, thanks to Spinister, that Scorponok would have been successful, but is going to find Bludgeon showing up to fuck up his plans.

The body count definitely is higher than the original run, but not the bloodthirsty genocide of Generation Two. Misfire's death was especially gruesome, but, at the same time, something I think we all wanted to see. (The method, not him as the victim, necessarily. I thought he was pretty decent for a forgettable Targetmaster.)

The origin of the Demons (finally!) was nice, but not what I expected. With their rant years ago (something like "We remember, oursss before yoursss thiss world," with the implication Primus had locked them away in the core), I'd always assumed they were pre-Primus denizens of what would become Cybertron, not pre-Transformer Cybertronians.

Noticing a lot of references to and symbolism surrounding forced unification and separation (the post-80 Cybertron status quo, Scorponok and Zarak, Ratchet and Megatron, Spike and Circuit Breaker (and Fort Max), Shockwave and the Ark, Scorponok's reprogramming of almost all the Cybertronian Autobots, the Demons and Transformers). Not sure what it's building to, but I'm noticing it.

The big question as of right now is what Optimus is up to. He's no longer Autobot Commander, no human knows he's on Earth, but he's going (it seems) to the Ark's final resting place. Why? Are we going to get a surprise Galvatron/Optimus showdown, perhaps with Megatron getting his revenge (in a way) by finally killing Optimus?

Oh, and you're as dense as lead if you're not coming to the conclusion that the Autobot Commander who saves the day in #100 won't be Optimus Prime. And that there will no longer be a Hot Rod. At least not by that name. Either that, or Furman is producing the greatest red herring smokescreen in comic book history.

[anarky]

Okay, now I have a real complaint and not just a nitpick:

Andrew Wildman is leaving as of #92, and will return for #100. The ensuing seven issues will be penciled by Guido Guidi. While I like Guidi (I've actually been opting for his "retro-styled" Cover B's over Wildman's Cover A's), I'd rather see them go to more classic TF artists. Geoff Senior would be the obvious choice. There was a guy who did several issues of the UK series whose style was similar to Wildman's but a tad cartoonier; IIRC, he went by the handle "Spaz." Dwayne Turner did one (surprisingly shitty) issue, and has gone on to bigger things; same with Chris Batista, who did the only issues of the second Joe crossover that didn't suck. Derek Yaniger and Manny Galan both did G2 work. Hell, I wouldn't even mind Jose Delbo too much, to be honest.

Sadly, this is not an April Fool's prank.

[Tom Foolery]

There was a cracker name of Lee who did a couple covers and I don't think he ever did much after that. They should have him finish the series.

[anarky]

MTMTE fucking floored me with the annual and Shadowplay. They need to just have one book of flashbacks to old Cybertron. Seriously. The origin of Shockwave was totally fucking tits. After the big reveal, there were all sorts of clues dropped in that that's who this senator was. I want to see the first time Orion/Optimus encounters him after this story.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Yeah, that reveal was right in your face the whole time and still drops your jaw when it happens. Awesome.

Much like Autocracy, there's a Digital Series called Monstrosity that deals with the beginning of the War. It's coming out soon, and then will be collected in issues this time, before getting the Trade like Autocracy did.

I'm glad they print their digital series. Some Publishers *coughMarvelcough* are real dicks about reprinting their digital stuff. DC does it right, but I don't buy DC anymore.

[anarky]

Something else occurred to me: They gave Shockwave a complete personality overhaul, and that punishment (I forget the name of it) where they replace the hands and head. Given that they wanted Shockwave to suffer, why let him keep a hand? There's got to be a reason for that. Or did he replace one hand later on, perhaps deciding he dug having a gun for the other hand?

Also, does this mean any Transformer with the one-eye head model (I'm sure there are more besides Shockwave and Whirl, even if I can't think of them) was a humiliated criminal?

[anarky]

The RG1 preview throws a huge fucking twist into the Demons subplot. Like "could step on an IDW-verse Metrotitan without noticing" huge.

[anarky]

No idea if I'll get a response, or what it would be (I'm kinda guessing "Never say never!" or something like that, if anything), but I proposed a question to the RG1 Facebook page (which I believe is run by Wildman) as to the possibility of some sort of flashback miniseries or ongoing once RG1 is completed.

I just noticed that IDW has all these incredible flashback stories, and even Dreamwave had The War Within, which was way the hell better than that universe deserved, but there's practically nothing in the Marvel continuity. We have the story of Primus and Unicron, then Primus created and (mostly) destroyed the creatures now called Demons, then a huge gap. After that, it's basically the cruddy info-dump in #1, the flashback in #47 that contradicts an awful lot that came before and since, and a few throwaway lines. There was definitely a neutral class of sorts, since Mirage had doubts about being an Autobot, but the whole CNA plot (and earlier comments by Grimlock that the faction distinction is a genetic thing) indicate it's not entirely a choice. And Megatron was not an idealistic quasi-socialist who became twisted; he was just batshit insane and wanted to turn Cybertron into a mobile weapon of mass destruction (which is mentioned in #1 and never brought up again).

Genetic or not, these guys lived in harmony for a while. There are also little details, like Megatron never suspecting Shockwave had plans to take over until the Ark crashed, and whether or not water ever existed on Cybertron.

[anarky]

Okay, RiD questions time.

