It means she is drawn well from the previews.

The art is done well so far from the previews I am not crazy about the char as written.

 

Me and a friend were talking about this a couple of months ago pre-devastator and pre RiD annual. I'd actually like to see him succeed to be honest. Keep him in character, self-serving and all but while being himself, actually win out for the greater good of Cybertron.

But to misquote Jules Winfield, that ain't the truth.

The truth is, Screamer will be busted from his killing Metalhawk. Someone saw it or has footage and that'll be what gets him thrown out on his kiester (or worse). I don't think Barber has the deftness it would take to write Starscream in character (which is acting in his own interest at all costs) while still doing good for Cybertron.

Roberts on the other hand...  

 

The only half way sensible in-continuity explanation I can see for why there's not many/any female robots (when there was/should be) and from the fandom's point of view there has been for 28 years or more.

Is this ; There's none because Solus Prime was murdered.

How you build on that is up to you you could say Primus was upset so he put a hiatus on Fembots - and the IDW Arcee can be the means to bring them back (kicking a screaming).

But to have with no explanation the idea of Female robots treated as "Mutants" and not-natural is not only sexist (biologically inaccurate as it's males that are the mutation) but also completely out of whack with the "Aligned Continuity" unless the comics choose to address it sensibly to say why.

Simply getting on your high horse and saying "There wasn't any female Transformers in 1984" is stupid ; as it's more by luck that intent - it's quite possible the female Betras Ladybird/ladybug could have got a toy as the missing Deluxe Insecticon before Arcee ever showed up bar a twist of fate (in some markets at least). [Something I still hope a 3rd party corrects one day].

And pretty much every Transformers fiction since has had some sort of Transformers females like Minerva, Energon Arcee, Blackarachnica, and there was a lot of them in season 3 of the cartoon.

Speaking frankly I've always found teen-bot Orion Pax a lot more offensive than any Pink girl robots like Elita-1.

So yes having Arcee as a crazy ninja is bad enough but to have her as some sort of social pariah as well it seems more more a reflection on the character of those writing the comics than the character of Arcee.
She doesn't have to be a robot secretary like in Japan either Prime Arcee is almost ideal aside from some season 2 sulking she's done wonders for the character in terms of being taken seriously.

Anything else seems like a step backwards now to me.

So in conclusion I hope they don't keep this sexist stupidity up forever it's getting as tiresome as Prowl's personality.

 

I kind of like that, particularly because it gets away from stereotyped feminine cues that, in this case, don't make any sense for her anyway. Just because she's had a gender/sex applied to her (which never made any sense anyway) doesn't mean she needs to look like a doll... or alternately, doesn't mean that she shouldn't look like a Transformer (that is to say, as I have always said, that ostensibly female designs have always been inappropriately anthropomorphized compared to the supposedly "male" bots).

Solus Prime is not part of this continuity... at least not yet.

I agree with the first part of your comment, but not the second half...

I agree that it's sexist to treat "female" as some kind of freak mutation/specialization. On the other hand, acknowledging that Transformers have no sex/gender (in this continuity at least) eliminates that problem. Having ornamentally overdetermined feminine traits are arguably more sexist than having none at all.

ie: the idea that "regular" Transformers are inherently "male" is an illusion, one that is only reinforced by introducing extra-girly feminine archetypes later on.

On the second point, for the time being, IDW's G1 is not supposed to be part of the Aligned Continuity, and in my opinion, never should be. The Aligned Continuity was always a problematic idea, and in some cases, it's better to leave some Transformers series separate.

The flaw in that logic is that only the toys were imported from Beetras, and the Ladybug design was never made as a toy. Functionally, that toy and whatever Transformers fan-character would be based on it, doesn't exist.

Also, relying on the "should" or "could" arguments neglects the fact that Transformers were functionally genderless, asexual alien robots in the beginning (and in Marvel) and a substantial portion of the fandom prefers it that way. Arguing that Fembots need to exist in all continuities is perhaps unfair. Despite the fact that gender and sexual dimorphism has not been addressed in any way, Fembots DO exist in most versions of Transformers. I don't think it's too much to ask for one continuity to run with the "genderless" option... especially in IDW where James Roberts has done such interesting things by expanding somewhat on that concept and exploring the potential for emotional pair relationships outside of typical norms.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but I think I agree with you. Or rather, I dislike "teen Orion" as much as girlypink robots... but more or less for the same reasons.

