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Transformers IDW #69
Transformers: Lost Light, Vol. 2
Rodimus and his Autobot crew continue their adventure as they chase the starship Lost Light --and its mutinous new captain! A witty, smart, emotional take on fan-favorite Transformers characters in a sci-fi world unlike any other!
The hunt is on as all sides converge on Troja Major as the race to unlock the secrets of a unique Cybertronian reaches its desperate, violent conclusion. Plus, First Aid returns to the Lost Light to find everything has the ship is under new command, half of his closest friends are missing, and the crew is actually making progress! Collects issues #7-12.
Winner of the Comixology Award for Best Ongoing Comic Series of 2017, as well as Best Writer for James Roberts!
The hunt is on as all sides converge on Troja Major as the race to unlock the secrets of a unique Cybertronian reaches its desperate, violent conclusion. Plus, First Aid returns to the Lost Light to find everything has the ship is under new command, half of his closest friends are missing, and the crew is actually making progress! Collects issues #7-12.
Winner of the Comixology Award for Best Ongoing Comic Series of 2017, as well as Best Writer for James Roberts!
144 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2018
22 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
James Roberts
536 books131 followersJames Roberts is a British comic book writer best known for his contributions to the Transformers franchise.
Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 16, 2023
Two parallel storylines here. One, with Rodimus' group, is OK but sort of struggles under the weight of tracking all the lesser-known characters. It may be setting up something more interesting, though. The second, with the mutineers, is much more compelling and in the vein of earlier Lost Light stories. (B+)
August 5, 2023
F u Getaway
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 17, 2024
Finished 9/14/24 - While Roberts' dialogue and characters are always charming, there is really only one character I am continually interested in as this series moves on and he was in only one issue of this volume. I'm so far from when I started this series (MTMTE) that I'm having trouble remembering if certain characters are still alive or not. That could be just a 'me' thing, but tell me what the hell was even going on in the final issue of this volume with Getaway and crew. A character that showed up ONCE in the previous series that I thought was pretty awesome popped up out of NOwhere, killed someone, and left without any explanation on how he got there. Maybe he was in another Transformers IDW series that parallels The Lost Light up to this point, but I highly doubt it.
I'm just tired of being confused and uninterested with this new storyline not going anywhere or giving me a good hook to keep me coming back. Progress to keep reading has slowed and I am very, very casual about continuing. It gets an additional star for the great artwork.
I'm just tired of being confused and uninterested with this new storyline not going anywhere or giving me a good hook to keep me coming back. Progress to keep reading has slowed and I am very, very casual about continuing. It gets an additional star for the great artwork.
March 3, 2018
I can't even... Cyclonus and Tailgate (why, why would you do this, James Roberts?!), Rodimus ("For someone like Magnus, cognitive dissonance must have been deafening"), psychopaths, circuitous stories (so much love for those games with narrative structure and metatextuality), and boats!
April 7, 2018
Writer James Roberts and artist Jack Lawrence continue the adventures of the crew of the Lost Light as they seek the legendary Cyberutopia.
Roberts' writing remains good, with excellent callbacks to previously-laid groundwork. Without a doubt, I would call him one of the most Easter-Eggy of writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading, adept at bringing out very old ideas in new and fun ways. Some of those Easter Eggs aren't even Transformers related, per se, but rather, make readers think of other materials, characters from other stories, and they call out personality foibles that make us either was to crow with excitement or cringe in horror. It is exactly this that I think bothers me so much about Lost Light Vol 2. At this point in the game, it has become more a story of torture porn than anything else. While it is done in a very succinct, organized, and understandable (at least insofar as characters' justification for their actions is concerned) way, for the first time since Lost Light started 5 years ago as More than Meets the Eye, I find myself just being turned off by it all. Characters are created just for the story, and I find myself uninterested in them. Lug? Anode? Who cares? Then, when we do look at long-standing Transformers (Tailgate, the Protectobots), they are there only to be cut, slashed, brutalized, maimed, tortured, or blown up. Then there are the monsters, monsters, and more monsters. With the appearance of each one, I'm finding myself shrugging and flipping to the back of the book to see them taken down (spoilers: not a single monster is defeated in this). Dissatisfied, I put the book down, and turn on the news. Oh look. Monsters everywhere. And NO RESOLUTION for these monsters either.
