Last Light (issue)

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"Last Light"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	September 28, 2016
Cover date	September 2016
Written by	James Roberts
Art by	Priscilla Tramontano
Colors by	Joana Lafuente
Letters by	Chris Mowry
Editor	John Barber & Carlos Guzman
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era (2016)

While Red Alert struggles to overcome Sentinel Prime's brainwashing, Fortress Maximus finds a new way to live up to his name in order to stop Sentinel's fleet of reanimated Titans.

Synopsis

On Lost Light launch day, Red Alert personally reviews every applicant who wants aboard the vessel. After begrudgingly letting Brainstorm on despite his being exempt from a bag check, Red is approached by Swerve, who instructs him to look at the datapad in his hand. On the screen, Red reads the words: "THIS NEVER HAPPENED"...

In the present day, within a Titan on Luna 1, Red Alert—suddenly in the thrall of Sentinel Prime—grapples with Fortress Maximus while Sentinel gloats over the reanimation of the many other Titans in the moon's graveyard, thanks to the efforts of a reluctant Sovereign. Realizing nobody is listening to his ranting, Sentinel turns and notes with some distaste the way Cerebros is cradling Prowl's body. Cerebros keeps Sentinel talking; first, the Prime explains how he survived his seeming death by detaching his true Titan Master form from his larger body, then details how he has been slipping in and out of hibernation beneath Kaon for millennia as he has slowly attuned himself to the Titans, granting him the control that—through Sovereign—he now has over them. Using the quantum foam of Luna 1's engines, Sentinel plans to supercharge the Titan's spacebridge, opening it wide enough so that the rest of the giants can travel through and raze Cybertron in accordance with his wishes. His monologue complete, Sentinel prepares to do away with Cerebros and Fort Max, but is suddenly laid low when the silent Prowl, back on his feet, smashes a M.A.R.B. across his back. Prowl, Cerebros, and Max escape on the remaining M.A.R.B.s, but Sentinel is content to let them go, certain they cannot interfere with his scheme.

Years earlier, Red Alert searches Rewind and Chromedome's quarters aboard the Lost Light, over Rewind's protestations. In a hidden compartment, Red finds a set of data disks Rewind had secreted away. Rewind takes the disks, and, urging Red to not "give in," lays them out in a familiar five-point pattern...

Big M! SHOWTIME!!

Prowl awakes back in Fort Max's facility, and reacts with some degree of anger upon learning that Cerebros had used his new brain implant—slipped into Prowl's head as he was cradling him—to take control of Prowl's body and strike Sentinel. While Prowl has been out, Fortress Maximus has conceived a plan: transform the base, constructed by Tyrest from the parts of many different Titans, into robot mode. Unfortunately, the manual release switch for the base's transformation cog is stuck... but Prowl's sharply-honed table-flipping skills soon prove exactly what are needed to force it free. The base transforms, and, using Cerebros's implant, Fort Max is able to take direct control of it, flying it into the sky to block the other Titans' path to the giant spacebridge. While Max and his Titan fight to keep Sentinel's Titans from going through, Prowl and Cerebros board their M.A.R.B.s to strafe Sentinel as he stands by the moon's thrusters. Sentinel quickly shoots them out of the sky, whereupon Red Alert appears behind the fallen Prowl, and presses his gun barrel into the back of his former ally's neck...

Years before, back on the Lost Light, Red Alert talks with Rung about his fear that he may have been brainwashed into being a sleeper agent by the establishment. Though reluctant to indulge what he believes to be a paranoid fantasy, Rung suggests that they exploit Red's fear of and resistance to the very concept by seeding his subconscious mind with triggers that, should he ever be "activated," will alert him to the fact he is not himself. These triggers take the form of "continuity errors" in Red's memory... things that never happened, conversations that never took place. Looking around the room, Red realizes that Rung's shelves are filled with model Titans instead of model ships... and that the room's portholes have moved to take on the form of the five-point pattern—a mnemosurgery scar—that he has been seeing everywhere...

