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popculturebuffet · 1 year

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More Than Meets the Eye Retrospective Issue 4: "Life after The Big Bang" (Patreon Review for Brotoman.exe

Hello all you happy Autbots and welcome back to my issue by issue look at Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye, as funded as always by Brotoman.Exe, we chart a course through one of my faviorite comics of all time as a bunch of autobots head up into space on a quest or something but really just to find themselves, adventure and what not.

I"m really pumped going into this one for a number of reasons. The first is a simple: Transformers Earthspark just debuted and while I haven't seen it yet (I have a giant pile of shows to get to, though I fully intend to get to this one before the year end so it can be in contentoin my best animated episodes of the year list.) it sounds really promising. The fact Danny Pudi and Zeno Robinson, both voice actors I dearly love, are in the main cast dosen't hurt.

It's also notable for the fact that from what I have learned Earthspark.. takes a few pages from this era of IDWformers book. It takes place post war, though how the war ended is still vauge, Decipticons are given restraining bolts to prevent transforming, and biggest of all and something vital to this very series in the future.. Megatron has quit as leader of the decepticons and is now on the side of good, if not neceisarily agreeing with the Autobots despite allying with them. And yes for those of you knew, that's an arc in this series and one of it's best and most important, it just dosen't come into play till season 2 so we're years off from that. But given IDW Megatron was I belivie the first version of Megs to do this and certainly the most prominent, I wouldn't be suprised if it's where Earthspark got the idea to try it in animation and it's tremendous this comic had enough impact on things to do that. Now if we could only get some of our faviorite b-listers in animatoin again eh? Still a wins a win.

And to be fair to earthspark it does diffrent things with the concept and in a lot of cases better than Robots in Disguise and it's followups did: The autobots and cons are still stranded on earth so for now Cybertron is a non-factor, the rights of the imprisoned decptiocns are questioned far more and better from the looks of it, and the main villian is a human, but given a decent backstory instead of spike fuckboy witwicky and his bullshit. What i'ms aying is it sounds great and i'm excited the cartoons are FINALLY taking some of the comics, specifically this one's, great worldbuildling and ideas to a wider audience. Not that this comic isn't great or , for now, widely avaliable, I just want more. MOREEEEEE.

Anyways, the other reason is this is my first review covering an arc I haven't before. See I first covered MTMTE as part of last year's pride, intending to make it a retrospective. This didn't pan out due to me having delay it, other retrospectives, all kinds of stuff so I shelved it intending to restart it at some point. Brotoman either saw that review and wanted more or simply loved the series and liked me covering it but either way he asked for me to cover it and for constiancy's sake, I covered issues 1-3 again. I didn't mind, those issues are great and doing it one at a time allowed me to dive in fairly deep and notice stuff I hadn't in previous readthroughs, but it is nice to get going in full.. and to not have to dig through my images for reviews to see if I had already made one for certain moments. So get on board as we go to a snow planet just in time for the icy grip of winter as things get real john carpenter real fast while Tailgate decides he wants to become a decipticon with predicable reactions from the command staff, all under the cut!

So we open with a Journal entry like doug only about plauge doctoring

It's here we meet a new member to the cast: First Aid. He's an autobot medic who was once a doctor.. but got bumped down to nurse thanks to Rung reporting on his ocd and erratic tendencies

Yeah this bothers me for a number of reasons. For one, registered Nursing is an important, noble and often thankless perfection. You dont get "demoted" to nurse. I get this is a battlefield situation, but it's two diffrent if very important skillsets, not something you get as a punishment for OCD and collecting WAY too many autobot badges, as shown behind first aid. Even Optimus would have actually trained battlefield nurses. I've become a tad more touchy about the subject since I now have one in the family whose an absolutely lovely person but even before that i'd seen enough works of fiction with nurses, MASH in paticular which ALSO took part during combat, to know you show them respect. I get it this is cyberton, it can be handwaved but it's not a great bit of writing. Say he was bumped down to residency or to a lower position.

