Knightdramon wrote:Last issue was more or less pitched as a "Tailgate stands up to Megatron" solicitation...which never happened.
This issue it seemed a bit less "completely out of context", but still...weird.
Oh yeah that's a good point. I didn't mind that Tailgate didn't meet Megatron in that issue, simply because the cover was so awesome. So you're right that cover does commit more of a sin than the present one.
I wish I was able to find the cover from last year (or whenever) with Tailgate on the front standing next to the C-62 Bomb. Any cover with him on has been great. I'd count Issue 30's regular cover as the most boring of the MTMTE run.
Also, Broadside looks like he could duff up anyone!
Auntie Slag wrote:
and now I've got to wait another month.
Two weeks, actually. #31 is due July 9.
So much so that it feels like its trying to squeeze too much in, but I'd rather that than too little.
It certainly reads better as a whole -- well, the flashback sequences do, as that section of the story is now complete -- but for the sake of pacing and breathing space, I still believe the trial by itself should've served as a prologue for 'season 2', before jumping into the disappearances, and the corpse, and folks reaction to Megatron inexplicably being 'co-captain' of the ship.
Oh, gee willikers! You mean Rodimus isn't dead after all? How shocking! Roberts has never pulled that one before...
It's also awesome how Megatron, in spite of clearly behaving and being treated like he's totally in charge of the ship for the first two issues (including being called "captain", not "co-captain", and being able to unilaterally promote people to senior positions) turns out not to be. It sure was nice for the entire crew to irrationally behave in just such a way as to preserve Roberts' tired, played-out "shock", wasn't it?
The conclusion to Megatron's trial was completely and utterly anticlimactic, as there was no conclusion, just a continuance. Meanwhile Optimus Prime is a huge asshole, forcing Megatron to denounce the Decepticon cause for absolutely no reason (nobody is going to be convinced by it -- Soundwave et. al. have already decided to fight, and those who've had enough, like Starscream, have already decided to give it up) other than to rub salt in the wound and get some measure of payback on Megatron for manoeuvring his way out of a death sentence.
Optimus Prime should be above petty impulses like that.
Somehow "we don't have the authority to execute you" becomes "here, have command of a crew of Autobots" in spite of the fact that the Lost Light is Rodimus's personal property and his mission, such as it was, was explicitly not an official one. Plus Optimus Prime doesn't actually have authority over anyone anymore, since he abdicated his claim to power and let Starscream take over the planet. So, uh, yeah. All this just happens because the plot says it has to. All of this so Hasbro can feel justified in including an Autobot sticker with their next Megatron toy.
Oh, and the entire issue makes Optimus out to be stupid, spiteful and a bully, and Optimus should never be any of those things.
I'm sorry, but Roberts is better than this. There are some good parts to this story, lots of the trademark Roberts wit and and an interesting mystery with the ship disappearing. But the whole "trial of Megatron" story comes out, in the end, like time wasted trying to explain the unexplainable. No matter what they did, it was never going to make any sense and the whole thing was always going to come down to a gigantic handwave. The whole thing should just have been dispensed with with a few lines of exposition so that they could move on to the actually interesting story that's been floating around in the background, and that finally seems to be coming to a head next issue.
I'd probably be a lot more generous to the story if Roberts hadn't played the "a character is horribly injured/dead...hohoho nope, just kidding, he's fine!" card for the seventh time* in two and a half years.
*Am I missing any? I count:
All the characters who "burned up in the atmosphere" in #1 that were inexplicably fine in #2
Rung's head gets blown up, only for him to be alive next issue
Red Alert survives decapitation
Swerve's face gets shot off, only for him to be fixed next issue without even comment
Magnus magically survives an "incurable" spark injury, and getting his head crushed (I'm generiously counting this as one incident...)
Tailgate "dies", except nope, getting stabbed magically fixes him somehow
It's already been established that Cybertronians are pretty hard to kill, though - hence the Relinquishment Clinics where Chromedome and Rewind met. I didn't really see any of those as 'fake-outs' per se (except perhaps Rung's) since we've seen Transformers survive that sort of thing many times. And some of those are there to drive plot and character - Magnus's survival leads us to Tyrest (and also sets up Tyrest's own escape); Tailgate's survival is a result of a thawing in the relationship between Whirl and Cyclonus. You know what I mean? He's not 'faking' deaths for no reason - it's because it serves the drama and the plot.
I dunno. I'm just not that fussed about characters dying. Once they're dead you can't use them again!
I get what you're saying. It's a valid plot device but the problem is that Roberts has overused it to the point where it's become tired and predictable.
A huge part of the drama and tension in a series like this comes from putting the characters in danger. But if they basically can't die, then they're not in danger and there's no drama. Reading threads on other forums, when it turned out Rodimus was in the coffin or mini-Magnus got his head squashed, instead of being shocked or upset fans were speculating on how next issue would reveal that he wasn't actually dead. The cliffhangers had absolutely no tension to them because everyone knew that the next issue would immediately show the "death" to be a red herring.
