Why is marvel prime so stupid?

Discussion in 'Transformers Comics Discussion' started by PrimeSmokescreen 04, Oct 6, 2021.

  1. PrimeSmokescreen 04

    PrimeSmokescreen 04 Well-Known Member

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    Ok, first he kamikazes himself into earth, destroying the entire ark crew in the process, to take megatron out of the war.... ignoring the fact that there are still multiple decepticon commanders on cybertron to fill that void and killing yourself is just putting the autobots at a massive disadvantage.

    Then, after endangering nonexistent innocent lives inside a video game, Optimus stops the developer from killing megatron (the thing he was willing to murder his entire crew for), and orders that he be killed instead... now you could say this is some kind of development because he feels guilty about what he did to the ark crew and wants to make amends... but a much better way of doing that would be killing your arch rival instead of offing yourself and putting your subordinates at a massive disadvantage.

    Next, shortly after the matrix quest and a whole lot of moping, Optimus orders an unconditional surrender to Scorponok in an attempt to join forces against Unicron... um, how about offering a conditional surrender under the terms you work together to stop him? Makes a hell of a lot more sense than just handing your guns to the decepticons and hoping for the best.

    Finally, at the tail end of the series, Optimus sacrifices himself to destroy unicron and in his last breath appoints the new leader of the autobots....Grimlock..... the guy that ruled the autobots as a dictatorship and tried to execute Blaster and gold bug for not following one of his orders. Why in all of Primes infinite wisdom would he choose that asshole to lead? Why not Prowl, or Blaster, hell Hotrod would've been a better choice than Grimlock!
     
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  2. Primeultra

    Primeultra Well-Known Member

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    If we are talking Marvel proper, his reason wasn’t just taking Megatron out of the war, it was that there was very important information stored on tge Ark…..and that information could not fall into enemy hands
    Um that’s actully what he did

    If you re-read the books you will see That he immediately starts to talk about how to deal with so that they can prepare against the greater threat……The unconditional surrender was more of a ploy to help Zarak

    Zarek ls command of his troops was weak at the time and he needed the moral boost to keep his postion Had Optimus not capitulated to Zarak ego, And presented an unconditional surrender it’s likely The alliance would’ve never happened

    Offering anything other than an unconditional surrender and he would have never convinced Zarak that they needed to work together
    Prime didn’t exactly name Grimlock as the next leader

    His only words were to ask Prowl to make Grimlock understand ……And that was it

    Anyway besides that he knew that the new leader was going to need a strong hand, a person that could Handle descent from both the autobots and decepticons

    He also knew Grimlock learned from his earlier mistakes
     
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  3. Gridlock1987

    Gridlock1987 Well-Known Member

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    It makes more sense originally, where he knew Autobots couldn't win that fight, so he wanted to at least end it in a draw, taking the Decepticons down with them. But then, 30 years later, Furman decided to retcon it (and a lot of other stuff, for whatever reason), that it was Primes "genius" plan all along... Ignoring all of the obvious problems with that plan. So yeah, it makes no sense, but at least few nostalgia buttons were pushed. Yay...?
     
  4. Max Rawhide

    Max Rawhide Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ... uh, never mind

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    To add to what others have said:

    You're refering to the retcon from the IDW 84 series. Initially crashing the Ark was nothing more than a last ditch solution. IF the Ark was attacked and IF the Autobots would be unable to win, THEN he would activate a pre-programmed course to crash the Ark. Optimus reasoned, rightly so, that if the Decepticons won they would have the Ark (perhaps a way to attack the Autobots on Cybertron like in the movie with Autobot City) the secrets on board, and strike a serious blow to the Autobots by killing several core fighters. By crashing the ship he denied them all this, and took some Decepticon top dogs with them as well. Optimus was actually very smart in this because while he hoped they wouldn't be attacked and if so they would win, he prepared for the eventually if all the negatives added up.

