Transformers: More than Meets the Eye season two discussion

[inflatable dalek]

One good point made on the Underbase podcast was that if ALL Overlord was still in his thinking Megatron was dead/"Kill me! Kill me!" phase, he'd have likely just sat there and taken death as a blessed release rather than putting up the bigger fight they might get if they encounter the Our Lost Light (henceforth OLL) version.

[Knightdramon]

Don't comics in the UK get released on Thursday any way? At least that's the case in the -one- comic book shop in York.

I find a combination of comixology+scans for archiving +trades when they are out to be the most satisfying and space-effective anyway.

[Auntie Slag]

Cor, Skids is coming in for a lot of flak these days. I can’t see why, he’s done sterling work in this issue particularly, and has not been deterred by Megatron in any way. Apart from his forced comments when fighting a legislator one-on-one aboard the Lost Light, he’s been a favourite of mine. I think he’d make good command material.

[Terome]

Cor, Skids is coming in for a lot of flak these days. I can’t see why, he’s done sterling work in this issue particularly, and has not been deterred by Megatron in any way. Apart from his forced comments when fighting a legislator one-on-one aboard the Lost Light, he’s been a favourite of mine. I think he’d make good command material.

I really like how some characters like Skids and Trailcutter are getting more respect for their abilities from Megatron than Rodimus would ever give them. Megatron is surprisingly comfortable with trusting people to do their best.

[Auntie Slag]

Showing Minimus’s corpse on the floor with half his side missing… this is not the irreducible version of Minimus Ambus. If you look at his design in ‘Remain in Light’, this is the outer shell Mimimus that attaches to the Magnus armour. I’m wondering if whoever killed him knew about the Magnus armour but not necessarily about the tiniest version of Minimus.

Although the fact that this outer-shell Minimus has a chunk ripped out of his side might negate that. Someone on the DJD works/has worked for Tyrest and knows about the Magnus armour. If it’s Tarn, who plays the Empyrean Suite music, is there a link between Tarn, the Jhiaxian Institute and Agent 113?

Is Tarn Agent 113?

[Skyquake87]

I really like how some characters like Skids and Trailcutter are getting more respect for their abilities from Megatron than Rodimus would ever give them. Megatron is surprisingly comfortable with trusting people to do their best.

This right here is probably what galvanised the Decepticon movement I reckon - and speaks volumes about Megatron's leadership style - it seems more managerial than anything else.

I bet this is how the Decepticons got to be the force they were in Cybertronian society.

I like Skids too. I really like Nautica and Nightbeat's relationship. I love that timey wimey sequence of them with the briefcase.

[Auntie Slag]

Yeah, considering what an absolute scumbag Megatron has been to Cybertron and the Universe since they closed the Grimley coalmine, he really is a thoroughly interesting and respectful character.

Pax is quick and inspiring, whilst Megatron appears to do things excellently and may be someone deserving of a ‘Worlds Best Boss’ mug. I think it would be a great turn of events if the Decepticons genuinely love him. In many continuities he leads through fear, which isn’t very interesting.

It would be a hell of a thing if a lot of Autobot's end up loving him too.

[Warcry]

Agreed about Megatron -- his leadership style is not at all what I'd expected, and he honestly seems like the sort of boss that everyone wants to have (except for the genocide). He treats his people well when they're putting in the effort and knows how to get the best out of them.

And then despite having an ending that would lead nicely into the set up for an ongoing (the Autobots have saved Earth but the Decepticons have won the Galaxy, it's easy to imagine a series where the survivors regroup on Earth, defend the planet whilst at the same time trying to reclaim their old territories) the next author along contradicted it as well by suddenly having the Decepticons be, if anything, worse off than the Autobots.

Agreed, though that's more Costa's fault than a problem with AHM itself. In spite of saying there were thousands of troops on each side, he acted like the entire Decepticon government had fallen apart because Starscream was moping on an asteroid with fifty guys.

IIRC (and despite rereading it recently that one didn't stick in my mind as it was set up for a story that even under Barber hasn't happened. Actually, it's weird that, unless I've forgotten something, no writer in the main continuity has done the Blaster/Soundwave fight that would seem so obvious regardless of set up. It's as if they're all deliberately not following up on the Spotlight out of a sense of perversion) Blaster's not much of a physical guy, his greatest weapon is, as he says, his voice/sonics.

It's hard to say really, because he just fought the one guy who he didn't really want to kill.