At any rate we soon find out why he's writing his journal like an apocalypse log: He works at Delphi, a wintery hothlike outpost on the edge of Decepticon Justice Divison Territory. Which again kinda frames that yeah this was a bad reassignement for them.

This also marks our first mention of SAID Decepticon Justice Division, one of the series biggest antagonists, and it's once again a nice bit of setup I didn't notice my first go round and didn't think of my second. We also don't learn much, just the basics but it's enough to make it both understandable why Delphi is such a remote outpost, why it' sonly on the FRINGE of said territory and why two cons come running banging at the gates for sanctuary.

The DJD are a specialized unit made by Megatron to hunt down deserters or defectors. This being Megatron they don't so much throw a goodbye party as horribly mutilate the bot in question as slowly and painfully as possible as a warning to anyone who would try. And all we see in the panel descrbing tha tis the remains of one bot, cowering in terror, his robot guts ripped out in a pool of his own energon.

While we'll see them hands on later, like I said their some of the books main villians, it's a nice setup that instantly shows why you should fear them and why the mere idea our heroes will face them later is horrifying. And you haven't even seen what those encounters are like yet.

So naturally it's understandable two cons, with no alt mode who were clearly amde as canon fodder want anyone to protect them. The head of the facility, Pharma, wants them gone, thinking it's just two more dead enemies. It's part of a theme we've already seen a bit but I don't think i've gotten into but's important to this arc: the divide between the deceipticons and the autobots and the shades of grey in the conflict. Don't get me wrong, the autobots are still the good guys: Megatron wanted to conquer everything and as seen with the DJD, he and his men did some truly AWFUL things. But as we've seen in countless other wars just because you put a gun in someone's hand.. dosen't mean their evil. They may just be sketchy or in the case of these guys seemingly just pushed into the war. Not everyone who saw the universe with a gun in their hand joined the deceipticons because they wanted to break things or dominate other life. Some likely joined because of the intital social disparity that lead to the uprising.. and then may of gotten trapped, or as we learn later were MADE for this and had no choice in if they wanted to fight for the purple or the red. You can't blame Pharma for being a tad hesitant but you cant blame Ambulon and First Aid for showing these guys compassion. And as we'll see throughout this series just because you put on the red dosen't make you a good person, and as we've seen already with Prowl and will again not letting go of the war, TRYING to move on and make something new.. will only damage YOU and cause harm to others. You don't have to forgive the deceiptcons, it's understandable.. but you don't have to hold on like it's still an endless war to destroy their evil forces either.

Team Hypocratabot Oath wins out and the two are put in cells but still kept in observation and taken care of… until they activate their wonder twin powers, something happens and we cut to two days later.

Ratchet is doing grizzled old timer things, in this case sitting at a bar morosely, having a drink and wondering how the hell this place exists. … Ed Asner would've made a great Ratchet and if he never played him, that's transformers loss.

At any rate the bar is the one Swerve talked about setting up last time, with the now iconic locale of Swerves fully up and running. Seriously I didn't talk about it last time but the circual design, nice diner type booths and cool giant rainbow vat of various bits of robot booze.. it catches the eye and really stands out. The Lost Light itself is decently designed but I admit the hallways and hab suites kind of run together. I get why, ti's a star ship packed with people, but they feel kinda generic even for generic locations compared to say the halls of both enterprises. I may not have WATCHED a ton of star trek but man those hallways…. and I may of reached a new low in my career, speaking whistfully about hallways. I don't care. Those hallways were dope and I stand by that.

But the actual locatoins? All fairly memorable while fitting the vibe the ship is just a standard ship our heroes bought that happens to have really sweet unique engines: Rodimus' office, Swerves, the med bay, rungs office: most important locations are memorable, and well designed so you know exactly where everything is. I was amazed thinking back to the first few issues and realizing just how .. every room is well mapped out. IT's a small thing , sure, but a good spatial sense of where things are in a location helps it feel that much more real.

