Full Preview for IDW Transformers: Lost Light #8

Nautica: I'd like everyone to meet my friend, The Collecto- I mean The Curator! Yes! The Curator! Absolutely not the collector!

ricemazter wrote:Wait, does that imply that Cyclonus is rich? How does anyone in this series make money when all they do is hang around a ship? Are they getting paid for being crew members? How much is Hot Rod making as captain compared to everyone else? I'll bet it's a lot.

Issue 13 MTMTE, tailgate said cyclonus is a billionaire because he owned real-estate before leaving on the Ark 6 million years ago.

Synopsis
THE HUNT IS ON! Ever lost something and spent forever looking for it? Try visiting Troja Major, the lost property capital of the universe. Just bear in mind that it's better known by another name: the Howling Town. And the Autobots are about to find out why.



Story

I was reminded by other comics staff that we've had a number of voices already on reviews this far, for the new iteration of Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, but mine was not the one that has appeared yet for Lost Light. It's probably time then, right? Back to the story?



One of the issues I've had with the series, much like its predecessor, is the use of the medium of comics as a serialised narrative - they read really well as a collected trade (read volume 1 in one sitting, believe me), but sometimes take odd steps as single issues. This book, however, does not do that, and in fact plays the field extremely well as a morsel of a wider story yet to happen, and previous ones being closed or at least addressed.



As we know, James Roberts takes his time on the series to get to know the characters, and characters here are a very important part of the plot: what we discover about Nautica and Velocity, their interactions prior to the Lost Light, wouldn't have made sense while Megatron was still in the picture - but what he does well here is to not sacrifice plot for character development, at all.



And in terms of highlights, this book has fallen into the category of what Transformers comics can do now, from a socio-political perspective, in terms of identity, representation, and delving further into human issues while using sad gay (can we finally change this to queer?) robots in space. And yes, I'm talking about Anode and Lug, and what we learn about both of them.


Art

After a full arc and a breather, we see a different artist taking charge of a very important issue, plot wise among the rest, and Priscilla Tramontano has some excellent leads in terms of visual continuity with Lawrence's art, while still keeping very much to her own style and approach to the characters.



With a change from the usual, Joana Lafuente joins Tramontano on colours, perhaps also aiding in the continuity, but also providing an extremely vibrant and diverse cast of organic presences on Troja Major, taking the best pages out of Lucas' books and making the marketplace as cantina-esque (but well lit) as she can.



In a universe where several characters are identifiable by their speech patters, and those speech patterns are to be made visible, a letterer like Tom B. Long makes sure that we can glean more from the page that you might read at first glance, while also enjoying the sounds of the new setting! Meanwhile, the cover for this review's thumbnail is the variant art by Alex Milne and Josh Perez, very much about the grief aspect of it all, but also more pertaining to the plot of the issue than you might think... All other covers can be found in our database entry right here, including Roche/Burcham, Tom Whalen, and the main Lawrence/Lafuente

Thoughts
Spoilerish ahead

What do you know? We're back looking for the Knights of Cybertron! For real! As I said above, the overarching plot is not sidelined for the characters or subplots, but rather the two work well together in the issue, and we get to find out more about The Quest that started all those 50+ issues ago under another title altogether - but what we find may not be what we were looking for, especially if it was answers.



That said, my allusions towards the scene featuring Anode and Lug warrants a couple extra words here, while still wanting to leave it to readers to appreciate: it has some nice callbacks to the last Optimus Prime issue, and Sideswipe's understanding of the new reality; it has a well-developed approach to the issue at hand, sign of good research on the team's behalf; it helps sediment

Bounti76 wrote:I love the new/old character that Lug and Anode meet! Even if Anode still does rub me the wrong way. And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't this issue feature more fembots than male 'bots? At least until the last few pages?

It did! It was a nice little slice of life in the TF verse.

Randomhero wrote:I really wish I could say I was surprised by the ending but I'm so fed up with fake deaths and resurrections it's just become the norm with roberts anymore. Kill a character and a year or two down the road and they're back. Sometimes it's the very next issue. It's just another tiresome thing.

If I can ask, what happened? I don't plan on picking this one up.

