#the entire ll comic was a pain to read at least for me

[cherrytimemachine]

always felt Atomizer's death was stupid as hell. I mean Getaway's already killed dozens of people for trival reasons, he won't hesistate to murder you for betraying him. dumbass

I honestly hate the direction they took Getaway in. I felt bad for Atomizer the whole time he had to deal with this fucker. I think the the point where it got super over the top evil for me was when Getaway went out of his way to verbally berate Riptide right before trying to kill him just for the sake of it. And Atomizer, loyal Atomizer, he looked at Getaway and told him that what he’d done was excessive. Getaway could’ve been a much better villain, but I don’t fully blame Jro for that since Hasbro cut the length of their story. They had planned a season 3 and 4, but Hasbro gave them a limit they had to follow. Hasbro cutting production time for their shows or cutting corners for toy sales at the expense of the creators they hired seems to be a recurring theme the more I learn about them.

Give me a reasonable conflict that still tests the moral limits Atomizer is willing to accept for supporting Getaway. They could’ve kept Froid and Sunder in the mix, but instead of Getaway being outwardly evil out of nowhere, Froid encourages him to make harmful decisions and choices. Froid is intrigued by the thought processes and minds of people like Sunder, who commit horrible crimes, so why wouldn’t he try and do a social experiment where he pushes someone to the brink of becoming a worse person to test how the mind responds under pressure from an influence? Have Froid release Sunder himself, have Sunder threaten Getaway and his crew if he didn’t give in to their demands. I imagine it like Pharma’s situation with Tarn, but we get to see it in action. There is potential to seeing Getaway breaking behind the scenes with the added inclusion of Atomizer as someone who’s trying to help his friend, but Getaway pushes him away so he doesn’t get involved.

At one point he’s faced with the choice of killing Atomizer or sparing him, and Getaway has to choose whether to kill one or let them all die. They hold singular lives above his head and make him feed Sunder’s hunger as a means of saving the many for the sacrifice of he one. Sunder torments Getaway, tells him to kill Atomizer, and Getaway has to come to terms with how far he’s been strung up by these people. Because above all, he’s afraid of dying if he refuses, so he complies out of fear for his own life and others like him. That point would tie back in really nicely to his experience watching his fellow MTOs die during the battle of Corcapsia and the trauma responses that led him to where he is now.

He had such understandable motives as a villain, and that’s something I loved about him when I read MTMTE. They totally squashed that in Lost Light and I’m still unhappy about it.

#the entire ll comic was a pain to read at least for me #volumes two and three especially #getaway #atomizer #tf riptide #froid #sunder #pharma #tarn #decepticon justice division #mtmte spoilers #idw mtmte #lost light spoilers #idw lost light #idw g1 #transformers idw #transformers #ask cherry #cherry monologues

[anna1795-blog]

My Lump Review of “Transformers: Lost Light” so far

So, remember a few weeks back when I said that I’d be doing some lightning-round reviews of the Lost Light and (maybe) Till All are One comic lines issues that I’d read leading up to LL#5? And how LL#6 just came out this morning? Well, I’ve come across a little problem...I am having difficulty being invested with “Transformers: Lost Light” as it is right now.

*SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT*

What can’t I get invested in? The stories that Lost Light is telling so far. 

I love James Roberts as an author. I think he’s creative, imaginative, and manages to turn some common comic and literary tropes on their head. I was completely immersed in the world that he crafted in MTMTE. I fell in love with the characters (well, most of them), the worlds, the smaller plots that were going on between characters. It was a character focused expanded narrative that left me wanting more because of flushed out, detailed characters (extended thanks to Alex Milne for lineart and his entire lettering and coloring team). 

Now, I came across my investment issue with Lost Light when a friend asked me today: “Why don’t you talk about the Transformers comics much anymore?” So, I talked about the latest run by JRo, and he seemed interested and asked about the story. 

Well, here’s my first problem: We have six issues of the comic line so far, yeah? A slightly longer first issue to set the scene, tell us the new world that our wayward mutinees have been blasted into, but most of the other issues last about 27-30 pages. Now, what’re the stories? The operative context being there’s more than one. 

I’ve counted at least seven (six with one subplot, which I rounded up to seven). Let’s count them out, shall we? 

1.) New Team Rodimus have been teleported onto an alternate, Functionist Cybertron that was teased at back in MTMTE. They need to get home without being captured by the Functionist Council, and they’ve been roped into assisting a ragtag resistance that needs to stop the Functionists from expanding their doctrine beyond Cybertron and eliminating races and planets that fall outside of their Grand Taxonomy with Unicron Jr. (I know it’s really Luna 2, but its functions remind me of Unicron from the 1984 movie, so Luna 2= Unicron Jr.)

Does that seem like a lot? That’s story 1. Here’s the subplot/story 2. 

