Oh, I'm sure that's it. I still hate those little glasses with the pink liquids though. Spotlight Blurr is the only older instance of a TF bar in IDW that I recall. And there are Fembots. Gogo-dancing fembots. It was a problematic issue on a couple of levels. *EDIT* Okay, waitaminute... I went back and checked my hard copy of Spotlight:Blurr, and there are no dancing fembots in the bar scene that I can find. WHERE DID THIS IMAGE COME FROM??? I feel pretty sure that it popped up in an older IDW comic, and it was the topic of some confusion (since it contradicts Spotlight:Arcee). Does anybody remember what I'm thinking of?? Honestly, I prefer that to the idea that all TFs with faceplates actually have normal faces underneath. Ugh. That always bothered me for some reason. And that image looks suitably weird to pass "alien" muster for me. I think that discussion of faceplates was actually Spotlight: Orion Pax... but more or less the right chronological period anyway. Unless there were two such conversations? It's for their file-maintenance and virus search routines. Or maybe they just need to actually process their fuel and feed the energy into their different systems. Who knows? While we're running down the (lengthy) list of things I dislike, micro-repair systems also bother me. I prefer good old-fashioned maintenance schedules and mechanical check-ups. That's kind of what Hoist's whole job is supposed to be, in fact. You still need intakes for air-cooling and heat dispersement. References to "exhaust" abound in Cybertronian vernacular, so it makes sense that there's a corollary. As for guys with faceplates, it could explain why so many characters with faceplates also have little vents and stuff around their faceplates. Actually, many TFs tend to have little vents on them, frequently on their helmets somewhere. They're such a generic design motif, I guess we never really stop to consider their possible functions... Yeah, IDW is actually addressing those differences and coming up with their own particular explanations. But there's still so much physical biodiversity (even more now after the NAILS returned) that I don't think you can chalk it ALL up to "outliers". Beast-themed TFs might be lower class, but in that case, they must also make up a sizable portion of the population... and represent a separate race (or races) of Cybertronian. That can certainly be expanded upon. Very true. We tend to assume that this is because the different NAIL tribes all (for some reason) seemed to be ESPECIALLY easily influenced by their environments... something we don't see so much with the main cast. That suggests that all of those variations came about in the last 4 million years... which is itself always a problem because it is simultaneously an eternity AND no time at all from the perspective of Cybertronians. Oh well.. You don't need to answer the existential/religious questions of how life on Cybertron began, to address the common knowledge realities of how TF's reproduce asexually (industrial manufacturing in Marvel G1... until that Gremlins-Budding thing came in... yuck), what their social divisions and conventions are, how they eat, why they look like they do, etc... There is so much cultural detail that we are still missing (and that Roberts has only begun to scratch the surface of) that really shouldn't be so obscure now. I don't need to know whether Primus exists or not, but I'd like to know whether a faceplate covers a real face or not... or whether their helmets are part of their heads or some surface armour... or why they have beast bots... or how they reformat themselves, etc, etch etc... Well, to some degree, they can still piggyback on comic-book convention, where 99% of alien races tend to be some variation on standard humanoids. Since IDW established that there IS a larger intergalactic community, and that TFs are galaxy-spanning creatures, it would be easy to say that TFs are hyper-adaptive and often borrow from other cultures and integrate these influences into their own culture... perhaps this came about at some early phase, when TFs had not developed their emotional and cultural faculties very deeply, and instead copied what they saw beyond their normal dominions. But then some fans would be like "waaaah... TF's aren't the most important, cool, original, perfect beings in the universe anymore!". I think that's illogical. That answer is small, easy, egalitarian, and pretty much closes the issue. It's WAY less offensive than just about anything else they could do, and lingers less than this "pronoun obsession" we're seeing lately. They can't be THAT afraid of people jumping up and dropping the series. It seems like maybe they are working on cooking something up, but the problem is that the more involved or convoluted the answer is, the more likely it's going to alienate people. And the longer you drag out getting to that answer, the more you're going to bug people and foster debate. Well, that's the problem isn't it? We just don't have faith in Barber anymore. Well, I don't consider you an idiot, so feel free to take that as a compliment. Doesn't speak well for the situation or our confidence in the creative forces, does it? zmog
I suspect you're thinking of the robo-floozies from the pit fight crowd in Megatron Origins. With you on that one. I don't mind the idea of Nano-bots per se, as aThey can be easily analogous to bacterium and other symbiotes/parasites and exist within a transformers body and help them function or make them sick, but yeah, the should all be getting regularly checked out by Hoist for oil changes, and filter check ups and stuff, and anything he can't fix up he refers them to Ratchet. I hate, hate, hate CR chambers. Such a cop out, not sure who introduced them into the fiction, I can't immediately recall them being mentioned before one of the LSOTW prose stories so it may have been Roberts, yet ironically he hasn't used them since whilst Barber does all the time. I love this idea, although I presume just like our face holes, it would be more for air intake than heat dispersal. The big vents that are normally around torsos would be for that. See to me, yes, that should be the be all and end all really. Transformers are supposed to be chameleons, they're supposed to infiltrate and adapt. They're robots in disguise, it's not just a tagline, it's supposed to be the whole point. It's why I don't really like them moving away from Earth, and it's a credit to Roberts that he's made me not care. But it should still go beyond turning into vehicles and whatnot to hide, they should absorb things from the species they interact with, and I'd like it if that was alluded to a little more, and perhaps given as a reason why Earth affected them all so much. It could be that since the galactic council ostracized them, they haven't had that interactive contact with other races for such a long time that their development as a species stalled or went backwards, embroiled in war until they got to Earth and that dormant facet of them came out and changed them without them even realising.
