TF Views

Major change in the status quo. Starscream kills Metalhawk and uses his death as an opportunity to sieze power. The crown from the animated movie is one fan nod too far, but it does illustrate just who's in charge quite nicely. Further issues will have to clarify the situation, but it looks like the unaligned Cybertronians have made Starscream king by acclaim rather than electing anyone. The surviving Autobots are exiled, thanks to Starscream calling them out for everything they've done in front of the mob. And his takedown of Turmoil is pretty awesome. Looks like Megatron is the only one who truly intimidates him. And I think it was honestly far truer to Starscream's character to have him murder Metalhawk than for him to show gratitude and go back to planning to compete in an election. Starscream has been a murdering, backstabbing, power hungry opportunist for millions of years. He's not going to change so easily. Swindle I can buy, since he's in it for the money rather than the killing, and Dirge seems to be sick of killing as well. But not Starscream.

I also appreciate the way Ironhide got through to Prowl, and the way Wheeljack ultimately saved the day, with a flashback to the "three most important words" scene from one of the early issues, #3 I think. I hate that they killed him off, but at least his last words make sense now. I couldn't figure out what the point of his statement to Bumblebee was, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense. And saves the day.

All things considered, this has been a good run. Barber moves the characters along and in to place for the next arc. Most of the resolutions will likely take place as the next arc starts up.

Starscream murders Metalhawk, and pins the blame on BB and Megatron. This is in character for Starscream. And, it is picking up a thread that we have yet to see played out in any official context, Starscream as leader.

It is hard to tell exactly which characters are exiled at the end. But, the general vibe I got was that the "true believers" of both factiosn are in the literal and proverbial wilderness.

He's not going to change so easily. Swindle I can buy, since he's in it for the money rather than the killing, and Dirge seems to be sick of killing as well. But not Starscream.

I do not think that Starscream is in for the killing so much as he is in for the power.

I get the feeling that Starscream is going to pay for killing Metalhawk. In practical terms, the speech he used to win over the crowd was largely stolen from Metalhawk. The question is how successful Barber allows Starscream to be as a leader.

I am also wondering what kind of leader Barber is going to write Starscream as. Killing Metalhawk was harsh. But, it was not completely out of order. Metalhawk was a competitor. How will Cybertron be for most other Cybertronians? Barber might be raising uncomfortable questions about what makes a good or great leader and how much people might be willing to live with.

I am curious about Swindle and Dirge. Are they in with the exiles? (I cannot tell.)

did not really mind the 1986 movie crown.

Metalhawk made himself a player.

Given the history of Cybertron, politically motivated killings are to be expected. If you are going to be politically active, you are accepting the chance of being killed. Starscream arguably would have seen Metalhawk as a "player" on the board.

My impression is that BB was definitely the author mouth-piece, and that Starscream's biggest problems are going to stem from his inabilty to honestly read and understand the 'bots he leads.

what Starscream tries to do while in power and who he does what to.

just felt like signing off with a spoiler tag.

So Ironhide's big game-changer is to just talk Prowl back into being a good guy! Because Prowl's totally a good guy on the inside, right? He's noble, and fair, and selfless, and-yeah, what the hell ever, it works, Prowl pops out of Devastator, exchanges a couple of corny one-liners with Ironhide, and goes on to just arresting dudes in the background and having fuck-all to do with the rest of the issue. Wow, he was really put through the wringer. I can tell all he's been through has had a profound impact on his character and personality. He's clearly been shaken to the core and Barber wants this to be visible as a major element of the story.

Seriously though, then Megatron tries to finish his experiment or whatever by combining with Devastator himself, but gets stopped by a lame deus ex machina that was planted a few issues earlier by Wheeljack. And I know it seems really cute and well-foreshadowed and planned, but then that also makes it just collapse in on itself: If all Wheeljack had to do to stop Megatron was say his own name three times, why the shit didn't he just do that before ShrapnelProwl shot him in the head? Dumbass.

Not as much of a dumbass as Metalhawk though, who gets killed because he apparently completely missed Starscream confessing that he was a schemer who was going to backstab everyone two issues ago! If you're going to ignore something that blatant, then you deserve to get shot through the chest. So yeah, we're apparently just supposed to close our eyes and forget that SincereScream from the early issues was ever a thing, he's always been a scheming bad guy, just the way we like him, right? Characters evolving and developing isn't something we want in our Transformers fiction, oh no! Oh sure, a couple guys break factional rank, like the expected Dirge and Swindle who show up to rally against the Decepticon uprising (which continues to boil the question of "If Barber wanted them to be around to do that stuff, why the hell did he make a big thing of getting them out of the scene so they wouldn't be around for the big initial confrontation in issue 14? Why the fuck was that THERE?!), so I dunno, maybe they'll get to stay in the city with Starscream and his new population of robo-hobos. There will be no more actually-interesting talk of elections and socio-politics, Starscream crowns himself king because, I dunno, he wants to, I guess, and everyone else gets kicked out. But that's okay, because thanks to Megatron's stupid plan being behind everything, it's been established that there are really NO negative consequences at all to being out in the wilderness! So who even cares?

Look, if Barber had wanted to end this story arc with Starscream as leader of Cybertron or whatever, there were a zillion more interesting ways to do it than to waste our time with infuriating fake character development for Prowl for ten issues, followed by a couple issues of Megatron coming back and doing generic evil plan stuff until a deus ex machina stuck him back in the same damn place he was when he first came back.

And if you actually think we're going to see the 'Starscream as leader' thread play out, you're clearly not paying attention, since IDW's gonna flip that over and go into this 'Shockwave takes over Cybertron' big dumb event thing in a few issues because, hey, SHOCKWAVE ruling over CYBERTRON? We've NEVER seen than before!