Let’s start this out by saying if you do not want to be spoiled at all, or thrown a curve ball, do not read the preview. iTunes has just posted a three page preview for issue #44 of More Than Meets The eye. Last issue we were left on a cliff hanger, so naturally issue #44 looks to be ramping things up significantly.
If you don’t mind being spoiled a bit, continue on after the jump for the preview. If you want to go into the issue blind, best to wait!
Nocturne
Wasn't Delphi built to support the nucleon mines? Pretty sure I remember reading something like that.
And ha! I knew the Necrobot was involved the second I saw all those tombstones. I'm looking forward to learning a bit mire about him.
And I feel rather cheated that we never got to see any of the carnival trip. At least we know where Skids probably learned to juggle now.
And while I'm liking the art I'm not a big fan of the case of open mouthed same face that seems to have infected the cast. It's giving me worrying flashbacks to Pat Lee and Dull Surprise…
Hadlen_Weltall
I read it and couldn't stop laughing… Megatron takes the plunge to banter! Magnus has the Metabomb!
Anguirus
I am the research masterrrrrr
SMOG
Win… what…?
The quote you included above sure does affirm that somebody came up with the idea of the DJD and then developed it. Yup. Controversial stuff. Solid research there.
zmog
Anguirus
I win.
YakMaster003
Ah. I'd forgotten about that discussion. Thanks for the reminder.
SMOG
That was one of the main theories back when that issue first came out, though there's never been any evidence one way or the other. Roberts has confirmed that the DJD use UUT weapons to chop up Phase Sixers, but we don't know how they actually -beat- them in a fight.
zmog
YakMaster003
I thought about that for a bit. What if Megatron shared the "Achilles Virus" (like Overlord) or shutdown codes (like Screamer with Sixshot) for all the P6ers with the DJD? Wouldn't that give them a significant leg up when they hunted Black Shadow down?
SMOG
Also possible. Why else build a massive medical facility on a random planet? Though actually sharing a planet with the DJD is questionable, considering the power differential. I suppose it could be argued that the DJD don't actually spend much time sitting around their HQ, and are instead roaming around checking Cons off their list.
Logically, yeah. But Roberts really took his time clarifying how the DJD were able to take down someone with those capabilities. It almost felt like he hadn't bothered to think about it, and when put to the question he was like "Uh… their weapons are made of Ununtrium".
But yeah, it does stand to reason that if you spend a page describing how Black Shadow is one of the biggest BAMFs in the universe, and then show him totally smashed, and at the mercy of 5 dudes… you're saying something about those 5 dudes.
zmog
ZeroiaSD
My impression was Delphi was likely a big medical facility for the region, and handled a lot more than the fighting on the world itself.
I'm fairly sure that was his intent, considering we got a brand-new "Black Shadow's greatest hits" right before the kill.
SMOG
I see what you're getting at, though I don't think the things you cite are nearly as conclusive as that. I think you may be tilting them just a bit. Having a mole in the organization, for example, doesn't really diminish them as you imply… to me it says a lot more about the skill and psychological immersion of the mole. That was my take-away… not that the DJD were a bunch of sloppy operators.
As for the "routine" nature of their conflicts, after seeing Black Shadow's greatest hits reel, I can see how whole Autobot batallions might be casually savaged and left in ruins by the DJD, but not necessarily executed… after all, attrition is not only a valuable tactic (the wounded and maimed put a larger drain on resources) but it also makes more sense, since TFs are much harder to flat-out kill than humans are. And of course, by sending more patients back to Delphi (and Pharma), Tarn ensured himself a steady supply of cogs.
Just the same, even as far back as MTMTE#3 it was established that the DJD was absolutely f***ing terrifying, and the revelation that their leader cannibalized transformation cogs to feed his addiction added to their bogeyman qualities… but this does sort of feel discordant with the idea of ongoing skirmishing with the DJD on Delphi (how big is Delphi anyway? Didn't the DJD quarter themselves on the other side of the planet? Why so much fighting?).
My take was that there were frequent efforts to push the DJD off the planet, and that Delphi was at one point a major hotspot, so there would have been some real action there. In that context, the idea of 5 sociopaths holding off an entire Autobot army still makes them sound pretty badass.
There is also the question of professionalism; the DJD are supposed to hunt down individual Decepticon traitors and horribly torture them… there's no reason why they should be so attentive or thorough to Autobots. In short, that's not their job.