I was wondering about that, but I don't think I am. Is there a "bar scene" in Megatron Origin? Maybe it's there...? Lazy animators? Did Roberts use them in one of his stories? Shame on him. Blah. Oh, yeah. I just meant the air had to go in somewhere. But then, I guess that's more anthropomorphizing... making TFs into a bunch of mouth-breathers. See to me, yes, that should be the be all and end all really. Transformers are supposed to be chameleons, they're supposed to infiltrate and adapt. They're robots in disguise, it's not just a tagline, it's supposed to be the whole point.[/QUOTE]I kind of like a blend between this idea, and the tendency towards being stagnant (stuck in a war for 4 millions years anyone?). It's like as a species they are incapable of original thinking, and are unmotivated to change. For beings that are functionally immortal, time has little meaning, and it can be very easy to fall into a rut... and so they fall back on infusions of change or scientific evolution from other species. Or something. Exactly my feelings. Nice! I like that. zmog
Roberts only used a CR chamber as a brief plot device in MtMtE, to get Ratchet to chase down Pharma instead of Fort Max. The idea was that Pharma had built a false floor in there too small for Max to use. I think the treatment of med-bots under Roberts has been comprehensive and sophisticated enough to forgive him the notion that a CR chamber might be PART of a treatment regime. Though I'm still stewing over the "death clock," to paraphrase that guy in DotM.
Yeah, I forget which story though. It may have been Bullets. Rotorstorms unknown drill sergeant at the acadamy would beat crap out of him every night and chuck him in a CR chamber overnight so he'd be all repaired by the next day. Ah yes, that too. As a support machine, totally. But all to often they're treated as magic tubes. Stick hurt guy in, take fixed guy out. Ah now I didn't mind that. If spark shrinkage is a thing that occurs when a Cybertronian is terminally ill, then it makes sense that the rate of shrinkage can be measured and a time given until the point of no recovery. I also liked that the other characters seemed pretty horrified by it.
I just read Bullets for the first time last night, and you are 100% correct on this. Although to be fair CR chambers were around in the IDW universe since basically day 1 when Furman used them in the -ation series. (For sure they were around by the time of Escalation.) Edit: Bullets also includes a part where Rung ruminates on the introduction of more advanced vocal processors modeled after various organics.
Interesting... I keep putting off reading Bullets. Or maybe I did and forgot? Anyway, that's a fascinating aside. zmog
You should really read it when you get the chance. I had pretty much given up on the IDW comics somewhere in Costa hell, and then I read Bullets and was like, "Oh, shit, this Roberts guy is writing these comics now? Oh, hell yeah!" And then I slogged through the rest of Costaville (because I'm stubborn, and because there was another Roberts gem hidden in there) and got to MTMTE and RID. And while I usually like MTMTE better, I'm still impressed with them both.
Wasn't it only insinuated but not confirmed that it was Whirl? We know he was an instructor at the academy and changed his name for a period, but Rotorstorm also says the bot was "clapping and cheering" when he got his accommodation. I'm not sure Whirl can "clap" so much as "clang."
Pretty sure it was addressed that, at least according to Whirl: He was a flight instructor. He quit. He became a watch maker. Senate wanted him to work for them. He told them to shove it. They destroyed his business, empurata'd him, and forced him to work for them. So, yeah. It allows Whirl to be his instructor.
Hey, I don't know if anyone watches this thread anymore, but if there's anyone left, can someone get me a really high-res pic of this issue's title page(full shot of Devastator looking down at Galvatron)?