2.) Terminus thinks that Megatron should stay on Functionist Cybertron and abandon Rodimus if it means not having to face the Knights of Cybertron and the possibility of execution, but Megatron is conflicted. On the one hand, this world needs someone like him to fight the good fight. On the other, he feels that he needs to answer for his crimes that he committed during the war. And by the end of LL#6, that decision is made for him, not by him (infuriatingly enough). 

Let’s keep going on this pain train, folks!

3.) A flunkie from someplace on Caminus (I think? I can’t really explain how Nautica and Velocity know her otherwise), Anode, was on Luna 2 in Normal Cybertron ‘verse with her pal Lug, and they were picked up by the Necrobot before they could become putty sometime during the War (I think?). Only, Anode was the only one to be picked up, but we don’t realize until issue 5/6 that the Lug that she was talking to was actually a hallucination brought about by her being in a coma, and that her friend died back on Luna 2 before the Necrobot could get her. 

3a.) Anode has a protoform star (or something) that is very valuable because you can take a Cybertronian’s spark energy and warp the sentio metallico around it in order to create a new bot? That’s what my understanding is, and I could very well be wrong. Anyways, Anode is also carrying some baggage with her from something bad that happened on Caminus, but then she’s gonna take her protoform star and resurrect her dead friend!

4.) There are a bunch of Autobots and Decepticons from the past who were bamfed to the (now alternate) present by the Necrobot, and the War that they were committed to is now over. What are they going to do now? Who are these ‘bots? How are they going to get along with the rest of the team? Well, aside from Roller and Anode, we get very little exposure to the rest of them. 

5.) Rodimus has a massive revenge boner for Getaway and the other mutineers on the titular Lost Light, and he’s converted to Spectralism almost entirely and redone his paint in order to commit to getting his (actually Drift’s) ship back. Also, Rodimus is a lot angrier now than before. I know that you got marooned on a hollow planet, bud, but did you need to deck Functionist Rung in the cheek? Seriously? 

6.) Drift had a vision of the future where he, Rodimus, and Grimlock were facing down Pharma, a butt ton of spark-eaters, and I think the Lost Light was in that image, too? And Ratchet is worried about him (which is nice), but...when is it gonna come up again? 

(As an aside, in LL#5 when Rung mentions how he can create crystals and was blackmailed by the Council to create so many of them, Drift mentioned that there were crystals in his vision...WHERE?!?! DID WE SEE THEM?! I saw it was raining...was it raining Crystals? Then why did their impact look like liquid? This really bothered me!)

7.) Both Rungs that we see are facing their own crisis regarding their function. Normal Rung doesn’t know what to do now that he resigned from being a psychiatrist/therapist. Functionist Rung wants to take down the Functionist Council and destroy Luna 2 (which Rodimus and Co. need to get home) And...blurble blurble something something Functionist Rung dies. 

And that’s from what I can remember from the six issues so far! For all I know, I’ve missed something! Did I remember Tailgate and Cyclonus and Whirl? Swerve and Ten and Brainstorm? I almost forgot them! 

Almost ten different stories! In six issues! And which character are we supposed to focus on?! Which place should we prefer? 

And I think that might be one of the issues. It feels like we’ve gone from a character-focused narrative to a setting-focused narrative, or some weird hybrid of the two. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but when you have a medium such as a comic book, the space and time you’re working with is limited. If Drift saw crystals in his prophetic vision, were they off-panel from what we could see? Maybe, but we should’ve seen them if they were important to his vision? How close or far away is the Necroworld from Functionist Cybertron? Is this going to impact the away team’s ability to get back home if they don’t take the Luna 2 transporter? Will the fact that there are two Anodes in the same universe now impact what’ll happen to them? Everything’s taking place in a Functionist Universe with a bunch of bots who don’t belong there, but...that’s about it. 

I think the only people I felt invested for the entire story thus far are Megatron and Drift. Drift seems to have taken over for Magnus/Minimus as Rodimus’ minder when they’re out to go fight things, since he’s gotten very protective and knife-y whenever seeing Rodimus in danger. Megatron’s coming back into his element by coordinating a charge against the Functionists, pulling in from his millenia of warfare and steadfast leadership. But everyone else feels really bland or, in the case of Rodimus, much more negative to be bordering on unpleasant. 

I really want for this series to work out. I notice that similar issues regarding too many story lines in too short a time are coming up within ‘Till All are One’ as well, so this could very well be an editorial mandate for the entire Transformers IDW writing team since MScott and JRo have pretty different writing styles. I hope that things can smooth out as we move away from Functionist Cybertron. However, with Megatron being left behind (which creams my figurative corn and has so much salt as to be inedible that it’s a whole ‘nother rant for another day), I don’t know where we’re going to go from here. 

#transformers idw #lost light #ll spoilers #mtmte #comic reviews #kind of a rant