Every Time You Say Hello, I Say Goodbye.
Devastation Issue 6. February 27th 2008.
Eh. Uh. Ohh... Frag.
Well, after last week, the conclusion to Devastation would have to work incredibly hard to be anything but charming in comparison. But before we dive into how much it does or does not stop scraping the bottom of that barrel, a quick mention of how I am, largely in response to the bad taste Spotlight: Arcee left in my mouth, auctioning off my copy of the very rare Eugenesis on behalf of some trans charities, you can see me discuss this in more depth HERE, and you have till the 24th of November 2021 to get your bids in.
Back in 2008, and maybe it’s coming off the back of such a disgusting issue, but it’s amazing how the passion and drive of this series has drained away as it went along, leaving us with what winds up feeling like a series of box ticking exercises. Starting with the opening, as, in Tampa, we see Dante has now donned his own Headmaster armour and is about to merge with the body of our finally revealed super-secret villain, none other than Scorponok!
Yes, it’s immediately a damp squib to launch the issues, especially as Scorponok’s head (hung up like Sunstreaker’s) reveal gets a full page, as if it’s genuinely meant to be a surprise. If it had been half a page, maybe we could have at least had some payoff to a certain plot later in the issue.
Eh. Uh. Ohh... Frag.
Well, after last week, the conclusion to Devastation would have to work incredibly hard to be anything but charming in comparison. But before we dive into how much it does or does not stop scraping the bottom of that barrel, a quick mention of how I am, largely in response to the bad taste Spotlight: Arcee left in my mouth, auctioning off my copy of the very rare Eugenesis on behalf of some trans charities, you can see me discuss this in more depth HERE, and you have till the 24th of November 2021 to get your bids in.
Back in 2008, and maybe it’s coming off the back of such a disgusting issue, but it’s amazing how the passion and drive of this series has drained away as it went along, leaving us with what winds up feeling like a series of box ticking exercises. Starting with the opening, as, in Tampa, we see Dante has now donned his own Headmaster armour and is about to merge with the body of our finally revealed super-secret villain, none other than Scorponok!
Yes, it’s immediately a damp squib to launch the issues, especially as Scorponok’s head (hung up like Sunstreaker’s) reveal gets a full page, as if it’s genuinely meant to be a surprise. If it had been half a page, maybe we could have at least had some payoff to a certain plot later in the issue.
Scorponok makes the very poor choice of calling his own people off dealing with Hunter, so this can be his first kill in his new combined form. Hunter meanwhile, is having incredible difficulty turning into a head because the Machination scientists are working to mess up the process (yes, this plot has decided to develop even slower than it was already), leaving him at the mercy of the new full bodied Scorponok as he demolishes his own wall to get at the human, screaming “It’s killing time!”
Which is definitely crap and cheesy, but, to be honest, in a comic full of pretentious villains giving big speeches that don’t actually mean anything, it makes rather a welcome change of pace.
Speaking of pretentious speech giving villains, the Reaper attack on the Decepticons in Oregon gives us more than our fill. Starting with Megatron giving a speech as he’s killing Reapers that veers from telling them they’re shit to telling Starscream that he doesn’t care about the “Internal machinations” (not great to throw in a not especially natural word that’s already associated with another plotline) that bought about his “Second coming” (lucky sod), he just wants to know who Starscream serves, himself, or Megatron?
Starscream’s reply of “The Decepticon cause” is enough to make Megatron cry “Take me!”, turning into a gun and letting Starscream stroke his trigger.
This is probably the best part of the issue, good enough for All Hail Megatron to repeat it the following year.
Which is definitely crap and cheesy, but, to be honest, in a comic full of pretentious villains giving big speeches that don’t actually mean anything, it makes rather a welcome change of pace.
Speaking of pretentious speech giving villains, the Reaper attack on the Decepticons in Oregon gives us more than our fill. Starting with Megatron giving a speech as he’s killing Reapers that veers from telling them they’re shit to telling Starscream that he doesn’t care about the “Internal machinations” (not great to throw in a not especially natural word that’s already associated with another plotline) that bought about his “Second coming” (lucky sod), he just wants to know who Starscream serves, himself, or Megatron?
Starscream’s reply of “The Decepticon cause” is enough to make Megatron cry “Take me!”, turning into a gun and letting Starscream stroke his trigger.
This is probably the best part of the issue, good enough for All Hail Megatron to repeat it the following year.
