Wouldn't Optimus 6 be RID 64?

 

Probably. I know they renumbered in the mid 50's. I thought there was a spotlight, one shot or short series squeezed in too.

 

Spoiler

Not yet. I believe those stories are part of volume 3 of their respective series

 

RID/Transformers made it to 57 then the Revolution one shot then six issues of OP

 

More Than Meets The Eye #4: Life After the Big Bang

4/5 Witty, creepy and clever.

Whilst RID has settled down into some sort of pattern, MTMTE is still a hard one to pin down. Its four issues thus far have each been quite different – I like the variety, especially when it means I can’t guess what type of story we’re going to have next. It’s like when Star Trek had The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine on the go simultaneously: TNG was ship-bound, they could literally go anywhere and do anything, whereas early DS9 was full of arguing and political shenanigans. To complete the link, both shows featured a bar or cantina as one of the primary sets.

As ever in a Roberts script, the dialogue is fully-loaded, both in terms of jokes and references-I-don’t-quite-understand-yet. There are dozens of quotable lines here, from the Swerve “not being able to speak” gag, to Ultra Magnus’s “Don’t say I’m irritable, it really irritates me.” There are a number of tantalising hints of Transformers lore, from the Militant Monoform Movement to Adaptus to Soundwave’s Anti-Neural Pogroms, all of which hint at a wider universe than the one we see on the page.

That said, we’ve now arrived on our second alien planet of the series, and it’s the second in which we’ve met some fellow Transformers. Now, I know the Transformers are spread far and wide across the galaxy, and here the Lost Light has good reason to travel to an Autobot base – but for all of Roberts’ hints of a larger universe, the galaxy feels a lot smaller when every planet contains Transformer life. Hopefully as the Lost Light gets further and further out from Cybertron, we’ll see some planets and races that are as yet untouched by the Autobot/Decepticon war.

After picking up a message on Ironfist’s old wavelength, an Autobot away team beams down to the Delphi medical base, which has been beset by a deadly plague. The exact nature of the virus is very odd – it doesn’t affect the medics (Ambulon believes the doctors’ prior contact with all sorts of alien pathogens has created an immunity, but I don’t quite buy that argument), nor does it affect the long-term injured – it’s a funny sort of virus that only affects healthy robots who aren’t physicians. Hmm. On the subject of physicians, great play is made of Ratchet’s old and decrepit hands, and then he arrives on a planet populated by surgeons. Is there a potential hand-transplant in the offing, do we think?

Even in the medical base, the set-up is a little weird: we have Pharma, cooped up in a quarantine bay and unable to communicate with the outside world (it’s weird that the room isn’t equipped with an intercom system – however it does allow Roberts to do a spoof of the TV show Lost when Pharma writes on his hand – “Your friend is upset” is a riff on Lost’s “Not Penny’s boat” scene). We also have Ambulon, who has a “past life” – his original purple colour scheme shows through his new red/white paint job. There are a hell of a lot of different hints and oddities and threads here that hopefully will pay off down the line.

Eventually, both Pipes and Drift come down with the plague, and the bad guys reveal themselves – a couple of “Genericons” who were previously thought to be harmless. My only complaint here is that these Decepticons seemed to be obvious culprits from the off – perhaps it would have been better if one of the Autobot medics had been the evil plotter, but there you go.

The final panel gives us the return of Fortress Maximus, who has literally been jump-started back to life by First Aid (I laughed at the actual jump leads complete with crocodile clips here). I’ve never really been a Fort Max fanboy, so his reappearance here doesn’t have much impact on me. The underwhelming ending is actually the weakest part of the issue, with Fort Max’s over-dramatic cliffhanger speech coming across as a bit rubbish, coupled with the Furman-esque way in which the cliffhanger is a full-page surprise character reveal. Boo!

Another problem I had with this issue was the treatment of Tailgate. I don’t really see the point in making him a Decepticon for half an issue, only to then make him an Autobot again. I also rather liked his child-like ignorance and naïveté, something that’s pretty much ruined here by having the entire Autobot/Decepticon war downloaded into his head. It seems the entire gimmick of Tailgate being a Rip Van Winkle-type character has been lost in the space of four issues. For all I know this could lead somewhere really interesting, but at the moment I’m a bit nonplussed about the Tailgate storyline, I have to admit.

