the implication is that

Spoiler

Caminus, after reaching the planet/planetoid and birthing the Camiens chose to have his body disassembled and spread across the world, forming the basis of their cities. But his mind and spark were preserved and and the cityspeakers were given the task of interacting and translating for him...which makes sense because...if he had his body dissected, he'd have no other way of communicating.

 

Fraid not. Metroplex refers to Caminus as he throughout and Caminus certainly looks like a dude. Plus we have explicit confirmation of male Camiens as in Issue 1, we have two female Cityspeakers and one male, which was doubly confirmed by Mairghread in an interview. She made a point of ensuring we saw a "standard" male bot in that scene.

 

Okay.

Starscream... was awesome.

I'm serious. Starscream's been at his best here since the beginning of the comic. When he's angry, he's terrifying. It's an odd trait for a character who's usually associated with his cowardice, but for once Starscream is portrayed as a legitimate threat. And I think that, of all the characters in this comic, Scott knows how to write Starscream the best. He's smug, he's self-absorbed, he's bigoted, he's conniving... but deep down, he still cares for Cybertron. And that, in my humble opinion, has made him an excellent antagonist.

On the other hand... why was Chromia responsible for the bombing? What happened to Ironhide, or the other guys who got sprung from the prison? Where's Rattrap? We don't know. And that's my biggest beef with this issue: For a finale, it doesn't wrap things up very well. Granted, there's another Windblade mini on the horizon, but as it is we have no idea what happened to the supporting cast. They could be dead for all I know.

Another thing that frustrates me is that Chromia and Starscream both get let off the hook for doing horrible things. Seriously, what the hell??

The cameos were cool. The Micromasters, the Fuzors, Knockout... all nice touches. But I have no idea what they add to the story.

I bought this issue to complete the run, but it was kind of underwhelming. On the positive side, the artwork here was positively gorgeous. I look forward to further work from Stone.

 

Spoiler

Whelp, my soul is broken. But at least the cameos were nice, I want to see Knockout and Injector have a vanity off.

 

Digilaut only made a slight mistake (check the edit), also that post from me is only me claiming that I like that theory and that I'm adding it to my personal canon.

Yeah, this issue made Starscream look amazing as a character because he was actually Competent for once.

Chromia was responsible because she's Windblade's bodyguard and only wanted to protect her (by sending her back to Caminus- where she would likely be protected by the other Cityspeakers).

The reason for this is pretty simple- if the NAILs found out that two of the higher-ups in the government were destroying the city there would be chaos so it's better for all involved if everything is just hushed up.

I have a feeling that the cameos were set up for the future (maybe Windblade Returns will focus on the other colonies of Cybertron)

Now that I would pay to see.

 

So colony worlds... Just imagine if there is a Planet Master, and the Lost Light crew met them.

Brainstorm- "We went to this planet where everyone was really small, but they formed heads and guns and engines for bigger bodies. Then Hot Rod pissed off their leader, and it turns out he forms the head of a guy who forms the head of a guy whose even bigger than Metroplex,, and he looked just like you!

 

This needs to happen.

 

"Colony titans" simply means titans who went as generation ships as opposed to Metroplex who stayed on Cybertron.
This term is used when WB is merged with Metroplex and it's more his way of talking.
The only colony titan named by Metroplex is Caminus, who's of the same size.

Also, Caminus is a dead titan and a resources-starved colony. Citizen of Caminus needs to be relocated to Cybertron, probably.
Behold all new fembots in IDW continuity, immigrants to Cybertron.
What a simple, yet efficient, solution.

 

Caminus is still alive but is split up into pieces so people are still going to live there even if people want move away- the Cityspeakers still care for him.

 

Technically true, but more precisely would be to call him brain dead or a vegetable. He's functioning, but Metroplex can't even connect with him.
Anyhow, Windblade's mini gave us justification for other female characters in canon and Starscream finally kicking lesser bots as he should.
Suprisingly, the main character worked mostly as a plot device than anything else. That's a twist.

 

Yeah people have been complaining that Windblades one notable trait has been naivety and now she shows some real cunning and political intelligence and people aren't happy with that, either. We don't know Chromia won't get punished in some form either, it just won't be public. Windblades solution ends the conflict and keeps things settled and Starscream on side. I really hope the consequences of Chromias' actions are addressed in the future mini-series even if it just the impact on her friendship with Windblade.

Really happy with how it turned out, I really didn't want Chromia to be the Big Bad but it was handled so well. Great to get a TF comic that really doesn't have an antagonist really, it was all misdirection.