I think you're right about the Blaster/Soundwave fight that never happened. Furman didn't use Soundwave in any of his modern stories until they'd already been canned, and I don't think anyone else even gave Blaster lines until MTMTE. I don't know that they've even been in the same scene as one another yet.

Actually, a battle between him and a guy who can talk people to death seems to have a certain appeal, I wonder if we'll get a flashback to the ALL version doing that?

Yeah...you'd think that Blaster's sonic weapons would cancel out Tarn's silly spark-exploding voice. Though I suppose he's just as overpowered in every other area so it would probably just end with a double fusion cannon (*groan*) blast.

I suppose Red Alert would have acted pretty much the same on both ships, he didn't really interact sensibly bar Rung and presumably the (entirely justified in the end, Drift's and the other's culpability in his suicide thanks to their conspiracy kind of got glossed over didn't it?) paranoia about being watched and secret plots would have likely driven him to crack open the cell.

Fair enough, though with no Fort Max aboard to take Rung hostage Swerve presumably wouldn't have blown his head up, so Red would have been able to confide in him more deeply. Would Rung have talked him into taking it to Rodimus or Magnus before things devolved to "drill holes through the hull of the ship" territory?

But then you're back to the scale thing again, IDW have always presented it as a galactic conflict, even when it was a secretive one. 12 soldiers on each side (and as I don't think we ever saw the stages gone through properly did we? Where was Nebulos supposed to be? Who knows how many more troops get added as they go along) across what would have to be a huge number of planets- hundreds? Thousands?- still adds up to an insanely massive war effort.

Absolutely! I just think it's a bit much to have thousands or them gathered in one place. I got the impression that before AHM, there were hundreds of teams like Starscream's spread across the galaxy, either infiltrating inhabited worlds (which really makes no sense unless they all have secret Energon deposits, but it cranks up the drama so I'm happy to ignore it) or openly setting up shop on ones that are up for grabs.

The tech level that the Transformers display is high enough that gathering more than a handful of troops in one place would be suicidal. We know from Stormbringer that blowing up entire planets is something they could do more-or-less on a whim, so congregating 1,000 troops in a single place is just begging the other side to start dropping planet-killers. I imagine that things were different at the start of the war when they were still fighting on Cybertron, but after killing each other for four million years they seem to have gotten very, very good at it and I like to think that it's forced a significant change in strategy.

To be fair to Barber, which version of the power of the big boys that had been previously portrayed does he go with for consistency? The Sixshot Furman talked about or the one he (and Schmidt) actually showed us? The Decepticons who could level most of the major cities on Earth or the ones who could barely do it to New York?

I do tend to prefer "showing" over "telling", so in terms of the Phase Sixers I'd have preferred to see them stick with what was on the page and not the narrative bigging-up that Sixshot got. You're right though, I suppose it's equally valid to do it the other way around.

Regarding the Decepticons though, AHM never gave me the impression that they couldn't level the planet if they wanted to (didn't Skywarp singlehandedly level half of Beijing in an hour on a lark, presumably while fighting off a huge amount of the Chinese army?) just that they were dicking around because Megatron wasn't telling them what to do.

Someone mentioned on Twitter this is all they're talking about in the TFW thread, so it's not just crazy Uncle Warcry who has issues with this.

Cor, Skids is coming in for a lot of flak these days. I can’t see why, he’s done sterling work in this issue particularly, and has not been deterred by Megatron in any way. Apart from his forced comments when fighting a legislator one-on-one aboard the Lost Light, he’s been a favourite of mine. I think he’d make good command material.

I think you summed up nicely why people don't like Skids. He's a super-smart theoretician ninja superlearner who talks to giant god-sparks and can fight off tons of the battle robots that took over the rest of the ship and used to be a spy and everyone loves him and he's not afraid of Megatron and should probably be in charge and isn't he just so awesome?

Skids can **** right off.

[Auntie Slag]

That’s true, but its not like Skids gets utilized in a ‘last line of defence’ style that the Autobots would usually reserve for Metroplex or Omega Supreme. Rodimus has this super warrior in Skids at his disposal but doesn’t regard him as anything other than another crewmember, in fact he referrs to him as a criminal rather than anything more noteable. Magnus does similar.

He brings Rung back but no-one acknowledges it.

He has a brief chat with gods on the other side of a portal that others can’t access and again no-one says a word, not even Rung.

