Remember how I said a couple weeks ago that I’d gotten spoiled and greedy because we had two Lost Light issues in a month and now I didn’t want to wait 30 days for the next issue? Well it’s been two weeks and we just got a new issue. So now I’m really spoiled and greedy. God knows what I’ll be like when we go back to the regular schedule. “What? Wait an entire month between issues? Like the peasants??”
Anyway, see below for a spoileriffic, spoiler-filled, spoils-all-the-things review of Lost Light #15.
(Last warning, massive spoilers below. I tried to write the review without them, but it ended up being “So, stuff happened. And the art was nice.”)
The last time we saw the Scavengers was after they’d been trapped in a cell with a rampaging Grimlock. The cell doors open on a completely articulate Grimlock and a pile of bodies. The Scavengers are dead!
Except, given the track record of IDW in general and James Roberts in particular, you just know they’re not going to kill off someone we like.
(Well, except for Ravage. And Skids. Metalhawk. Possibly Bumblebee? Nevermind, forget I said anything.)
Scorponok mwah-ha-haas his way through his plan and a quick history of the all-knowing Magnificence (the Matrix-shaped object that had been hidden in Grimlock’s chest) and turns around to see, tah dah! The Scavengers are alive and well!
Sometimes a “ha ha! They’re not dead after all!” reveal can be a bit of a cheat, but here it worked well (especially for the Scavengers, who’ve always been a pretty meta bunch.)
It’s simple. After you triggered Grimlock, you left us to do what we do best –
– panic.
The thing to remember is that Nickel hung out with the DJD for years. She wasn’t a prisoner or a slave, she took care of an off-the-rails scary gang of Decepticons and bossed them around. So a rampaging Grimlock isn’t a big deal, if you know how to punch him in his transformation trigger.
Turns out somewhere along the line an injury pressed against Grimlock’s brain, and the pressure’s relieved when he’s in dino mode. (Nickel explained this a lot better of course.) So his rampage stopped as soon as he transformed. While Spinster worked on fixing the pressure point, Nickel took everybody apart just enough to look like they’d been slaughtered, so the guards would leave the cage open.
Scorponok, monologuing like a…well like an overconfident Decepticon…explains the rest of his plan, the reason why he wanted the Magnificence in the first place: he’s using that knowledge to build a race of organic, spark-animated creatures, since organics can reproduce way easier and faster than Transformers. Once Scorponok has enough of them he’ll download their consciousnesses into new Transformer bodies, and boom, no more extinction crisis.
I have a couple problems with this plan.
One, I’m hoping his plan involves cloning more of these creatures, instead of letting them reproduce the regular way; the first creature is a girl so cloning is possible, it’s just the way he was talking about it sounded like “they’re so good at reproducing I’ll just breed them!” I figure the average Transformer has no idea how delicate and problematic the human sex drive is, and the idea of Scorponok making humans mate to get more babies is arrgh bleck too disturbing to watch.
Second problem: you know what this plan means? More humans in my Transformers books.
The neat thing about More Than Meets The Eye and Lost Light is that they’re usually far away from Earth so the odds of having humans around are pretty low. This plan could mean humans become an integral part of this story. Don’t want ’em! Don’t need ’em! Every few years we get the return of Headmasters or Pretenders or G.I. Joe and I’m sure those things are fine but I don’t want them in this book. Please?
One more thing I did like, though: Scorponok gets the upper hand and things look bad for the Scavengers, until Nickel throws a phone at Scorponok who, like an idiot, listens to it. The message starts playing: it’s a recording from Tarn, who’s voice can literally kill people. It’s a present he left to Nickel, to use if she’s in a bad place.
I don’t know who you are, and I don’t need to. What’s important – what matters – is that you tried to hurt my friend.
That was hands-down my favorite part of the whole story.
In the end Grimlock stays behind so the Scavengers can get away, and he takes charge of the new organic baby girl Scorponok created. As much as I don’t want humans in my Transformers book, I’m imagining, a few years from now, a dramatic shot of Grimlock with a badass, almost-feral girl on his shoulder, and I really like it.
The art was by Brendan Cahill and Sara Pitre-Durocher this issue. I think I spotted more of Brendan’s work than Sara’s, and it all looked great, very dynamic, and Joana Lafuente’s colors were striking as always. I’m still not a fan of lips on Nickel, but I think they’re growing on me.