Minor issues aside, though, this is a great change of scene. It’s a whimsical yet dense thriller with a pace and verve that make most of my quibbles seem minor by comparison.

 

Hints are Roberts speciality.

Cause they are everywhere, in the dialogue and in the art.

I would say more on the issue, but I'd risk going into spoiler territory if I do.

 

THis two parter is literally my fave single story of the lot so far I think - it really made me feel like i was back in the 80's getting my Transformers fix from Woolworths again. It fairly self contained but has lots of little threads that connect it to past and future stories.
ANd I love the remote setting and all the new characters mixing in with the established bots we know.

 

OH MY GOD I CAN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THIS REVIEW BECAUSE SPOILERS

=D =D =D =D

 

Okay, here's what I will say,...

JESUS. There's no way I can say anything about anything until the review of the next issue is up.

 

Yep. Let's just say that after issue #5, I began to adopt the near-religious view of MTMTE.

 

Not counting Dark Cybertron #1, this was the first issue of IDW Transformers I ever read.

 

Great to see you get back to MTMTE and enjoying it as pausing at #3 seemed to break the story flow at a time when it barely had time to get started. Like many others have stated we can't really discuss too much of this issues content till you review the next one but it is great to see you pick up on all the little hints at future world building.

Your assessments of the rid issues seemed pretty close to what most of us experienced in that we loved the premise and potential then quickly got Fatigued by its limitations. Barber does try much harder than you might imagine to lift things out of the rut so 10/10 for effort but sadly in my opinion the series seems to stay at the same level no matter what he tries.

 

I can't really say much about issue 4 without relating it to issue 5 so let's just say, I like First Aid here a lot, Ambulon too, although I read this issue before I read Last Stand so my fault for spoiling that Ironfist died I guess, whoever that was I thought.  

 

Oh shit,,,,, Delphi!  

(I'll say this about Tailgate being a "Decepticon" for a minute because it's really less of an issue than it seems. So I'll consider this not really a spoiler. Tailgate pre-dates the Autobot/Decepticon war, he's totally neutral on this. And despite prejudices, including some by the reader, this is supposed to be a post-war era. Tailgate represents someone completely unbiased by the war because he was never in it. So like a casual Football fan, he doesn't pay attention to the game until the playoffs. He is presumed to be an Autobot, but really why is that? He tries being a Deception for all of about 5 minutes because of Cyclonus, who wasn't really in the war either. All of the other Lost Light crew have a pre-existing bias about being a bot/con, but for Tailgate it's really just a Manchester United/Baltimore Ravens thing.)

 

Oh, I rarely get the chance:

You know nothing Ryan F!

 

 

I can't wait for the next update xD!

Finally got time to replay. Like others I can't say much about anything else, but I do feel the same about Tailgate. I know lots of people like Tailgate, but he just sort of grate on my nerves constantly. And this is the issue he started to irritate me. Perhaps I just don't like this particular kind of immature. But he almost seemed like... not only naive due to lack of experience, too trusting due to kindness, but actually kind of... not thinking clearly at all... I can sort of getting what kind of character James Robert was arriving at, and I'm not saying he is unlikable (for example, he really has a big heart, and he is very kawaii looking).

But I just couldn't like him very much, and please forgive me for saying this: I really hope Whirl zap him in the coming issue of LL. And hi it wouldn't be so bad. He can beat up Killmaster and save Swerve while he's away.

 

Spoilers!

And I agree he's annoying.

 

I sort of take issue to this. You are projecting your experience with RID onto his when he is only 5 issues into both runs. It's sort of the same as a spoiler - and I for one had an entirely different experience - enjoying both comics in equal measure, but for very different reasons.

 

I just read it and it didn't happen! So not really a spoiler... just some foolish wish

 

That is a fair point, I probably was getting a little carried away with my opinions.

On a more positive note reverse psychology works with things like hype increasing expectations of things to impossible levels and negative reactions might inspire rid to be seen as the underdog to be routed for.