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ScottyP wrote:So how about issue 18, eh? Loved it and without giving anything away, it delivered on a big twist in a smart way that's way cooler and more sinister than anything I'd speculated.

I dunno yet...... it could be (and I hope and believe it is) brilliant, or it could be a horrible cop out.


Either way, I didn't see it coming.

Randomhero wrote:

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:If they have a toy, they have a better chance of survival.

Randomhero wrote: a soft reboot to G1 with the 84 toyline being the focus like everything these days. Crash landing on earth, a small group of humans discovering them and making friends and fighting the Decepticons who are evil because they’re written to be evil.

Addressing the Elephant in the room, but when has this actually happened, post-1984???

Dream Wave, perhaps? Outside of that, which I haven't read so wouldn't know, No cartoon or comic I've seen has ever reused the 1984 framework. IDW certainly didn't, nor did Beast Wars/Machines and the cartoons that followed them. I see a lot of chatter decrying this as a certainty, but I don't know where the basis for it stems from?

Transformers isn't really in the same boat as say, He-Man. Wherein the 2002 cartoon & toys predominantly relied on appealing to the nostalgia of it's original fanbase. Mattel realised too late, that to exclusively fixate on the old fans is a liability to your future success IE The show and toyline were soon cancelled and other than a single comic, He-Man hasn't been onscreen and/or relevant to pop culture in 15/16 years.

IDW did do it though. Just last year with retconning hearts of steel. Transformers crashing on earth and fighting. Granted it was all the machinations if shockwave but it’s still happened

Armada did it too. The cartoon and comics had the minicons crash on earth and starting the war there.

Devils due did it too with their Transformers VS G.I. Joe series

And don’t forget about animated. That was the start too. Crashing on earth

Also you should probably go back and watch beast wars. It opens with the maximals and predacons fighting in orbit and crashing on earth lol

Also beast machines revealed they also crashed when they came home

Edit: oh! Don’t forget RID that also dealt with a ship crash landing on earth releasing a bunch of Decepticons

Let's break this down.

Crash landing on earth,

Oh I see, so just by using this single trope, it means they are replicating G1 origins?

Really??? It just makes them all lousy pilots.

G1 with the 84 toyline being the focus like everything these days.

How many of them did this exactly? Think hard...

Beast Wars/Machines?

RiD/Car Robots?

Unicron Trilogy?

Animated?

Prime?

a small group of humans discovering them and making friends and fighting the Decepticons who are evil because they’re written to be evil.

As I do know what I'm talking about with Beast Wars, none of that applies. There were no humans (thankfully) and Megatron bribed a crew to fulfill a secret mission.

The other series perhaps but it was done with a contemporary setting. No One went back to 1984, it's human characters or even Autobot City (only recently has IDW even picked up this concept)etc .

There was no retread of any of the Sunbow/Marvel story beats either, given the rosters all varied wildly, only references and homages.

Rid/Car Robots: the Autobots were already heavily entrenched on Earth.

Unicron Trilogy: they all went to Earth in search of Minicons

Animated: they were cadets

Prime: was animated Bayformers/aligned continuity

None of these were Sunbow/Marvel/Takara Reboots, other than superficial similarities and with good reason. Those writers and artists that grew up with it don't want to repeat it, they want to put their own ideas into the setting they know.


Lastly, it may be a point of contention for some, but I still see Megatron:Origin and Infiltration as the beginning of IDWverse. Not some lazy retcon after thought. In print, as per the IDW HC Collection, those two stories are the first of book one, so that is all I need to know.

Ironhidensh wrote:

ScottyP wrote:So how about issue 18, eh? Loved it and without giving anything away, it delivered on a big twist in a smart way that's way cooler and more sinister than anything I'd speculated.

I dunno yet...... it could be (and I hope and believe it is) brilliant, or it could be a horrible cop out.


Either way, I didn't see it coming.