Maybe my biggest problem with Lost Light Vol. 2 is that I'm looking at a world that is far too similar to our own world. This is a shame because I read Transformers because I like seeing pretty pictures of characters I like doing Transformery things. Instead, I'm reading a pastiche of the mockery of existence that the Real World has become. Yay? Sad as I am to hear that the IDW Transformers Universe will come to an end this Fall, I'm almost glad. If it gets rid of these monsters, I'll be pretty satisfied.
Roberts' writing remains good, with excellent callbacks to previously-laid groundwork. Without a doubt, I would call him one of the most Easter-Eggy of writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading, adept at bringing out very old ideas in new and fun ways. Some of those Easter Eggs aren't even Transformers related, per se, but rather, make readers think of other materials, characters from other stories, and they call out personality foibles that make us either was to crow with excitement or cringe in horror. It is exactly this that I think bothers me so much about Lost Light Vol 2. At this point in the game, it has become more a story of torture porn than anything else. While it is done in a very succinct, organized, and understandable (at least insofar as characters' justification for their actions is concerned) way, for the first time since Lost Light started 5 years ago as More than Meets the Eye, I find myself just being turned off by it all. Characters are created just for the story, and I find myself uninterested in them. Lug? Anode? Who cares? Then, when we do look at long-standing Transformers (Tailgate, the Protectobots), they are there only to be cut, slashed, brutalized, maimed, tortured, or blown up. Then there are the monsters, monsters, and more monsters. With the appearance of each one, I'm finding myself shrugging and flipping to the back of the book to see them taken down (spoilers: not a single monster is defeated in this). Dissatisfied, I put the book down, and turn on the news. Oh look. Monsters everywhere. And NO RESOLUTION for these monsters either.
Maybe my biggest problem with Lost Light Vol. 2 is that I'm looking at a world that is far too similar to our own world. This is a shame because I read Transformers because I like seeing pretty pictures of characters I like doing Transformery things. Instead, I'm reading a pastiche of the mockery of existence that the Real World has become. Yay? Sad as I am to hear that the IDW Transformers Universe will come to an end this Fall, I'm almost glad. If it gets rid of these monsters, I'll be pretty satisfied.
December 20, 2019
Done
Good art, as usual. There are two storylines. One with Anode, the first "Trans" Transformer. This is a predictably pointless foray into identity politics, complete with a whole page explaining why it "makes perfect sense". Only it doesn't actually make ANY sense. But whatever.
The mutineers' story is considerably more interesting. It slowly builds up, getting more and more suspenseful and dark. I personally agree with the original reason given for the mutiny: That Rodimus is a terrible leader (which he is), and that the idea of Megatron being a good guy who now captains a ship full of Autobots is ridiculous (which it is). But instead of leaving it at that, Getaway is turned into psychopathic murderer. I mean, those were two very valid reasons for a mutiny. Nobody had to be made "evil". But it does make an interesting story build up.
I don't like that IDW always depicts murderers and serial killers as Autobots, and peace-loving pacifists as Decepticons. That is ridiculous, but IDW plays that card over and over, to the point that the labels are meaningless. Why even have them then? Decepticons are supposed to be bad. Autobots are supposed to be good. But not in the IDW-verse. You can pretty much count on the opposite to be true, for unknown reasons. It gets old. And this story features at least two cold-blooded killer Autobots.
This book still has a lot of British slang. I found myself having to stop and look up some of it sometimes. Personally, I don't like that, feeling like I'm reading an import. Just personal preference.