    However, the intentional crashing from IDW 84 makes him indeed look a bit shortsighted. Then again, he probably expected that with Megatron gone the remaining commanders would clash. And that's indeed what happened in 84: Scorponok took a piece, Straxis took a piece and Thunderwing took a piece, but there was no single Decepticon commander anymore. In that way he was right, but he clearly overestimated his own troops ability to deal with the new situation. (Funny that's the same problem Sunbow Optimus has: he doesn't really delegate and is surrounded by ranking officers who are unsuited to take over.)


    I fully agree that Optimus was a moron in this. Since Megatron fell to his death during the game and suddenly appeared again, it was clear that he cheated.

    However, note that throughout Marvel Optimus shows signs of really hating the war. After Ratchet died PM OP clearly expressed his immense frustration with the war, the constant killing and dying, and being willing to stop if it would save him this. Add to this his gigantic guilt trip since awakening on Earth: having brought the war here, seeing first hand humans being used as slaves, human deaths, Autobot casualty after casualty, the dire misery the Autobots lived in with fuel shortage and lack of spare parts, having played a part in the creation of new Decepticons... He must've been in constant torment by his guilt.

    And then in the game he did the exact same thing as four million years ago. Attacked and outmatched by Megaton, Optimus endangered and killed bystanders just to also kill Megatron. He did it all over again. The exact same thing that started it all. This must've weighed so heavily on his consciousness that he stopped thinking rationally. He just gave up mentally, because it all had become too much.

    Was it a bad movie tactically? Absolutely. But in the state of mind he was in, he no longer was able to think rationally and committed what amounts to suicide.


    Optimus likely was the only Transformer to truly see the threat of Unicron. With the Matrix lost/corrupted the only way to stop Unicorn was to unite the Transformers. This was nigh impossible in the comics and had only happened once before (The Underbase). But where before there was a clear threat with Starscream, this time it was something vague. Simply working together thus wouldn't work. Not just because Scorponok was dealing with rebellion, but also because it's not in the nature of the Marvel Transformers. Even the Autobots opposed Optimus on this. The troops coming together for a chat wouldn't have worked. Tensions would've been too big on either side. And where the Autobots might've contained themselves (unlikely from what we saw) the Decepticons surely wouldn't. By surrendering, this changed. And still not really, because only after being transported to Cybertron do you see the two parties grudgingly working together and only when Unicron arrives do they work together.

    Also, the surrender wasn't completely unconditional. There clearly were agreements between Scorponok and Optimus. Optimus just took the risk because he realised the threat of Unicron.


    This pressumes that Grimlock was a bad leader. He really wasn't. His run as Autobot commander was perhaps the best time the Autobots had on Earth: previous fallen troops were repaired, there were no casualties until the moon battle, the Autobots became self sufficient for their energy needs, the Ark was repaired and launched again, and no longer hunted by the very humans they wanted to protect. For the first time since coming to Earth the Autobots were save. Also note that in Marvel the Dinobots weren't the same powerhouses as in the cartoon: they could be beaten. But neither the combiners nor Omega Supreme nor a combined force of all the Autobots stood up against Grimlock. They may have disliked no longer protecting humans and they realised he was a tyrant, but they didn't unite to overthrow him. They accepted him as leader and the safety he brought them.

    Also, @Swerve previously argued that perhaps the only reason Grimlock was so angry with Blaster and Goldbug was because they left without officially resigning, since Optimus later commented that everybody is free to go, just as long as they state this. Blaster and Goldbug didn't. They deserted during a mission.

    The only negative about Grimlock's tenure, is that the Autobots stopped opposing the Decepticons. This only because Grimlock didn't consider the humans worth protecting (since the humans would attack the Autobots just as easily and had done so many times -- shortly before he became commander there weere many casualties due to humans).