The true terror of the Reapers is shown however, as they kill Runabout and Runamuck is what can only be described as an unfunny comedy scene, complete with Runamuck’s head bouncing along and Eh and Uhing after it’s cut off. Which is enough to make the watching Galvatron (who must have gotten here very quickly. No really sense of distance between the differing locations is going to hurt some of the impact the issue is aiming for later on) to decide the Decepticons have no chance unless, in a moment borrowed from issue 74 of the Marvel US series, he bends the orders he’s been given and intervenes.
An intervention is also what you get in the junkyard, as the same interference being applied to Hunter has the side-effect of making the other Headmasters useless as well, allowing Hot Rod to finish all but one off, who is taken care of by Hardhead. Who has come to bring Hot Rod back to Ark 32 as they prepare to leave the planet.
An intervention is also what you get in the junkyard, as the same interference being applied to Hunter has the side-effect of making the other Headmasters useless as well, allowing Hot Rod to finish all but one off, who is taken care of by Hardhead. Who has come to bring Hot Rod back to Ark 32 as they prepare to leave the planet.
Hot Rod however has decided that this time it’s personal and he’s going to stay and sort out the Headmasters, encouraging Hardhead to pretend he got there too late to find him and just take Ironhide and Wheeljack back as he drives off.
Yes, the resolution to the running since the previous miniseries Ironhide plot is “Oh, you find him and take him home instead”. Presumably the crushing has been postponed by the mass fight in the junkyard, but even with the Machination having intercepted the previous police call, surely other authorities have now been alerted by all the explosions? Is Hardhead going to find Ironhide in time? The guy does not even appear in the issue.
Furman said on his blog at the time that this was a casualty of all the plots in the air, but he only has himself to blame. Reducing the length of Hunter’s efforts to transform, or making the Scorponok reveal a half-page or cutting some of the completely pointless Reaper stuff would have left some room to at least show Ironhide in this sequence. It’s the worst of all worlds, the story feels like it’s been reduced to a checklist and then the writer fails to even tick every one of those boxes.
It so annoyed people at the time that Nick Roche even went and created a little one page “Interlude” for Spotlight: Grimlock that he shared on the IDW forums, showing a well and fine Ironhide coming out of a CR Chamber and meeting just about the most cheerful Prowl he ever wrote, which you can see HERE. It doesn’t even have as much canon as a Mosaic, but sod it, I count it as such.
Yes, the resolution to the running since the previous miniseries Ironhide plot is “Oh, you find him and take him home instead”. Presumably the crushing has been postponed by the mass fight in the junkyard, but even with the Machination having intercepted the previous police call, surely other authorities have now been alerted by all the explosions? Is Hardhead going to find Ironhide in time? The guy does not even appear in the issue.
Furman said on his blog at the time that this was a casualty of all the plots in the air, but he only has himself to blame. Reducing the length of Hunter’s efforts to transform, or making the Scorponok reveal a half-page or cutting some of the completely pointless Reaper stuff would have left some room to at least show Ironhide in this sequence. It’s the worst of all worlds, the story feels like it’s been reduced to a checklist and then the writer fails to even tick every one of those boxes.
It so annoyed people at the time that Nick Roche even went and created a little one page “Interlude” for Spotlight: Grimlock that he shared on the IDW forums, showing a well and fine Ironhide coming out of a CR Chamber and meeting just about the most cheerful Prowl he ever wrote, which you can see HERE. It doesn’t even have as much canon as a Mosaic, but sod it, I count it as such.
But of course we had to lose a resolution to the Ironhide plot so we could get two pages of the Autobots on Ark 32 not doing very much. Prime is conference calling with Hound about sending his team to Garrus 9 as well (something that will annoy Sideswipe) and Prowl is still studying the now confirmed to be the autopsy of Leadfoot, and the “Necrotic” virus that killed him, which feels so familiar that he now worries his own memories have been messed with.
I actually initially misread “Necrotic” as “neurotic” and worried I had a terminal case, but it’s impressive that the same month Furman doubled down on his idea that women robots are unrealistic, he introduced the idea you can kill them with a zombie virus.
Which is something Galvatron decides to use on a passing Reaper, which, unlike what it did to Leadfoot, does turn him into a zombie who goes around infecting other Reapers. Now that would be a useful special weapon to use later.
