This is what makes or breaks and issue of MTMTE for me, I used to think it was just the humor not clicking for me, but the more I think about it the 'straight men'/'funny men' dynamic is probably why I still remember the Delphi arc very clearly despite reading it only one or twice a few years ago.

 

Man... the Delphi remains i think, my fave short story from the whole run so far. Self contained and a hell of a lot of fun.

I just realised, following the last page of this thread, reading all the posts, particularly Ryan's and the comment by The Madness, that Ryan's analytical and thought provoking reviews are going to gelp the IDW-verse 'live' a little while longer for me, and help me appreciate it in ways that i wouldnt be able to just reading it alone.

Having the rest of us contribute, and discuss more reasonably, long after the individual issues have been discussed to death on the issue threads, is very satisfying in itself.

So, thanks everyone - this thread is most awesome to participate in .

 

Yeah, I probably have missed the point on Swerve if I'm honest... to be fair in a lot of films and TV shows there are characters who I know the writers want me to root for but I just end up hating (especially when the 'hero' is played by James Nesbitt, Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand).

Aw, shucks!

Actually, my critical skills need a lot of work. I often watch a show or read a book, and then read a review where the critic points out a whole bunch of stuff - themes, connections, homages etc. that I failed to spot.

Similarly, I really like a lot of stuff that's been critically panned (or had mixed reviews) . Sometimes a piece of art just resonates with me, and I'm unable to fully explain why I like something. Carnage in C-Minor is one of my favourite G1 episodes; the Ang Lee Hulk is my favourite Marvel movie; Bucks Fizz are my favourite pop group.

All I can promise to do is read a comic and say what I think about it - any super insight or new takes should be considered a bonus!

 

Carnage in C is a garbage plot but Soundwave gets lots of lines (in Season 3!) so it all works out in the end.

 

Unsubscribed!


 

 

I’m not alooooooone!

Well, okay, it’s not my favorite but I liked it more than the ‘08 film if nothing else.

 

Having seen other Ang Lee flicks I kinda knew his theme. I've always thought 70's Hulk (the one 90% of America seems to remember) was an allegory for alcohol abuse (always leaving town after a fight and starting over) and the Ang Lee movie focused on child abuse.

Spoiler

Juuuust in case you haven't seen it, Bruce Banner was weaponized by his father using genetic engineering. The gamma rays accidentally triggered them but he was always intended to be used as some sort of weapon,,,, from BIRTH, by his father. Dayyum!

I never got Seinfeld.

 

Crikey, I know those are only examples, but I don't think Swerve is meant to be likeable in the same way as a Gervais or Brand character. He's portrayed as 'in-show' annoying right from the very start, and I think you're meant to sympathise with the other characters who put up with him. For me, the triumph of this issue (which I found otherwise a little bit twee) was Swerve's flashback to being fobbed off by Blurr. It reveals he's a character who has to constantly lie to himself and everyone else in order to feel like he's worth something. Having known such people in real life, I'd have been disappointed if Roberts had shown him having one revelatory encounter and then mending his ways. The problem with these types of people is always more endemic and self-reinforcing. On some level, they know they're just making things worse for themselves and using up the good will people extend to them, but they can't stop doing it.

I certainly used to consider MTME at its best to be an exploration of various types of damaged people - the kind who don't get easy redemptive character arcs. Rodimus is pretty clearly marked out from the get-go as a crushingly insecure egoist who is going to get everyone into trouble repeatedly in his mad pursuit of glory. Drift has turned to religion, thinking it holds all the answers - and is only going to cling harder and more fanatically the more it lets him down. Ultra Magnus has written his entire purpose into the upholding a rigid code, Chromedome is essentially a recovering addict ... etc etc.

I'd like to think so.

 

This in a nutshell is what the Lost Light has always been about. Thank you for summing it up so succinctly.

They are war veterans with PTSD and trying to cope in a,,,,, new world order (for lack of a better term)

I understand the need for a relaunch (NUMBERS BABY!!!) but as a coda for this last quasi-G1 it's been a heck of a ride.

 

Which leads to the clever juxtaposition here - Tailgate is equally full of bluster, and also tries to 'big himself up' in the eyes of his fellow travellers - but where Tailgate has Cyclonus to act as a confidante/guardian angel, Swerve doesn't really have anyone to help take the edge off his flaws - and his unsuccessful quest for a room-mate just hammers home the point that he doesn't have his own 'Cyclonus' to rein him in.

Indeed, Swerve's jokes, his extrovert behaviour... even the Hawaiian shirt of his avatar - this is a robot who wants to be noticed. Maybe in his past he was constantly being overlooked, perhaps didn't have as many friends as other Autobots. Are his attention-seeking ways an attempt to redress some of that loneliness? Is it better to be remembered as 'the loud, obnoxious one' than to not be remembered at all?

 

This exactly. This is why Swerve has always worked for me. He started out as a guy who used humor to completely deflect his lack of self-worth, his sense that "importance" was made by achievement. Having been part of a rigid military structure for years, who can blame him? But when he acquired friends, when he... well, later in the series when he does things... we start to see a more whole person emerge.

To me, this is the entire idea of MTMTE/Lost Light: the idea that the war represents childhood for this species, and now they are all being forced to reckon with adulthood. In the crisis mode of childhood and young adulthood, it can work to be The Funny One, The Rules Jockey, The Religious Type, etc, but as an adult, when one seeks to become a more whole person, one suffers a lot of awful disappointments and crushing heartache before one gets a better sense of self.

