RID #14 (Major spoilers)

Mr_Tigg · Post by **Mr_Tigg** » Wed Feb 27, 2013 3:38 pm

Holy Carp! That was a cracking issue - considering how this series has been all-at-sea at times the payoff was spot on.

Good prediction from BF in the previous thread, though if Rung is anything to go by we could see WJ back in action again! And love the idea of Prowl being part of a gestalt.

Hound · Post by **Hound** » Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:07 pm

Not sure how I feel about this issue tbh.

Post by **snarl** » Wed Feb 27, 2013 7:36 pm

Stuff has started happening in these issues, that's for sure.

Still not a fan of a lot of the dialogue, nor the pencils and colouring. Don't think they're outright *****, just not a fan of the style - it reminds me of the cartoon with the bright colours more simplistic layouts and poor dialogue... you lose a lot of the gravitas when you have team america stuff like Blurr throwing up his hands and wailing like a woman etc.

But, 13 and 14... they've been the best issues by far imo, they've gone some way to addressing a lot of what I hadn't liked in a reasonably plausible way.

Still plenty I could nit pick over... It's absolutely no way near as engaging, gripping or consuming as MTMTE, which gets me close to Ultimate Spidey, The Boys, Y: The Last man... But nor is it the spectacularly bad, stupidly **** stuff we were getting between 2008 and 2011

Post by **Best First** » Wed Feb 27, 2013 8:30 pm

I enjoyed that, but revealing a cerebro shell after a year is a bit much.

Loved the cavalry arriving though.

Mr_Tigg · Post by **Mr_Tigg** » Wed Feb 27, 2013 10:08 pm

I will admit that Barber's dialogue isn't on a par with Roberts. Nor has this issue prompted me to go back and re-read past issues of RID unlike MTMTE.

Despite it's weaknesses though I feel as a standalone it's on a par with the better issues of MTMTE. It's just a shame that this is the exception with this series rather than the rule, and doesn't hide the fact that the pacing has been way, way too slow in the build up to this.

On a side note, I actually didn't like the last issue of MTMTE much at all - found it a bit fanwanky in places and too focused on the comedy of Ultra Magnus in a *gasp* drunken situation. That makes this one of those rare occasions where RID is actually better for me than MTMTE (until next week when Overlord will no doubt rip my expectations up and shizzer all over them before blasting the benchmark into orbit!).

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:11 am

Sorry, not really seeing this the same way you guys are, but at least **** happened.

If a writer is clever enough, he can take past events and tie them all together in a logical fashion that's acceptable. That didn't really happen here, IMO. That multi-character exposition on Megatron's grand plan could have been great....had it made some sense. The madness was induced by...wha? The energies from Megatron's old body fused with a Metrotitan's space bridge tech did...what? Omega Supreme got killed how? Why not skip the whole gestalt thing and shoot Omega with a cerebroshell? And having as the foundation of that master plan a cerebroshell is certainly a bit of a cop out.

I like the idea that the Autobot's brightest mind and greatest strategist was under Decepticon control. And that he now serves as the head of Devestator is also an interesting twist. I like the shock value of Wheeljack getting his head blown off. Nice elements.

But it's the 'how we got to this point' that bothers me. It took over a year to get to a point that we could have gotten to in half that much time, and the way we get to this point is quite lame. Why is Arcee killing Autobots? She HATES Decepticons! Does she have cerebroshell too? If so, why not shoot Bumblebee and Metalhawk with one while we're at it?

Anybody remember at what point the cerebroshell actually got into Prowl's head?

The ending was also predictable with Ironhide and the cavalry showing up. Saw that coming from a mile away, but I'm looking forward to it.

So yeah, it's better than what we had out of RID of late, but it's bitter sweet. Some parts of this thing are so amateurish, it really detracts from the overall enjoyment of it. If I were a young teenager again, I could see myself absolutely loving this. As it were, MTMTE is still my cup of tea.

Give it a "B-".

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 8:54 am

Some of the dialogue made me physically wince.
"I'm coming with you. I'd like answers."
"Yeah, fair enough. We all do."
Ugh. How did that get past an editor?

