And ITunes is providing us a new preview. It’s time for some Scavengers action in the IDW Lost Light #15 Preview.
You may have thought we saw the end of the Scavengers in the previous issue of Lost Light, but they still alive and ready to roll! Grimlock seems to get his brain back, and Scorponok will have to deal with the Scavengers’ revenge (with the help of little Nickel, too).
Transformers: Lost Light #15
James Roberts (Author) • Brendan Cahill (Artist) • Jack Lawrence (Cover Artist) • Nick Roche (Cover Artist)
SECRETS AND LIES! As the Scavengers’ journey reaches its ignoble end, the architect of their downfall puts the fate of half the Cybertronian race in their hands. Only one question remains: Are the worst Decepticons prepared to become the ONLY Decepticons?
Expected Release: Feb 28, 2018
Don’t wait more and check out the mirrored images on our news post and be sure to grab your copy for the full story at the end of February.
Sagitta
Ha-ha! With Misfire's record with guns? Would hope he would get the sword. Of course, very happy Grim really trusts him with it.
Sadly, even if the Scavengers did ask the artifact questions it probably simply answer: "You've gotta be kidding."
Murasame
I'm looking forward to it. For the first time in years I can't await the next issue
trence5
Is it just me or does Grimmy look like a certain unofficial-looking robo-dino(sorry I don't know if we're allowed to say 3rd party names outside that forum )?
Focksbot
Thanks in turn for the conversation!
One important factor here is that the series is clearly starting to wind down and bring its various threads together. There's a hell of a lot more scope for originality, and for the unexpected, when it comes to laying down your characters and your initial plot threads. You can also throw in a lot of twists and turns in the second act, and some in the third act. But in any coherent story arc, the ending is where you need to start clearing up the plates and handing people their coats. This is the point at which a great many hugely popular fictional series – with massive budgets and entire writing teams – completely drop the ball. Lost and Game of Thrones are the ones that come to mind most obviously.
Of course, you do get fictions that keep their audience guessing right up until the end, and keep doing odd things, but they also tend to disappoint a section of the audience. The ending to The Prisoner TV series in the 60s infuriated people. I personally liked the way Twin Peaks ended, but I can understand why a lot of people were annoyed by it.
But Roberts is in a place now where his readers have had years to collectively speculate on his planned ending, and years to get used to his various quirks and devices, and get a feel for where he wants to take these characters. It would be nothing short of astonishing if he was still able to surprise everyone with every single issue.
justiceg
What an awesome thread!! Just caught up on all of the (polite and respectful!!) discussion here. Highlight of my time on these boards. Looking forward to when the actual issue comes out to discuss as well.
You mention later in this post that something in MTMTE/LL has changed and I agree – it's that there seems to be a lot less of this world-building now vs. how much there was in S1 of MTMTE (which, notably, is where all of the three topics you listed above were discussed). I once had a thread noting that the underlying religion vs. science tension that was ever present in S1 was all but gone by the time we made it to LL and barely featured in MTMTE S2. I don't know if it's because Roberts got burnt out or because some of the Hasbro mandated stuff undermined where he was going with things, but I loved – and miss – exactly what you're discussing here.
Way back when the *Dreamwave* MTMTE was proposed, the team behind it was originally going to chronicle each "era" of the war – they moved away from that direction, but if there's *anyone* who could have done that original concept justice, it's Roberts by a long, long mile.
Fallout
thank you for putting into words what i couldn't. now the question is, what happens if he tries to throw the sword?
also, i love how serious the scavengers look when they first show up. spinister looks scary, which is a sentence i never thought could be said seriously
ze collecter
My guess is that since Spinister only lost his arm, he put together Nickel or Misfire, as they were the least mutilated, and they assisted him in putting the rest back together. You also gotta remember that the way Grim "killed" them was non-fatal as they were ripped limb from limb.
sharkrainbow
i think the real issue going on here is that the book has to be structured as an episodic, month-to-month self contained installment business due to the nature of the industry and so on, but what a lot of people really want – and seemingly expect to get – is a single graphic novel with a chapter released each month.
which i totally get, that would be SIQ!
but for a whole lot of reasons, not least of which being that JRo has a "plan" but has likely only finished writing a month or so ahead of time, it's just sadly not possible.