I think there's still more to it that's unresolved, to the point where it can't be a cop-out. The namedrop of Troja Major may help to serve as a reminder that Agonizer pointed out five crests to Velocity and Nautica, yet the flashback to the Knights of Cybertron arriving to Mederi only shows one on the banners.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:

Randomhero wrote:

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:If they have a toy, they have a better chance of survival.

Randomhero wrote: a soft reboot to G1 with the 84 toyline being the focus like everything these days. Crash landing on earth, a small group of humans discovering them and making friends and fighting the Decepticons who are evil because they’re written to be evil.

Addressing the Elephant in the room, but when has this actually happened, post-1984???

Dream Wave, perhaps? Outside of that, which I haven't read so wouldn't know, No cartoon or comic I've seen has ever reused the 1984 framework. IDW certainly didn't, nor did Beast Wars/Machines and the cartoons that followed them. I see a lot of chatter decrying this as a certainty, but I don't know where the basis for it stems from?

Transformers isn't really in the same boat as say, He-Man. Wherein the 2002 cartoon & toys predominantly relied on appealing to the nostalgia of it's original fanbase. Mattel realised too late, that to exclusively fixate on the old fans is a liability to your future success IE The show and toyline were soon cancelled and other than a single comic, He-Man hasn't been onscreen and/or relevant to pop culture in 15/16 years.

IDW did do it though. Just last year with retconning hearts of steel. Transformers crashing on earth and fighting. Granted it was all the machinations if shockwave but it’s still happened

Armada did it too. The cartoon and comics had the minicons crash on earth and starting the war there.

Devils due did it too with their Transformers VS G.I. Joe series

And don’t forget about animated. That was the start too. Crashing on earth

Also you should probably go back and watch beast wars. It opens with the maximals and predacons fighting in orbit and crashing on earth lol

Also beast machines revealed they also crashed when they came home

Edit: oh! Don’t forget RID that also dealt with a ship crash landing on earth releasing a bunch of Decepticons

Let's break this down.

Crash landing on earth,

Oh I see, so just by using this single trope, it means they are replicating G1 origins?

Really??? It just makes them all lousy pilots.

G1 with the 84 toyline being the focus like everything these days.

How many of them did this exactly? Think hard...

Beast Wars/Machines?

RiD/Car Robots?

Unicron Trilogy?

Animated?

Prime?

a small group of humans discovering them and making friends and fighting the Decepticons who are evil because they’re written to be evil.

As I do know what I'm talking about with Beast Wars, none of that applies. There were no humans (thankfully) and Megatron bribed a crew to fulfill a secret mission.

The other series perhaps but it was done with a contemporary setting. No One went back to 1984, it's human characters or even Autobot City (only recently has IDW even picked up this concept)etc .

There was no retread of any of the Sunbow/Marvel story beats either, given the rosters all varied wildly, only references and homages.

Rid/Car Robots: the Autobots were already heavily entrenched on Earth.

Unicron Trilogy: they all went to Earth in search of Minicons

Animated: they were cadets

Prime: was animated Bayformers/aligned continuity

None of these were Sunbow/Marvel/Takara Reboots, other than superficial similarities and with good reason. Those writers and artists that grew up with it don't want to repeat it, they want to put their own ideas into the setting they know.


Lastly, it may be a point of contention for some, but I still see Megatron:Origin and Infiltration as the beginning of IDWverse. Not some lazy retcon after thought. In print, as per the IDW HC Collection, those two stories are the first of book one, so that is all I need to know.

The minicons still woke up and a signal was sent to cybertron which brought the autobots to earth.

Beast wars still counts because by season three they maximal did end up betting protohumans and making friends with them.

You can only count megatron origins as much as you want and not care for retcon but you’re hitting personal fanon then. It can’t be ignored. It happened.

Ironhidensh wrote:

ScottyP wrote:So how about issue 18, eh? Loved it and without giving anything away, it delivered on a big twist in a smart way that's way cooler and more sinister than anything I'd speculated.

I dunno yet...... it could be (and I hope and believe it is) brilliant, or it could be a horrible cop out.


