Sardines

« The Transformers: Lost Light #13 »
Be quiet back there! I'm trying to watch TV.
"Sardines"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	January 24, 2018
Cover date	December 2017
Written by	James Roberts
Art by	Alex Milne
Colors by	Joana Lafuente
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	David Mariotte
Assistant editor	Carlos Guzman
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era

Cramped inside Skip, can Team Rodimus share a confined space without driving each other crazy?

Synopsis

Fortress Maximus, Red Alert, Cerebros, Outrigger, and Beak successfully track the "last will and testament" message sent by Team Rodimus back to its source, arriving on Necroworld. There, they find themselves confronted by the forces of the "Disappeared" Decepticons. While Maximus rescues Outrigger from Fangry, Red and Cerebros liberate the Necrobot's fortress, taking out any Decepticons they find, with Rapidfire being the last to fall when he makes the mistake of threatening one of the surviving Autobots. Searching for any Cybertronian tech littering the planet, Fort Max discovers the isolation chamber containing Tailgate and summons the others to analyze the situation. While Cerebros studies Kaput's notes and learns about Tailgate's condition, Red Alert shows off what he has found: the Necrobot's tattered cape, which turns out to be a "window" through space, focused on the Benzene Cluster. Red observes that something is not right about the cluster's appearance, but Max interrupts, tabling the subject until they have helped Tailgate. With the aid of Beak's x-ray optics, they peer inside the chamber, and are shocked at what they see...

Off in space, the oversized, mass-displaced body of the dead Decepticon Skip serves as spaceship for Rodimus and his crew as they chase after the Lost Light. Unfortunately, the cramped quarters aren't conducive to a peaceful environment, and the signs of boredom and trouble are starting to brew, beginning with a prank war that has kicked off between Swerve and Anode. Swerve convinces Velocity to tell Anode that, during a medical examination, she has found a vestigial head growing out of her butt. As revenge, Anode attempts to stick Swerve to the ship's recharge slab with magnetizing spray, but he wakes up and catches her in the act. His crowing is curtailed when the recharge slab overheats and bursts into flames, triggering the sprinkler system. Anode legs it, leaving Swerve to shut the sprinklers off, but after doing so he starts to feel woozy and has Ten call Ratchet to examine him. The old medic is having problems of his own, his hands having begun to shake again, but he dutifully examines Swerve—and finds a bomb inside his head! Swerve assumes that Killmaster teleported it in during their last encounter, but as he grumbles about it, Ratchet slaps a hand over his mouth to shut him up... because the bomb's ticking detonator isn't measured in units of time, but in words. Swerve must stop talking or die, and as if that wasn't alarming enough, Swerve's now-wordless grunts alert Ratchet to something else that has just happened: Ratchet's entire body has turned grey, in the same manner as it would if he had died!

The pair return to the main room, where Drift is alarmed to realize that the colorless Ratchet's "aura" has disappeared. Nearby, as Cyclonus stares off into space through a porthole, Ultra Magnus slides in beside him to make use of the windowsill as a desk. The pair talk about what they will do when they reach Cyberutopia; Magnus is thrilled at the prospect of all the paperwork that awaits, and hopes to finish "Terms of Peace," a set of rules he has been working on for millions of years that he thinks will legally ensure peace and happiness. Cyclonus, on the other hand, is unsure of what he will do, having always expected he and Tailgate would reach Cyberutopia together, and Magnus, ever uncomfortable with "feelings," can say nothing to make him feel better, and excuses himself to work elsewhere. No sooner is Magnus settled, however, than Anode interrupts him, with Swerve having used up a few of his remaining words to tell her that the Magnus wanted to see her. As Magnus looks up, Anode is suddenly dragged through the air by magnetic force and stuck to his body! Perfectly willing to expend even more of his limited opportunities for speech to gloat, Swerve explains that he loaded the magnetizing spray into the sprinkler system, and staged the recharge slab "fire" so he could douse Anode in it!