I'm guessing Arcee was also shelled at some point, there's no way otherwise that she'd be sharing a room with Jhiaxus's best student and not flipping out and killing people. I'm a little disappointed that Megs described Ironhide, the Dinobots and the Aerialbots as "quite dead" as well, as if he knew what had happened to them - it seemed like a very lazy set-up for their eventual return but unless he'd personally extinguished their sparks it doesn't seem like the sort of thing he'd say. Kind of undermines his whole "I've been behind it all!" exposition speech too, since he obviously doesn't know what's going on - presumably he observed events until it appeared that, um, Superion was about to smash Ironhide and then spirited away thinking "I assume that whatever happens next, it will result in all of their deaths." I can't help but feel a "Decepticons retreat!" will be on the cards in pretty short order.

And what is Meg's grand plan, anyway - Devastator smash? Isn't that the same plan they always have? As Yaya says, if they've got shells, why not just shell Starscream, Bumblebee and Metalhawk and then hold the elections anyway? Hasn't Megatron seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Or even got a couple of dudes with needles for fingers stashed away somewhere? Bah.

To be perfectly honest this whole thing smells a bit retconny, as if Barber changed his mind about where it was going.

Post by **snarl** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:38 am

I agree with a lot of what Yaya says.

I don't really see how Yaya's review lands the issue at an overall B- mark though?

"Yeah, I think Pat Lee was a spectacular **** and draws about as well as a paedophile. I give him an A"

Answers Yaya!

Also, I'm always interested when I lurk on the IDW boards. The posters over there that I basically have pegged as being mildly mongy are more or less the ones that lap RiD up as if it were warm, creamy milk...

Jack Cade · Post by **Jack Cade** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:58 pm

I think there's a lot of problems with this attempt at 'pay-off'. I made a big list over on the other board, and there's ones here I hadn't even thought of (like using a cerebro shell on Omega).

I guess I do want to know what happens though, so that's something.

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:57 pm

Rereading ten issues back it all makes a lot of sense if Bombshell can only maintain control of a limited number of bots at a time. You see the shell on Dirge blow just as he sees Prowl confront Bombshell. I assumed that was because Bombshell was killed, but it makes a lot more sense in light of this issue, if it disengaged because Bombshell had just taken control of Prowl.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 3:43 am

snarl wrote:
"Yeah, I think Pat Lee was a spectacular **** and draws about as well as a paedophile. I give him an A"

Answers Yaya!

If I ever gave Pat Lee an "A", you have the right to ban me from the boards and have me return with the handle "Dumbass".

Actually, it occurs to me that I might have been overly generous in giving a "B-", as the more I think about this issue, the worse it gets. Primarily because, for the past year, it's all been building to this. This is the 'grand reveal' issue. This is the payoff, so it should be viewed with a more critical eye. For the reasons above, and the one's Jack talks about at the IDW boards, the whole explanation is truly a stretch and so much of it occurs off panel. Megatron just walks out of the jungle almost dead, yet he's been the one behind this master plan all along, back to the old sunbow Megatron after Roberts had written him so very well in those two Choas issues.

Despite all those complaints, I'm still in. I guess that says something.

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 10:58 am

Anyway, we can all rest easy now Prowl's flagrant disregard for Wheaton's Law is explained exactly as we all predicted it would be.

Post by **Kaylee** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:38 pm

I thought this issue was total nosh.

All this build up, glacial pace and political intrigue for the end result to be Prowl was brainwashed (for some reason) in a really, really contrived plot by Megatron to rebuild Devestator.

Honestly, the sheer number of moving parts in that plan, the ridiculous complexity of it all just raises two questions:

1. How did he orchestrate that and miss the Dinobots, Superion and Ironhide surviving?
2. WHY? If you can plan that intricately, that far in advance why would you piss it away on this daft scheme? It's like solving the human genome just so you can invent a breed of human with rotating teeth that play 'Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy'. Why would you do that??

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 12:50 am

Karl wrote:I thought this issue was total nosh.

All this build up, glacial pace and political intrigue for the end result to be Prowl was brainwashed (for some reason) in a really, really contrived plot by Megatron to rebuild Devestator.