    Taking this accomplishment of Grimlock, it makes sense Optimus chose Grimlock as new leader. There were no humans to protect, but the future of the Autobots was very much at stake. They needed to be kept safe, exactly what Grimlock has excelled at. Also, judging by how easily Prowl was duped by the Decepticons' ploy for peace and how easily Grimlock saw through this...again the right choice.
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2021
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  5. Coffee

    Coffee (╭☞ꗞᨓꗞ)╭☞

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    Prime knew Grimlock was ready, though he would still need Prowl's guidance to help him "understand." Grimlock didn't even think he was ready until it turned out to be Hi-Q, er, Optimus Prime to remind him he had the capabilities. Things got a bit murky when Grimlock ended up indeed fucking up hard only for Prime to return and save the day, but I chalk that up to a rushed ending.

    The worst thing about Grimlock was the fact that he was an asshole. As a military leader he did fine, more or less. He failed as a leader because he assaulted his troops, made gruesome plays like threatening to kill the humans if dissidents like Blaster and Goldbug didn't back off (even if he admitted he had no intention of following through with it), and outwardly brandished his leadership as a trophy. He also wasn't ready at this time, and from what Prime had seen of Grimlock since then, decided he had indeed grown.

    But yeah, Marvel Prime is far less stupid than he is just kind of fucked. Almost every Marvel US/UK story following the return of his head to his body centered on his depression, and his almost neurotic fascination with his own (in his belief, deserved) death. The framing of his (first) death, in which he screams at Ethan Zachary to hit his kill switch really does come off as him being suicidal and taking the out, rather than doing it because he felt he deserved to die for letting videogame characters die. Which is way darker than most other stuff in this comic, but fits in too cleanly with his arc of regret and struggles with the burden of leadership, as particularly evident in the UK comics. The dude faked his death just to see how his friends would react, he was not well, period. I don't think he even got better until Goldbug reminded him of his love of life when he finally returned as a powermaster.

    Also "kamakaze's" himself to earth is a pathetic simplification of the Ark crash scene in any of its iterations.
     
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  6. Swerve

    Swerve Well-Known Member

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    Interestingly, Grimlock's one whopping great failure in his second tenure as leader- namely walking right into Bludgeon's trap on Klo and getting most of his army slaughtered, requiring Optimus Ex Machina to save him, comes about for one notable reason- Not Listening to Prowl.

    Back in Issue #1, the Ark crash and all its consequences happen, in part, because Optimus is determined to press that button and just plain overrules Prowl when the strategist starts discussing courses of action, without even listening to him.

    So, maybe this is what Optimus was going to say to Prowl: "Make Grimlock understand that even when you're certain you're right, that's when it's most important to listen to advice."

    Optimus' failure there was in not realising just how much Grimlock and Prowl would rub each other up the wrong way- he may not even have realised that Prowl wanted the job for himself, or that Grimlock's tendency to prat about and not bother telling Prowl what was going on would wind Prowl up so much.

    Prowl's failure is that his somewhat autistic nature (personal reading from how I've always identified with his Marvel incarnation, others may disagree) just really doesn't cope well with Grimlock's tendency to be a dickhead, personally, and Grimlock's failure is that in being pleased with himself for being a lot smarter than he lets on, he tends to forget that other people- like Bludgeon- are as well, and that confrontation is not always the best way to resolve any situation.
     
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  7. PrimeSmokescreen 04

    PrimeSmokescreen 04 Well-Known Member

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    In retrospect, Grimlock was definitely a better leader than I gave him credit for due to his accomplishments. But, I dont see a person like Optimus appointing him as his successor after all the verbal and physical abuse the autobots endured during his tenure. Also, I get that 84 was a retcon, but it's still apart of the comics canon and it makes optimus look stupid imo.
     
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  8. noblekale

    noblekale There can be only one!

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    It's been a LONG time since I read the originals, but:

    Point 1: It was originally a last-ditch effort, Prime knew they lost, and wanted to take as many of them down with them as possible, AND, if I remember correctly, they never saw organic life as true life until further on. Someone can mistake me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember them trying to communicate with objects and vehicles and not getting any response, then finding out there were "creatures" inside the vehicles and maybe they were wrong.