At the sight of the mnemosurgery scar on the back of Prowl's own neck, Red breaks free of his conditioning and turns his gun on Sentinel, blasting his Titan Master self clean off his host body's shoulders. Unfazed, the tiny Sentinel stalks towards Red, explaining Red was just one of a group of brainwashed sleeper agents from before the war, chosen from the ranks of Sentinel's informants to serve as his personal militia if the time ever came. But just as Sentinel begins to reassert control over Red, forcing him to aim his gun at his own head, Beak comes swooping onto the scene, and knocks Sentinel over the edge of the nearest thruster, sending him on a mile-and-a-half-deep plummet into oblivion. Given that Red's mind is freed, and the spacebridge portal automatically shuts, everyone is left to assume Sentinel has perished. Unfortunately, Fortress Maximus was unable to prevent most of the Titans from getting through—but Sovereign reveals that he has been able to grant Cybertron a reprieve, redirecting the bridge so that it deposited the Titans into deep space. The giants are still heading for the Transformers' homeworld—now, it will just take them longer to get there.

Prowl takes Sovereign back to Earth, then returns to Luna 1 for a sabbatical, joining Cerebros and Red Alert—his mind calmer now that Sentinel's presence on the moon is no longer causing his nightmares—in scrubbing their Titan-base's T-cog. Fortress Maximus is grateful for the company now that all the Roboids and Outrigger have left, and apologizes to Cerebros for doubting him and his implant. Red and Max lament the loss of their friends on the Lost Light; Prowl sympathizes as best he can, equating the loss with fear of change, and of endings. Just then, a buzzer goes off, alerting Red to the fact that a scanner he has searching for the Lost Light has found something. Alas, that something turns out to just be some gibberish background data. Fort Max wonders if there could be a hidden message within it, but Red refuses to indulge his own worst instincts. "Sometimes," he tells Max, "you just have to stop."

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only as part of Red Alert's (unreliable) memories.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"[Prowl] was an obstacle. I could have crushed the Decepticons long before Kaon, but he seemed to think it his job to rein me in. Caution, caution, caution. 'Consider this, consider that...' Every conversation, a lecture on collateral damage. He blunted me—and it's taken me four million years to recover my edge."

—Sentinel Prime

"Er—don't you need a permit?"
"A permit?"
"A search permit. Y'know—something you have to show me before you go through all my stuff?"
"You're welcome to complain to Ultra Magnus. You'll have to give it four weeks, mind."
"Four weeks to process the complaint?"
"Four weeks to fill out the form."

—Rewind and Red Alert

"I think we need a Plan P."
"You mean a Plan B."
"I know what I mean."

—Prowl and Cerebros

"Go on, Red Alert... pull the trigger. You'll make a mess, but don't worry. I don't mind getting dirty."

—Sentinel Prime

"I miss all of them. All the crew. Well, most of them. At least half of them. A good ten, fifteen percent."

—Red Alert

Notes

Continuity notes

• Red Alert's first flashback is to the events of issue #1. Panels 2-4 recreate panels 3-5 from page 11 of that issue. As an early clue that things are not what they appear, multiple characters are seen in the queue waiting to board the Lost Light who were not (and/or could not) have been there, including Impactor (at that time, out in space running missions with Guzzle), Ambulon, First Aid (both stationed on the planet Messatine), Ironfist (deeeead), and even Bumblebee (leader of the 'stay on Cybertron' argument).
• The disappearance of Sentinel's head from his corpse was noted in the Titans Return one-shot that began this storyline. It's made clear that in this issue that this happened because Sentinel, in his true form of Infinitus, simply disconnected when nobody was looking.
• Red's second flashback is to a previously unseen scene that we nonetheless knew about: him finding Rewind's "snuff film" discs, set between issue #5 and #6, which we saw the direct aftermath of in Spotlight: Trailcutter.
• Red refers to being a warden in Translucentica Heights, and notes that Chromedome and Prowl can verify this; they met him while he was working this job in flashbacks shown in issue #10.
• In the third flashback, Red Alert says he doesn't trust Chromedome or want him inside his mind (and isn't happy he's on the ship at all) because of his work at the New Institute. (We did learn in "How Ratchet Got His Hands Back" that Rung thought this talk of the Institute was a sign of Red Alert's delusions)
• Prowl recalls being "brainwashed" and "shadowplayed"; the latter was perpetrated by Chromedome (as seen in issue #14, in a scene set during #1), which opened the door for the former, carried out by Bombshell in Robots in Disguise #4.
• Previously, in issue #20, it was implied that it was just the spacebridge portal which Tyrest built that had been pieced together from bits of other Titans' bridges. Turns out this issue that the base itself was a patchwork Titan, made of bits of others.
• Prowl's ability to flip the switch is, of course, a gag based on his history of table-flipping, going back to issue #1. His pose here mirrors the panel from that issue of him tossing his desk.