Yeah, though all we know is that Caminus won't survive without help (the colony, not the titan), it certainly opens up a way to introduce load more fembots into the setting by having permanent contact set up between Cybertron and Caminus. But I don't think the implication is all Caminus will be evacuated to Cybertron, it depends id 'bring them home' is literal or more symbolic, uniting the colonies with Cybertron via the space bridge.

I am so happy with Windblade, I know the plot and the art isn't to everyones taste but for me it has been non-stop brilliance.

 

Well, didn't want to spoil. but in the scene just before the bomb goes off (bottom of page 19 I think), there's "clk!" right next to Chromia's foot. Now at the time, that seemed to obviously be just the bomb about to go off, oh my god death and destruction. In retrospect, it's her triggering the bomb. Which is something you need in a good mystery. MTMTE is a master of the bloody thing. Not just obvious clues, but things when you re-read them take on an entirely new meaning.

The Camiens thought Cybertron would be a glorious world that would save them. She finds it a world full of divdes war and what she sees as terrible people. She also sees that her cityspeaker, her responsibility, is tied to Metroplex and has become concerned with helping Cybertron. As Windblade says, she is now of both worlds. Chromia just sees pyschos and dissidents. So she, as someone who is confirmed as quite capable of killing, goes to extreme lengths because she hates this place and just wants them all to go home. You could even suggest that she thinks Windblade is only tied to Metroplex and by making this weakened person follow her lead, she'd have made sure Windblade's reason for staying came with them, not realising that Windblade has started to care about the people.

Windblade cares about the deaths but...she's changed how she plays things. See below

and I'd suggest the Metroplex scene is intentionally confusing. Two minds, one seemingly infinite, mergin. It's logically going to be amazingly confused. who is who, where are they etc.

I would argue that many of the things you're not happy with...are the point of the conclusion. Windblade makes the point of her duty and that she'll do what needs to be done, regardless of the politics or the credit. At the start she viewed Cybertron as in an idealistic fashion, now she's playing the game. The point is that everyone gets off, because she can't afford to try and make them pay. She still needs Chromia, and she can't make Starscream pay, so she's now playing by his rules. Plus remember, Starscream is the most powerful person on the planet. How do a handful of former autobots, decepticons and aliens convince the world that supports him to punish him. Instead she uses him the same way he hoped to use her.

But if he's braindead...why have cityspeakers. What function do they fill that engineers can't? They've reference communing with titans and Caminus before, and while Metroplex says he can't find his TRACER, he eventually finds Caminus. I think Caminus has to be still mentally alive or the cityspeaker concept falls apart. If Caminus is dead, Cityspeakers can't be properly trained. you can't learn to communicate with a dead man. If Cityspeakers were only meant to activate various functions, yeah, tap into his brain make things work, but they have to learn the language, they have to learn two way communication. Impossible with a dead titan. I think it's far more likely his corpse, which it would be after this, was sacrificed but Caminus remains alive...but hardly in a state where he's going to be powerful or easily traceable.

totally for limited resources. makes perfect sense. Caminus being brain dead just doesn't

 

I'm not necessarily against Chromia being the 'villain' of the piece, but Windblade deciding to sit on it and let her get away with murdering three people seems really out of character.

For what it's worth, though, Windblade isn't hanging around with Chromia anymore in the chronologically later Punishment miniseries. I'd like to think she's at least shunning her somewhat for what she did.

 

It's a great example of character development- Windblade has gone from this naïve young 'bot to someone who is able to survive and thrive in politics, I don't know why people are complaining about it.

Well uniting the colonies under Cybertron would be beneficial for Starscream as it would give him an empire that would rival the ancients- and this issue did really hint that's what Windblade and Starscream's plan for the future is going to be.

 

I don't agree. I think Windblade is young and in a leadership position and she is starting to make tough decisions for the greater good, including letting Chromia get away unpunished officially in order to keep Cybertron unified.

As you say Chromia seems to being shunned by Windblade in Punishment which for someone as devoted to Windblade as Chromia would hurt.

Exactly. I'm so happy with this.

 

I don't believe Chromia intended to kill anyone, she probably justified the deaths as a means to an end - to protect Windblade.

I'll be interested to see how this picks up in RiD and in the sequel. It's probably gonna be a while before Windblade trusts her again.

 

Overrated boring snooze-fest.

 

Thank you for that insightful and in depth analysis.

 

What do you want, a review the size of an encyclopedia when it can be simply put in just a few words? It's not like you'd feel any less butthurt by it.