Really not sure what is the appeal of this series.So we got to watch as Rodimus Prime brutally murders the rest of his race? And he did not even had the courtesy to squash Wheelie, just condemned him to die of lack of fuel in outer space.
And as I guessed, the key is like Sari's Allspark key from TF Animated. Guessing the secret of this planet is probably some big energon deposit or maybe the Matrix being here, whatever. It will all end with everyone being killed by Rodimus and then he probably gonna shoot himself in the head or something. I have little sympathy for him considering what he did. Even killed Strongarm.
Also, as I said last issue too, it makes zero sense they would be living off organic fuel. Just set up some solar panels around this planet's sun and make energon. The cartoon and comics had them make energon from anything, from nuclear power plants to rock concert sounds and water.
I guess also these new TFs are built from tin foil, one lead pipe killed Moon and Wildwheel? And the latter never even got around to have a cool cowboy hat, in a western setting? What a waste. Same for Autolauncher's first and only comic appearance (not sure why the wiki does not call him that, sure he had a redesign but the colors and alt mode are pretty recognizable). Do these guys not even have guns anymore? Y'd think they would need them because they sometimes have to run into species that can put up a fight...

And man, I still do not give a Rattrap's ass about Shib or the other humans, but Nick continues to waste our time with panels on them.

Sharpclaw has a cool alt mode, I like the spikes, and how apparently her wheels close up on her back like Kingdom/Siege Mirage's in robot mode. Nice touch that she and her brother have such sharp senses - y'd think Moon had that advantage too being a beast mode TF.

Speaking of Moon, you'd never guess but... apparently he was not even going to be in this comic, and his role was to be given to a Botbot. Waddleplop, the cute ice cream penguin at that. That kinda explains Steeljaw's annoyance and disdain for him more, given how useful an ice cream alt mode is. Likely not much of the dialogue was rewritten.
Seibertron.com Transformers Twincast/Podcast - Seibertron.com Twincast / Podcast #300 "Last Pod Standing" on Stitcher
Moon's role in Last Bot Standing was originally slated for Waddlepop. However, Hasbro informed writer Nick Roche that the BotBots were off-limits, and as a result Roche replaced Waddlepop with another Transformer who possessed a cutesy, unorthodox design

Y'mean, Steeljaw. Lockjaw is the crappy horror movie about a crocodile-headed snake that hunts people if you draw them with a magic pencil.  

It's in turn with how it seems despite being supposedly super hard to kill as per the comic's retelling of past events, here it seems they can die from seemingly trivial injuries. Falling off a cliff, really?
And they are all filled with delicious, delicious blue jell-o, too. Or maybe that is Listerine.

Moon is a guy, last I checked, or at least he was in the Beast Wars II anime.
Wiki says so too. Moon (BW) - Transformers Wiki

Have you been watching environmental activists of late? They are saying how we should not have children because they are a strain on resources and that the human race should go extinct. If Ra's al Ghul existed for reals, they would hail him as a hero for wanting to cull humanity to more ecologically manageable levels.
I feel this whole comic was funded by some ecoterrorist like that because that seems to be the only message it has, that Transformers should all just die rather than prolong their existence. It ignores pretty obvious ways by which they could continue to exists without turning into organic-eating monsters because it needs to push this message.

As for why they are eating people instead of making bio-fuel out of crops, again, because this is a forced message so it needs to be SHOCKING and über-grim!  

 

Good humour!

 

Despite some clumsiness with the word bubbles at times that was a damn good issue. It genuinely felt like a lot happened.

I think my favourite bits were the discussion between Rodimus and Steeljaw at the beginning and the spit scene. Steeljaw clearly wants to help Rodimus, and when Rodimus contests him, he goes for the healthy debate route, even though Rodimus clearly can't be swayed.