And the only moment a Reaper speaks in the whole issue is when one asks another if he’s OK before being zombified. Which is a big sign of how completely pointless these villains have become.
During all this, Scorponok moves about two steps, allowing Hunter to overcome the mental pressure, transform and become Huntstreaker (who, perhaps surprisingly, we don’t get a full body reveal of, so I guess it’s lucky that Mosaic got there first), before turning into car mode and escaping through a wall.
I actually initially misread “Necrotic” as “neurotic” and worried I had a terminal case, but it’s impressive that the same month Furman doubled down on his idea that women robots are unrealistic, he introduced the idea you can kill them with a zombie virus.
Which is something Galvatron decides to use on a passing Reaper, which, unlike what it did to Leadfoot, does turn him into a zombie who goes around infecting other Reapers. Now that would be a useful special weapon to use later.
And the only moment a Reaper speaks in the whole issue is when one asks another if he’s OK before being zombified. Which is a big sign of how completely pointless these villains have become.
During all this, Scorponok moves about two steps, allowing Hunter to overcome the mental pressure, transform and become Huntstreaker (who, perhaps surprisingly, we don’t get a full body reveal of, so I guess it’s lucky that Mosaic got there first), before turning into car mode and escaping through a wall.
Which is fine, but should have happened two issues ago and it won’t be till the end of the year that we pick up on this plot as the Dead Universe takes priority for the first of Furman’s Vinegar Strokes miniseries.
In Oregon, we have the blessed relief of the end of the bizarre and pointless Reapers story as the Decepticons just kill all of them, the only relevance of the whole thing being that Galvatron uses the distraction to sneak off with Sixshot’s body. Now, imagine if the Reapers had just been limited to the Sixshot Spotlight and instead of this, Galvatron had come to use his superpowers on Sixshot as he’d tried to kill the Autobots two issues ago. You’d have kept the threat of Sixshot to normal Transformers intact and provided a more realistic way for him to be gotten out of that situation with no Autobot casualties. The big battle here could then have been the two actual protagonist sides in the comic, a quick Autobot attack on the Decepticon base to try and drive them off the planet before they have to pull out, which fails and puts them into retreat because of the Starscream/Megatron love-in.
But there’s no point imagining what better work by the editor might have done, the story as is leads us to the most telling part of the whole issue, as Astrotrain points out that, as no one cares about Runabout and Runamuck, there’s been almost no devastation in Devastation. Megatron does briefly think of adding Blitzwing to the tally, but Starscream sways him by drawing his attention to some circling USAF jets and pointing out they are now exposed.
In Oregon, we have the blessed relief of the end of the bizarre and pointless Reapers story as the Decepticons just kill all of them, the only relevance of the whole thing being that Galvatron uses the distraction to sneak off with Sixshot’s body. Now, imagine if the Reapers had just been limited to the Sixshot Spotlight and instead of this, Galvatron had come to use his superpowers on Sixshot as he’d tried to kill the Autobots two issues ago. You’d have kept the threat of Sixshot to normal Transformers intact and provided a more realistic way for him to be gotten out of that situation with no Autobot casualties. The big battle here could then have been the two actual protagonist sides in the comic, a quick Autobot attack on the Decepticon base to try and drive them off the planet before they have to pull out, which fails and puts them into retreat because of the Starscream/Megatron love-in.
But there’s no point imagining what better work by the editor might have done, the story as is leads us to the most telling part of the whole issue, as Astrotrain points out that, as no one cares about Runabout and Runamuck, there’s been almost no devastation in Devastation. Megatron does briefly think of adding Blitzwing to the tally, but Starscream sways him by drawing his attention to some circling USAF jets and pointing out they are now exposed.
Which makes Skywatch trying to wake up Grimlock to find them some Transformers seem fairly pointless, and we meet the one sane person there as he points out to Agent Red this is a really stupid plan. But as there’s no actual advancement on this plot from the end of last issue, they could easily have dropped it to, say, oh, I don’t know, give some resolution to the Ironhide plot.
It also means the Autobots leaving Earth is two very small panels, which adds to the lack of weight this has, especially without the assumption people had at the time abandoning the planet was going to lead into All Hail Megatron.