I agree with you about not wanting to see characters die. Wanton character death like we've seen in a lot of other comics is simply wasteful. But if you're not going to kill any important characters, then you probably shouldn't built the climax of 1/4 of your issues around a scenario designed to make it look like someone is dead/dying. Find another way to tell the story that you want to tell. That's all I'm saying.
I think the one time I felt the red herring death worked was with Tailgate. Sure, it did serve as a bit of plot device, which you'd think would lose points with me, but it helped advance Cyclonus's storyline. It gave his 'season 1' arc a nice closing.
...Plus, he got his horn back as a result, and I made no secret 'round these parts how much Cyclonus's asymmetrical look irked me
Then again, in the #21 thread, I partly wished Roberts still went through with it. Could've taken Cyclonus's arc in an entirely different, and potentially interesting, direction. But, like Death's Head, I'm not much of a proponent for character deaths. It's a waste.
Conversely, I also agree with Warcry, that Roberts should... well, knock it off. It's a suspension killer.
I do think the fake out death's have been a weakness, as I've waxed lyrical on before I've no problem with the characters being virtually immortal, but that means you can't have it both ways and then try to create cliffhanger drama out of seeming death, even if what happens is still pushing the plot forward in other ways.
It's also hurting the genuine death's, at this stage does anyone think Bumblebee has done more than go for a bit of a nap?
I do think, the couple of times he's done similar, Barber has handled it slightly better. No one has, to the best of my knowledge, being crying foul over Wheeljack or Metalhawk because their death's weren't Big Cliffhanger moments but more a part of the flow of the drama within the issue, so it doesn't seem so undermining when they turn up later (he also tends to not have them turn out to be fine almost straight away, which helps).
All that said though, I do think this feels different, if nothing else because technically the Rodimus who turned up dead in the coffin is still actually dead.
While I'm not nearly as bothered by this as other readers - I quite like it when I am tricked by a writer - I'm going to agree with Warcry that there should be a downregulation of cliffhangers threatening imminent danger. For me, stuff like Atomiser's list and Ultra Magnus getting along with Megatron more than he gets along with Rodimus are far bigger sources of tension. I am on tenterhooks about who is behind the Lost Light Insider!
From his Twitter stream and interviews, Roberts does seem to be smarting from this particular criticism so I think we can expect to see it ease up when the script backlog catches up to the end of Remain In Light (in roughly six months' time, I believe).
I reckon we make more out of these fake-outs than is necessary. They've never bothered me. In fact, the only one that did is, perhaps rather oddly, seeing Snap Trap alive and well in this issue after getting Drifts sword through the face in the Temptoria issue.
The thing is though, I'm sure Roberts has had Ratchet or Chromedome mention in the past that to kill a Transformer, you've got to wipe out the Rossum's trinity thing. That was mentioned in issue three I think. So that would help explain why Snap Trap is tickety boo (though you do see him on the ground this issue missing a leg and a pool of robot blood around him).
Of the fake-outs though:
- Rung was marked out from the beginning as special/unusual.
- Magnus was a good lesson in changing what I thought Magnus was and being alright with that (though it took months until recently for me to square with the fact there were many Magnuses before him)
- Red Alert, the only thing that bugs me about him was his end feels slightly sidelined being only in text... and that is a lame reason, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
And then there's the Necrobots iPad, so lots of interesting things to come yet.
And I totally agree with Terome, there are some good ideas being milled that negate any nasty aftertaste the fake-outs may be giving some people.
I read this nice and early today. Thought it was great fun - definitely a bottle episode as described. I liked the Nightbeat puzzle-solving dossier structure (and the establishment that Nightbeat likes problems, not people), Tailgate pulling a gun, the Ravage reveal and the character work on Riptide and Nautica. Not quite sure what the point of the Ultra Magnus appearance was other than to establish that Megatron can recognise Verity off the bat.
Puzzling over those spark-type factoids and details such as Huffer being born again, Gears having a tiny brain, Hound being in the Primal Vanguard and Ammo being a monoformer.
As for the last page... now there's a fake-out death if ever I saw one. My guess is that it's a sister ship of the Lost Light.
Very Red Dwarf: Quarentine wasn't it? Arguably everyone turned on each other a bit quickly there (Cyclonus has gone two years without someone trying to murder him in his bed, would Huffer really turn on him that quickly?), but it still read very well and had lots and lots of nice moments for everyone.
The main flaw is the British education system stuff was very on the nose, if you're American imagine the Autobots coming across Planet Obamacare. Hopefully them arriving on Planet Offsted won't see that get much worse (especially as, unless I've really misread the demographic, I suspect most of Roberts' British readers are already onside in not liking what the current government is trying to do to schools and universities, could wind up preaching to the choir).
Are the other new arrivals who aren't on the Rod Pod now floating about in space? If whatever is doing this can separate the paint from Pharma's hands whilst leaving the hands behind it should be sensitive enough the grab the ships they're on but not them.
Come to that, shouldn't there have been a lot more stuff-not-from-the-launch left behind when the Lost Light vanished last issue? The fuel if nothing else...
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