TF Views

More Than Meets the Eye 4-5
Life After the Big Bang, How Ratchet Got his Hands Back
James Roberts, Alex Milne

Roberts indulges in his love of having Transformers die in macabre ways by introducing a plague in the Autobot medical facility at Delphi where Transformers "cry" themselves to death. This story feels like a Star Trek plague episode with a mysterious disease on an alien planet, and a race against time to find the cause and find a cure. But it ties nicely into the larger background story that Roberts is telling, gives Ratchet an arch-enemy, and brings First Aid on board the Lost Light. This story also gives us the first detailed information on the Decepticon Justice Division, a group of lunatic enforcers who go around butchering Decepticons who get on their bad list for even the most trivial of reasons. It's a good story, with my only real complaint being that it's only the fourth and fifth issues, and we're already getting sidetracked onto a side quest. But at least it's a quality side quest.

Robots in Disguise 6
"Syndromica (1)"
John Barber, Livio Ramondelli

Shockwave's big ore-seeding Regenesis plan is about to come to fruition. With such a big cast, the fact that these books go on side missions with smaller groups of characters is no surprise. We just saw it over in MTMTE, and here in RID the book steps away from Cybertron to see what Orion Pax is doing as he roams the galaxy. He responds to a call from Hardhead, Wheelie and Garnak who have captured Jhiaxus, and if he's around, it won't be long before Bludgeon and Monstructor return as the Dead Universe related characters tend to stick close together. Orion's already tired of his carefree life and ready to jump back into the fray. Good issue, and it's leading up to Dark Cybertron, showing how far ahead the writers had planned.

Transformers: the IDW Collection Phase 2 book 2

The Transformers: Autocracy #1–12
Chris Metzen and Flint Dille, Livio Ramondelli

This was a new story for me. I didn't read it when it was first published, and I'm not sure I was even aware of it. Set after Megatron: Origin and the flashback portions of Chaos Theory, it details how Orion Pax changes his outlook on life and how he obtains the Matrix to become Optimus Prime. When the story begins, Pax is essentially a police officer, and an Autobot. He is hunting down a Decepticon arms dealer (Swindle, of course) in the city of Nyon, a run down place full of angry citizens who do not trust the Autobots or the government of Zeta Prime. Swindle is the key to finding Megatron and ending the Decepticon movement. Pax is zealous in his application of the law, but he's troubled, questioning whether he's on the right side or not.

When Soundwave spies on the Senate and gathers intel on a new energy-draining weapon of Zeta Prime, Pax and his crew are sent to capture him. This leads to an encounter with Megatron, who attempts to sway Optimus to his side by exposing Zeta Prime's weapon and that he plans to use it on civilians. Pax is sent to capture Hot Rod, who shows Pax many of Zeta Prime's victims. Orion Pax is forced to make a series of choices that include siding against Zeta Prime and temporarily cooperating with Megatron, until Megatron betrays him. It's Megatron's betrayal that ultimately leads to Pax finding the Matrix and becoming Optimus Prime, the first true Prime in a long time. He is able to inspire others, and gains the recognition of Metroplex, the first Titan, not seen in ages.

The change of heart feels like something that should have taken longer, but the characterization of Pax as essentially a man of conscience willing to take risks and take a stand in the face of corrupt elements both in society and in government is sound. It's classic Optimus Prime. There are several references to the 1986 movie in the story, including a beat by beat recreation of the scene where Hot Rod's interference results in Prime's death. Chris Metzen describes this scene as "Flint [having] a lot of unfinished character business from the 80s that he wanted to make good on (Hot Rod's impetuousness getting Optimus killed...)", and of course it plays out differently here. Ramondelli's art is great for evoking the run down cities and the beat up Transformers. It's interesting to compare this story of Prime becoming a leader with the very different story we just got in the 2019 series.

I really enjoyed the story. Nice to finally read it. Dom gave a review of it here: https://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1037

The Transformers: Spotlight: Trailcutter
James Roberts, Matt Frank

Both this story and Spotlight Hoist are correctly placed between MTMTE 5 and 6.

Trailbreaker feels unappreciated. He's seen as "the guy with the forcefield" and little else. He gets some unsolicited advice from Whirl, who among other things advises him to change his name to something more impressive, hence "Trailcutter". While he's recharging the Lost Light is attacked and Trailbreaker finds that his forcefield is not working, while the rest of the crew is frozen in place. Yeah, this is one of those stories where the main character is forced to save the day without his normal powerset that we see every so often in super hero comics to prove how a character is effective even without his powers. And of course Trailbreaker/cutter is able to defeat the invading Deluxe Insecticons and Lockdown by bluffing them into thinking his forcefields are still operational. Fun but forgettable.