Either way, I didn't see it coming.

I did. I called it two months ago and mentioned that the sparkeater army is gonna be the crew of the lost light that mutinied.

There’s only one way to make a spark eater. Brainstorms gun. Brainstorm built it to mimick the effects of the one they ran into and thanks to time travel it created the myth of them and created the one who was on the lost light.

That very gun was still on the ship that made it Cyberutopia. Drifts flashback showed the army, pharma and the lost light. We know pharmas body was dragged through the portal, the lost light followed the map.

If I had to make a guess again. The lost light was captured. The grand architect which his faction of people who’s goal is experimenting on cybertronians captured the crew, getaway makes a deal because he has knowledge to help them because he never reveals all he knows. Sells out the crew for whatever reason benefited himself. Pharma finds the gun, uses it as revenge against them foiling Tyrest’s plans back in MTMTE.


Oh and tyrests is back and is the Architects right hand which brings back all the loose ends from the series.

Randomhero wrote:
The minicons still woke up and a signal was sent to cybertron which brought the autobots to earth.

Yes and how is that related to G1?

Beast wars still counts because by season three they maximal did end up betting protohumans and making friends with them.

They "made friends" is a kind appraisal. They were virtually Neanderthals, they had no real perception of anything going on around them. They were hardly Miko, Sari or the Witwicky's.

You can only count megatron origins as much as you want and not care for retcon but you’re hitting personal fanon then. It can’t be ignored. It happened.

It's not about what I "want", Fanon or any of that meaningless stuff. It's what IDW states in print.



Show me in this book, where it says otherwise?

Randomhero wrote:

Ironhidensh wrote:

ScottyP wrote:So how about issue 18, eh? Loved it and without giving anything away, it delivered on a big twist in a smart way that's way cooler and more sinister than anything I'd speculated.

I dunno yet...... it could be (and I hope and believe it is) brilliant, or it could be a horrible cop out.


Either way, I didn't see it coming.

I did. I called it two months ago and mentioned that the sparkeater army is gonna be the crew of the lost light that mutinied.

I was referring to the revelation about the Knights of Cybertron, or at least that one 'clan' of then. Regardless, full marks indeed for calling it on the Mutineers!

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:

Randomhero wrote:
The minicons still woke up and a signal was sent to cybertron which brought the autobots to earth.

Yes and how is that related to G1?

Beast wars still counts because by season three they maximal did end up betting protohumans and making friends with them.

They "made friends" is a kind appraisal. They were virtually Neanderthals, they had no real perception of anything going on around them. They were hardly Miko, Sari or the Witwicky's.

You can only count megatron origins as much as you want and not care for retcon but you’re hitting personal fanon then. It can’t be ignored. It happened.

It's not about what I "want", Fanon or any of that meaningless stuff. It's what IDW states in print.



Show me in this book, where it says otherwise?

It’s a retelling if the classic story. Crash landing on earth the bringing the war there.

Look you started it saying you don’t know anywhere post G1 that told the crash landing on and starting the war and making human friends. Myself and others have pointed out it’s happened all over the franchise in the spans of post G1

The point is people have been saying "oh the reboot will mean going back to 1984 all over again" and my point was that no one has. They may have taken influences from it, but that's all. No writer/artist wants to retell Sunbow/Marvel/Takara. It was of it's time and as the years go by, only the character designs retain their relevance.

Crashing a spaceship and using Earth as a backdrop isn't exclusive to G1 either.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:The point is people have been saying "oh the reboot will mean going back to 1984 all over again" and my point was that no one has. They may have taken influences from it, but that's all. No writer/artist wants to retell Sunbow/Marvel/Takara. It was of it's time and as the years go by, only the character designs retain their relevance.

Crashing a spaceship and using Earth as a backdrop isn't exclusive to G1 either.

Animated did! Armada did! Beast wars did it! The writers full on admit that was their aim. Animated even full on opened with footage from wardawn as archive footage. Beast wars did the same, two enemy’s ships fighting in earth orbits and they shoot each other down.