This being Swerve he hasn't OFFICALLY opened the bar yet.. which is to say most characters we know are hre, I paticuarlly like Chromedome with a swirly straw in the background. May make that an avatar for the blog at some point.

He just hasn't told command since Ultra Magnus hates fun. Why he hasn't told Rodimus I don't know, I can't image he dosen't like free booze and good time.. well free for him. He is captain after all.

It turns out Ratchet is here for a reason and not to see this gem of a backgroudn guy who looks so confused

He got a datalog, basically a blog but beamed into your skull

Okay for ROBOTS it's probably healthy. This is very much a me thing: see in high school they had us read the Cyberpunk Novel Feed, about a future where kids are lethargic, relaint on tech and said tech is put in their brains via feeds. While it could come off a LITTLE

It did predict how widespread computer tech would become ahnd how isolating it can be.. via brain computers that slowly rotted you away. I don't remember much else. The fact Be More Chill did a similar thing with computer pills that slowly gaslight you into their world domination plans, does not help. Nothing good comes from putting a computer in your brain unless your a cyborg (and even then it' sa coin flip between dc's cyborg and A borg), or that's just how you were born.

It was a blog done on the old frequency for Wreckers: Declassified, done by Fistitron an optimus and wreckers fanboy we met in Last Stand of the Wreckers. And that brings us to yet another thing to talk about. This issue is kinda.. packed with way mor eof those than intended.

So in short: Last Stand of the Wreckers was done by the same team of this comic, only artist James Roche was more in the creatvie lead. In short i'ts the story of a rag tag bunch of autobots known as the wereckers, baiscally the Autobots verison of X-Force who go in and take on the most dangerous missions with every expectation they may not come back. Black Ops stuff. Last Stand followed a small group, including Mags himself, as they inflitrated a terrifying penal colony to rescue Fortress Maximus, giant city sized autobot and badass from Overlord, a terrifyingly powerful and amoral decepticon who was trying to cause as much of a ruckus as possible… essentially his version of doing THIS to megatron

It's a great work, plenty dark but in a well done way with really likeable characters your sad to see go. It's VASTLY important to this work as we'll not only see Overlord again, I won't spoil how, but Fort Max as well and the events of said book naturally come up given both played a part in it. We'll table both for now, but it's something I had to adress eventually and even considered covering. Ultimately I decided it just made more sense to jump into the setory itself, but i'd be up to covering it if anyone's interested.

Anyways a new datalouge was beamed int ot he brain last night and Ratchet noticed something: it was medical stats, specifically patient stats and he recognized Delphi's number.. and something in the last few days has caused the patients to be cut by half. Worried about it Ratchet decides to check it out since their close> This isn't his only reason thougH: if Pharama is there.. he's going to give over his roll as cheif medical officer to him. Ratchet's hands are still malfunctioning and as we established in the first issue, his main goal here is to pass on his legacy.

We get a brief scene with Rodders and Mags. Naturally Tailgate's request to be a decepticon has royally horked off Ultra Mags who wants to DO something about it. Maybe beat it out of him. He doesn't now day's young. Rodders is more worried about Magnus than Tailgate, pointing out even if he wanted to Tailgate can't become a con anyway as naturally for the guy who set up a group to hunt down anyone who leaves and tourture them to death, Megs also had to make the decitipbrand ritual as metal and edgelord as possible, with part of your spark casing being used.

Magnus on the other hand seems off and the why is quickly explained: With the war gone, everyone seems a lot more individual and naturally captain stuck up his tail pipe dosen't like this… and feels lost. He also points out when Rodimus tries to use the quest as a uniter that most of the crew.. really isn't here for that. And thus he dosen't know WHY he's even here. It's likelyt he crew's chaotic energy and relaxed manner was already a lot for sam the eagle here, and Rodimus advises him to loosen up budddy.. okay he dosen't say it that way but her certainly thought it that way. And shockingly he DOES have a plan to deal with Tailgate.

Back on MEssatine, where Delphie is, Ratchet has dispatched a team of himself, Drift and Ensign Ricky er Pipes. You remember Pipes right? He was alwasy there. Good old pipes. Strangely he's the only autobot here WITHOUT any red in his paintjob.

Pipes is loveable though, having been stationed on Cybertron or Space Stations his whole life he joind the lost light since unlike others he never got to see the universe even with a gun in his hand. So far he feels it's wet and kinda brillant. He is cautious about this being so close to the DJD as we get more foreshadowing: Swerve saw them in actoin once and coudln't talk. Swerve. Swerve coudln't talk.

We also get our first mention of forging, with Ratchet mentoning most of the best medics were. I'll get more into THAT later, as it's more mentoning it now to pique the audiences intrest for later. Like the DJD this will be important later. Honestly i'm thrown by how much Oda-Level setup Roberts tucked away in throw away lines.

Ratchet being a crotchety old goat who dosen't like his new agey collegeu's stuff decides ot needle him a bit, pointing out how Drift SHOULD be worried: this is DJD territory.. and as i've mentioned before Drift is an Ex-Con. And one of the most high profile ones at that. It's why Ratchet dosen't buy it: a small but brutal and near unstoppable band of killers versus an old man, a rookie and drift himself who while badass is someone they'd likely fully prepared for… and he's not worried

Their shouting gets interrupted as Pipes finds a giant red X on the wall.. adn given this isn't the x-men that cannot be anything good. So naturally he decideds to ram into it..

This.. gets him covered in corpses and railed out by Ratchet for being a dumbass

… honestly now i'm hearing more Kurtwood Smith. Who is still around and would make a perfect Ratchet. Just saying Earthspark crew. Don't think he's shown up yet and even with That 90's Show he's got time for it. Do it. Hav ehim put his foot up decipticon ass. He's even red. How I never thought of this before I don't know.

Drift.. decides to be smart and cuts up a zombie…. who was shambling and barely a threat. So a guy. He cut up a guy. A guy Zombie. With a melee weapon

So before ratchet decides to say screw the infection and put a foot up botht heir asses Red Alert shows up. He marks Pipes with a stay the hell away x and explains all of this is a plauge: some sort of virus has gotten loose (hence the casualties), confirming what the x said.

Back on the Lost LIght Tailgate is nervous as Ultra Magnus grabbed him out of his habsuite and told him he was going to teach him a lesson. Keep in mind Taigate is only about as tall as one of Magnus' legs. Turns out Hot Rod is he just wasn't going to phrase it that way because you know, that's terrifying coming from the guy in CHARGE. His solution is ellgant if mildly messed up.

Hot Rod brought in Rewind, who being an archivest has tons of footage of the big events of the war, and uploads the mdirectly into Tailgates head in teh span of a few seconds… basically filling him in on what went on in the war in seconds. (everything that matters)

Notably it includes Megatrons rise. He dosen't edit out the fact that Megatron was doing a good thing at first.. but it's mostly there to show that no, the deciptcons still weren't great and did a LOT of war crimes. And while I get why this was done, worse people coudl take advantage of Tailgates naivite.. it's still far from the best way to do it. Showing him the worst of the war thrown at him… was not the way to show him how bad the war was. Showing him the footage i'll admit was great: Rewind has both made and collected plenty and it's a way to show it without doctoring it for bias, evne edited together: this is just.. things people saw at ht eend of the day, thigns rewind saw. It's a godo way to hav eit sink in.. I just feel maybe speed running it was a bit much for the poor guy and not the thing heroes shoudl do. But it does help the ambigiuity WITHOUT making our heroes total monsters: what they did wasn't great.. but like I said there are worse people out there who coudl recurit tailgate for far worse. There's no telling WHEN they'll met a deciptcion whose decided the war is over when theys ay it is who could use poor gate as a spy or as a living bomb or something. And as we'll see next season, Tailgate is VERY susceptable to this sort of manipuation, as someone will play the same thing on him.. just not wearing the badge they were worried about.