So, we learn that the Transformers were at war before the time of Nova Prime, and he ended the wars. But there's no info on the factions involved, since neither the term "Autobot" nor "Decepticon" existed. There's never been anything else about that before, right?

The Metrotitans, including Metroplex, pre-date this time by an unknown number of millennia. Omega Supreme is newer than them, but still older than any other known living Transformer. Alpha Trion fits in here somewhere, likely dating to the time of the Metrotitans and Primus. All these guys seem to pre-date the wars mentioned earlier (and many are in hiding because of the violence). Nova Prime, Galvatron, Cyclonus, Jhiaxus, Dai Atlas, Tailgate, and Scourge are from a newer time, when Nova Prime has somehow ended the wars and instituted Pax Cybertronia. Most of them go off on the Ark to the Benzuli Expanse and wind up in the Dead Universe. Tailgate is stuck underground for several million years. Dai Atlas, what, goes off and creates a duplicate of Crystal City, which includes the Metrotitan from the original on Cybertron?

So at the end of the MTME annual, the Metrotitan returns to Cybertron, dying. Crystal City was always there, right? Or did I misread something, or forget a detail from MTME, and the Metrotitan returns it to its original location on Cybertron?

If this is the same Metrotitan (which seems the case), then it's likely Ore is somewhere on Cybertron now, possibly returned to life, since he vanished with the Metrotitan.

On to ages: Who do we know is old enough to remember the Nova Prime era? Everyone I've mentioned so far, obviously. Also Shockwave--not named specifically, but double-checking references in this and Shadowplay, he's definitely Jhiaxus' student. And clearly Monstructor and his components.

Also, Jhiaxus came back from the Dead Universe and made Arcee have boobs. Do we know when, relatively speaking, that happened? We thought previously he'd made Monstructor at around the same time, but, clearly, that was much, much earlier.

Omega apparently went off into hiding with Monstructor, but, somehow, was in contact with the Autobots and joined them, despite apparently being uninterested in the prior conflict(s).

Next subject: Body count. One-third of Reflector is dead (again). I'm assuming all the Decepticons survived Arcee's rampage except the two guards, though not in the best of shape. Omega's not dead, at least not yet.

And, now, the huge fucking doozy. This time travel shit is giving me a headache. Don't get me wrongo--it's awesome, but it's damned confusing.

LV-117 was affected with some sort of Energon by Shockwave, probably not too far removed from the time period when he affected Earth with Ore-13 (which was around a million years ago, IIRC). It made the entire planet unstable in time. So Reflector from our present crashes in the distant past, killing Spectro (???--I can't keep those three straight). Wheelie, probably a few hundred years ago (judging from Prime seeing his distress call around the time of Stormbringer, IIRC) crashes on the planet, but arrives quite some time before Reflector. Also in the present, Orion Pax and Wheelie are chasing Reflector, and wind up all over history. Bludgeon, who I'm just going to assume was healed by Jhiaxus since they still haven't explained it but that makes sense, has figured out how to follow Orion through time on LV-117; their first meeting takes place after their run-in a few issues ago for Orion, but before for Bludgeon. (Oy vey.) Meanwhile, Turmoil, from the not-too-distant past, is asked by Shockwave to go to LV-117, and winds up way the fuck in the past. His ship has a time travel mechanism built in (by the aliens? wasn't clear on that), and he winds up back on Cybertron, a few issues ago. And now his ship is missing. And we also cannot forget (and I seriously doubt Barber has, either) that Quintessons are somehow involved in this shit.

Holy fucking shit, I'm confused, but is that more or less how you read it?

Plus, Gorlam Prime was a practically dead Cybertronian colony world at the time of the Furman books, with only a few Micromasters running around. Somehow it managed to go from that to a bustling world of Cybertronians (at least if it's moving linearly through time) by the time of Chaos Theory, a few earth years, then die out again. But in fifteen million years, it will be the home of Ironhide, Alpha Trion, and a bunch of guys with Generation Two insignias. Which now becomes a bit more and less confusing when we learn Jhiaxus' master plan appears to be to bring Gorlam Prime from the past to the present.

Oh, and Megatron's coming out of the wasteland. And Combiners are suddenly popping up there, as if by magic.

Going to make a wild guess: Garnak's species, due to the weird temporal nature of LV-117, eventually evolve into the Quintessons... then, somehow, are instrumental in the creation of the Transformers.

IDW had better not reboot this shit again. This is some "Claremont on X-Men, at his prime" level of setting up years worth of stories, and I love that they're going back to the previous versions (before the soft reboots) and picking up dangling plot threads.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

"Har Har. For your information, apart from Tarn and the D.J.D., I'm scared of (one, two, three, four) FIVE things in this life.
One. Megatron (obviously)
Two. Overlord.
Three. Sixshot.
Four. Shockwave.
And Five. Some nightmare combination of Megatron, Overlord, Sixshot, and Shockwave"

"They can't combine--"

"Matter of time. Decepticons are obsessed with combining. Put two of 'em in a room and within seconds one will be standing on the other's shoulders. Fact."


James Roberts needs to given a Pulitzer or a Nobel or something. Definitely a Golden Deuce.

[anarky]

I'd like to eventually see a flashback featuring Black/Sky Shadow. There were three Phase Sixers. He's the only one we've only seen in action (so to speak) in dialogue about his past exploits.