Up in the cockpit, Rodimus fields a dispute between Roller and Chromedome and Rewind, the latter two having crawled inside the former's alternate mode while he was sleeping for some "privacy." Rodimus isn't very interested, though, more concerned about the fact that their lock on the Lost Light's location has just been lost. A moment later, a call from Fortress Maximus comes through, and Rodimus ushers the other three out so he can take it. Maximus shares what he has discovered about Tailgate: the inside of the isolation chamber was empty, marked with a scorch pattern that indicates Tailgate's unstable spark spontaneously combusted, atomizing his body. Rodimus calls Cyclonus in to give him the bad news, and the mournful howl of anguish that Cyclonus unleashes turns the heads of everyone on the ship. He stalks from the cockpit in the grip of rage...

...just as Lug manages to pull Anode free from her magnetic bond with Magnus, accidentally sending her flying backward into Cyclonus. All the tensions that have built up in the cramped quarters suddenly explode: out of control with grief and fury, Cyclonus whirls around, Great Sword in hand; Swerve uses up his final few words to yell a warning that alerts Anode in time for her to duck, causing the sword to instead rake Rewind, severing his primary fuel line. As Velocity springs to action to tend to Rewind's wounds, Chromedome and Cyclonus begin fighting, each mocking the other over the validity of their relationship. Ratchet attempts to get between the two, only to discover that he has become immaterial when Chromedome's fist passes harmlessly through his body. Whirl instead breaks up the fight, realizing that something has happened to Tailgate, and the heartbroken Cyclonus sinks into his arms. Swerve, meanwhile, is shocked to discover that he hasn't exploded because the bomb was a fake that Anode had Whirl put in his head while recharging. The pranksters argue while chaos continues around them; the increasingly intangible Ratchet starts to sink through the floor, just as the mass displacement override used on Skip begins to wear off and he starts shrinking around the crew, threatening to crush them. It's absolute pandemonium until a voice silences them—the voice of Ten, and he declares that the fate of the universe rests on the crew doing exactly as he tells them!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"What will you do when we reach Cyberutopia?"
"Well, my immediate priority will be the paperwork."

—Cyclonus and Ultra Magnus

"Once you've created paradise, how do you decide who's allowed to live there? After all, there's only a finite amount of room. As I see it, the only way the Knights of Cybertron can manage the population without damaging their reputation for compassion and civility — is to create a visa system so gruesomely complex it deters every prospective applicant except those with a passion for bureaucracy that borders on the fetishistic. I can't wait."

— Ultra Magnus on Cyberutopia

"Is [Terms of Peace] a poem?"
"It's a set of rules—a set of rules that covers every conceivable aspect of Cybertronian behaviour in every conceivable scenario. Provided everybody follows every rule to the letter, two things are guaranteed: perpetual peace and a life of eternal joy and contentment."
"So it's not a poem."
"It's a self help-book. A self-help book with strict penalties for non-compliance."

—Cyclonus and Ultra Magnus

"Cyclonus, I... my deep-seated distrust of intimate conversation and my unwillingness to reflect upon—let alone disclose—my own feelings usually makes it impossible for me to offer meaningful advice when those around me open up."
...
"So I'm just going to sit over there."

—Ultra Magnus

"I don't appear to be dead. And I'd know. I'm a doctor."

—Ratchet

"Oh. Oh, I know what this is about. I know exactly what this is about. You're jealous."
"Of?"
"Me and Rewind. We have what you don't have. What you'll never have."
"You have nothing. You think you do, but it's not real. Because when it's real, it hurts."