    Point 2: The video game. This is the only one that I actually agree was a dumb move. I get he has to be the moral high bot, but he should have known Megatron cheated, and if anything else, called it a draw and said since both cheated, both had to be destroyed.(Megatron blatant cheating, and Optimus cheating his morals) I guess maybe he could have been reasoning "If I was wrong about organic life being true life, could they be alive, however brief their existence?" type of thing, which would play back on the first point of not registering organics as true life.

    Point 3: The surrender. Others explained this one so much better than I ever could. The only thing I could add might be the decepticons still had issues with organics, and "A fleshy leading us? Preposterous! We'll wait until the first mistake and destroy it then take over" deal, and Optimus knew so he played it up to keep Scorponok, who he knew would listen, in control.

    Point 4: Grimlock as leader. We don't know for sure what his plans were, so like they said, it could have been anything. Plus Grimlock CAN learn, he just has to let his ego go and actually focus on something other than himself at the time.
     
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  9. Max Rawhide

    Max Rawhide Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ... uh, never mind

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    Grimlock had learned from his previous stint as commander though. And Optimus did tell Prowl to remind Grimlock of his obligation to protect the weak. Interestingly, Grimlock in the same conversation makes clear why he's better suited as leader than Prowl: because he sees the bigger picture.

    But what alternatives where there? Ultra Magnus doesn't exist in Marvel US:
    - Fortress Maximus was off line -- also, while a Galen controlled Fort Max would've been perfect (physical power, wishing for peace, and a trained politician as the brain), with Spike as the head he was pretty much useless.
    - Prowl: an excellent advisor, but a poor commander. Too strict.
    - Blaster: he may have rebelled against Grimlock, but at this moment he still wasn't commander quality. His attitude towards Goldbug also indicates he was just as short tempered as Grimlock, he needed to do everything himself, and he was too eager to fight. (Remember what his criteria was for the new leader: quick with his fist and gun.) He also had a fundamental hatred for the Decepticons which would make him ill-suited to lead when they tried to maintain a peace treaty.

    As I said earlier, it was a very dedisive moment. There was a fragile peace and it could go both ways. @Swerve is absolutely right in stating that Grimlock's behaviour ultimately undermined the peace. But then Grimlock also expressed doubt from the start, stating that peace wasn't likely for some reason that remained unexplained. Still, if he hadn't fought Fangry perhaps Bludgeon might have had to deal with Decepticons who were willing to give peace a chance. Then again, Bludgeon and Krok were already planning to betray the Autobots and re-start the war. And Grimlock did see through them. He likely was the best candidate available: smart enough to see through Decepticon ploys, and very determined to keep the Autobots safe. (At least, until the series came to a quick end and AM OP had to save the day.)

    It is interesting that both in Marvel and Sunbow, Optimus his command style results in a complete absence of capable replacements. With Rodimus Prime you can see Ultra Magnus or Springer take over since Rodimus was already delegating, but with Optimus...



    Yes and no. Yes, it is, but it also contradicts the Marvel Generation 2 series. The Marvel G2 series and the 84/Re:Generation One cannot fit in one timeline. 84 on the one hand enriches Marvel US by making Optimus his guilt even bigger (not only is he responsible for getting them on Earth, but now the entire mission was a fake). But on the other it clashes.
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2021
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  10. Longitudinalwave

    Longitudinalwave A Big Fan of (Sound/Shock)wave

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    I think that, if nothing else, we can all agree that Prime's decision to blow himself up over a video game was one of the most boneheaded moves of any Prime.
     
