That page is a flash-forward to how RJ's plots will come to fruition. the blurb above that panel notes "fellow Decepticons, by then my slaves".

 

I loved the artwork and colors in this book. Great story too. More like this!

 

Funny that RJ does have Soundwave in his daydream. With his tracker, he could easily find that pawnshop where SW was last sighted and have his little homies patch him up. If you saw what Soundwave did to Ratbat in Megatron: Origin #4, it looks like some of his cassettes are his slaves. Very grand of RJ to envision enslaving the slavemaster. He had ball bearings, I'll give him that!

And while this does feel stand-alone, Megatron now possesses a device that can track any Cybertronian anywhere in the galaxy. I'd sure as hell put that to use. It's like when BW Megatron let Tarantulas cultivate his own agenda, then he'd monitor and reap the benefits. In fact, Megatron could pick up the threads of any part of RJ's scheme. But who knows, all this is likely to go the way of the Ruby Crystals of Burma.  

 

I wonder how stand-alone it really is... I'm assuming none of his devices were destroyed, and it never shows megatron actually taking the tracker. Perhaps starscream will continue where he left off?

 

Megatron leaving parts of Ramjet for HUMANS to find SHOULD have lasting consequences. Oh, and I liked this issue.

 

Another good read! I loved seeing Megs just rip Ramjet the shreads. IDW Megs hasn't been defeated yet in personal combat - first Starscream, then Op, now Ramjet, not to mention Sentinel in Origin. Boy is IDW Megs a bad@ss! I wonder if we'll ever get to see him go up against Shockwave. Love what they're doing with Skywarp too.

 

Yup. A head's been enough in previous continuities. Starscream got similarly gutted in Infiltration and came back.

Anyhow, that was fun. At no point does RJ actually seem to have a plan to deal with Megs, he's just clutching a device that'll let him know where his enemies are...

Liked the re-emphasised aspect that Megatron's supposed to be handing over to another commander by this point... it raises the question of whether he really is at the top of the command hierarchy (and just following through his own protocols) or part of a group of equally dangerous individuals.

Furman's indicated he'll probably do something with the character, so we might be seeing Ramjet get edited down from 'stupid' to 'stupid grunt'.

Wouldn't say this confirms sparks in this continuity, but characters do appear to have critical systems in their chests (laser cores?)

Looked good, read fine. So what the hell went wrong with TF/Avengers?

3.5/5

edit:

At a guess it doesn't work properly anyway...

 

Dear lord what did I just read? Hip hop Constructicons? This was horrible. The art was ok, the coloring was great, but the story accomplished nothing. What a waste of a spotlight. Kudos for the Guidi cartoon cover though.

And another thing, why is the text so small? The editors didn't catch this?

 

Doesn't Kup's spotlight refer to his spark multiple times?

 

Oops. Could've made that comment clearer. We haven't seen anything like a BM spark, where they can be ripped out, transferred, be independently useful to third-parties and there's a metaphysical existence that goes with.

Sparks and spark-cores seem so far to be functional things, in spite of Kup wittering on a bit.

 

Yeah we have. Megatron Origin 4 showed Soundwave ripping out Ratbat's spark and transferring it into the smaller cassette body.

 

Unnamed, and we haven't seen one vanish off to a hypothetical allspark (or be transferred like this.) Plus Megatron: Origin implies a fair amount visually, including Hound and Sentinel Prime being dead, Elita-1/Ariel et al, and those things don't seem destined to stick. (edit: Although Soundwave does appear to have a glowing physical object in his hand in the panel(s) in question on page 14, not raw energy with an independent existence.)

"Not quite sure how I can explain away their presence in Megatron Origin but I’ll work on it."
http://simonfurman.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/and-the-next-spotlight-is/#comment-1327

"I’m sure Ramjet will feature in the ‘ongoing’ in due course, but I wanted to give Stuart full rein on the character first. Once the Spotlight is out there, expect to see Ramjet crop up again."
http://simonfurman.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/script-wrap-14/#comment-1692

Brain modules not having to be in the head and having something to do with spark-cores isn't a stretch. Reassuringly, no Big Bad has started playing Pokémon with them yet.

 

Yup, the spiritual implications are yet to be explored alright.

Although, I did get the impression sparks were somewhat transferable from Megatron Origin #4.

 

Mmm, it'd be easier if I just went back and added the footnote I've added to the posts elsewhere -- sparks and spark-cores seem to be functional rather than having an independent existence and a mythology around them. Tearing out Ratbat's vital systems and putting them into storage so that he can be wired up into a smaller form later seems pretty reasonable, and one of the nice plot touches in M:O.

Hoping that Furman decides to stick with that state of affairs rather than going down the Primus route again. Not sure if he'll be able to resist when it comes to the Nova Prime plot strand...

 

Ha, loved this.
Sure it doesn't fit into anything far-reaching plotwise, but does a great job for what it is as a Spotlight, a single-issue story highlighting the charactre of one character. And damn if it isn't a fun character to read. Loved the shots showing how utterly oblivious Ramjet is to reality.

My only complaint would be his Classics design, since I really like the F-22 Seeker designs and was kind of hoping for a more realistic depiction on his part as well. But since this is definately a more light-hearted book, and Ramjet doesn't look to be sticking around much anyway, it's hardly a real issue.

 

Ok, you've lost me. There's mention of sparks, but not the sparks you want them to talk about. They've been shown to be transferable from body to body, but not like what you're talking about. I haven't the foggiest what it is you're looking for here. Do you want them to be identical to the BM spark's and what said sparks accomplish?

 

We've seen spark-cores (physical objects) removed, and haven't seen sparks transferred or removed from those. What we've got so far is a bit like taking a hard drive out of one PC and putting it into another, rather than reducing a TF down to something that can float around outside a physical body.

Basically, sparks haven't been seen to exist in the sense that the fiction (BW/BM) which coined the concept uses them --

http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Sparks

-- which I like, personally; I'd rather this continuity stayed away from a "every spark's a tiny piece of Primus' essence, they're all linked to the allspark and return there after death, hosting someone else's spark gets you a free physical upgrade, etc" setup, as it's more way more into fantasy than science fiction.

Did I manage to sound less incoherent there?

 

Appearances can be deceiving. You notice Sentinel Prime's eyes are still glowing in the last scene with him, suggesting he's actually still alive at that point. Hound probably was just in stasis lock.

Isn't a spark-core/laser-core the same thing as a spark?

 

Less incoherent, yes, however...

Correct. The sparks from BW/BM is more than likely vastly different on small levels from the sparks here in IDW's 'verse. Which really makes this more of a "flames on Optimus" kind of debate.

 

A spark-core seems to be a container, and a spark something that doesn't survive outside one.

Interesting bits from Kup --

"I'm aware of every pulsin' atom of my ancient spark"
"It was actually rather straightforward -- extend a localized field around his crashing spark"

If the core casing's breached, meltdown occurs.

Since we see Megatron holding Ramjet's internals but not what he did with them, that's a probable route for Furman to re-intro the character. What would be interesting to know is whether the head's also required, or Megatron just claimed it as a trophy.

Plus the clincher that author confirmed it. Just noting the art's not very clear on how/why/what happens.

edit:

I'd say it's a bit more than that. What we've been calling sparks since the 90s have a whole bunch of stuff tied into them that includes an afterlife, the ability to physically alter and reshape a TF, etc. These aren't those sparks -- yet, anyway.