—Chromedome and Cyclonus

Notes

Continuity notes

• Outrigger, Beak, Fort Max, Red Alert, and Cerebros were all introduced as living together on Luna 1 in More than Meets the Eye #56. The subsequent issue noted that Red was trying to track the location of the Lost Light after they received the Rod Squad's "last will and testament" transmission sent out in issue #50. Beak and Outrigger left Luna 1 with the rest of the Roboids at the end of issue #57—Outrigger's dialogue in the very first panel of this issue explains that Fortress Maximus asked them to "postpone" their trip home to be part of a "rescue mission." They're finally responding to issue #50's transmission, but of course Rodimus and the crew are long gone.
• In giving Red Alert a new body, artist Alex Milne tweeted^[1] that this was his look for being tired with people messing with his neck.
• Fortress Maximus quips that he "normally loves animals" as he pummels Fangry, alluding to his fondness for the Roboids from More than Meets the Eye #46.
• Fangry seems to have been left alive by this beating, if dazed, unlike the rest of the Decepticons in this issue who have clearly been killed.
• The "Disposable" Rapidfire threatens to execute is Scrounge, a luckless character from the Marvel Generation 1 comic who has made a few appearances dotted through IDW history before (once under this writer and artist, specifically, back in More than Meets the Eye #9). His appearance on the Necroworld means he must be one of the "Disappeared," thought to have died during the war but actually saved by the Necrobot; it seems safe to assume the "apparent death" he was rescued from was seen in Spotlight: Metroplex, in which he wound up on the wrong side of Sixshot.
• Tailgate was left locked in the isolation chamber after Fangry killed Kaput in issue #7, in which the rest of Team Rodimus departed Necroworld in Skip. In their absence, it very much appears that the Decepticon members of the "Disappeared" have killed most or all the Autobot ones, so we guess leaving a planet full of Decepticons pulled through time fresh out of the war with no context or desire for peace unsupervised wasn't the best idea Rodimus could have had.
• The Necrobot's cape was left after his body crumbled to dust in More than Meets the Eye #50. It can't be a coincidence it's trained on the Benzene Cluster; recent issues have established the cluster as an area of interest for the Galactic Council and Black Block Consortia, and that someone has taken control of its resources.
• Anode starts the prank war as revenge for the phony survey Swerve had her answer, back in issue #1.
• Anode notes that she, Lug, Velocity, and Nautica are not long back from their trip to Troja Major, as seen in issues #8-9.
• Brainstorm has rebuilt his Early Early Warning System, seen before in More than Meets the Eye #30. It now "does famous voices"; we hear "Peace through--OH MY GOD, LOOK OUT!" and "Freedom is the right of all sentient--WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!", obviously Megatron and Optimus Prime, quoting their famous mottos—except Nautica guesses the first is Nautilator (who was previously established to sound just like Megatron in More than Meets the Eye #12), and the second is Pyro (who, as established in Last Stand of the Wreckers, suffers from primus apotheosis and tries to imitate Optimus in all things). She's almost certainly just messing with him: she was standing right by Optimus and Megatron on the last page of Dark Cybertron's finale and would've seen countless recordings of them besides, while she would only know about Pyro and Nautilator from second-hand accounts.
• Whatever's going on with Ratchet, it begins with the return of his unsteady hands, a problem the character was facing back at the very start of More than Meets the Eye but which he apparently fixed with acquisition of a new pair of hands in issue #5.
• Anode notes the magnetizing spray is used to give magnawheels their capabilities. We saw these devices in action back in Spotlight: Trailcutter.
• Swerve thinks Killmaster placed the bomb in his head during their recent encounter in issue #3 (the footnote references issue #4 as the one in which Killmaster was "zapped," but Swerve wasn't in that one, having been zapped himself in #3).
• The story makes a point of having Swerve note that the bomb's timer is "very large". Given that Anode later reveals Whirl put the bomb in Swerve's head, we can conclude that Whirl actually built the timer with this clock-making skills, and that it's "very large" because his claws prohibit him from carrying out small, delicate work. Whirl was established to be revisiting his old craft in More than Meets the Eye #47.
• When Velocity notes that Rewind will survive his wounds, Cyclonus darkly remarks "he always does," referring to Rewind's previous miraculous escapes from death, in More than Meets the Eye #12 and #33.

Transformers references

• Cerebros's design has been tweaked a bit from his last appearance to add elements of (and portions of blue coloration from) his Titans Return toy.^[2] It's not a complete reformat; he still retains the vehicular alternate mode he had in More than Meets the Eye #56–57, with wheels on his shoulders.
• On page 6, Lug uses the word "repaint" to describe her transformation into Swerve's "biggest fan." While this word does see plenty of general usage, it's hard not to see it as a specific reference to Hasbro's practise of re-releasing an old toy in new colours. This gives us a virtual repaint of a virtual retool, for those of you keeping score.
• Terms of Peace seems to have been titled to draw a deliberate parallel with Towards Peace, Megatron's most famous work. That is, Roberts is drawing the parallel — Ultra Magnus himself is probably oblivious.

