Lost Light #22 (the mother of all spoilers)

[Professor Smooth]

There's a lot to take in here. So much so that I had to read it a few times to catch everything.

Good ol' JR continues that "secret identity" thing that he has been so good at since Minimus Ambus. As folks have guessed, "Pharma" isn't really. Not entirely. And as it turns out, that was true of a bunch of different characters throughout the run of MTMTE/LL. The Guiding Hand has been hiding in plain sight from the very beginning.

Adaptus is currently inhabiting a body very similar to that of Pharma. Mortilus was the Necrobot. Tyrest was another. The Magnificence (as others have guessed) is all that's left of another. And the last. The last. Oh, wow. Primus has been there since the very, VERY beginning and it's freaking excellent.

But the shining star of this issue is Megatron, captain of the Last Light in the Functionalist Universe. He has SO many great moments here. His stuff with Minimus Magnus is sweet. He makes the Scavengers' day. But it's what he does with his "fusion cannon" before giving an INCREDIBLY Optimus Prime-type speech that really made it. And everything in that whole scene throws back to an early Megatron/LL bit.

Just a joy.

James Roberts very dryly summed up the issue on Twitter this morning by saying "I think we can all agree that LL#22 is a great jumping on point.

If you've been reading from the beginning, and I'm pretty sure all of us have been, this book is sublime.