Honestly, the sheer number of moving parts in that plan, the ridiculous complexity of it all just raises two questions:

1. How did he orchestrate that and miss the Dinobots, Superion and Ironhide surviving?
2. WHY? If you can plan that intricately, that far in advance why would you piss it away on this daft scheme? It's like solving the human genome just so you can invent a breed of human with rotating teeth that play 'Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy'. Why would you do that??

Your post is hilarious. And sadly, true.

Post by **Kaylee** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:22 am

You're welcome

Seriously though, am I wrong in this train of understanding:

Megatron sent loads of tiny versions of himself to earth as handguns to do something-or-other.
Thingy-wotsit was killed, so Devestator was out of the picture.
Megatron got rebuilt by Shockwave, despite Shockwave hating his guts.
Megatron's new body allowed him to do something-or-other to drive... people... mad? But only if they got too far away from him? EH???
Megatron then... surrendered.
Galvatron turned up and the Sweeps turned into a giant trash-monster.
Megatron blew himself up fighting it.
Prime opened the Matrix- his go-to move for solving most any problem, from blocked drains to trash-monsters eating his pals.
Prime naffed off. Because [composite word including 'f*ck'] YOU, that's why!
Rodimus et al naffed off to go to a better story.
Bumblebee proved his character has truly been mined for all it's worth, and then some.
Starscream very nearly pulled off the most ironic Decepticon victory in history by winning through democracy.
Until Megatron trolled back into town, presumably having been napping in the wilderness, and claimed it was all his doing and that Prowl has, for an unspecified period of time, been under his control...
So he can rebuild Devestator...
And 'win'. Somehow.
Despite the fact that nobody who was meant to have died (due to proximity from Megatron being too great) is actually remotely dead. Or that Devestator has been beaten on numerous prior occassions, with or without Superion, the Dinobots and Ironhide.

Oh and Metrotitan popped in for tea and then died after chatting to Starscream.

[/list]

Post by **Best First** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:22 pm

Achievement Unlocked: Mugatu. 1,000,000 points.

Post by **Kaylee** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:16 pm

And further more... why did they need Prowl? What with all that drivel about 'a shared lust for destruction', wouldn't a Decepticon have been a more logical choice? And when did they find time to modify Prowl into a combiner? And was this like a 30 minute operation, so nobody noticed he was missing?

Nyarg!

Hound · Post by **Hound** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:43 pm

I guess using Prowl was to help them 'infiltrate' society better and his modifications were made after he blew himself up a couple of issues ago.

This really wasn't as clever as it wants to be.

Post by **Kaylee** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:20 pm

Infiltrate what, though? Screamer was doing the closest to true infiltration, I feel. Megs just bumbled in and turned it into a fist-fight!

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Mon Mar 04, 2013 9:57 am

Karl wrote: Rodimus et al naffed off to go to a better story.

<3

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Mon Mar 04, 2013 4:26 pm

And I thought the Lost Light crew were dysfunctinal.

After seeing what's going down in RID, it appears the Lost Light crew aren't as unstable a group as we thought.

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 6:03 pm

Yeah, I also had mixed feelings about this issue.

On the one hand, it was cool, lots of stuff happened, and it had one BRILLIANT panel in it: Prowl's death panel, where he both implicates Bee and the audience when he says "Why couldn't you tell it wasn't me?"

On the other hand, like everyone has said, we just blew up everything we were working towards, this is just another Auto vs. Decep bash-up now (and the RiD/ReGen stories are overlapping), they killed Wheeljack (do we think Bee is gone too?), and I have no idea WTF is up with Arcee. Why didn't they just plainly state she's under control as well? Or is this just some reeally long con? Also the last panel was obvious, although Grimlock was missing, no?

I didn't read IDW between Furman and Roberts, so I'm pretty fuzzy on the space bridge/gestalt stuff. For those of you that waded through that, did this all get tied off in a nice little bow?

In sum, I appreciated the context given to what's happened thus far, but it's left me totally unexcited about what's coming next. Unless there's a Dynobot gestalt involved.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:02 pm

Shanti418 wrote: I didn't read IDW between Furman and Roberts, so I'm pretty fuzzy on the space bridge/gestalt stuff. For those of you that waded through that, did this all get tied off in a nice little bow?