The Transformers: Spotlight: Hoist
James Roberts, Agustin Padilla

Hoist is scouting a planet when he's attacked by Tarn, leader of the Decepticon Justice Division. Only it's not really Tarn, because this planet shows anyone who lands there his or her worst fears. The whole point of the issue is that Hoist is meant to be the one normal guy on a crew of damaged or severely flawed individuals on the Lost Light, and he's forced to keep all the others alive until rescue arrives from the Lost Light. Again, it's a fun issue but not consequential, and the enjoyment comes more from the character moments than the plot. Probably the most memorable part for me is that Bob, Sunstreaker's pet Insecticon, sees Metroplex as his worst nightmare thanks to Metroplex crushing so much of the swarm back in the Ironhide miniseries.

The Transformers: Robots in Disguise #7
Interference Patterns
John Barber, Brendan Cahill

Drift's old commander Turmoil arrives on Cybertron, with his ship just appearing out of nowhere. The suspicion is that he has a cloak for his ship, but when Wheeljack sneaks on board to investigate, he finds a time machine.

There's some interesting stuff in this issue, which as far as I can tell was inspired by the continuity error of Reflector dying in Spotlight Wheelie then turning up alive later on. Wheeljack is not usually a spy, so having him be the one to infiltrate the ship is an interesting choice. Metalhawk, normally not a fan of either Autobot or Decepticon and insistent on welcoming all Transformers back to the planet, changes his tune with regard to Turmoil, and actually comes in to save Wheeljack's life when Turmoil discovers him on his ship. Several of the pages have (going by memory here) 16 panel grids, which really do a nice job conveying the idea that Wheeljack is carefully and methodically working his way through the ship. It's a solid issue.

And we see Jazz and Sky Byte on stage together at Blurr's bar, which is just fun.

The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #6–8
Interiors, Scavengers 1, 2,
James Roberts, Nick Roche, Alex Milne

Interiors sees the revived and repaired Fortress Maximus lose it and start shooting people and taking hostages, because he was understandably not over his issues from three years of torture at the hands of Overlord. Rung gets shot through the head by Swerve but survives as Swerve was trying to shoot Fort Max, whose goal in all of this was to force Rodimus to take the ship back to Cybertron where Fortress Maximus could confront Prowl for why he waited so long to send a unit to Garrus-9. It was good to follow up on the events of LSOTW, and Max's state of mind makes sense.

Scavengers is a two part story that introduces the overly hammy and overpowered Decepticon Justice Division to the series, after they've only been name-dropped up until now. It also introduces a group of "grunt" Decepticons calling themselves the Scavengers, because scavenging for parts and supplies is how they get by. They're led by Krok, and I appreciate seeing an Action Master in these books, as always. They pick up a new member, one who happens to be on the DJD's killl list, and choose to stick by their new friend rather than abandon him to the DJD. The idea seems to be that these are just ordinary individuals who believe in the Decepticon cause, not psychos who enjoy killing like the DJD, though they seem to have no problem killing a wounded Autobot early in the story, even though they know the war's over. In contrast with that, they find Grimlock, who was also apparently traumatized by the events on Garrus-9 and is withdrawn and childlike, and they take him into their group as well.

So we get two stories with Garrus-9 survivors and get a look at some of the lower ranked Decepticons, and it's the usual mix of action, horrific robot violence and quippy dialogue that is Roberts' style. The characters have no connection to the Lost Light, so this is just a side story with mainly Decepticon protagonists, and it's enjoyable enough. It opens up the state of the post-war universe a bit more, and lets us follow a bunch of rarely-used Decepticon second-stringers for a few issues instead of Autobot second-stringers. I'm sure we'll see these guys again.

The Transformers: Robots in Disguise #8–9
Dinobot Hunt, Night and the City
John Barber, Andrew Griffith

Ironhide heads out into the wilderness to hunt for the Aerialbots and he takes Sky Lynx and the recently returned Dinobots with him. Starscream pushes Bumblebee to hold elections, and Dirge goes to Shockwave for prptection. While out in the wilderness Ironhide and the Dinobots fight a wild Turbofox and discuss Ironhide's vision of the future, something Slag in particular is quite sympathetic to hearing about. As night falls, the Dinobots become more and more edgy and hostile, though Ironhide seems less affected by whatever signal is affecting the others. Reading this now, after the fact, it's fun to see that Ironhide is in fact right about the cause of the madness, it is Megatron causing it. And Bumblebee asks at one point, when wondering about the anger, if something us controlling us, or controlling Prowl? Barber gave us the answers, but it's something I never saw at the time, only going back through it later on do these lines jump out at me.

I enjoy that the Dinobots are more receptive to hearing about his vision of the future than the other Autobots are. But when the frenzied madness hits them, Swoop stabs Ironhide, who is amazed that he's still alive afterwards. Reflector steals Turmoil's ship (and will end up in Syndromica and in Spotlight Wheelie) with Ironhide finding the Aerialbots in the form of Superion. They've combined seemingly on their own.

Reading this the first time, some of it did not make sense, but now it all clicks nicely. It's all a bit more mundane than I imagined when the story began, as I imagined a primal Cybertron, alive in some way and lashing out at the Transformers. But as we'll see down the line, it's Megatron out in the wilderness, manipulating everyone through Vector Sigma somehow, and working on perfecting combiners. Bumblebee never interests me as leader, but it is different having someone as weak and indecisive as him in charge.