Real-life references

• The title of this issue refers to the idiom "be squashed (in) like sardines," which means to be very tightly or snugly squashed together, especially in a small space.

Errors

• The "radio muffle" speech bubble effect is inconsistently colored this issue. It's blue for Cerebros and Swerve's transmissions on pages 2 and 6, turquoise for the Early Early Warning Device and Fortress Maximus transmission on pages 7, 13, and 14, and blue again for the Early Early Warning Device on page 20. That's assuming that the last page isn't the only error, and that Maximus's transmission sharing the turquoise effect with the warning device isn't supposed to mean something, because come on, if you believe Tailgate exploded off-panel, we've got a space bridge to sell you.
• On page 11, panel 7, James Roberts's British spelling of "behaviour" slips by the editors! This was changed to the American spelling in the trade paperback.
• On page 14, Max's transmission says "This it's Fortress Maximus" instead of "This is Fortress Maximus." This is corrected in the trade paperback.

Other trivia

Some steps and a Rung.

• Originally solicited for release in December 2017, this issue arrives noticeably late, in the final stages of January 2018.
• It's mostly obscured by speech bubbles in the retail release, but uncolored pages show that the plinth Fortress Maximus uses to take out Fangry is Skids'.
• Red Alert receives a new design in this issue, an Alex Milne original to update the Nick Roche design he sported during More than Meets the Eye.
• Rapidfire is revealed to have been a member of a Decepticon sub-group called the Guncons, which also included a 'bot named Zooka.
• Did you spot Rung on page 7? He's tucked away in the top right corner in his rarely-seen alternate mode, probably trying to take up a little less space (right). The design of his alternate mode doesn't really match the more ornate appearance artist Alex Milne gave it the only previous time he drew it, in More than Meets the Eye #29; he seems to have hybridized his design with the simpler look James Raiz gave it when it first appeared in More than Meets the Eye #22.
• Ratchet gives a medical name to the long-established history of Transformers' bodies rapidly fading to grey upon their deaths: "aggressive depigmentation."

Soundtrack

• "Your Silent Face" by New Order^[3]
• "Bored to Hear Your Heart Still Breaks" by Tullycraft^[4]
• "Good Fruit" by Hefner^[5]

Covers (4)

• Cover A: Cyclonus tries to retain his calm amid the cramped chaos, by Jack Lawrence and Joana Lafuente
• Cover B: Swerve and Anode plot explosive pranks, by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham
• Cover C: Rodimus tries to keep the peace, by Alex Milne; part of IDW's "Artist's Edition" theme for December
• Retailer incentive cover: Rodimus by J.N. Wiedle; one of a pair of variant covers by Wiedle for December's Transformers titles

• 

  Cyclonus keeps his calm by focusing on a single thought — the thought of killing everyone aboard!

• 

  Spy vs Spy!

• 

  "It's not my fault they forgot to color the page!"

• 

  "Hey look, I found the light!"

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• Lost Light #14
• Till All Are One Annual 2017
• Transformers vs. Visionaries
• Rom & the Micronauts
• Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook hardcover
• Micronauts: Wrath of Karza TPB
• Windblade: The Last City hardcover
• Atomic Robo Presents Real Science Adventures: The Flying She-Devils in Raid on Marauder Island TPB
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story graphic novel adaptation

Reprints

• Transformers: Lost Light Volume 3 (August 15, 2018) ISBN 1684053315 / ISBN 978-1684053315
  • Collects Lost Light issues #13–18.
  • Bonus material includes a cover gallery.
  • Trade paperback format.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 86: The Everlasting Voices (July 1, 2020)
  • Collects Lost Light issues #13–18.
  • Bonus material includes the first half of Transformers: Historia (up to Last Stand of the Wreckers), including the Windblade profile, a cover gallery and an intro by Simon Furman.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Lost Light Volume 3 – cover art by Jack Lawrence and Joana Lafuente

• 

  The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 86: The Everlasting Voices – cover art by Dreamwave and Jack Lawrence

References

External links

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