I found this one the most boring of all truthfully.

 

Honestly, I feel like this Spotlight would fit better if read with Police Action. It clears up a couple of plot holes from that, too.

(This isn't the last Phase 1 plot thread that will be picked up on, though, especially by Barber.)

 

I've been out of the loop from TF comics for a while so I forget a lot about Spotlight Bumblebee aside from the basic plot and finding it cute. It is a generally good little side note in the final two Costa story arcs that left me with a bit of a smile at the end, as best I can remember.

 

Don't know if you've ever seen Disney's Gargoyles but they also handled this subject. Each Gargoyle is unique in color and features, so they all "know each other". The concept of having a name is odd to them, (except their leader, who was christened Goliath by the humans.)

This could theoretically also apply to Cybertronians who mostly have unique heraldry (colors), a limited range of alt modes, and often unique features.

 

i'm sure this has been talked to death somewhere on this board, but what's the deal with Prime vehicons anyway?
the story treats them like drones, except where the writers wanted to make a quip or whatever and then they have a personality for a scene?
where do you draw the line between a drone and sentient mechanical life?
i'm losing my grip what does anything mean anyway?

 

They're full fledged Cybertronians. Starscream has a vote taken to determine the course of action, they've got sparks, Breakdown and others comments on how they've got the short end of the stick doing menial but necessary jobs, the miner mouths off to Ratchet about being a disgusting Autobot. They're also killed by the Spark Extractor, a weapon of sentient mass destruction.

It's one of those points that the show doesn't really want you to think about; that the Autobots are mass murderers and are a small team of half a dozen who doesn't think twice about killing 500+ of their own kin on a foreign world because of an emblem on their chest. (Yes, there's a thread where someone kept a running count of deceased Vehicons; he only did up to somewhere in Season 2 and was at over 600)

I haven't seen anyone argue that the Prime Vehicons were anything but Cybertronians after about episode 4 aired.

As to the other question, there have been a lot of drones, Beast Machines in particular had a lot, all of which aren't sentient and don't possess sparks, making them lifeless drones to other Cybertronians.

 

Boatformer: Just because a CGI cartoon takes a shortcut and clones dozens of genaricons because they don't have the budget to render individual extras doesn't invalidate my point.

Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen were all on the same mold and Jazz's transformation wasn't far off. And the Seekers were basically "generics" but they had individual colors.

My overall point is that Transformers are identifiable not only by their name but also their colors, and they don't really speak English. So there might be some really efficient way in their native tongue to communicate, "Red-Blue Truck, Leader" or "White-Red Jet, Liar"

 

Just a quick exposition on my prior point:

There's only 6 primary colors and with black white & grey that takes you to 9.

Assuming two identifier colors per bot that reduces your color identity to a two digit value with no zero. Alt modes could be quantified by catagory, air, land, sea, stationary, so that's a number from 0-3 and a suffix denoting specifics such as size, weight class, armor. So that Rewind and Metroplex (two black and white with red stationary Transformers aren't confused)

I'm probably putting too much thought into this though.

 

More Than Meets The Eye Annual 2012 – Primus: You, Me and Other Revelations

Funny, clever, lots of obscure G1 references (Fullstasis, Argon Nebulae), and an almost-too-neat resolution – this is MTMTE in a nutshell. 4/5

This issue is, in essence, all about belief, or lack thereof: Cyclonus’ and Drift’s belief in the Primus creation mythology, Ultra Magnus’ self-belief and his belief in the law, Ratchet’s atheism, Swerve’s lack of self-belief, and – crucial to the ending – the Metrotitan’s new-found belief in the Transformers as a race.

We open with a scene set inside Ultra Magnus’s head – in the same vein as the G1 cartoon episode “Microbots”, a group of Autobots have been reduced in size and are wandering about inside another Transformer’s body. In most other variations on the “Fantastic Voyage” theme, this would have formed the main crux of the story, but here it’s relegated to a pre-credit teaser (although, as we shall see, it will have more bearing on the plot that initially seems to be the case). The punchline to this section sees Ultra Magnus smile for the first time in years, and this initial embarrassment forms the beginning of a personal journey for him – one of the two main character through-lines of the issue.

When the Lost Light arrives at the Crystal City, the ship is confronted by the Galactic Council, a sort of space-police who hate Transformers (understandably). They ask Ultra Magnus to join their ranks, but he declines. Is it because he sees the Lost Light as the place where he’s needed most? Or is it because – as the text implies – he’s beginning to soften, developing emotional ties with his crewmates? The answer is left deliberately vague, but it still represents an interesting showcase for a character who – up to this point – has been the “over-officious beaurocrat” and little else. It’s nice to see him get a little more depth here.

The other Autobot to get a major part here is Swerve. He’s still incredibly upset over the shooting of Rung, and – when he gets into a conversation with the previously-dead Ore – begins to ponder the nature of existence. Again, Swerve has been another character who’s seemed a little one-dimensional thus far (the office joker), so again it’s nice to see that, beneath the brash exterior, there lurks a more melancholy soul. That’s the real success of this story – the way it adds additional facets to characters we thought we already knew.

