TF Views

Shockwave wrote:I maintain that Spike could have been dealing with Swindle without knowing it. Remember the first episode of Animated that had Swindle in it? He assembled an entire team of criminals and none of them knew who they were working for until the last minute. Why? Because Swindle is just that good at BSing people.

Swindle basically just hired them to steal what he needed in that episode under the guise of a voice in that episode. Being over the top cartoon criminals, they didn't really care who he was as long as they got paid.

Sparky, I do get what you're saying about not wanting to deal or have relations with a species that's bent on eradicating us, but the thing you're forgetting is that they're robots... IN DISGUISE! Animated has given us a story where Swindle was able to manipulate things without making himself known so why is it so hard to accept in comic book form?

Because that's not what the comic book suggests. Spike is a smart guy. He was able to track down Scrapper despite hiding in his vehicle mode. And Spike would naturally be suspicious of someone selling him Cybertronian technology. Unless he knew it was a Cybertronian in the first place. And again, Spike goes fugitive as soon as Swindle tells the Autobots about their deal. If Spike thought he was dealing with someone else, then why would he run? The evidence in the comic suggests he knew he was dealing with Swindle.

And considering how Spike's whole team was good at bringing down Decepticons anyway, why wouldn't he just arrange to meet Swindle somewhere, take him down, and then take whatever tech was on/in him?

*edit*

I was just thinking about Spike killing Scrapper. From his point of view, Scrapper's just a machine. Considering how little he thinks of the TFs as a race (at that point- maybe still), it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't even consider Scrapper to be alive in the traditional sense. Just a machine. Scrapper has no rights. He's not human. Spike's superiors would likely see it the same way, which makes it all the more evident why that failed plot-line didn't work. Prowl can be butthurt all he wants, but as far as the humans are concerned, Spike destroyed a dangerous toaster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0_S_EdZ_I8

Ok, so let me get this straight: Spike (and by extension all of humanity) is supposed to be so hateful of absolutely all TFs anywhere ever that he just kills every robot on site period no questions asked because "they're TFs and all TFs are evil and must be destroyed no exceptions the end period!"? I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Hey Dom, remember a few pages back when you mentioned that there were no WW II mentions? Sorry, but here goes: I can only think of one person throughout all of history that has ever had that level of a genocidal hatred of a particular race and I think we all know how that turned out. So really? Spike is supposed to be Hitler? Really? THAT'S what we're supposed to believe would be the REASONABLE reaction here? Come on! Even the most harcore of racists (obviously not counting Hitler) doesn't just arbitrarily kill every member of the races they hate. And really, Spike has certainly been written WAY more intelligently than that. So yeah, sorry, I'm not buying the whole "Genocidal towards eViL rObOtS!" thing. I didn't bite for it with Circuit Breaker in G1 and I ain't biting for it for Spike now. And thank Costa that at least in the ongoing Spike isn't written that way. The last thing ANY TF fiction needs is another damned Circuit Breaker.

Shockwave
-Seriously. This is why she sucked and why the less said about her the better.

EDIT: Mako, just for the record, your "Giant Toaster" argument actually does carry some validity in real life as I seem to recall that people not being able to regard robots as sentient and/or viable characters is why those people were not able to understand the live action movies. The problem is that this isn't how Spike has ever been written and if he were to have been it would still have reduced him to robo-Hitler/Circuit Breaker.

Let's see. . . Spike killing Scrapper was in issue 8, just 2 issues after the first major arc had finished. So Spike had only been allied with the Autobots for 1 or 2 whole issues. Yeah, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that at that early stage in the story, Spike still thought of ALL Transformers as machines and not as living beings. That kind of thinking doesn't just disappear overnight.
I mean, Rad in the Armada toon kept coming to the realization that "the Transformers were alive" as late as 30 episodes into the show, and he actually *likes* them!

Issue 29 actually touches on this.

Spike acknowleges Cybertronians to be alive and morally autonomous. Remember, he says that he actually l ikes a few individual members of the species. But, as he puts it, the are "not human", and that does make a difference in how he sees them. There are people who take this view with cats or dogs. They may not like dogs, but they happen to like their neighbor's dog. Similarly, a friend of mine has two dachsunds that are known cat killers. They dislike cats, but know enough to respect her 2 or 3 cats.

So, Spike would have seen Scrapper as a living individual. But, that does not mean Spike would respect Scrapper as having meaningful rights.

goes fugitive as soon as Swindle tells the Autobots about their deal. If Spike thought he was dealing with someone else, then why would he run?

Because he still bought weapons illegally.



Dom
-again, grounding....

On the topic, there was that one really good episode of ST:TNG where they had Data on trial to establish if he was an individual or a piece of Starfleet property. The people Data worked with all thought of him as a person, but the general consensus among Starfleet (prior to that ep) was that he was just a very advanced android. Any semblance of personality he had was just mere programming to help him get along with humans.

Or say, Robocop, who was a cyborg. I remember one lady telling him that he was just a few chunks of meat and a lot of armor and circuitry. She said he was just a piece of OCP property. And this was a guy that was built around the corpse of a human and retained his memories. I'm sure there's hundreds more examples out there where robots, cyborgs, androids, and whatever else that seem alive and human (perhaps even are in their own definition of the word) are not seen that way by the humans around them.

Dominic wrote:Because he still bought weapons illegally.

If Swindle went to the trouble of getting a stand-in to make the deal with Spike, what makes you think he wouldn't also make it appear legit? Otherwise, Spike should have questions about how this unknown person got their hands on such advanced technology. Not to mention, Spike wouldn't be able to just show up with a bunch of mech suits and guns for a military operation with out getting clearance for it and answering some questions about where he got it from. Whether or not he got them legally would have been an issue long before now and is the least of Spike's concerns at this point, so it's unlikely that's the reason he went fugitive.

-again, grounding....

Your ground still looks to be a slope when it should be level with logic.

Sparky Prime wrote:

Dominic wrote:-again, grounding....

Your ground still looks to be a slope when it should be level with logic.

OO FACED

Do we get another Costa issue, or is he out? Somebody's gonna have to deal with this. (Or it'll be dropped entirely, like the Magnificence was. WHERE THE HELL IS THAT THING, IDW, IT SORT OF MAYBE LOOKED IMPORTANT. Might come in handy in this Hot Rod series.)

Costa is out. He is on "GI Joe" and he will be on a new magic themed series called "Smoke and Mirrors".


Dom
-content with what explanations we got.