So yes, he’s awesome, but no-one seems to care. Which prevents his awesome-ness rendering everyone else on board pointless. And that doesn’t bug him either. Its all quite odd.

Perhaps the only place Skids will really come into his own will be working with Megatron.

[Terome]

Showing Minimus’s corpse on the floor with half his side missing… this is not the irreducible version of Minimus Ambus. If you look at his design in ‘Remain in Light’, this is the outer shell Mimimus that attaches to the Magnus armour. I’m wondering if whoever killed him knew about the Magnus armour but not necessarily about the tiniest version of Minimus.

Jeez, never even thought about the irreducible Minimus. Not sure what narrative function a surviving Magnus would have but that's definitely a possibility.

Does Magnus have three transformation cogs then or just the one in his innermost form? That's a reader's letter question for sure.

This right here is probably what galvanised the Decepticon movement I reckon - and speaks volumes about Megatron's leadership style - it seems more managerial than anything else.

I bet this is how the Decepticons got to be the force they were in Cybertronian society.

Pax is quick and inspiring, whilst Megatron appears to do things excellently and may be someone deserving of a ‘Worlds Best Boss’ mug. I think it would be a great turn of events if the Decepticons genuinely love him. In many continuities he leads through fear, which isn’t very interesting.

These few issues have really established Megatron as Optimus' equal. The lead-through-fear angle still applies but only to the extremities. His inner circle and fellow founders like Starscream and Ravage would probably be spared such desperate measures like discipline-by-DJD.

I get the sense that Megatron might have lost it when he was in the empire-building days. This kind of hands-on management style really wouldn't extend to multiple worlds and fiefdoms run by the useful nutjobs he'd used to wallop the Autobots.

[Auntie Slag]

The thing that bugs me now is Rung’s comment about he and Megatron probably not getting the chance to talk again. His line to Skids in Issue 11 “Its Rung… forever”. How much of a grasp does he have on everything, and is he able to influence anything, as in save lives? Or is it his awareness of parallel universes that stops him intervening to save lives because it doesn’t matter? Is there only one Rung across all timelines?

Why save Pipes when there's millions of other Pipes all happily chugging along not being stomped by Overlord?

[Summerhayes]

Did you just take that single line and extrapolate it to mean Rung is some sort of universe straddling superbeing?
Bravo.

[Death's Head]

universe straddling

Phwoar!

[zigzagger]

Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #33 three-page preview by way of iTunes.

[optimusskids]

Oooo look it's a sonic screwdriver sorry I meant wrench

[Unicron]

Surprised by the lack of replies to this point. Well, I guess there's nothing overly meaty in this preview so that would explain it.

Hmmm... they're checking out the quantum engines. I'm now betting they 'fix' things in good old Star Trek style technobabble fashion. You know, "re-align the deflector dish to emit a tachyon pulse" type BS.
Though I'm expecting it'll be something like keying this Lost Light's engines to the quantum signature of the LL we've been following (probably gotten by scanning Skids, who has been on our LL through more jumps than any of the others), and activating a jump, thus restoring everyone on board to the version we know.

[zigzagger]

Yeah, as far as previews go, this one just isn't giving me a whole lot to work with. I'm pretty much left with the same questions I had last issue.

Maintains the horror-mystery tone though, which I'm enjoying.

As for the 'fix'... mmmm, I'm going with 'a deviously planted clue from a few issues back that eluded most us' that ends up saving the day

[Knightdramon]

My theory/ies

This could be a phobia shield or something [like the one in SL: Hoist] that attached to Rodimus's brain and projects his worst fears

--Crew killed, himself dead, spaceship torn apart, all because he let Prowl put Overlord on board and the DJD found them because of that

Or it could be an alternate timeline brought together by some quantum mechanic wizardness thing

Either way, THANKFULLY, unlike the last issue, this has not been f*cking hyped to death by anybody, or I just missed it all, meaning my expectations won't be absurdly high.

[zigzagger]

Full preview is up @ Newsarama.


No surprise, for me anyway, but...

SPOILER! (select to read)

Nautica all-out confirms what most of us were already suspecting; the quantum duplicate thingy is indeed accurate.


Duplicate Rodimus's demise, however, turns out to be slighter more... humiliating than I was expecting. Death by showboating, essentially.

Well, death by standing too close to a quantum generator when it's about to flout the laws of nature, but you get what I mean.

[Red Dave Prime]

If nothing else, this promises to be a fascinating look at what might have been. Cant wait.