Crashing on earth is a trope in transformers. The wiki even makes jokes on the works page about being designs to crash!

Yes but, in closing as this is going on too long, not one iteration did it to the same effect. Everyone who crashed got up more or less instantly and carried on their lives. No other series crashed into a dormant volcano and "slept" for millions of years.

The Animated "footage" is also a bit of a hot potato within the community, I have discovered elsewhere.

The bottom line is it is Homage and nothing more. The aim of the writers and series above is only that. Acknowledge it, as easter eggs, for the ever diminishing fans of yesterday and then move on to the New thing. No one wants to go backwards.

Synopsis
LIGHTS OUT! The “Everlasting Voices” trilogy concludes with an explosion of hope, a grave betrayal… and more answers than you can handle! Events of the last six years build to a frenzy of revelations, casting everything that’s gone before in a new—and deadly—light. No exaggeration, no hyperbole: there has never been a more important issue of Lost Light.



Story
We reach the final stages of the penultimate arc in this ongoing series and saga, as will be the case for its parallel series Optimus Prime, and the Lost Light comics take a shape that will be familiar to many, unexpected to several, called on by a couple of speculators, and still managing quite a punch - with some cautionary reserves - as it steps onto the next level of the Space Opera with Sad Gay Robots.



I also feel the need to begin here with an initial disclaimer: on my first read, I was not overly impressed at some of the turns that James Roberts' script had taken, though I recognised the craft in the narrative and having several threads actually run through since the very beginning. And I mean the VERY Beginning of beginnings.



And in the vein of moving back to roots and develop story cappings, fans of the More Than Meets the Eye initial, new, fresh feeling, with all of its urgency and ambition is captured almost entirely in this one issue - by retreading some of the ground that was laid back then, in The Quest, in the characters' dynamics, in the acceptance of some sort of end, and some



So if I started the first notes on this issue by being annoyed (to myself) about the sheer amount of denouement that this trilogy cap brings to the readers' table, narrative- and emotion-wise, I was able to come round to how the issue approaches those answers, what it leaves yet to explore, and how finely Roberts balances the pacing for the entirety of it.


Art
Jack Lawrence is the artist of the Lost Light series. I know there is a direct continuation between MTMTE and LL, but Lost Light is a different (not better, not worse) book in its tone at least, and Lawrence is a big part of what makes it all click. If to all of that you add some seriously masterful layouts, some excruciating reaction scenes, and one touch of smirk-inducing parallelism with MTMTE, you have one of the strongest displays yet in the whole run.



A display that is only made fully possible by the colour combinations of Lawrence's partner in art Joana Lafuente, and her skills at bringing some of the harder hitting moments home with the muting or heightening of the shading and lighting are exactly what the book needed in some of the more crucial moments in the second half.



As shown above, there are also plenty of moments for letterer Tom B Long to shine, with some font work that fits the work we've seen on the Scavengers issues, and the perfect placement of dialogue that is - this time, and very nicely so - essential and kept close to the heart of the story and its characters.

If you were looking for any of the variant covers, you can always find them in our database entry for the issue, including both Alex Milne and Josh Perez versions of the Cast Doing Things - be it be shocked or ..a different kind of shocked, as shown in the thumbnail for this review.

Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

If I started questioning the negatives of the issue's storyline, I ended appreciating what it did - and wonderfully so in its visual (re)presentation from the team - and it was ScottyP who phrased it best in staff discussions: it did a great job of giving you an answer while leaving the answer ambiguous enough. Not only that, it never lost its core while exploring all of the corollaries.



And so, we reach the end, as we start The End in the final pages and following weeks. A lot of what was propelling, under the surface, some of the driving narratives have been somewhat dealt with right now - but there is more, so much more to come in one monster of an arc - and they have received what is possibly the best ending to that story that could've been set out. That is no mean feat.

Actually while it wasn’t millions of years, the autobots in animated were asleep long enough for sari's dad to age from a kid to an adult.