 

Hmm...I don't know if Cyclonus would be a key difference here. Granted, he does act as a bit of a filter, keeping Tailgate from letting his ambitions overflow to the point of self-destruction, but I believe the root desire may be different enough in this case.

On one hand, Swerve seems to crave attention for attention's sake. he wants to be seen, he wants to be experienced (not the adjective, the verb, he wants people to experience him), ultimately, he wants to be remembered. He wants people in years to come to remember him as a good person who had adventures, maybe hob-knobbed with the elites (Blurr). He wants a legacy. Everyone knows him as a loudmouth, Swerve wants to try and make himself more than that.

Tailgate seems to have the same ambition, but on a shorter time table. He also wants to be seen, but merely for the lack of being noticed before. He wants people to think he's an important figure. He wants to be known. He wants people to recognize him, maybe know him for a gimmick ("Finger on the head!"). Having Cyclonus as someone he remembers from his past is a good thing, but he wants to make his mark in the world he lives in now. He wants fame. No one knows who he really is, he wants to be noticed.

So that seems to be the key for me. Swerve wants to be remembered, Tailgate wants to be known.

 

Oh come on, why do I have to be the bad guy?

Hey Ryan, good news (well,, sort of.)

The series will definitely END at some point. At least that's the rumor.

So you won't have to do this forever.
 

 

Heh. Your purple's showing...

 

...i can finally participate in this thread!..

...so, last year - after an eighteen-year hiatus from transformers media, in recognition that the modern continuities had legitimately eclipsed G1 in scope - i decided to consume each of their modern iterations with a completely open mind: the prepetually-intriguing-wiki-noted IDW comics, the widely-derided live-action films, and the surprisingly-well-regarded prime/rescue-bots/robots-in-disguise animated series...i'd already spent a few years tentatively exploring how to best pursue the sprawling wash of IDW titles, mini-series, one-shots, and trades in a sparsely-stocked marketplace before ultimately reaching the same conclusion as ryan (that the IDW collection hardcovers handily sorted through the mess for folks in exactly my position, and were reasonably priced to boot) and taking the plunge with volume one in january of 2017...

...boy, were those first volumes kind of a disjointed effort to follow!..i slogged along, struggling to recognise many of the characters and myriad scattered plot threads, before finally digging online for some good point-by-point read-alongs around the time i was in volume three, and stumbling upon this rather-formidable thread...

...so it's been about eighteen months of catch-up, reading one or two issues of the comics followed by the pertinent discussion herein, and it looks like now i'll be steaming ahead of ryan in short order...so many times i've yearned to pipe in with my own take on anachronistic discourse from a year or two ago, especially on the frequent occasions where i've adored issues ryan loathed and vice-versa, but now that we're firmly in phase two the sea change in quality and consistency is profound: lots of great reading and very few outright clunkers, even if my preferences do tend to swing opposite ryan's own...

...for what it's worth, yeah, i'm old-school G1 (used to moderate the RTT usenet group, in fact), but i've since learned to appreciate the newer continuities on their own terms...in the IDW books, while i found furman's world-building intriguing, i felt his plotting was hackneyed and his scripts were often amateurish; it won't win me many fans, but the drift miniseries and all hail megatron were highlights of phase one to my eyes...phase two, without hesitation the delphi arc (MTMTE 4-5) is as good as comics get to me...

...i'm very much looking forward to reading where the IDW comics take me from here, and sincerely hope that they end more gracefully than the live-action film series sputtered out: i'm optimistic, in this case!..

 

I hope Ryan gets back to this soon, he’s still got a long way to go.

 

...yeah, i was surprised by the pace of the last ten pages or so...

 

Welcome to the fold! I find your situation quite familiar. I'd been keeping up somewhat with modern visual TF sources (still haven't watched TF5 though), but I'd been unfamiliar with the comics. Another TF fan friend started talking to me about them during the MTMTE/RiD run and they REALLY piqued my interest. I went the less user friendly, but more storage convenient, road however, through the Transformers comic book app on my ipad. However I started at the MTMTE/RiD jump on point and have been rebooting every 6 months or so. After going through those 2 books I jumped back to AHM and the eponymous title, then again I rebooted back to the -ations and added in some spotlights and the wreckers and dinobots side stories. Now I've rebooted chronologically and I'm going through Origin Megatron and the -acy series, which should get me pretty close to the entire IDW continuity on digital (aside from the recent stuff in the expanded universe titles).

Planning on taking my new chronological read through all the way to current and into the final issues of IDW. Gonna be an interesting ride.

 

I had to go back a few pages to see where Ryan left off. (April!?! I hope he's okay?)

Definitely "the Delphi Arc" is the pivotal story for MTMTE/LL. Everything that is unique to the Lost Light storyline weaves through here. Delphi introduces the DJD. DJD leads to the Scavengers. Scavengers leads to Grimlock. And this all is still relevant as the series nears the end.


But damnit Ryan! Get back on this, you haven't gotten to the "Season 1 Finale!"

Spoiler

OMG what if he read it and couldn't go on? The feels! Oh the feels!

 

Oh damn, yeah he's on the lead in to "Remain in the Light". Wouldn't be surprised if doesn't know where to start. This is a rough patch.