This is one reason why the 'Slaughterhouse' incident seemed a bit out of step… not only in terms of their ability to walk all over the entire Lost Light crew, but also just in their diligence in doing so…
I guess the sense of the DJD being truly unstoppable really came with their first appearance, where suddenly they were Phase Sixer-Killers… that boosted their profile a lot... though it bothers me that I'm not quite sure if this was Roberts' intent, or whether he only ran with it after enough people pointed out that they must be P6-level threats themselves to pose a danger to guys like Black Shadow and Overlord.
All in all, even early in this series (before we were fully acquainted with Roberts' elaborate plot seeding tendencies), I daresay you can't introduce the idea of an enigmatic deep cover agent with an exotic contact method, placed in a superstitiously fearsome elite Decepticon unit… and then further develop that unit into a small squad of absolute monsters… without ensuring your readers will wonder about this guy often.
Roberts could hardly accuse the readers of "making Agent 113 into a big deal"… it would be either a profoundly naive complaint, or downright stupid. Readers often go where you tell them to go, and Roberts certainly sowed the seeds of speculation. Perhaps Roberts was still finding his way with serial storytelling, and planted more ideas than he actually intended to follow up, but objectively speaking, I'd say that's exactly what he did.
I don't read the solicits, since they are inherently superficial promotional commodities. I would hope that the actual content would be more telling than that tedious pot-stirring nonsense. I guess I sort of draw a line between the actual goings-on inside a title, and the outside means used to market it. Drift was one such example. The people who hated him probably read a lot more press releases, which probably exerted a greater influence than his actual appearances on the page.
While the "Agent 113 is XXX" speculation never quite reached the same fervor as the "Roller is XXX" and "Tarn is XXX" memes, I wouldn't lay that at the fans' feet. The author categorically created all those mysteries through the tools of the trade, the very stuff of layered storytelling. It's either disingenuous or irresponsible (or even idiotic) not to expect your readership to be attentive to those things.
And I say that with respect to just about any author, not just Roberts (though in the past, I have certainly held him to a higher standard).
Hmmm… I wasn't thrown by the name. Many top-level organizations are surprisingly small in terms of their core membership…. but I agree at the same time. I would have expected something in between; not just 5 guys, but maybe 5 guys with an extensive support network. I mean, more than just some off-world orphan like Nickel backing them up, to be sure.
zmog
Anguirus
In "Bullets," "Last Stand of the Wreckers" is retroactively set up by First Aid finding a message-in-a-bullet from Agent 113, the mole in the Decepticon Justice Division. So the first things we learned about the Division:
-They've been duped by a mole on an ongoing basis
-They are whining about losing contact with Decepticon forces on G9 three years ago
-They routinely get into firefights with Autobots and leave survivors. Surviving a battle with them is routine, and battles with them are routine, as First Aid checks badges obsessively (leading to his later demotion sometime before MtMtE #3).
These do not sound like go-getters. Indeed, Roberts commented that the following concepts:
-DJD as major arc villains in MtMtE.
-DJD being a small group of very powerful individuals
-DJD being semi-anonymous and using pseudonyms
…were all the later fruit of him mulling over ideas for MtMtE, going back to the throwaway line in "Bullets," and wondering what the concept of "Decepticon justice" was like.
And yeah everything was sort of woven together with gossamer thread, such as those regular firefights with the DJD taking place ONLY on their home base of Delphi which TURNS OUT to be a stash of superfuel and they were throwing all of those fights because Tarn had a deal with Pharma which no one found suspicious because we still don't know.
Regardless, there was pretty open suspicion around here when we first "met" the DJD that "Agent 113" was going to just be thrown under the table (like so many comic book concepts), but then the speculation on which member was the mole turned into a kind of self-sustaining game. Not that that was a bad thing, but "Agent 113" has always been kind of a deep fan speculation thing rather than something you saw in solicits and so forth. We now know that Roberts is not one to forget a single line from a short story five years ago, but he is not most authors.
If nothing else, "Division" is a stupid name for an organization of five people. In "Bullets" I had them pegged as a whole Decepticon FBI with multiple levels and so forth.
WilyMech
Ultra Magnud strikes me odd he has np desote to help them.
Sockie
I think Chromedome and Rewind are more interested in finding out if a certain member of the House of Ambus is dead.
Purple Heart
So my guess is that they go find the Necrobot to see if old Vos is dead or not.
Autovolt 127
There's no such thing as a coincidence in these comics.
WilyMech
I think more like Hermes where he guides souls to the underworld. Charon makes the soul pay a gold coin to cross the river Styx.
Prime_Directive
At least, that's what they say. All we really know is he tracks down the deceased and enters their names in his list. Must be a long list.
Raiju
Necrobot? So he's like the Cybertronian equivalent of Charon, the boatman on the River Styx?
soundwaverulls
Yeah, it was awfully convenient for him to have been found out.