Hahahaha right back at you! They're PHASE SIX of Megatron's Infiltration Protocol! That means Phase's 1-5 had a part in the planetary genocide you speak of. It's not just Sixshot slaughtering a planet all by himself it's all due to a strategic effort. Thus the reason the DJD have been able to take out Phase 6ers. Hell even Starscream can stop a Phase Sixer if you go back and read Devastation.

The only reason you're able to doubt Combiners right now is because of the poor way that most have been handled in IDW as of late. Which is the main issue putting me off about this issue. Plus the blatant disrespect for combiners is apparently getting worse!

But then again after seeing how easy it is for them to pick off dozens of titans this shouldn't really surprize anyone.

 

Not really, most of the phases before Phase 6 we know of were simply "infiltrate society and turn natives against each other"

That's because he knew the special "killswitch" so to speak that Megatron gave the Phase Sixers in case they turned against him.

I'm not saying Combiners are weak, but they've never been shown to be the end all be all super weapons you seem to think they are. At best they seem to be city levellers.

 

And Phase's 3, 4 or 5 for all we know may have required Devastator.

Pfft! No truer words could be said about Strika right now.... She's basically a Bot who appeared out of nowhere who we see catching the fist of a combiner you begrudgingly admitted has the power to at least level an entire Cybertronian city! Now I don't know a whole lot about Strika but that Team Chaar scene stood out on a show (Animated) I tended to despise 95% of the time. So her debut in my head space was on good terms..... But I'm NOT hardwired to believe any and everything they fling on panel during a fight as plausible in a comic book be it an Outlier or not.

Again this shouldn't really surprise me. I gave Scott the benefit of the doubt despite her being a writer of that God Awful Prime show which is notorious for having some of the most ridiculously one sided, battles in TF history. So if you can't make the character believable and w/o being at the expense of making Devastator a pathetic punching bag then I'll just check out ongoing episode synopsis on TFwiki if I'm board.

 

Man, you'd think Stika beat up Devastator so bad that your fond childhood memories of him as a ty were wiped from your brain, and your G1 MISB toy of him was turned to ash, with the way some people are acting, it was just a punch she blocked, that was it, unless I'm missing something and there's a page missing that I'm not seeing in this preview.

 

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaa!!!

Sigh......anyway my concerns stand. Hopefully this is a false alarm and Devastator brings some type of reality back to the book in the next panel and plucks her in to outer space some damn where.

 

That's what I thought too. It's a cool shot, but it makes no sense in story given Devastator (or Prowlastator) tore Superion in half.

 

I'm less concerned about Jobberstator than I am about taking up an entire page with almost exactly the same shot we ended on last issue. This is a good tale so far, all in all, but the last two issues have been breezy reads, and it looks like this one will be too. Wouldn't matter so much if the story wasn't missing important incidental details, like who's holding back the titans while the entire cast is off on a sidequest.

 

Give me one example in any of TF fiction where combiners have been shown to be as powerful as you imply they are. I admit, Strika blocking the punch with no damage is a bit ridiculous, but I honestly think you're overestimating the power of combiners.

 

Look on the one hand YES Devastator and all combiners are held up as strategic weapons that are hard to stop but on the other hand STRIKA

I mean, no one would complain if it were Brawn, that's just his thing.

 

I can't believe Strika literally just killed Devastator and now he's dead forever and also completely erased from the canon...

 

Bruticus: Rampages through Iacon so much that evacuation is considered
Devastator/Defensor: Battle between them almost levels Tagon Heights
Menasor: Almost destroyed Caminus before Superion shows up
Thunder Mayhem: Almost completely wipes out the Cybertronian race

 

What???

Weren't you the one who just declared Combiners as "City Levelers"? That's no easy task so I didn't disagree. Are you back pedaling on that strength class now?

If not then I fail to understand your issue at this point since you've also agreed that Strika taking that punch w/o a scratch was "ridiculous".

 

I did say that, but you said a Combiner could take on a Phase Sixer, which is the part I disagreed with.

 

The physics of Transformer strength/durability is pretty mind-bending anyway. Imagine living in a place where the people are generally tougher and denser than most building materials.

 

That seems likely, but even following that, it seems excessive. We saw Megatron pull something very similar back in All Hail Megatron... but he wasn't cracking wise. He was struggling. Allowing Strika to shrug it off feels... unnecessarily cavalier.

We don't really know the extent of Tailgate's new powers, or if they're unprecedented. I always figured a strong little guy like Brawn was an outlier, but the distinctions between being a POP, or an outlier, or just plain strong, have been very mushy. Guys like Grimlock and Megatron are 'heavy' POPs, and they're among the strongest 'natural' Transformers who ever lived.

I suppose it's possible that Strika could be in that "leader class" power level, but pushing her beyond that level feels excessive, like they're overdoing it for the sake of a momentary plot twist.