Yes and no. I think Furman's handling of Arcee was a huge problem right from the beginning... but if we are running with his version of the character, then there are some perfectly good reasons for "her" to be a pariah (that are not directly tied to her being a "girl") ...

1. because she is reportedly a violent psychopath who until recently was a maximum security inmate due to her extremely volatile and murderous ways...

...of course it's never been really explained WHY she is a violent psychopath, other than being tortured and experimented on, and "made female" made her "crazy"... which is really a pretty awful explanation, politically speaking.

2. because, as you pointed out, she isn't really female. She isn't a "girl"... she actually IS a mutant. You can't just arbitrarily introduce a "female" into an asexual race. Science doesn't really work that way (Jhiaxus... crazy, remember). Arcee is a standard Cybertronian who was physically and psychologically operated on in ways that make her "different" than other TF's...

...again, a caveat here is that the community of Autobots could actually include her and support her, and help her find some kind of coping mechanism for her difference... something that has been avoided throughout this series, probably because Barber really didn't want to deal with the existential identity-politics can-of-worms that Furman left open on the counter.

Personally, I think that if you're actually interested in some of the potential for speculative fiction in Transformers, and exploring the conceptual territory of what male/female would mean to a bunch of aliens who do not have sexual gender, it would be a very good direction for the RID series to start addressing Arcee's past, her changes, and clarifying the nature of Jhiaxus' experiments, even if it means taking the discussion away from conventional ideas of male or female. But I don't think Barber's up to that.

Meanwhile, Roberts has opened the topic of TF love relationships, and introduced a (symbolic) same-sex couple into Transformers in a sensitive, genuine, intuitive way, one that works both within the science-fiction concept of IDW Transformers AND as a normalizing and implicitly gay-friendly development, without any of the usual fanfare that typically accompanies "coming out" characters in comics.

So yeah... I think the Arcee situation can be handled intelligently and sensitively, but probably not by Barber.

I'm not a big fan of Prime Arcee, and I don't think she's an especially well-written or progressive character... she still hasn't escaped the "token female" pitfalls...

BUT, I have to agree that she's considerably better than any version of Arcee we've gotten in pretty much any version of the fiction up till now, and she does represent a change in a positive direction.

Out of curiosity, which portrayal of Prowl's personality are you objecting to? Because I think he was on track to be a pretty good character up to the point that Costa and Barber gave him a Spike Witwicky Complex.  

As for "sexist stupidity"... we may have different solutions to that issue, but I think we would at least agree that things as they are now are not an acceptable solution, and that IDW finally has to sort out the mess that is Arcee (thanks to Furman, largely).

zmog

 

Also, as an addenda to the above, I think that the best solution for the "male/female" question is this:

Transformers, while being an asexual alien race with history of gender, have been exposed to other alien species for eons. I think it's possible that they might have started adopting genders as a cultural affectation, even if there is no sexual or biological component to go along with it. Basically, bots who encounter organics, and say "I've seen females on this planet, and I think I identify with that "type" more than male types.. so I guess I'm female."

However, to this end, I think it would be better if the exceptionalized over-stylization of Fembot physicality were ended, since gender is primarily a psychological and social construct. So yeah, that basically means a less restrictive and stereotyped code for the physical appearances of self-identified Fembots.

The problem with this solution is that in a pan-galactic society, concepts of what is "feminine" or "masculine" (or in-between) would vary wildly based on the planet and particular culture - they are not universal - so there's no reason that these adopted "genders" would necessarily fall into recognizable tropes and binaries anyway. One Transformer may identify with a maternal caregiver role observed in traditional Earth cultures, meanwhile another might adopt a "female" tribal warlord archetype observed on the planet of the hyena-people, or whatever...  

zmog