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  11. TheUltimateBum

    TheUltimateBum Nautica Lover

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    It was in-character IMO. I mean, he won, but he had to sacrifice people. Even though they were NPC's in a game, he still cared enough and that is another thing that sets the contrast between him and Megs (I'm not a big fan of either of them, but if the opposite calm and kind guy/raving lunatic dynamic is there, I can tolerate them). At least it isn't as bad as early Marvel UK's Bastardimus Prime (seriously, I always found Furman's pre-Powermaster Prime to be too much of a bastard; he was one of those characters Budiansky definitely did better IMO, Furman was much better at writing Rodimus).
     
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  12. Primeultra

    Primeultra Well-Known Member

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    does 84’ Contradict G2?
    I haven’t read all of 84 yet, waiting for the trade paperback

    Would you mind detailing the contradictions to G2, And does 84 fit better with regeneration?
     
  13. Max Rawhide

    Max Rawhide Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ... uh, never mind

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    It's been some time since I read 84 and it didn't make much of an impression, but IIRC the biggest issue is Jhiaxus and the G2 army and how they came to be. The ending of 84 seems to make the G2 empire coming into existence very unlikely at the least and perhaps even impossible. Maybe future stories do enable this, but my immediate reaction after reading 84 was that it didn't work with G2. Something noted by others as well.


    I think it was written with that intent in mind. Re:Generation One already gave another explanation for Jhiaxus & co and that seems to work better with 84. Would also makes sense that IDW instructed Furman to make their prequel fit with their sequel.
     
  14. Primeultra

    Primeultra Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for the info
     
  15. Nova Maximus

    Nova Maximus Well-Known Member

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    84 just kind of ends with Grimlock falling over offline into the tar pit to be awakened again in the 80s. Now I haven't read G2 so perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't fully see how that messes with Jhiaxus.
     
  16. Max Rawhide

    Max Rawhide Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ... uh, never mind

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    Nothing to do with Grimlock at all. It has to do with the situation on Cybertron and how the G2 Empire came to be. This seems less likely with the situation on Cybertron at the end of 84.

    Not as familiar with the UK comics as with the US, but I think G2 is more aligned with the UK comics. The background and origin given for the G2 Decepticon Empire seem based on the UK background, and this conflicts with the 84 ending.

    Where Marvel US gave us very little information about Cybertron (nothing about during those four million years: Straxus ruled in the now, followed by Megatron and then Thunderwing), the UK run had much more background. They tell that after Megatron was lost on Earth Trannis became Decepticon leader and then conquered most of Cybertron, reducing the Autobot resistance to an underground movement and creating a Decepticon empire. This initiated a long period of Decepticon rule. Trannis was killed by the Wreckers and Straxus replaced him leading to the current era of the comics.

    The origin of the G2 Decepticons seem to referance this idea: unopposed Decepticon rule resulting in the rediscovery of the budding proces. But at the end of 84 Cybertron is divided between Thunderwing, Scorponok and Straxus. There's no room for a unified Decepticon Cybertronian empire (and Trannis), making 84 not fit with the Marvel G2 comics.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2021
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  17. PhantomMenace

    PhantomMenace Banned

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    There is FOUR MILLION YEARS of time for that to happen.
     
  18. Swerve

    Swerve Well-Known Member

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    This is a really good point. I think there's a sort of collective tendency on all our parts to underestimate - massively underestimate that four million year gap, just because it's thematically so poor a fit with the story being told around it.
    By this, I mean that although we're told frequently that Transformers don't die of natural causes and as such can easily live for millions of years, all the evidence presented on screen argues that "we are as mayflies, compared to them" does not apply- a Transformer acts as if time passes at the same kind of pace for them, as it does for us; they'll get bored in the same amount of time, their duty schedules and so on appear to use 'days' much the same as ours, and the Autobots on the Ark act as if they've ended up stranded on Earth for a long time.

