IDW Spotlight: Arcee (Spoiler warning)

[GoktimusPrime]

It took me a while to warm up to it, but I did like how they made her a crazy psychotic beeotch and completely took her away from all the other girlie stereotypes that this character copped in G1.

The G1 Arcee origin story IMO was the worst piece of crap ever written by Simon Furman (who otherwise is my favourite TF writer). Her appearance in Season 3 was mediocre, ended by the cruel fate of being binary bonded to Daniel... and in The Headmasters she was nothing more than the Autobot Headmasters' freakin' receptionist! "Arcee! Go fetch Fortress and Chromedome a some tea and coffee!" -- she was like those bridge bunnies in Macross.

I also like how it tied in a lot of elements from other Spotlights. The references to Nova Prime and Jhiaxus are also sweet references to G1 and G2. (although Nova Prime is called Prime Nova in G1)

What also impressed me was the Autobots' prison. Previously we've always seen Transformers being imprisoned like humans. Placed in cells, and often it's too easy for them to break out (e.g.: Bludgeon, Octopunch and Stranglehold) or for someone else to bust them out (e.g.: Hellbat --> Guyhawk). I like how they've made good use of the fact that their prisoners are NOT humans... in fact, NOT organic life forms so instead of detaining them in cages or cells, they simply imprisoned their extracted Sparks! How cool is that?!

And their shells are stored separately - disassembled! So aside from the fact that it's a heavily guarded, secured and fortified prison, there's the fact that the prisoners' Sparks are physically removed from their dismembered bodies!!

Aside from the amazing security this provides, it also helps to create and remind the audience that of how otherworldly the Transformers are - and I've always liked it when writers portray Transformers as being truly alien. To that end, I also like how Arcee resents the whole "gender" thing amongst Transformers and also explains why they have "genders" in the first place.

I really liked the scene where Fortress Maximus is speaking to Arcee with her body disassembled... reminds you that they are machines. It reminds me of Dr. Slump where Arale-chan's head would talk to Dr. Senbei or her body would talk to him without a head. It also looked a lot like other classic robot science fiction like I, Robot, The Positronic Man and A.I.



IDW's Arcee is very much an entirely different creature to any other Arcee. But other than that I quite like the character. (^_^)

[i_amtrunks]

I loved it from the get-go.

I wouldnt call it a Spotlight though, it didnt really focus on Arcee all that much, but it was an integral part of the IDW Furmanverse, it sits alongside Shockwave, Prime and Galvatron as the real "must read" Spotlights.

Don't want to go into too much detail, but I loved the character, loved all the cameos (Banzaitron!), loved the dark and angular art style and colouring.

Have a few questions and thoughts that are more spoilery, I'll leave them till more people can nab the comic.

[GoktimusPrime]

I wanna see Banzai-Tron in action... I hope that they'll make him just as cool as he was in Cybertron Chronicles.

[Paulbot]

I think it's now clear that the idea that Spotlights are standalone stories is pretty much out the door.

The new design of Arcee is nice but I didn't like Fort Max's implied new alt mode. And some of the cameos annoyed me because they seemed really out of place and I don't think there's room for those stories to be told (outside mosaics maybe?)

[GoktimusPrime]

fwiw I think that Verity and the new Arcee are HAWT!

I think it's now clear that the idea that Spotlights are standalone stories is pretty much out the door.

...were they ever stand-alone? IMO they've all been interlinked to some degree.

[Paulbot]

The earlier ones (like Hot Rod, Nightbeat, Shockwave) could be read all by themselves but they broadened the universe and laid seeds for future stories. But to me this one felt like a direct sequel to the Prime Spotlight and the prologue for the next chapter, not a self contained story.

[Sam]

I definitely have no issues with the various aspects of the story itself - the infrastructure of the prisons, the general plot, and even making Arcee a tough Autobot was very satisfying (in fact I too am tired of female characters as always being portrayed as weak).

But I would have liked Arcee better as a calm, cool-headed, efficient warrior rather than a psycho fembot, is all I'm saying.

[Tober]

I didn't really like it. I don't follow the comics series too closely so I come away with more questions than answers.

Arcee to me is the maternal Autobot who turns into the Lara Croft dual-pistol sharp shooter when the situation calls for it. It seemed in the movie tht she was able to take care of herself as well as Daniel who she was there to defend along with Hot Rod.

The vengeful psychatic Arcee seemed too far out of place. Even contradictory in the DW/IDW series. The explanation for her gender seemed really forced too.

Artwork and design were great, dialogue mediocre, story kinda sucked.

[GoktimusPrime]

I agree that the explanation for the whole gender thing didn't seem necessary. I don't know why Furman feels compelled to always explain it in an Arcee origin story - he did the same bloody thing in G1. But the explanation for gender here is waaaaaay better than in G1 (freaky experiment by Jhiaxus > trying to appease human feminists on Earth who were protesting against the Autobots' masculinity - like hello? You don't have genitals! Why are you listening to those stupid protestors and appeasing them to the point that you're expending resources to construct a female Autobot??!).

The earlier ones (like Hot Rod, Nightbeat, Shockwave) could be read all by themselves but they broadened the universe and laid seeds for future stories. But to me this one felt like a direct sequel to the Prime Spotlight and the prologue for the next chapter, not a self contained story.

Yeah, but IMO that's a natural evolution to the way that Spotlights have been written. As you said, the earlier issues were laying seeds for future stories, and later issues started intertwining with other issues and series - such as Spotlight Galvatron which showed Sideswipe's reaction to the news of Sunstreaker being abducted by humans on Earth. I think it's natural for later series to make back-references to previously seeded plot elements, like Monstructor, Nova Prime etc. As a regular reader I don't mind it - yes, I can see how it would be confusing for a new reader, but comic books have always been like that. Perhaps what IDW needs to do is to follow Marvel's cue from G1 and include footnotes that reference previous issues for readers to look up - very useful for hunting down specific back issues.

But I would have liked Arcee better as a calm, cool-headed, efficient warrior rather than a psycho fembot, is all I'm saying.

Maybe, but I'll give Furman points for trying something completely new.

Artwork and design were great, dialogue mediocre, story kinda sucked.

I liked the story. The dialogue was okay, but I agree that there was nothing terribly memorable about it, except for the first piece of dialogue where Arcee cries out, "JHI-AX-US!" -- the separation of Jhiaxus' name into three syllables like that is a really nice tribute to G2 behind-the-scenes history (i.e.: reference to Furman's attitude toward Hasbro about the G2 series at the time). ;D