Transformers references

• Transformation cogs are referred to with the abbreviation "T-Cog" in this issue, taken from the Transformers: Prime cartoon.
• Though the mechanics of the process are, by necessity of the story, quite different, Fortress Maximus controlling a giant Titan body via a link provided by Cerebros is an adaptation of his Titans Return action figure, and of the classic depiction of the character in Generation 1 media, where Cerebros actually forms the head of the giant Fortress Maximus robot.
• Front and center in the alphanumeric gibberish code is a dedication to mark the end of the series: "MTMTE 2012-2016".

Errors

• Sentinel plans to use Luna 1's engines to supercharge the Titan's spacebridge with quantum foam, but quantum generators were only 'invented' 5 million years ago, long after Luna 1 was 'lost'. Another error or an indication of future time travel madness?
• Red's second flashback doesn't fit with what we knew of the scene: Red's words in issue #5 ("I can hear Rewind begging Chromedome to help him look for some missing data disks—he won't find them.") clearly implied he found and took the discs without Rewind's knowledge. Of course, the scene is supposed to be marked with "continuity errors" for Red to spot, but this one feels more like a genuine goof than a hint that the scene is playing out "wrongly."
• As Prowl awakes and he, Cerebros, and Fortress Maximus come up with a plan, he has both eyes intact, when his left eye has been damaged since fighting Defensor in issue #2 of Windblade vol. 2. A few pages later, when fighting Sentinel, his eye is missing again. It finally shows as intact again a few days after, when he would have had time to get it repaired. This was retconned in the TPB release of the issue, with black being colored over the repaired eye, indicating that it has not been fixed at all. This is in line with Prowl's later appearances in the Optimus Prime ongoing.
• Prowl has been a wanted fugitive since before the Sins of the Wreckers series. Yet he's somehow able to return Sovereign to Earth, then return himself back to Luna 1 for a 'sabbatical' and not only does no one remark on the situation, Prowl isn't re-arrested.

Other trivia

• This is the final issue of More than Meets the Eye. Following a one-shot tie-in to the Revolution crossover, the series relaunches as The Transformers: Lost Light in December 2016 and continues from where it left off.

Soundtrack

• "Who Said This Was The End" by Gene^[1]
• "Bobby Malone Moves Home" by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone^[2]
• "Something Like You" by Michael Head and the Strands^[3]
• "The Copper Top" by Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat^[4]
• "The Dogs and the Horses" by The Divine Comedy^[5]

Covers (3)

• Regular cover: Prowl stands at the head of a shadowy army of Titans, by Priscilla Tramontano
• Subscription cover: Our heroes bid farewell, by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham
• Retailer incentive cover: Cyclonus, Rodimus, Megatron, Nautica, Chromedome, and Tailgate, by Alex Milne and Josh Perez

• 

  "Someone's behind me, isn't there?"

• 

  Hey, Pipes and Trailbreaker are there!

• 

  Why are Chromedome and Tailgate floating?

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• The Transformers: Lost Light #1
• More than Meets the Eye: Revolution
• Revolution tie-in one-shots
• Revolution checklist
• Road to Revolution one-shot
• Revolution #1
• The Transformers: The Movie 30th Anniversary reissue (back page)

Reprints

• The Transformers: Titans Return (January 14, 2017) ISBN 1631408216 / ISBN 978-1631408212
  • Collects Titans Return #1, The Transformers (2012) issues #56–57, and More than Meets the Eye issues #56–57.
  • Bonus material unknown at this time.
  • Trade paperback format.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 75: Titans Return, Part 1 (February 7, 2018)
  • Collects Till All Are One issues #1–4, Titans Return #1, The Transformers (2012) issues #56–57, and More than Meets the Eye issues #56–57.
  • Bonus material includes a cover gallery and a forward by Simon Furman.
  • Hardcover format.

• The Transformers: The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 12 (February 10, 2021) ISBN 1684057469 / ISBN 978-1684057467
  • Collects The Transformers (2012) issues #51–55 & #56–57, Till All Are One issues #1–4, Titans Return #1, and More than Meets the Eye issues #56–57.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Titans Return – cover art by Priscilla Tramontano

• 

  The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 75: Titans Return, Part 1 – cover art by Don Figueroa (Arcee) and Livio Ramondelli (retro)

• 

  The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 12 – cover art by Marcelo Matere

References

External links

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