    This leads to a weird sort of doublethink going on, when we get to "The Harder They Die" and onwards in the "Prey" arc- in that everything is written as if Optimus Prime and Megatron are ancient, legendary figures who've returned out of the distant past, and only the explicitly incredibly old Emirate Xaaron is clearly described as knowing and remembering them personally, with it fairly heavily implied that the other characters don't- that for the likes of Springer, Outback, Ratbat and Octane and so on, these two are legends returned from long before living memory- like King Arthur returned. Note, this is never outright stated, so there isn't a complete discontinuity with '84, but tonally it's unmistakably implied as such- and yet, at the same time, characters regularly make quips like "I'm only four million years old; I'm too young to die" and so forth, not to mention of course that, outside of the one "expanded universe" metafictional Fact-File reference to Ultra Magnus having been given life "using the Matrix Flame", there's no actual documented means in this continuity for new Transformers to have been created since Prime disappeared on Earth. (And, of course, no actual documented means for new Decepticons to have been created since the war began a thousand years prior to that, which is even weirder).

    A consequence of this is that the Four Million Year Gap, or rather the Eighty-Thousand Vorn Gap, becomes a difficult space to consider, because the comic isn't coherent on just what kind of timespan that is, in a psychological sense.

    The comic's sense of time is still preferable to that of the cartoon, where Four Million Years appears to be treated most of the time as "Megatron's just popped down to the shops for some energon... he's been rather a long time, actually", but we later find out that this span is a whole million years less than the Five Million Years that the war raged in apparent stalemate before the Ark launch- and yet characters still remember "before the war with the Decepticons" as if it was easily accessible living memory of a previous time.... but only a further Two Million Years before that, the Cybertronian race rebelled against and threw out their Quintesson masters, an event which seems to have receded into ancient race memory long before the lifetime of anyone who isn't Alpha Trion. The cartoon's timeframe really only makes any kind of sense if one assumes that something deliberately erased their memories of the Quintessons.

    In the comic, at least, it all more or less makes sense on paper, it's just that the tonal emphasis of the parts never fits with the whole. Here, '84 appears to go with a cartoon like approach, showing the same generation of characters clearly active on Cybertron in the 'past' as will be there in the 'present', essentially conflating the pause. My personal preference tends to be the contrary- I'd prefer Prime and the others to be distant legends who disappeared, presumed dead, generations before the likes of Blaster and Perceptor and Outback were even created, making the former two's eulogising of these ancient heroes, and arguing over the comparison between their mythological heroism, and the 'real' present day situation of the Resistance, and Outback's casual friendship with, and cheerful embrace of treason for the sake of, "King Arthur" - (Optimus) all the more powerful. "The Harder They Die" and "Under Fire" just don't work in the same way, if the returning Optimus Prime is more like "Boris Johnson comes back from his holidays to find the UK in a mess and teams up with a random member of the public to fix it".

    So- how can we have our cake and eat it?

    How can Four Million Years be a time abyss of unimaginable depth in which a whole unknowable history can unfold, Cybertronian Empires can rise and fall, new races can spring forth and henceforth be forgotten, history become legend, legend become myth, and so forth... and also be a time which is within the lifespan of most of the characters. Here, IDW perhaps hit upon a gem of an idea, albeit never applied to this particular problem, since it wasn't part of their continuity, namely, that of "information creep"; or, to be more descriptive, that Transformer long term memory is woeful. Thus, Outback might well have been physically alive at the time of the Ark launch; but, in terms of personality, effectively the same Outback was not, because Four Million Years Later, all those memories, and thus, that personality, have been worn away and replace- probably countless times.

    Now... how do we square '84's depiction of Ultra Magnus as Prime's adjutant back during the Ark launch, to Marvel UK's reference to the Matrix Flame.
    The answer is, surprisingly easily, and also in a way which makes a lot more sense of the idea of memory loss.

    The Matrix, in the comics, doesn't just have the power of creation, but also of recreation or regeneration- see Buster's repair of cars, see the Aerialbots being matrixed again in "Heavy Traffic", not to mention every reference after the Underbase saga to how the Matrix, if available, could have restored the fallen Autobots- and indeed, in the final issue, to how the Last Autobot, imbued with much the same power, cheerfully undoes death for pretty much most of the Autobot cast of the entire storyline.