Not only does it not really make any sense for Optimus to completely abandon a major outpost to go chase Monstructor at the point Megatron is there (why not just go meet Hound’s team by himself and leave Prowl and his boys on Earth? They could always grab some of Fort Max’s guards if they need extra muscle), how small the series has made the Universe seem, with characters rushing between Cybertron, Earth and the Dead Universe in what seems very little time, makes it feel like there’s not too much danger if anything does happen with the Decepticons as Prime can be back in ten minutes. It’s an interesting and bold idea, squandered amidst muddled plotting.
And the end of the last real ...Tions miniseries before real Oh Shit Wrap Up Tour starts is a trip into the Dead Universe, where Galvatron delivers Sixshot to the finally fully revealed Nemesis Prime and Jhiaxus.
It also means the Autobots leaving Earth is two very small panels, which adds to the lack of weight this has, especially without the assumption people had at the time abandoning the planet was going to lead into All Hail Megatron.
Not only does it not really make any sense for Optimus to completely abandon a major outpost to go chase Monstructor at the point Megatron is there (why not just go meet Hound’s team by himself and leave Prowl and his boys on Earth? They could always grab some of Fort Max’s guards if they need extra muscle), how small the series has made the Universe seem, with characters rushing between Cybertron, Earth and the Dead Universe in what seems very little time, makes it feel like there’s not too much danger if anything does happen with the Decepticons as Prime can be back in ten minutes. It’s an interesting and bold idea, squandered amidst muddled plotting.
And the end of the last real ...Tions miniseries before real Oh Shit Wrap Up Tour starts is a trip into the Dead Universe, where Galvatron delivers Sixshot to the finally fully revealed Nemesis Prime and Jhiaxus.
With one good gag, considering the original was based on the G1 Starscream toy, in that Jhiaxus is now visibly an orange Bay film Starscream. With a hunchback to add to his Igor like status. Though for some reason, when Nemesis Prime just asks him if he thinks Galvatron really serves The Expansion, Jhiaxus reads out Galvatron’s character profile of how he harbours secret thoughts but that it won’t matter now they’re in the endgame.
Which is a strange note on which to end.
After a shaky start, issues 2 and 3 of this series great fun, so seeing the complete collapse of the story across the second half has been disheartening. Every plot has needed about twice as long as it needed to and pace has been reduced to that of a snail and we cut from slow moving disconnected from the rest of the issue scene to slow moving disconnected from the series of the issue scene and back again.
This should either have been four issues, or the six should have better used the space to wrap up the facsimile plot or establish if Jimmy and Verity were OK or not or hey, here’s a thought, bloody Ironhide.
It doesn’t help that in the place a Mosaic has filled the last few issues, we get an “Earth will have to fend for itself” pinup by Josh Burcham of the major characters watching the Ark leave. Which is very nice, but if IDW were going to pump for an extra page of new art, how about an extra page of the comic itself?
Which is a strange note on which to end.
After a shaky start, issues 2 and 3 of this series great fun, so seeing the complete collapse of the story across the second half has been disheartening. Every plot has needed about twice as long as it needed to and pace has been reduced to that of a snail and we cut from slow moving disconnected from the rest of the issue scene to slow moving disconnected from the series of the issue scene and back again.
This should either have been four issues, or the six should have better used the space to wrap up the facsimile plot or establish if Jimmy and Verity were OK or not or hey, here’s a thought, bloody Ironhide.
It doesn’t help that in the place a Mosaic has filled the last few issues, we get an “Earth will have to fend for itself” pinup by Josh Burcham of the major characters watching the Ark leave. Which is very nice, but if IDW were going to pump for an extra page of new art, how about an extra page of the comic itself?
The art is great and Starscream and Megatron as a kinky team is actually very well done, but otherwise, this may not be as offensive as Spotlight: Arcee, but the basic storytelling has all the same eye off the ball issues. It’s an underwhelming mess. If we take Furman at face value when he says his stories were not compromised by the wrap-up order, then the format change which that wrap-up is going to be done in, can only be a positive change.
But before that, we enter a rather odd interim period before the two pronged duelling authors soft-reboot/hard-wrap-up begins in earnest.
Starting with a real dream of an issue as next week, it’s Spotlight: Mirage.
SPOTLIGHT: ARCEE
2008
COMMENT
KO-FI
But before that, we enter a rather odd interim period before the two pronged duelling authors soft-reboot/hard-wrap-up begins in earnest.
Starting with a real dream of an issue as next week, it’s Spotlight: Mirage.
SPOTLIGHT: ARCEE
2008
COMMENT
KO-FI