Well, I've been reading between Furman and Roberts, and I'll say I understand the space bridge/gestalt stuff as much as you do.

In sum, I appreciated the context given to what's happened thus far, but it's left me totally unexcited about what's coming next. Unless there's a Dynobot gestalt involved.

I've always wondered when we'd see a Dynobot gestalt and surprised that it hasn't happened in all the years we've had TF comics. Now would be as good a time as any, I suppose. If Prowl can be the head of Devestator, no reason Ironhide can't be the head of....Prehistoricus?

Mr_Tigg · Post by **Mr_Tigg** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:49 pm

Regarding Prowl being the head of Devastator - I don't understand the confusion - the explanation is that to form a good combiner you either need cohesive minds (constructicons) or no mind to resist (prowl). When Prowl joins the constructicons Megatron instructs Bombshell to command Devastator - implying that Bombshell is still able to both suppress and control Prowl thus make him a good fit for Devastator

.

Mr_Tigg · Post by **Mr_Tigg** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:56 pm

Yaya wrote: I've always wondered when we'd see a Dynobot gestalt and surprised that it hasn't happened in all the years we've had TF comics. Now would be as good a time as any, I suppose. If Prowl can be the head of Devestator, no reason Ironhide can't be the head of....Prehistoricus?

There was a mini comic that was released with the UK G1 DVD box set that had he Dinobots combining - they then lose control and total all the deception combiners one by one before turning on the autobots. It's pretty naff - Menasaur literally begs for mercy.

Post by **Kaylee** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 7:54 am

Mr_Tigg wrote:Regarding Prowl being the head of Devastator - I don't understand the confusion - the explanation is that to form a good combiner you either need cohesive minds (constructicons) or no mind to resist (prowl). When Prowl joins the constructicons Megatron instructs Bombshell to command Devastator - implying that Bombshell is still able to both suppress and control Prowl thus make him a good fit for Devastator .

Sure, but that doesn't answer for me 'why Prowl?' Unless Bombshell is going to control Prowl and Devestator for the rest of his life. Why not just use a Decepticon and have six points of failure instead of seven?

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 9:53 am

Yeah im still confused about this.megatrons master plan is to erm get devestator back up and running?
Like karl said, why prowl, why not another decepticon ?

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:46 pm

Ironhide shoots Bombshell. Devastator collapses. Decepticon plan fails. *Sigh*

I was actually hoping for some kind of utopia ushered in by Starscream before megs came back.

Post by **Kaylee** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 2:45 pm

I really wanted to see Starscream get somewhere, too. I don't really know why Megatron is giving him such grief: he nearly won the war for the Decepticons! Now Megs is just going to totally [composite word including 'f*ck'] it up.

Thinking about it... why are the Decepticons so enthralled to Megatron? He hasn't managed to win the war for them in over 4,000,000 years! He's cruel, has no problems sacrificing his troops and hasn't improved their quality of life one jot!

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 2:48 pm

Shanti418 wrote:Also the last panel was obvious, although Grimlock was missing, no?

Grimmy's busy being braindead on the Weak Anthropic Principle with Misfire, Krok and the other ragtag Decepticons.

Mr_Tigg wrote:There was a mini comic that was released with the UK G1 DVD box set that had he Dinobots combining - they then lose control and total all the deception combiners one by one before turning on the autobots. It's pretty naff - Menasaur literally begs for mercy.

I'd almost forgotten about that...by Guzzle's turret it was terrible

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Beast_Within

I suppose it's possible that the Dinos could form the limbs with Ironhide as the head of a combiner - that might be interesting going up against Prowl-Devastator, but it'll probably be Supes while Ironhide and the Dinos leading the Autobots' fight back against Megs and his troops.

I'm still not entirely sold on a lot of this, to be honest. "Prowl" detonated the Constructicons' ID chips using Wheeljack's override code. Even if he was under Bombshell's control, that should still have been fatal unless they swapped the chips for some that only blow up most of their heads instead of all of them...which is presumably what Shockwave, Soundwave and Bombshell were plotting back when Ratbat thought himself in charge. And I can't figure out for the life of me what the deal is with Arcee.