But it doesn't matter anymore because I'm not buying any more of these. I have one more Transformers comic I bought a while back, then I'm done with IDW. I just don't like what they've done with the franchise. The early IDW comics with Simon Furman were pretty cool to me. I enjoyed those. But gradually it all just went downhill. When IDW is good, it is really good. But I haven't read any really good Transformers stories in a long time now. Not since "Drift: Empire of Stone". I give up.
Good art, as usual. There are two storylines. One with Anode, the first "Trans" Transformer. This is a predictably pointless foray into identity politics, complete with a whole page explaining why it "makes perfect sense". Only it doesn't actually make ANY sense. But whatever.
The mutineers' story is considerably more interesting. It slowly builds up, getting more and more suspenseful and dark. I personally agree with the original reason given for the mutiny: That Rodimus is a terrible leader (which he is), and that the idea of Megatron being a good guy who now captains a ship full of Autobots is ridiculous (which it is). But instead of leaving it at that, Getaway is turned into psychopathic murderer. I mean, those were two very valid reasons for a mutiny. Nobody had to be made "evil". But it does make an interesting story build up.
I don't like that IDW always depicts murderers and serial killers as Autobots, and peace-loving pacifists as Decepticons. That is ridiculous, but IDW plays that card over and over, to the point that the labels are meaningless. Why even have them then? Decepticons are supposed to be bad. Autobots are supposed to be good. But not in the IDW-verse. You can pretty much count on the opposite to be true, for unknown reasons. It gets old. And this story features at least two cold-blooded killer Autobots.
This book still has a lot of British slang. I found myself having to stop and look up some of it sometimes. Personally, I don't like that, feeling like I'm reading an import. Just personal preference.
But it doesn't matter anymore because I'm not buying any more of these. I have one more Transformers comic I bought a while back, then I'm done with IDW. I just don't like what they've done with the franchise. The early IDW comics with Simon Furman were pretty cool to me. I enjoyed those. But gradually it all just went downhill. When IDW is good, it is really good. But I haven't read any really good Transformers stories in a long time now. Not since "Drift: Empire of Stone". I give up.
February 18, 2021
I miss Milne and Cahill. And worse, Roberts is just setting up the billiard balls for a trick shot right now in the endgame - there's no artfulness in his set up, just in the trick he pulls at the end. The plot is exciting, but the character moments aren't. It's a complete inversion of early MTMTE. You can only have so many sarcastic egotists before they all start to blur together. The characters seem only to exist in order to deliver increasingly stale one-liners, and to advance the plot. It's the opposite of MTMTE, and for that reason, I read it quickly, not savouring it like I did seasons one and two, trying to get to the epilogue as quickly as possible. I fantasize that instead of 25 issues, Roberts had been given a hundred, and after spending some time pub crawling greater Europe, he'd have refreshed himself and become re-inspired to take his characters in interesting directions, rather than just taking the plot in interesting directions like he does here instead.
November 25, 2020
I hope Transformers media going forward takes all of its inspiration from James Roberts run on the franchise. This heavy sci fi, big headed, giant hearted, mega witted narrative of fun and moral questioning is without any doubt the best thing to ever happen to the series.
Yes, as someone who has ye to dive into MTMTE, it is a little confusing. But it's still fun and in spite of that it actually makes me sit up in my seat and try a little harder in understanding the scope of this narrative. Usually if a story has to make me work I quit. But not here. This is the kind of love you have for someone who's kinda awkward but you'll still sit there and hear um out though all their "ummm. Yeah. Ummms" cause they've given you so many good memories and as a result you'd probably die for this motherfucker.
That's this book in a nutshell.
ALSO- Fuck Getaway! 😠
Yes, as someone who has ye to dive into MTMTE, it is a little confusing. But it's still fun and in spite of that it actually makes me sit up in my seat and try a little harder in understanding the scope of this narrative. Usually if a story has to make me work I quit. But not here. This is the kind of love you have for someone who's kinda awkward but you'll still sit there and hear um out though all their "ummm. Yeah. Ummms" cause they've given you so many good memories and as a result you'd probably die for this motherfucker.
