Except that he DID try to kill the crew.

For that matter, he doesn't know about the second briefcase. And given he's in the process of trying to erase a timeline, for him what happens to the crew in said timeline is irrelevant. He just needs to delay long enough to get away.

 

Rodimus guesses that he tried to kill the crew, but failed because watered down energon, but Brainstorm could have factored that in. And we don't know what it is that he wants to change and what he thinks the future would look like. Maybe he went back for something else and ended up in a mess (by why he needed to do that in secret is another matter).

 

Supporting the previous theory, Maybe he tried to kill the Crew because they, going back to stop him, caused the paradox... But, It's already going to happen due to the Grandafther Paradox.. Someones going to get fucked up by the end of this.

 

This issue was holy crap intensifies.

Megatron's breakdown and that line that you've finally become a fully fleged member once you have on......

 

"Here's a timeline where things went peacefully and there was no Decepticon uprising. Cybertron is pristine, no millions of years of civil war, only mild protests. It is so much worse."


Think about how much of the population they just killed off with the datasticks! That's the third most populous altmode. They're visibly everywhere. And now... gone.

 

Well, now we know that Rewind was forged.

 

I'm pretty sure he is consciously having to stop and choose a lot of this stuff. He remembers how he was, and how Optimus Prime is. He's done deception and putting on a face before, obviously, this time he just is doing it with more attempt to be that way. But he really did have a change of heart, because he's old, and he saw his way fail *so spectacularly* that Starscream ended up leader of Cybertron, and then Bumblebee called him on his crap, and then he saw he had to change to stop Shockwave and save his species, one thing he's always cared about.

Fortunately, 'command a ship' is relatively within his skillset that he used as a Decepticon. Giving orders. I mean, he may not have a Starscream, but 'do this, do that,' and have it obeyed still comes easy for him. It'd be harder if he had to do something even more unusual. And Rodimus is close enough to Starscream for some purposes...

 

I wonder if Roberts ever laughs manically when writing?

 

I wonder if he ever stops laughing manically while writing.

 

Because the war is over, he lost.

 

I know I wouldn't if i was him.  

 

Megatron is smart.

Megatron is an obsessive genius. An immortal obsessive genius.

Every four million years or so he has an epiphany and devotes his life to it.

I twigged to that when Roberts published the "Towards Peace" excerpt in #6 where Megatron said he would destroy his weapon when he murdered violence out of the universe.

 

One possibility, in the time of peace, the Arcee process simply caught on at some point (voluntarily), or they experimented with making bots like that. Peace means no higher priorities to take precedence.

 

That kind of goes against the functionist regime.

Then again it's not as bad as "they evolved that way." (seriously do people just not know what evolution is?)

 

One of the thoughts that jumped out at me reading the issue is:

"What if Dominus Ambus becomes Brainstorm?"

Dominus has got cause to want to burn everything to the ground. And we know he has intelligence to boot.

Question is if the process Dominus went through can be undone so he can return to a "normal" transformer again.

 

It doesn't affect function one way or another, though, so I think it'd be allowed. Maybe encouraged- you can express your individually without affecting your alt mode.


And it could've been in the Senate days, before the Functionist council was *it*.

I take it as short-hand for 'build styles changed in this direction.'

 

Ooh, I like that theory  

There's just so much going on in this issue it felt more like a full blown graphic novel.

There's some really, really dark story-telling going on here - Roberts really deserves credit for adding some serious sci-fi to Transformers. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the ending, it just hit so many notes perfectly.

Just... bravo.

 

Well, re: the females, we don't know if Caminus made contact with Cybertron in the intervening 4 million years of no war or not.

That may have changed things.

 

There is still a Lo~ot more living cybertronians in this timeline....

I'd think what it really tells us is an ideal timeline would be one which went about until the Zeta Prime events, then had the Autobots win quickly and/or once Zeta was down, Megatron propose a power-sharing that gets accepted, or something like that.

Major reform is needed, but 'ravaging the planet to ruin and reducing the species to 0.1% it's number' still looks pretty darn bad.

 

Awesome issue!
Poor Trailcutter, and that Rodimus Star..
Loved the conversation between Chromedome and Rewind. Theyre really just confused, aren't they?
Also, not sure if anyone's noticed yet, but when Chromedome said "My offer still stands just say the word." Did anyone else feel like was talking about using mnemosurgery to remove Rewind's memory of the DJD attacking?
Well, that's a rather dark ending... Can't wait to find out what happens next.