Of course we get all sorts of kinda fake-out cliffhangers. That's just how this works, an artifact of the medium.
Personally i loved it. I knew they weren't dead – i knew it – but there was that tiny voice in the back of my head going "what IF" that's made for a really dynamic inter-comic period.
My only hope now is that not every one of our beautiful trash boys survives. It'll be fine if they all do but i want to ugly sob at the end of this issue.
Giving Misfire Grimbo's sword is one of the best tiny flourishes we've had in months and my heart is brimming over.
Molini
Warning: Adults are behaving like adults, taking accountability and showing a sense of humility on the internet. And on a message board about one of the most popular pop culture franchises today. The doomsday clock just moved closer to midnight.
I can appreciate the whole "I can't understand how or why people think this is good" in the context you described. I've presented similar responses on my end with respect to the recent Warner Bros DC films not named Wonder Woman. Not in the sense of how can people like the movies, because there will be plenty of reasons to find to enjoy the movies especially if you are fans of the characters, but for me it was more of a "how can we settle for something that is critically bad, and pretend this is representative of the quality DC brand anywhere near the level of what the MCU has achieved?"
This example is also very divisive, but I believe analogous to the debate at hand. In short…I understand your reasoning here with respect to how you feel about the story direction, because I'm there too with a different form of media.
Oh god you're going to bait me into going on a rant about Rian Johnson and his Last Jedi film.
NO! bad driskull.
That practically brought a tear to my eye. Well stated. I would be very interested in such a guidebook! Brilliant idea. If anything someone should capture all of that somewhere.
See this is why I don't just jump into a flame war with people without at least attempting to feel out some sort of attempt at understanding the view from the other side. In this quote, I found out that you and I feel the exact same way here despite the fact that we are not mutually enjoying the present story arc of a long running series.
And this is pretty standard amongst anyone who's been reading comics of any kind or invests in a long running series whether it be a TV show, comic book, video game, novel, etc. While a series as a whole can be revered there will always be a specific season, episodes or storyarcs that just didn't hit everyone the same in ways that stronger ones did.
I can recall being so into Rick Remender's, in my opinion, classic work on Uncanny X-force, such that I followed him all the way through the not as great, and very disappointing towards the end, run of Uncanny Avengers.
Such is the way, it seems…
Definitely doesn't hurt to see if maybe you were just not in the mood or something when you first read it. I know I do that all the time, and then go back and do a reread and wonder why I was trippin at first.
However, you can't like what you don't like either. If anything, the finance side of me just says that comics is also an expensive hobby just like collecting figures, so I'm picky with books I stick with Lol!
Driskull98
Just wanna thank Focksbot and Molini for providing some great discussion points to counter my own. This is what forums are made for.
I'd like to apologize for including that in my initial post. It was an immature response and totally contradicted what I initially meant by "don't see how people think this is good writing" and was only included in the heat of the moment.
You're absolutely right, and I'd like to apologize again for any negative implications I have given with my past posts. It was not my intent to insult anyone's intelligence or personal tastes.
What I meant by "not understanding why people think its good" was not "people are stupid for liking this" but rather, "why is it okay for MTMTE/LL to do this?". It wasn't a jab at any particular group so much as it was an invitation for debate (which, surely, this site is no stranger to? )
I feel like if it was any other comic or a movie/television show, these tropes wouldn't be so easily disregarded. That's why I ask why people like it.
Maybe some folks like having "downtimes" from all the unique story touches and a simple fake-out trope like this is refreshing because it's not something that requires whole lot of thought and doesn't assault the reader with too much new things?
For example, the new Star Wars. If every LL issue were as expectation-diverting as that, people would probably get bored of everything being brand new and want something more down-to-Earth an unexciting.