This dissection of Swerve’s faith occurs whilst a similar conversation is going on in the Crystal City. When a party from the Lost Light arrive at the city, they find it ravaged and deserted. They also discover a Metrotitan. Explaining the Metrotitans’ importance to the Cybertronian creation mythos, Cyclonus provides us with a little flashback to ancient Cybertron (amusingly, it’s drawn and coloured like an old Marvel comic, complete with Ben-Day dots).

It soon transpires that the recent odd incidents (Ore coming back to life; the infestation inside Ultra Magnus) were due to the Lost Light’s proximity to the Metrotitan. The Lost Light crew save the behemoth (using the shrink ray from the opening scene), and in return, the giant Transformer conveniently magics all their troubles away, er, I mean, uses his extradimensional powers to free Ore and enable the Lost Light to escape the clutches of the Council.

It’s an odd ending – on the one hand it feels like a really convenient Magic Plot Resolution, but equally there’s a sense that this victory was earned: the Autobots solved the mystery, Swerve made sure that Ore was made comfortable (against Rodimus Prime’s orders), and the Metrotitan’s restored belief in the Transformers mirrored the themes that had been running through the issue since page one; Brainstorm’s shrink ray proved to be a Chekov’s Gun that helped unlock the mystery. So while some elements were solved rather too neatly, the journey to get to that end point made it feel satisfying nevertheless.

And, as always, nothing in this title is ever as self-contained as it appears: the story of the Crystal City is far from over, Swerve’s road to recovery is just beginning, and it seems inevitable that the council will turn up again in future. An annual this may be, but it seems absolutely integral to the main story, far more so than the recent one-shot spotlight issues such as Hoist and Trailcutter.

Oh, and I loved the joke that Rodimus Prime was using the line “Til all are one” too much. A sly dig at Flint Dille’s over-use of movie quotes in Autocracy, maybe?

Also, one of Mortilus’ ships is obviously drawn to look like the USS Enterprise.

 

Penny for your thoughts on The Guiding Hand? Since this was our first real look at what was supposedly, Cybertron’s ancient history.

And despite this being an Annual, we wouldn’t get another one for 5 years.

 

I was never a fan of “The Thirteen” and Regeneration One cured me of my love for all things Primus-related. The idea of ancient, magical gods in Transformers kinda bums me out, because no author has ever made them interesting. Unicron was far more menacing in the original Movie, where he was still unknown and a bit of a mystery. Turning him into Transformer-Satan was a painfully obvious move and immediately made him a walking cliché.

My favourite origin story is probably the cartoon one, at this point. Quintessons, Primacron and all.

Have to say I’m a bit nervous about this guiding hand malarkey (just the 13 by a different name, more or less), but I’m willing to reserve judgment because - hey - maybe Roberts can make it work?

Of course, Cyclonus might also be an unreliable narrator.

 

I don't like this as much as the RID annual, but it was still a touching story. I enjoyed Magnus's little character arc, Swerve talking to Ore before he heads off to heaven (Thats what I got from it), and a new creation myth for the Transformers that unlike previous Transformers origins, presents Primus not as an actual being but rather just a being of faith, like all the gods we've had in history.

A bit of a heavy annual but I remember having fun with it. Whats next? ... Oh. Oh!  

 

A recurring theme throughout these comics is how out of touch the Transformers seem to be with their own history. Cause there seems to be no recorded history of Cybertron’s ancient days, just bits and pieces. And so a good majority write off the Guiding Hand(which are not meant to be replacement for the Thirteen) are written off as myth.

Further insight into Cybertron’s ancient history will come in much later issues on Barber’s side of the story.

 

Mtmte is going to get a WHOLE lot better from here on out. Your in for a treat

 

That was exactly it. Storywise, anyway. The art was gash save for Guidi's contribution.

 

It is odd that a race of near-immortal beings have such a vague recollection of history.

For the longest time, I shrugged it off (like most do) that it was a reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyREALLYreallyrreallyreally,,,,,*gasp* reallyreallyREALLYreally long time ago *phew*

But I'm seriously starting to wonder if Transformers, as a race, suffer some sort of chronic memory degradation. Like when your hard drive starts over writing old sectors? Given enough time/input (and it varies from bot to bot, or Grimlock to Kup as the case might be) Cybertronians "loose" memories as they are overwritten. Their 'default personality matrix' however remains which is why they say the same personality, however without memories impacting their personalities they never evolve.

They are still a long lived species so this memory loss isn't usually noticed in th lifespan of most humanoids but now that we have crossovers with,,,

Spoiler

Rom who is supposedly hundreds of years old

*oh wait I shouldn't mention that here*

maybe someday they may explore that?

To a degree, fragile Cybertronian memory was addressed in Spotlight Kup but not across the whole race.

 

Spoiler

Isn't that whole thing kind-of addressed with that "memory creep" dealio towards the beginning of MTMTE season 2?

 

On the subject of bad Cybertronian memories, a similar sort of thing happened in the G1 comics: all the Transformers seemed to recall that the Scraplet plague nearly wiped out Cybertron millions of years ago, and nobody remembered what the cure was, even though millions of years ago should really have been within the lifetimes of most Transformers.

 

I've always imagined that Transformers have finite storage space for memories, so any memories they think they don't need anymore they just delete. If they all live forever and remember everything, what would they need with a Hall of Records, or a storage asteroid, or any other type of knowledge repository that's shown up over the years?