That scene of Rod spitting on Steeljaw was so good, because that line establishing that this is a purely earth thing just amped up the sense of shock and disgust from Steeljaw and his followers. They've never seen anything like this before, but they just immediately recognize it as something hugely demeaning and disrespectful. Rodimus spitting in this guy's face is one thing, and also entirely Rodimus in a "I have nothing but contempt for this court" kind of way, but that added layer of using a rude and demeaning gesture from earth to leave such a response from Steeljaw both solidifies his point and acts as some last vestige of the human race getting its mild payback against the Decepticons in a completely human way. It's pretty sweet.

Also Wheelie getting kicked into space made me laugh. I don't even "hate" Wheelie, but him just being a little head of wheels getting drop kicked into space was a genuinely funny image and to be real, we've all wanted to see something like that happen. I also love how Rodimus narrowly avoids making a rhyme when asking Wheelie about his haikus.

I also got to say this is Rodimus at his most Rodimus and I love it. Roche has such a good grasp on the character, and knows how to keep the spirit of Rodimus while giving him new but very resolute beliefs and goals for this story. He's also provided him some similarities to Bayformers Optimus, except done right in that he is actually giving a reason for his more violent streak.

But seriously, Rodimus calling these guys losers, jabronis, and "these two dopes" just feels right. His speech is just so perfectly Rodimus and it really helps it feel like this is his story and that you couldn't just have this be a story about Optimus or Bumblebee.

Also hell yeah Moon redemption with brutal death taking advantage of his weird anime eyes (Part of me wanted to learn more about him, but then Moon was never the centerpiece of this story, he just got a nice little arc) and hell yeah to Steeljaw being a pretty decent villain. Hard to disagree with him believing in procuring other life forms for sustenance when that is pretty much how humans, and all... IRL life forms function. However the whole farming thing is actually villainous and disgusting from a human perspective, even if he views it with the same detachment we would if we were relying purely on factory farming to survive.

Either way, I love this comic, I'm so sad it's going to end, and I want Roche to keep writing Transformers long after IDW is over and finished.

 

i think you are confusing art with character model and design. the art is perfectly fine

 

I found the splash page everyone has posted for the last 3 months to be absolutely excellent. Probably some of Su’s best work.

every other page has had terrible art, in my opinion. Definitely not the worst we’ve ever seen from IDW but certainly low quality, and the quality I’ve generally come to expect from Su since his horrible Lost Light issues.

 

very good, a lot of lore reveal and moving pieces. def the most entertaining issues so far. moon has been the bot of the rogues with the most focus outside of steeljaw so the turn seemed pretty right for him, sad though it didnt play out more. the energon key is very fun tista nd glad to see media revisit it. as unlikely as it seems, would love to see one or two of the rogues survive by the end of this, standing with rodimus so its a three bot team defending the planet again. def hope sharpclaw is a survivor; I like her as a new character and would like to see more and she seems more likely cause we've seen some clear tension between her and steeljaw, so maybe she will side with rodimus after being sick of him trying to command her.

pretty sure your missing the point of the story; its now how they survive but should they. rodimus' position is that the cybertronians have decimated the galaxy past the point of no return. they dont deserve a second chance to thrive and if the did they'd just start doing it again. they sorta already are, juts in a new way.

 

"We are all awake now, awake and hungry. But where is it? Even now we see them, glowing bright, drawing us near. Soon we will be there, all worlds will be consumed. Take us home Rodimus, Make us whole." - Steeljaw, probably.

Really good issue to a really good series so far. Can't wait to see how it ends.

 

Consider these two points together and get back to me.

 

If Wheelie was kicked that hard, he'd be vaporised. So would Hot Rod, come to think of it. Oh wait, 'it's a comic'.

 

I was able to borrow and read issues 2 and 3. So this is essentially a "Rodimus commits genocide on the last of his species" storyline. I can't imagine that I would ever be able to muster up any enthusiasm for that idea.

 

It's more of a "Transformers commited genocide on half of the universe, now Rodimus stops the last of his species from finishing the job".

 

I thought you said reading this series was a waste of time you couldn't get back, did you change your mind?