Cmdr. Trailblazer wrote:

ricemazter wrote:

Randomhero wrote:I really wish I could say I was surprised by the ending but I'm so fed up with fake deaths and resurrections it's just become the norm with roberts anymore. Kill a character and a year or two down the road and they're back. Sometimes it's the very next issue. It's just another tiresome thing.

If I can ask, what happened? I don't plan on picking this one up.

It's revealed that Nautica is looking for a way to resurrect Skids at the very end. If that does indeed happen, I'm gonna be very disappointed. Wolfman has a point, Roberts (or maybe just comics in general) have a habit of bringing back 'dead' characters. However, if Skids is brought back, I think it'll make his death and sacrifice worthless.

Oh, yeah that would be cliche and make one of the main events from an only okay arc of the series pointless.

Here's my prediction: Skids will be brought back, but it will be some kind of monkey's paw deal, where skids will be altered in some way, evil, brain dead, etc. Then, the crew will deal with that for a while before turning him back to normal in a tear filled "we missed you" scene. Nautica will probably be hugging him.

If you're losing interest in MTMTE/LL because you're not thrilled with where it's going this issue won't change your mind. That my opinion at least.

The first couple pages of Velocity and Nautica were cute but did absolutely nothing and told us nothing about them that we didn't already know while Anode and Lugs origins are given word bubbles.

It's just talking heads. I gave up after I saw word bubble after word bubble after word bubble and just skimmed the issue and waited for the wiki to summarize it which has always been one of my major criticisms about Roberts. He wants to tell you instead of showing you.

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:I was also sort of let down by the issue. I don't know anymore, it's like for every good thing, there is an inexcusable bad thing.

I mean, come on! Skids death was final, meant to be so, and was so meaningful. Similar thing with Ravage and Trailcutter. and how we are trying to resurrect him? If he does come back, that is scrap and it basically ruins Dying of the Light. If he is nearly brought back but somehow goes back to the afterspark,
or if Nautica needs to die for him to come back, ok I can give a little there.

Now I do like where we are going with the warworlds, the things from issues 7 and 46, we are getting somewhere. And Flame is back, nice

Those weren't war worlds they're D-class world sweepers but yeah having Flame show up raises some questions and possibly answers some. He was last seen in on a flashback on trial in LSOTW which means he was there when the decepticons laid siege to it and who else was there? Grimlock. Where was Grimlock found? on a Symbol ship. And what have this mysterious faction been flying around in? symbol ships. That last page was the only page I felt was interesting.

So the crew is long gone from Necroworld, how have they not managed to contact Cybertron by this point? It's good to see the quest actually someaby back on track, it's about time after nearly a whole year.

I've got to say, I'm not a fan of the whole trans/queer robot thing that Roberts and others have been introducing lately. We have aliens whose lifespans are seemingly infinite (at least in the IDWverse) expressing a lot of overly human feelings and angst. A race with no concept of gender, a race without the need for gender or sexual identity is what we've known Cybertronian to be all these years. I was fine with

Chromedome and Rewind; a huge fan actually. They presented a couple of genderless alien beings in love without making the whole affair seem overly human. But with recent happenings in TAAO and now LL, it feels like the writers are trying to present a very human problem in a way that just doesn't make sense. The endless same "sex" relationships and suddenly transsexual robots really feels like a PC stunt at best, personal social justice warrior-ing at worst.

ArmadaPrime wrote: Most interesting to a mythos-theorising nerd like me though is the Knights' symbols. It's something I'd thought possible for a while, but the reveal of those clearly shows imo that the Knights follow the Guiding Hand, each clan a different member. The bottom right is unmistakably Mortilus' head. The question remains then- who/what exactly does the Gear symbol we've seen a lot represent, and what does that imply about this Grand Architect who's name keeps cropping up?

If I had to guess, the bots with the cog symbol follow Adaptus. From what we've seen with the half-form protoforms and other interesting things inside the WorldSweepers, this sect of the Knights is trying to change Cybertronian physiology on a cellular level. Maybe each "chapter" of the Knights has twisted the views/beliefs of the Guiding Hand member they follow/worship. Just speculation though.