Edit: didn't realise that the review appeared when I quick posted good review but if threads are being brought together here, what's that mean for the final arc? Will any of it link to unicron?

Oh AllNewSuperRobot, regarding about what random hero said about hearts of steel predating infiltration (I.e. tfs on earth) that is a very, very recent development that happened after that hardback collection started. So he is technically right.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Yes but, in closing as this is going on too long, not one iteration did it to the same effect. Everyone who crashed got up more or less instantly and carried on their lives. No other series crashed into a dormant volcano and "slept" for millions of years.

The Animated "footage" is also a bit of a hot potato within the community, I have discovered elsewhere.

The bottom line is it is Homage and nothing more. The aim of the writers and series above is only that. Acknowledge it, as easter eggs, for the ever diminishing fans of yesterday and then move on to the New thing. No one wants to go backwards.

Beast wars did as an homeage but everything after decided to use it an introducer for the universe

But they were still using it as an introduction point. It wasn’t until IDW and Simon Furman decided they want to essentially make Ultimate Transformers like marvel had done with their ultimate comics. Modernize them.

My point is if IDW decides to play it safe, they’ll probably do a soft reboot and start the new continuity with them crashing on earth. It’s something that by now is really familiar and a story that will not only attract the fans but hopefully attract the new readers or the ones that didn’t like the IDW-verse.

You start with the autobots crashing on earth you’re gonna get the fans that haven’t read the comics saying “I recognize that! I’m gonna check this out.”

That’s what Dreamwave did, that’s what beast wars did. And animated and armada and so on. It’s something people remembered from the original and can find something to attach to.

Randomhero wrote:

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Yes but, in closing as this is going on too long, not one iteration did it to the same effect. Everyone who crashed got up more or less instantly and carried on their lives. No other series crashed into a dormant volcano and "slept" for millions of years.

The Animated "footage" is also a bit of a hot potato within the community, I have discovered elsewhere.

The bottom line is it is Homage and nothing more. The aim of the writers and series above is only that. Acknowledge it, as easter eggs, for the ever diminishing fans of yesterday and then move on to the New thing. No one wants to go backwards.

Beast wars did as an homeage but everything after decided to use it an introducer for the universe

But they were still using it as an introduction point. It wasn’t until IDW and Simon Furman decided they want to essentially make Ultimate Transformers like marvel had done with their ultimate comics. Modernize them.

My point is if IDW decides to play it safe, they’ll probably do a soft reboot and start the new continuity with them crashing on earth. It’s something that by now is really familiar and a story that will not only attract the fans but hopefully attract the new readers or the ones that didn’t like the IDW-verse.

You start with the autobots crashing on earth you’re gonna get the fans that haven’t read the comics saying “I recognize that! I’m gonna check this out.”

That’s what Dreamwave did, that’s what beast wars did. And animated and armada and so on. It’s something people remembered from the original and can find something to attach to.

But out of all the fans who didn't check out the comics, how many of them wouldn't be familiar with something that did take a different route? Like the people who jumped on during the aligned continuity or something?

Either way, my preference would be to keep the comics off earth for a while. In basically every continuity, Earth is the end of the war, a turning point. I'd like to see them start sometime before they get to Earth.

Exposition-heavy nonsense. I'm not complaining about the choices, such as the end of the quest and where they are etc etc, but as a read that was atrocious.

Characters were stood around explaining the plot to each other for page after page after page. It didn't read as revelatory, nor as a logical conclusion. Ha, certainly not. It was a huge narrative leap, and it was like listening to characters read aloud from a wiki entry.

Awful IMO.

Can we NOT talk about stuff that is not relevant to Lost Light? I don't come into this thread until I'm up to date and I really don't appreciate having to scroll through huge arse long posts about reboots and and ****.

Keep it on topic please.

Quint wrote:Exposition-heavy nonsense. I'm not complaining about the choices, such as the end of the quest and where they are etc etc, but as a read that was atrocious.