 

You're not wrong. My curiosity got the better of me. I did not spend money on these issues, just time, since I borrowed them, and I'm glad it didn't cost me anything but time. I am not a fan of this story, to say the least. Regeneration One did a far better job of Rodimus as the last survivor and made it a sad thing that ended on a hopeful note, while Last Bot Standing is as cynical as it gets and while the first issue made me angry at having my time wasted, these just had me a little disgusted. Still, I can't say I didn't give them a chance.

 

Fitting for a thread on 'what if' lol.

 

Emm, no, that is not why everyone acts shocked.
Transformers do not drool (let's forget about G1 Fangry when he was drawn by Wildman for a moment). They don't have glands in their mouths that would produce enzimes for digestion since they do not eat that way.
The reason everyone acted shocked was because Rodimus spit FUEL at Steeljaw. In a universe where it is incredibly hard to get fuel, and they basically devote most of their existence to finding more, such an act of wasting precious resources would count as incredibly disrespectful, for sure. It'd be like if you got invited to a bedouin tribe's camp in the middle of the desert, they gave you water and you poured it on the ground. Rodimus was basically showing them he does not want any of their fuel or hospitality.

Gotta agree. The art was not very good in this issue at all. That splash page looked good last issue, but otherwise cannot think of any really good art in this one.
In fact much of the car mode chase was downright hard to follow, and a lot of the pages felt like wasting time. Did we really needed like 5 pages on how Rodimus kills Treadshock and Autolauncher? Heck I never even understood what Treadshock was doing, turning around and driving backwards? It was not very well illustrated what he was doing. Shooting at Rodimus? Yet I saw no guns or blast effects. And then we get like 2 pages of him falling down the ditch, climbing back and being surprised the guy who was chasing him was waiting there to crush his head.

I don't deal with people playing the "I am being mysterious on purpose to mock you" game. It's something I stopped giving a crap about in primary school, giving people fuel to mock me.

A really bleak and utterly pointless end to IDW's universe, really. But oddly fitting, considering how pointless and boring IDW has gotten under Ruckley, and even before it - when Unicron came at the end of their previous continuity, I was soooo long past caring, already.

Pretty sure we only have his word on the matter. Yes, sure, the war decimated the galaxy - would it have been better if the Autobots just let Megatron do whatever he wanted to the universe? That'd have probably been infinitely worse. Even if the war destroyed planets like Earth, I feel it is faulty to blame the Autobots as much as the Decepticons.
And that is the big problem here, Rodimus is just telling his opinion to people who have absolutely no reference or idea about all this - Shib is an organic and all she know is what was passed down to her, and Steeljaw and co. were either created later, or have erased their older memories and no longer remember the war and any of this. Meaning Rodimus gets no argument, because the writer WANTS NO arguments. Aka, it is just the delivery of a forced message.

 

ok it seems like everyone is getting angry at this comic. I for one really love this not just because it's a comic about rodimus but it's got a lot of things that got me thinking again i mean steeljaw wanting what remains of his kind to survive and rodimus wanting his race to end so no more lives get caught up from the cybertronians actions. I really like that the art isn't the greatest but hell i'll take it over the first issues of the 2019 run also im wondering about that video hot rod had maybe it's about another storage of energon being hid by him or maybe it's something about gripper. Either way can't wait for that last issue

 

I'm so sorry sir, I'm so sorry the western styled story of a cartoon space robot toy isn't hyper detailed, because that is what good art is, 1:1 recreations of real life, I'm so sorry, EJ Su and Nick Roche have been placed in Guantanamo Bay, as per your orders, thank you for your understanding.

 

I thought the art was great but I guess a lot of people hate any Transformers art that doesn't look like sterile CAD drawings.

 

I think the art is the absolute least of this series' problems. Maybe the whole thing will tie up neatly with a bow in the final issue, but so far, I haven't really dug it, which is a bummer as I like the creative team.

 

Roddy will kill everybot while the battle consumes all bio lives before he turns his gun to himself.