    So- what if this process is quite normal- that a Transformer, once created, may indeed live indefinitely- but, at need, be 'regenerated' by exposure to Matrix energy- reconstructed like new and healed in mind and body- but with the price of this healing and rejuvenation being a cumulative scrambling or loss of memory. So, someone like Outback can indeed be over four million years old, and yet still a youthful rebel- because it's not long since he was last reborn in the Matrix Flame. Meanwhile Emirate Xaaron, knowing the value of his stored knowledge and experience, has avoided this, at the price of now having a body which is an ancient relic, probably can't even transform any more without killing him, and an outlook embittered by the sheer weight of memories.

    With Kup, in "Kup's Story", we see what happens when someone declines to risk losing their identity by being recreated- perhaps reformatted is the most appropriate-lore term - an ancient and broken down body, and a mind raddled by post-traumatic stress and beaten down by those memories, but, unable to surrender them, knowing that only very few ever manage to regain what they lose in the reformatting process.

    Note, for instance, that '84 clearly implies that Skyfire/Jetfire will be something between Skyfire reborn, and a new being, when his brain module is eventually exposed to Matrix energy again.

    The War, of course, would have utterly shattered the normal social mores and structures surrounding this sort of process, which in itself entirely accounts for the huge continuity errors around things said to have happened in this timeline. In a race as long-lived as Cybertronians, before the War there would have been much continuity of generation- in any given large group, most would have been around for a very long time, a few would have recently been remade, and a few approaching the point where this would be necessary (either through obsolescence of component parts, or injury/sickness, or just plain needing a new life for psychological reasons). But in the War, thousands might die in a day in a single battle. Some would be lost forever, brain modules destroyed. Some might well be remade - and note, incidentally, the sinister Decepticon terminology of "Harvester", and that the detritus of the Smelting Pool are used explicitly for the construction of newer, more advanced Transformers. Bear in mind that the Smelting Pool melts down quite slowly and - well, 'gently' is not the word, but it is not an instant process. Once stripped of the obsolete body matter, it is entirely possible that core components would survive to be reconfigured. It's chillingly likely that the industrialised murder of Straxus' regime is about taking yesterday's Autobots and remaking them as tomorrow's Decepticons, with new lives, new memories, etc. Whatever the case, whole aspects of the Transformers' oral history and culture could vanish overnight, as everyone who remembered them 'died' and was or was not reformatted- and in a race which would culturally have assumed that they would live long enough to not have to record history for their descendants, the loss of "living history" could easily elide even such important matters as "Oh, yes, and then most of the Decepticons decided to bog off to conquer the universe and they just left the losers behind" out of their race memory entirely.
     
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  19. Thundershot

    Thundershot Ratchet Fanatic

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    Yeah, the four million years thing throws both the comics and cartoon for a loop. I get that they wanted a LONG TIME to pass, but man… Heck, cartoon Shockwave took it too literally when he told Megatron “Cybertron shall remain as you leave it.” A truly logical bot, after the first hundred thousand years or so, would say, “Megatron’s not coming back… maybe I should vacuum or straighten up.” Nope. He just kept the status quo.

    Comics Shockwave was FAR superior but got fucked up by the Dinobots.
     
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  20. Swerve

    Swerve Well-Known Member

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    It's very fortunate that Transformers are robots and don't eat organic food. Otherwise I can just imagine the conversations.

    Rainmaker #1: Shockwave... it's been four million years. Can we please clean out the fridge?
    Shockwave: Negative. Cybertron shall remain as Megatron left it.
    Rainmaker #2: Can we at least throw out this milk?
    Shockwave: Megatron bought that milk!
    Rainmaker #3: It's got... things growing on it! And by things, I mean civilisations!
    Shockwave: No! We're not throwing away Megatron's stuff! He bought that milk to go on his breakfast!
    Rainmaker #1: ... Can we defect?
     
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