Very good question. I'm not sure I have a single, solid answer so if I may, I have two:
– The IDW series features a vast and expansive look into the history of Cybertronian culture and biology that's unprecedented in a Transformers series. I love learning about things like the Militant Monoform Movement, the Five Dark Epochs, Rossum's Trinity, etc. This gives the Cybertronian race so much more character than ever before. I really want Roberts to just write an in-universe guidebook that's nothing but stuff like this as it's the stuff he's best at writing.
– The IDW comics are the only real piece of Transformers media I consume on a regular basis. I stopped watching RID2015 about five episodes in and I don't like the movies (and don't even get me started on the Machinima series!). It fills the niche of "mature Transformer stories" for me, something that I know Cyberverse and definitely Rescue Bots Academy won't. I could swap over to Optimus Prime, but I'm so far behind that it's futile at this point. MTMTE/LL was my first foray into the IDWverse and I feel like I'm obligated to stick around with the characters I know and love, despite me not really enjoying where the direction is going. I want to see where everyone goes and what happens to guys like Megatron, Nautica, and Whirl. I can't just drop out when there's so much left to know. It's frustrating to constantly be putting down money for these issues when I'm absolutely unsure of where exactly the writing will go. One week, it'll be pretty good (see: the Mutineers trilogy) and another week it'll be hot garbage (see: the last RodSquad issue). It's a gamble.
I think I'm going to give it one more issue before I decide on whether or not I should drop it. I'm praying #15 doesn't disappoint. I want it to be good.
I guess I'm just having a lot of difficulty finding anything in these recent issues that is original and unique. Personally, it just feels like a lot of LL has been very…basic, I guess? Like you said, there used to be so many twists and turns on story tropes in older issues but nowadays it seems very straightforward and kind of dull. I don't feel like I'm reading a brand new iteration and version of the Transformers, I just feel like I'm reading a standard story that happens to star some characters I care about.
I'll have to give #14 another read-over. It appears I've missed a lot more of it than I remember.
Haha, I hope I didn't disappoint!
Heliblade
Gotta give Grimlock credit for being a good actor.
fishpop
Yay! They\'re not dead! 8D
kaijuguy19
I gotta wonder how did the Scavangers manage to put themselves back together again after what happened last issue. I mean I know IDW has been known to cheat death but I doubt that anyone could survive from Grimlock's Vlad the Impaler like violence.
Digilaut
I heard the wiki synopsis for Schindler's List is quite emotional and touching
Anyway, don't think anyone was expecting the Scavengers to be truly destroyed. Some people who don't like this raise a good question though: as this is the millionth time James does this kind of fake out issue ending…why bother at all?
(still enjoying this book greatly, for just different reasons than back during the great, great MTMTE S1)
Negativedark
Wow. They really did plan this through. They made sure to give Misfire a sword and not a gun!
Still Grimlock if you\'d just kept Scorpy monologing a little longer he\'d have spilled every plot point he\'s been working on for the last few years.
Wait the Scavengers have an artifact that can answer any question… Please, please tell me they get a chance to ask a few?
YoungPrime
This!!!!
The last 3 Leader class TR's are proof that Hasbro can listen when they want to. So Leader class, Scorponok, Fort Max, Deathsaurus and Star Saber would all fly off shelves in done right.
Mudslide
I keep up with the previews and synopsis' to see if it ever goes back to what it was. It hasn't. I guess I'm not allowed to have a negative opinion either.
Focksbot
You're right that it doesn't excuse something just because it's done widely elsewhere. And yes, we should want more from this comic. But … there *is* more. Surely it's not the case that every single feint and swerve of the script has to be blindingly original? From the start, Roberts mixed quirkier elements with standard plot devices like 'monster loose on the ship' and 'last minute grab rescue'. Sometimes the trope is just straight up used without being re-worked.
I don't think anyone here is anywhere close to claiming that last issue's 'cliffhanger' and this issue's resolution is a masterstroke of misdirection. It was a neat place for the issue to end, and it's an escape plan that fits well with the characters' previously established traits. It's adequate.
Agamus
Please tell me they\'re gonna give us a clean version of that splash page, that would make for a pretty cool wallpaper
justiceg
I have to admit, I'm anticipating Driskull's impending response to this almost as much as I am the upcoming issue now.