That's this book in a nutshell.
ALSO- Fuck Getaway! 😠
August 2, 2018
Volume 2 starts with twenty pages of hyper-compressed character storytelling. Following said marvel there are two mini-serials: the first on the nature of death and grief, which as story is surface plain but has many well-thought out discreet layers. Artist Jack Lawrence is proving his worth here. Scribe James Roberts delivers a good story for the reading; a good effort; but in retrospect it's a little too functional or tidy at times. The second tale, 'The Mutineers Trilogy' is of the stuff that Lost Light has won awards for. It's loaded with experimental storytelling, closure and revelations, and expands upon a twister of a narrative seeded four years ago. Incredibly satisfying!
February 14, 2020
Transformers: Lost Light Vol. 2 continues the trips of the Lost Light crew as they get themselves out the scraps they are constantly in! :D It is full of characterisation that is spot on! :D At the same time it build on past plot lines and continues to produce unseen twists! :D
The art as ever is sharp and clear with all the character clearly portrayed! :D The framing of the panels is excellently done giving everything a clear cinematic style that ties into the fast-pace scrip from the beginning that will keep you on your toes! :D
Transformers: Lost Light Vol. 2 is full of heroics, Grandstanding Adventure and Action! :D Brilliant Crisp High Five! :D Get it if You Can! :D
The art as ever is sharp and clear with all the character clearly portrayed! :D The framing of the panels is excellently done giving everything a clear cinematic style that ties into the fast-pace scrip from the beginning that will keep you on your toes! :D
Transformers: Lost Light Vol. 2 is full of heroics, Grandstanding Adventure and Action! :D Brilliant Crisp High Five! :D Get it if You Can! :D
January 1, 2018
Not the best collection of stories. Picks up the pieces after the mutiny though nothing is finalized yet.
November 15, 2017
Tailgate!
March 5, 2018
dead, happiness, partings.
March 22, 2018
Another excellently written volume, this series never disappoints.
March 22, 2019
This volume catches the readers up with Getaway on the stolen "Lost Light" and manages to be funny, heartfelt, and terrifying all at once. Great art, great story!
November 27, 2021
Lost Light is one of my favorite comics ever, Transformers or otherwise.
May 20, 2022
El cambio de dibujante no termina de convencerme, pero el arco de los amotinados mezcla la intriga, el terror y el gore que da gusto
July 17, 2024
Me gustó mucho este volumen
January 30, 2025
Standout Issues: #7, #10, #11, #12
February 4, 2025
i loved the issue with velocity, nautica, anode, and lug
August 15, 2025
The issues of this volume touch a series of different themes and I got a big kick out of each for different reasons.
Very good plots with quite the jawdropping twists, although I found the pacing a bit tight in a few spots, but nothing that broke the flow of reading for me. Dialogues are well done, action scenes are great and art is always a marvel for me.
Nautica and Skids are just heartbreaking
Lug and Anode are a fun couple and Anode is simply unabashedly funny
Cyclonus and Tailgate goddamnit just hug it out you idiots
Rodimus is Rodimus
Getaway is slimy as hell
and Riptide, poor innocent summer child, is a sweet bot and deserves a lot
These issues offered a good amount of side characters that I honestly liked for their behaviour and design, though they did Kaput dirty, poor guy...
Very good plots with quite the jawdropping twists, although I found the pacing a bit tight in a few spots, but nothing that broke the flow of reading for me. Dialogues are well done, action scenes are great and art is always a marvel for me.
Nautica and Skids are just heartbreaking
Lug and Anode are a fun couple and Anode is simply unabashedly funny
Cyclonus and Tailgate goddamnit just hug it out you idiots
Rodimus is Rodimus
Getaway is slimy as hell
and Riptide, poor innocent summer child, is a sweet bot and deserves a lot
These issues offered a good amount of side characters that I honestly liked for their behaviour and design, though they did Kaput dirty, poor guy...
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews