More Than Meets the Eye - Ongoing series

[Llama God]

I... had forgotten that. You make a very good point.

I clearly need to spend more time re-reading MTMTE. The next free weekend that I have...

(...will never happen. But you know. Just in case.)

[KnightBeat]

As happy as I am to see Rewind again, I hope that his return is not permanent. His 'death' was so amazing that a return at this stage would only cheapen it.

[Philip Ayres]

ah but it does create some interesting story telling oppotunities

1 Rewind has to be sacrificed to return the Lost Light to where it came

2 Rewing is saved and has a happy reunion with Chromedome..... then OUR Rewind shows up alive having been protected from the explosion by Overlord.

33 preview:

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[kayevcee]

The characters' speculation echoes a couple of thoughts that I had, namely that the alternate Lost Light was duplicated in the engine explosion in issue 1 and wound up somewhere else, and that the DJD attacked it quite soon after launch- implying that "Who's Afraid of the DJD?" happened around the same time as issue 1 and it was the *other* Overlord whose signal they picked up. Maybe the other Lost Light jumped straight into the heart of DJD territory, but like the surviving ship they were temporarily lost and, perhaps, wound up with a whole lot of nothing to do while they roamed around getting their bearings. Without all the wacky adventures with Skids and Delphi, Crosscut had plenty of time to work on his play and finished it much earlier.

On the weirdness that hasn't been addressed, we still don't know how Rodimus died or why Drift appeared to have stabbed Hound. They weren't missing their transformation cogs so who/whatever killed Ratchet, Drift and Hound (if Hound was alive when the other two were shot) might have been a separate incident. OR Drift stabbed Hound in the T-cog just to spite Tarn and he left the three of them alone in disgust. It looks like we'll out find from Rewind's data slug.

In relation to your second musing, Phil: I think it's plausible that Overlord's body could have shielded Rewind but the Lost Light jumped away before anyone could check, because Overlord. I'm also not convinced that "our" Lost Light's Overlord is dead. I have a horrible image of the DJD collecting his battered but intact body (maybe with severe trauma to the head and chest, based on the detached pieces we saw after the fateful battle) and, at exactly the wrong moment (maybe just after a catastrophic encounter with said DJD) Overlord is going to crop up again with the other Overlord's head attached somewhere close to the mangled skull of the original. Or he's carrying it around as an extra set of eyes and ears after the destruction of his previous set. It's the sort of body horror you'd expect from MTMTE

-Nick

[Philip Ayres]

I've been led to wonder if The Necrobot's list related to those killed on the LLII that we saw in #32

[Philip Ayres]

preview related Bet you the data slug ends "I Love You" and the original end of that is what turned up on the slug Chromedome had

[kayevcee]

Yep. That explains the Necrobot's list. It's a bit weird that he includes Dipstick before Drift and Ultra Magnus. Did he leave the remains of the Lost Light to go to Cybertron to record Dipstick's death (he's the wee red lad with the bobble hat, right?) then come back to log the last two? Maybe Dipstick had a very specific time-of-death.

I'm morbidly curious about the events surrounding Drift's death. As a Decepticon turncoat the DJD would be likely to make him suffer, like Black Shadow. However, Megatron and Ravage find him riddled with holes like Ratchet and stabbed-up Hound. Maybe they didn't recognise him. I'm sure there's a story behind the two average sized fist-prints on Drift's chest. Looking at that panel, actually... Hound is missing the top of his head (like Rodimus, although it's not as clean a cut) and poor Ratchet looks like he had Vos' face on. Poor bastard.

Do we think that the Lost Light started to disappear because the original duplication was a result of the sabotage of the quantum engines, and coming into close proximity with the duplicate (they picked up the coffin a few hours' sublight travel from the second Lost Light's remains)caused them to start removing the ship from the region of paradox? Maybe the ship disappeared bit by bit instead of all together because Perceptor's "magic" jump drained the quantum engines to the point where they couldn't move the whole ship at once. The "disappearance" might have been a glitched out safety feature. Maybe.

-Nick

[Philip Ayres]

Sept 6, 2014 20:02:24 GMT kayevcee said:

Yep. That explains the Necrobot's list. It's a bit weird that he includes Dipstick before Drift and Ultra Magnus. Did he leave the remains of the Lost Light to go to Cybertron to record Dipstick's death (he's the wee red lad with the bobble hat, right?) then come back to log the last two? Maybe Dipstick had a very specific time-of-death.

Dipstick is an original Lost Light crewmember so should have been aboard when the DJD arrived

tfwiki.net/wiki/Dipstick

[kayevcee]

Ah yes. I've just run into him while re-reading issue 31. Make more sense. Fair play to him for holding out so long! Clearly he's harder than he looks.

-Nick

[Deleted]

Well ..... so that happened! Or didn't happen? Or might have happened?

[Philip Ayres]

It's MTMTE 33 day today :-)

Refresh, refresh, refresh, click, click, download :-)

[Philip Ayres]

Eeeeeek!

[Philip Ayres]

Generally that went almost exactly as most people expected. A very odd experience.

But the revelation that Brainstorm might be a traitor...... I wasn't sure I took that at face value till the last panel. Still aren't.

The page in space 3 pages from the end is FAB

[Philip Ayres]

[Llama God]

For the first time ever I read MTMTE on the day of release yesterday! Such are the joys of living within cycle distance of a decent comic shop. I didn't manage to post though because my brain pretty instantly shut down after reading it.

My thoughts at the moment are:

I'm not sure how I feel about Rewind coming back. Although at least it wasn't a complete cop-out, and now both he and Chromedome have been equally traumatised. I mean, yes, Rewind's whole exchange with Megatron ("Inseperable." *sniff*) and then his being reunited with Chromedome was absolutely beautiful, but... I'm just not a fan of characters coming back to life. Especially after such a powerful death. But I guess this means I shouldn't be reading comics... :-)

As to Brainstorm... Wow. I could not have seen that coming. Now I'm going to have to go back and re-read the whole damned thing to look for clues. Because I'm still not sure if I buy it - especially given the wrong-footing we had of Prowl being a traitor at the end of RiD #31. Could this be the same sort of misdirection? I don't know.

Unfortunately I don't have time to go and re-read all the previous issues, so if someone else could do that work for me that'd be great. ;-)

[Philip Ayres]

Having Rewind back opens up an opportunity for further heartbreak at a later stage when OUR Rewind turns out to have survived.....

[Llama God]

I hate you.

[Philip Ayres]

Oh you know it'll happen

[kayevcee]

Welp, that blows my theory about what's in the briefcase to smithereens. Assuming he only kept one thing/effect in there. One thing I will say is that I don't see Brainstorm as being the one who revealed Overlord. If nothing else he's been shown to have a strong sense of self-preservation- I can't see him ringing the dinner bell for the DJD while he's still in the place they're planning to attack. That he was (I think) flattened by his own lab door implies he was taken by surprise as much as the rest of the crew. I think the comic's title applies now more tha- nah, it applies about as much as ever.

-Nick

[Bogatan]

Sept 18, 2014 10:02:07 GMT Philip Ayres said:

Having Rewind back opens up an opportunity for further heartbreak at a later stage when OUR Rewind turns out to have survived.....

Yup seems likely, to me it was never really about if Rewind was dead but how much he suffered as Overlords only plaything.

The whole thing did remind me of that episode of Star Trek Voyager. Which was a bit annoying even if it was one of the better episodes.

Did I miss something explaining why everyone expected the comic starring Lost Light to stay and the dead one to go?

[Llama God]

Sept 18, 2014 18:10:38 GMT kayevcee said:

Welp, that blows my theory about what's in the briefcase to smithereens. Assuming he only kept one thing/effect in there.

So...

What was your theory? And why does this issue blow it out of the water? I made it four pages back before I decided it'd be quicker and easier to just ask...

[Deleted]

Well ....

1. I'm thinking Meg's is cooler and cooler all the time now.
2. I have NO IDEA what happened on that last page buuuuuut ... I don't think Brainstorm is the traitor.
3. I don't trust this new Rewind at all.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I enjoyed the five Earth issues of RID a lot more than RG1, but not enough to stick with the series.

MTMTE on the other hand remains consistently entertaining. I can't get enough of the new how-have-I-ended-up-babysitting-a-bunch-of-imbeciles Megatron and have no wish to see him revert back to his Decepticon ways (though I fear it's as inevitable as the temporary nature of Prime's reversion to Orion Pax).

Martin

[Philip Ayres]

James Roberts is a very bad man.

Here's 34's solicitation

THE DILEMMA! On a planet dedicated to Right and Wrong, four damaged AUTOBOTS must make an impossible choice: kill or cure? Whatever they decide, their lives will never be the same.

to which I think simple done in one, 4 Autobots lost during recent events.

Oh no no no.

First we get The Megatron flashbacks, glimpsed in the preview and out first look at Trepan

Then there's The robot with the removable face at which point all sorts of alarm bells went off and sure enough the DJD show up not long after. yay for Leg cannons but when Trailcutter was trapped inside the forcefield with what I suspected was Vos I got real worried.

And then Brainstorm shows up, case in hand, transporting into the past? ? ? ?

Fabulous.

[Llama God]

Oh man. Why has no-one else posted in this thread yet? Are you all made of stone?!? (Although, if you are, Turnbull, congratulations on achieving the dream.)

Well...

Damn. What an issue. A quiet little side-adventure where nothing happens. But everything happens.

First of all, poor Trailbreaker. I guess given we got Rewind back, though, we were due for some other sort of heartbreak. The fact though that the sound effect for crushing his brain module is the same as the sound effect used when Death's Head crushed Shockwave's brain module back in the UK Marvel comics was... most disturbing. Which I'm sure was the intended effect. My only disappointment really was with Rojo's artwork which failed to properly convey what was going on, and which was, as ever, pretty below average.

But as for the rest... Megatron's origins remain fascinating. A hell of a lot more fascinating than what's going on in Primacy, too. Really thought provoking, chilling, and relevant stuff.

The real question, though, is: What the hell is Brainstorm up to? And which Brainstorm is this? From what time? I'm hoping we get some answers soon. But I'm not disappointed at having to wait a little while whilst we get the final chapter of Chaos... Can't wait.

[Philip Ayres]

Ooops. James accidentally spoilered part of this week's issue on twitter by quoting someone's tweet in a reply!

[Llama God]

Well. It's re-assuring to know that he's not completely perfect. Just mostly. ;-)

[kayevcee]

Brainstorm has been pretty high level in Autobot R&D for an undisclosed length of time. Chromedome(?) mentioned "he thinks it's four million years ago and he's being progressive" when talking about constructed cold Cybertronians, which implies he's been around at least that long. There's a chance that this is the Brainstorm of the pre-war period. Or the briefcase has a time machine in it. It's been established that it's possible in-universe. Either or.

-Nick

[legios]

Spent a few days catching up with MTME post "Daarrrrk Cybertron". Liking the way that this title is going, it remains a good mixture of seriousness and the sort of traditional comedy that James Roberts does so well. Megatron's increasing frustration with the Autobots is highly entertaining - one can almost imagine him shaking his head in wonder at the fact that this comedy of errors managed to survive, let alone win the war. It will be a shame if and when Hasbro mandate forces Megatron back to his cackling evil ways.

I do like that MTME continues to hand out little snippets of Megatron's past - and possibly neatly explaining his somewhat odd behaviour back in "Megatron:Origin". I especially like the further confirmation that IDW Megatron is by no means the facist that G1 Megatron was politically. Instead IDW Megatron seems to be closer politically, at least initially to Trotsky - with a distinct dive into Stalin or Mao as time went on. I am almost hoping that he actually rediscovers his roots a bit on his current voyage - a Socialist Megatron calling on the Workers of the Universe to rise up would be rather entertaining.

I recall a great deal of controversy on my Twitter feed when ish 34 came out but having read it I am not entirely sure I can see why, there doesn't seem to be anything in there which is beyond the sort of thing that this book has been doing since it launched ( and certainly nothing more controversial than was done by the Roche/Roberts duo on "Last Stand of the Wreckers". I'm not sure I entirely see where all the drama was coming from regarding that particular issue meself.

What I will say is that I am finding that I am getting a lot more out of MTME than I am out of RiDthatwas, and probably as much enjoyment (if in a different way) as I am from "GiJoe vs Transformers"

Karl

[Philip Ayres]

I think the issue with 34 was them killing off a character Trailbreaker that something decent was finally being done with.

I suspect they'll be back.