Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye #56 - "Ten to Midnight"

[laughing_tree]

"Putting the finishing touches to MTMTE #56. Let no-one think the series is done yet. The last two issues are all about endings." -- James Roberts

Comments

[owlbrigade1]

I gotta admit, this part of the story is only really there to serve the crossover event, so as good as it is to see some of the these characters outwith The Lost Light, it does nothing for me. It just takes up valuable pages which could be used to tell the storyline I do like. It is not going to get me to read other parts of the franchise.

[janegray]

I was really disappointed.

I was upset enough by the end of the previous story, because I had been so convinced that Megatron would finally leave the Lost Light, yet in the end he chose to stay. Meaning I have to continue keeping up with a comic I hate in order to keep up with one of my favourite characters.

And then the preview for this issue teased the meeting of Prowl and Fort Max, which is something I had been waiting for since issue #6.

The events of Garrus 9 happened during the Surge, one of the main great tragedies of the War, a major decepticon offensive that ended up killing off most of the Autobots in the universe. During this time, High Command was in desperate circumstances: Optimus was in a coma and dying, and the other Autobot officers, including Prowl, were first stuck on Cybertron and dying in droves because of the insepticons, then stuck on Earth and hunted down by the humans. Even when things finally settled down around the time of The Death of Optimus Prime, years later, communication was still mostly down and they couldn't reach many of their outposts.

In addition to that, Prowl had received intel from Agent 113 that Garrus 9 had been utterly destroyed. It was only three years later that Springer found some evidence that Fort Max and his soldiers might have survived.

So: while G-9 was falling, Prowl and the rest of High Command were busy almost dying. After that stopped, they were stranded on Earth for about three years, hiding and being hunted. At the same time, most of the Autobots in the entire galaxy were killed off, countless bases just like G-9 were hit and presumably completely destroyed. Even among the bases that did survive, High Command was in a horrible position to send out forces to rescue beleaguered Autobots, since they were stranded on Earth and communications were largely down. And intel from Agent 113 claimed that G9 was completely dead.

Prowl is known for being unethically ruthless. But it would have been truly the most unethical thing to waste Autobot lives in a mission to recover a destroyed prison with dead Autobots, especially when countless other outposts were waiting to be rescued. No matter how I look at it, Prowl was objectively right to not send any aid to G9 for those three years. And then, as soon as Springer found some evidence that Fort Max and his soldiers might still be alive, Prowl immediately sent in the Wreckers.

And that's all good and sensible, but Fortress Maximus was horrifically tortured for three years. He was in a constant state of agony and terror for three years, and forced to watch as his soldiers (probably his friends) were horribly tortured to death one after the other. It's quite likely he spent all that time wondering why the hell no help was coming, and whether the commanders he had been loyally serving for millions of years had cruelly abandoned him.

You can't use logic to easy that sort of pain. You can't say "oops, faulty intel, and also we were busy not dying ourselves" to make it better. Max's trauma is too terrible to reason with.

I had been waiting 50 issues to see how that conflic could be resolved. Prowl's "no, seriously, this time he really did nothing wrong, G9 was just the result of shit luck" side and Max's "what the fuck does he just shug off his fucking trauma then???" side.
.
50 issues. I really really really *REALLY* wanted to see that.

Instead it was played for laugh.

And okay, I guess they do have something that might be generously considered "a talk" about it later, when Max explains that Rung helped him get over the worst of his anger. That's all nice and good for Max's character development, but it does absolutely nothing to address the source of his anger.

Massive let down.

[scorntx]

Point of order:
1: The Autobots had tried going to G-9 before. They kept getting shot down.

2: Prowl didn't send the Wreckers in to recover Fortress, or any of G-9's staff.
He sent them in to recover the Aequitas files before the Decepticons got their mitts on them. The prison staff were an afterthought at best.
Because in case we forgot, Prowl's a ****.

[janegray]

1)Where did you see that? The short story Bullets outright says that High Command had received intel that indicated G9 had been destroyed. IIRC the ones that kept getting shot down were the Decepticons.

2)No doubt the Aequitas files were the higher priority, since they could have given a massive boost to the Decepticons and helped them win the war. But just because a mission has something as priority #1 and something else as priority #2 doesn't mean they didn't give a shit about #2. And anyway, Max's anger at Prowl had always been motivated by the question "why did it take you 3 years to send help!?" Regardless of priority, the fact is that he was angry because he thought the wait had been unacceptable, and the other fact is that High Comand actually had genuinely valid reasons for waiting 3 years.

[scorntx]

1) Ah, yes. Got the facts confused there. Derp.

2) For Prowl, the files were the only priority (he did dub the mission "Operation: Retrieval", after all).

But really, MTMTE does not really have a good track record following through on things.

[janegray]

2)Then why did he send Springer, who was all but guaranteed to follow his heroic instincts and try to rescue as many people as possible?

Springer was also very precious to Prowl as an ace in the hole, since he was the one Prowl personally hand-picked to become his rescuer if Prowl ever got compromised (the pre-recorded message in Sins), so he certainly didn't send Springer because he would have been a negligible loss.

More points of order

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

1) It wasn't the Autobots who were shot down, it was the 'Cons. Springer's contact inside the DJD was the one who brought it to their attention. It's not really a stretch of the imagination for the 'Bots to assume that the prison was destroyed

2) Prowl sent the Wreckers to recover both, otherwise he wouldn't have sent Springer. And given how our election is going, what with Wikileaks all but supporting Trump, I think it's safe to say that handing propaganda to the 'Cons would have been a more serious blow to the Autobot's cause than the loss of soldiers

Last and most important, Prowl isn't the sum total of High Command. Prime, Bumblebee or anyone else could have organized a mission to G-9. As stated prior, the Autobots were a wreck

Re: More points of order

[janegray]

I think it's safe to say that handing propaganda to the 'Cons would have been a more serious blow to the Autobot's cause than the loss of soldiers

If you want the opinion of real heros about that, in Sins Of The Wreckers even Springer and Kup and Stakeout agree that leaking the Aequitas would be a massive disaster that must be stopped at all costs. Are we going to call them assholes too?

And we have seen the results of the bad reputation of Cybertronians. Nickel's colony world was entirely destroyed, a worldwide genocide, just because they looked Cybertronians. Cybertronians with animal modes turned into torture slaves to work off frustration.

(Digression: the Autobots really should have imposed some anti-hate speech laws on the Decepticons post war. There is a guy going around on a comedy tour telling jokes about "destroyed planets you don't care about." Cybertronians are already loathed and despised across the Universe to the point that there is a florid slave trade and ongoing genocidal campaigns, that crap is like jet fuel on fire. Imagine if, after WW2, the Nazis had been left free to go on comedy tours telling oven jokes).

[q99]

Prowl seems kinda... broken here. Off. Something flat-out wrong with him. And yea, it *does* ruin some moments.

[scorntx]

Given all the stuff that's happened to him, it's not a surprise if he's gone a little nuts.
It's more a surprise it hasn't happened sooner.

Plus, y'know, sharing head-space with Mirage and Sunstreaker can't be good for anyone's long-term mental health.

[q99]

I liked revisiting the Roboids and having them re-established as people. They deserve a break!

Otherwise, fairly weak issue.