Spotlight: Orion Pax
James Roberts, Steve Kurth, Juan Castro

I honestly don't see the point of some of these Spotlight issues at this stage. Back during Furman's stint as writer, they were used to help build the story, but with the exception of Spotlight Prowl, most later Spotlights are just standalone issues that go back and revisit some earlier point in IDW continuity and feature a character that we're usually watching in the main series anyway. However, according to what I've read, this issue exists in part just to address a continuity problem with Orion Pax's appearance in Spotlight Blurr where he looks like he does here, while an earlier appearance had him looking more traditionally like Optimus Prime. Did we need a standalone issue to explain away the problem?

I haven't talked much about the plot here, because it's honestly pretty thin. Optimus gets a temporary new body that supposedly tougher than his usual one, and he's taking part in a hostage exhange to retrieve the captured Ratchet. There's a lot of talk, a lot of continuity that was mentioned in numerous prior issues, and a chance for Pax to bemoan the fact that he doesn't have a faceplate. It's not a bad issue, just an uneeded one.

Transformers: the IDW Collection Phase 2 book 3

Spotlight: Thundercracker
John Barber, Chee

I don't recall having ever read this issue before. It honestly does not tell us much that's new, presenting Thundercracker as a far less strident Decepticon than many of those he serves with. He's part of the crew under Bludgeon that is searching for Metroplex in order to obtain space bridge technology. It does establish some early contact between Thundercracker and Bumblebee that might explain how they later reach an accord in the Costa ongoing, not that anything beyond the events in that series are really needed to explain that.Thundercracker lies after he's found Metroplex and tells Budgeon that he's not there, showing that his disagreement with some Decepticon goals and methods goes way back, and his disgust at slaughtering aliens for no real reason mirrors his attitude during All Hail Megatron.

I still don't care for Chee's art, and while the story is perfectly servicable it offers nothing we haven't already seen in the main series.

Spotlight: Bumblebee
John Barber, David Daza

I think this issue was published later, but the placement here seems odd since it takes place during Police Action and Chaos Theory. I guess a flashback in the timeline to published stories is not really any different than a flashback to the unpublished and distant past. Some of these issues were probably created to be packed in with the appropriate action figures, because I remember some of those coming with comics. This issue seems like yet another "explaining gaps in the narrative" type of story. In this case, the story makes clear what already seemed fairly clear to me back during Chaos, that Megatron surrendered so he would be taken to Cybertron where he could use the space bridge built into his body to bring his army there. The main plot also has Bumblebee figure out a way to capture all five Stunticons by himself, so it's more "Bumblebee as a leader" material.

I'm just not a big fan of the whole "Bumblebee learns to be in charge" plot thread that runs all through Costa's work and into Barber's series. I don't have a lot of interest in that character taking that role, and if the series makes anything clear, it's a role that he's really not cut out for, no matter how hard he tries. So an issue that explores that yet again didn't do much for me. Again, it's perfectly servicable and inoffensive, but far from compelling.

Original discussion here: https://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=37167#p37167

Man, you are just flying through these. At this rate, you'll be done with the entire continuity by next week

I really wish there was some sort of online resources showing the in story chronological order for reading this. I've been reading through what I have, but I've already skipped some things where I shouldn't. For example, I've read Infiltration through Devastation, but apparently Stormbringer was in there somewhere as were some of the Spotlights? I just started reading the Spotlight compilations, but I'm unsure of where they specifically fit chronologically. I started with Megatron: Origins, because I now that's the earliest starting point, but beyond that... *shrug*

Shockwave wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 8:57 am Man, you are just flying through these. At this rate, you'll be done with the entire continuity by next week

Yeah, it's not taking long. A lot of the early stuff I'd read multiple times, so I moved through it pretty quickly. We're getting to the material I've only read once or twice, or not at all, not to mention it all feels more dense in terms of the volume of dialogue and story, so things are slowing down.

Some of these story arcs seriously work so much better when read all at once in a short time. Stuff that bored or lost me when it took six months to read is considerably better. I'm feeling much kinder towards Dark Cybertron for example, though I still have problems with the story.

I really wish there was some sort of online resources showing the in story chronological order for reading this. I've been reading through what I have, but I've already skipped some things where I shouldn't. For example, I've read Infiltration through Devastation, but apparently Stormbringer was in there somewhere as were some of the Spotlights? I just started reading the Spotlight compilations, but I'm unsure of where they specifically fit chronologically. I started with Megatron: Origins, because I now that's the earliest starting point, but beyond that... *shrug*

I agree, I'd like to read this continuity in strictly chronological order. Most of the "present day" storylines are easy enough to place, but sometimes a Spotlight issue or a flashback issue is tough to place in relation to other events.

This guy has set up a chronological reading order, but it's hard to read. Scroll down to the spoiler tag labeled "flashback chronology": https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/ ... 8.1117009/

Thank you. I disagree with his order a little bit, only because I know that Megatron: Origins happens before Infiltration so that in story chronological order would have to come first. But this is at least, useful information. And gives me a starting point on where to catch up.