Characters were stood around explaining the plot to each other for page after page after page. It didn't read as revelatory, nor as a logical conclusion. Ha, certainly not. It was a huge narrative leap, and it was like listening to characters read aloud from a wiki entry.

Awful IMO.

That was what my fears and slight concern were about, at the start, but on later reads... the cast that does the whole exposition thing was well balanced in such a way that the different voices work in that kind of setting, especially with a super excitable Rodimus who gets to be right about his mission! In front of everyone! With his character traits and how he's been written, it just clicked, and didn't feel like info dump (say, like the talking heads previously seen, for exampmle).

Not saying you have to think it not awful, just that I initially (almost) agreed with you, then changed my mind on re-reads.

Yet the portrayal of Rodimus in-story is inconsistent, considering that which precipitated the quest in the first place. He has, ultimately, failed to find the Knights. Given the concerns about his own public perception expressed in early MTMTE, this is perhaps an ignominious end.

However that's debatable and isn't the point of my criticism. It's sophomoric storytelling. No matter the emotion on their faces, the characters are literally stood in a room explaining a plot that had, surprisingly for Roberts, little foreshadowing and which ostensibly wraps up the series' original premise.

The more tender character moments were lovely, though, even if Roberts has been drawing from this same well much over the course of these books.

It's also sweet that you're trying hard to like the issue too.

Quint wrote:It's also sweet that you're trying hard to like the issue too.

Nah, it won me over.

Not me. Just a bunch of wasted pages of people just standing around. Page 16 is just panel after panel of Rodimus standing there, pointing at a screen, putting his hands on nickels shoulders just talking. Throw in some flashbacks of the knights finding Cyberutopia! Show the gaurdaians carrying the sick! Show the telepaths banding together! What do we get instead? One panel of Mederi followed by Rodimus and co standing around and explaining everything instead of showing. Even if it’s not actual flashbacks it can be interpreted flashbacks because that’s all Rodimus is doing. Making an interpreted guess on what happened but at least it’s be better than just standing around! A full page of Nautica pointing her finger for a gag.

This is a comic book! Visual media! Don’t need people always just standing around and talking!

I said it on TFW, would it have been acceptable in OP 18 to have prime chained up with shockwave just explaining what happened to him in word bubbles the whole time? Absolute not.

I'm surprised by the negativity. I guess I shouldn't be around you Buzz Killingtons but here we are

I'm not even going to argue, some of y'all will find a way to dislike literally anything.

Carrying on then, how great was Fulcrum at being this comic's Buzz Killington? Even has the chin.

I think some things can be explained faster through talking then via flashback. We all have to remember though that our opinions are just what we thought of it, it doesn't mean it will be shared (unless people share your tastes and biases)

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with that approach but I'm very easy going.

ScottyP wrote:I'm surprised by the negativity. I guess I shouldn't be around you Buzz Killingtons but here we are

I'm not even going to argue, some of y'all will find a way to dislike literally anything.

Carrying on then, how great was Fulcrum at being this comic's Buzz Killington? Even has the chin.

And yet there’s plenty that will like it souly for being James Roberts. Plenty of people who will put on rose tinted glasses and act like nothing is wrong because it’s their favorite book and refused to believe there can be anything wrong with it.

This is sometimes comparable to the Legends comics where the dialogue bubbles overpower the art and here. It’s just dialogue bubble after dialogue bubbles with no one doing anything in scenes but stand around and talk. And I get where it’s coming from. That’s a very British tv thing to do which James this comic as. Stand around and talk even fans from the UK have brought that up that. Moonbase2/underbase a UK TF podcast used to being that up a lot. But this is a comic book. It’s suppose to use the art to also tell a story and that’s always been the biggest problem with MTMTE/LL, it would rather just stand around and explain everything than show things happened.

The opening with the guardians. They are attacking them and during the “attack” there’s panels of them just talking at times. Where are the guardians in those panels? Are they taking a breather? Wtf

I want to see anyone trying to stop Rodimus from talking about how right he is.