Also I REALLY love the detail of getting to see Tailgate's optics up close> I always wondered how the visored transformers saw, even in this very series but simply just.. neve rnoticed those before in this scene. Beautiful haunting stuff.

Anyways back on Delphi we find out causes your optics to break down and leak rust, then everything does before you collapse. And while the medics themsevles have x's, their fine. It's only the patients who are in danger as well as the various staff other who all quickly died off, leaving it down to our three doctors. As for why they didnt send out an SOS commuincations been down since the "big bang" that caused it. They also find a patient that catches Ratchet's intrest, who will be revealed at the end, one whose been comotose.. but First Aid has a suggestion: spark jumping. Basically attaching fancy jumper cables to two sparks, using a healthy one to help a weaker one. See this is one of the many reasons I love james roberts: he'll ask deep questoins about war and what have you.. but he's also not afraid to introduce new stuff to the mythos that answers dumb questions he likely had as a kid like "can you jump a transformer" And it's awesome.

Back on the Lost Light… Tailgate dosen't take things well yelling at Cyclonus.. who tries to say "Did you think it was as simple as good and bad guys"… forgetting he actively asked Tailgate "I wonder which side would you choose". Then when tailgate hits him to no avail, understandably upset he had him askingm to be decpticon on a ship full of former autobots who might not take him asking to be part of them so well as the command staff did.. he BACKHANDS the guy and literally kicks him while he's down

Yeah… while I do think Cyclonus is an intresting character this moment soured him for me a bit. He knokws tailgate is out of it, out of time like he is.. and yet brutally if only mildly attacks him and leave shi ma sobbing mess.. for being mad at something HE DIRECTLY SET UP. I.. dont' get what James was trying to acomplish here and given where the two's relationship goes it's deeply uncomfortable. There were better ways to show how emotinallys tutned cyclonus is. Why.. why is it always slapping.

Back on Dephi we wrap up. Ratchet tries to talk to Pharma whose in the isolation cell.. only for things to go pear shapes. Pipe has explosive goopy rust happen, and Drift has to nonlethally incapa ciate him so they can get him on an iv. Then drift starts leaking out of his eyes.

As Pharma comes back.. thrown in by the cons, who have gotten weapons and escaped. Things seem bleak, even Ratchet's ready to surrender.. when we find out JUST who the vip was.. and that First Aid succeded in giving him a jump.

We'll get to this inevitble asskicking next month. Before we go soundtrack corner. Our first song is the Next Life by Suede. It's VERY good, nciely tying into the feeling of dread at hte start of the issue and the senes of hopelessness at delphi. IT just ended up on a movie soundtrack so THIS is the image I got when I looked it up on youtube

That may be one of the most 90s things i've ever seen. Still not as weird as the plesantville album cover.. nor the actual album art.

Why does this man have a manquein of taylor swift? Still really good emotoinal song. The next one, Smokers Outside the Hosptial Doors, by Editors.. is eh. It's very much just your standard morose ballad tm. Good guitar work nothing else. It fits the tone of the issue, but it's one of those clear signs me and james roberts just don't have the same mustic taste. I prefer peppy often poppy synths or rock music with some energy. He likes far slower more methodical stuff. I'm not agains tslow stuff, as I covered last time I friggin love the mountain goats.. I just like some stuff with energy to it more often than not, so i'm picker with the slower ballads. Suede worked, Editors diddn't. That's all it is really

Thanks for reading and have a happy holiday.

#transformers #more than meets the eye #tailgate #ratchet #autobots #decepticons #idw #comics #james roberts #nick roche

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