For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of what Roberts has done with Tailgate... but that's a different conversation, really.

There is (maybe) an undercurrent of feminine empowerment here (Look, everyone, we made a super-strong fembot! Give us a cookie!) but it feels like it's out-of-step with everything.

Power levels in IDW are pretty screwed up, and in general, the canon has become very badly managed. Combiners were initially treated like doomsday weapons, and were kept very much in reserve, like the IDW staff were waiting for a good way to explain / introduced them. Then Perceptor one-shotted Monstructor, who was supposedly an unstoppable god-monster who owns Omega Supreme like it's nothing. That was bad. Then, at a certain point, everything got really slapdash. People like Superion were just 'spontaneously' magically combining... first, just because, then later, because Megatron tapped into the primal essence of Cybertron and mentally willed them to... blah blah blah. Total mumbo-jumbo. Terrible writing. Bad. Demerits all around.

And then we got the deus ex Enigma of Combination, because Hasbro wanted to do a Combiner toy line, and IDW had to speed things along. So now, anybody who's standing in the same room together can be a combiner. Blargh.

So I think it's fair to say that the Combiner brand has devalued somewhat. Some of this is the traditional comic book law of diminishing returns... You introduce a super-powered threat (Combiners, Phase Sixers, Titans) and then subsequently undermine and treat them as disposable until they're totally Worfed.

Which sucks.

Maybe true, but I doubt it's deliberate. Man, looking over all the poorly developed plot threads that went nowhere is depressing sometimes. I pretty much forgot that Scoop was even still in Devastator. But it hardly matters, since Combiners in IDW pretty much cease to be individuals anymore (sadly).

Inconclusive. Planetary genocide isn't that hard when you're mostly fighting underdeveloped squishies, and you're benefiting from 5 preceding phases that are designed to utterly cripple their ability to resist. It's an ephemeral measure of power.

Both Phase Sixers and Combiners have been held up as unstoppable murderbots, but the writing is capricious and inconsistent enough that it's impossible to make a reliable prediction. However, there are a lot of combiners running around, so chances are they will get nerfed more often.

I agree that Combiners shouldn't be that powerful. I'm a G1 Profile original purist, and for me, most Combiners can only lift around 300 tons, and Devastator is only 60 feet tall. All of the mass-shifting fanwanking that made them into apocalyptic god-bots is not my preference. But in IDW, they've definitely portrayed them as much more powerful. Meanwhile, we have very little to go on for Phase Sixers. Black Shadow apparently defeated an army of heavy hitters, meanwhile, Overlord got reduced to a flaming chassis by a handful of deterrence chips. So far, if we look at the list of Phase Sixers, we have two living, and a bunch of dead ones... whatever that tells us, we can say that they're not invincible.

zmog

 

I don't even remember Strika... Is that bad? Anyway, catching Devys fist I don't like. The art is misleading. In the frame with the punch his knuckles are flush with the hull. In the next frame Strika is catching Worf's hand but the ship is barely dented. I would guess that punch pushed her right through. At least that would be more interesting. Then she could climb out of the hole and be all fist shaky and growling, Devy can punch again and she catch it... Too many frames?
I think this plot thread is sillier than the whole un-dead titan army who really don't seem to be all that much trouble (I also find this plot silly). At least I really enjoy Starscream. I like Windblade. Hopefully this story pays off.

 

SMOG is wise in the ways of comics.

This kind of bullshit really upset me right around the time it was revealed what Phase Sixers actually WERE (Wolverines) and before we had so much as a handwave about Skywarp's teleporting, Trailbreaker's forcefield, etc.

At some point I just started rolling with the punches cause I was having such a good time. Sort of like how in Beast Wars I don't really care or need an explanation how Waspinator can be literally cut to ribbons when Dinobot dies intact, et al.

But

It's still a FLAW and there's no use pretending otherwise. Bad habits of both the medium and the franchise reinforcing one another.

You could still pick it up though. At this point there are enough ostensibly "friendly" combiners so that Wheeljack should be running experiments on them, sort of like Leo Quintum in All-Star Superman. You could get an arc out of that (maybe he pays Sixshot to try fighting Menasor, but both of them are getting bribed by OTHER people for their own agendas).

 

Maybe she's temporarily high on forestonite ? ..... How would you prefer it play out, Strika vs Devastator ?

 

Well, I wasn't aware that Strika vs Devastator needed to be a thing, because generally "normal" TFs don't fight combiners blow-for-blow. But you can still show that Strika is strong without making Devastator look like a punk. Not necessarily for Devastator's sake, but for the sake of Combiners and basic intuitive internal consistency. Because, at the moment, Strika appears to be the Strongest Transformer in the History of Ever.

zmog

 

Strika getting punched by Devastator and getting up afterward would be pretty cool, kind of like when Metroplex knocked the snot out of Sixshot and the Phase Sixer looked like he'd be okay in a few minutes.