Recap / More Than Meets The Eye S 1 E 3 Liars A To D Part 3 The Chaos Of Warm Things

Nickel, iron, cobalt, chrome
He'll eat your soul,
turn your spark to stone
Nickel, iron, cobalt, chrome
Run little robot, run away home

Traditional Cybertronian rhyme, re. Sparkeaters

Something is loose aboard the Lost Light, and the Autobots must hunt it down before it kills again!

Issue: #3

Released: March 14th, 2012

A short time ago, Shock the Duobot finds the corpse of his partner Ore, and laments the pointlessness of his death. After the token rites, he examines the datapad Ore had, deleting the call from Prowl, and goes looking for the tracer Ore was meant to put on the engines. As he does, something forces its way out through a locked door, and promptly kills him.

Now, Red Alert has found Shock's corpse, and warns Rodimus that there's a Sparkeater on board. Rodimus simply responds with "cool". Acting quickly, he tells the crew to get to their quarters while he and the higher-ups go looking for the creature. As everyone files out, Tailgate finds himself stuck mid-transformation, and unable to get anyone to help, until he calls out to someone he recognises, Cyclonus.

In the engine room, Ratchet examines Shock's corpse, with everyone else discussing the mythological nature of the Sparkeaters. Ratchet angrily cuts in to remind everyone about the dead Autobot, brushing off their concerns that it might be otherworldly. Then Trailbreaker finds Shock's brain module, removed from the body without any head wounds. Chromedome speculates it's connected to Rossum's Trinity, the Sparkeater taking advantage of the interconnected nature of the brain, the spark and the transformation cog to feed. Ignoring this, Ratchet examines Shock, and decides whatever it is sustains itself by feeding on Sparks. Wanting a second opinion, Rodimus asks Chromedome to examine it. As it turns out, Chromedome is a mnemosurgeon, a surgeon who specializes in memory, the reason Rodimus invited him on-board, and something Rewind is distressed by. As Chromedome begins examining Shock's memories, he notes that since he's dead, they're going to be sketchy. He begins, and flashes of a half-dead thing flash through his mind.

Back with the rest of the crew, Cyclonus carries Tailgate to a spare room, then unceremoniously dumps him on the floor. Meanwhile, Skids and Swerve navigate a dark roomne that turns out, much to Swerve's joy, to be a bar. He recounts how he and Blurr had planned to open a bar once the war was over, only to find Skids wasn't listening. Instead, he's taking a vent off the wall, planning to ignore Rodimus' orders, figuring his amnesia gives him the license to be whatever he feels like. Swerve declines to come along, and Skids leaves, before briefly returning to ask if he likes music.

Back in the engine room, Chromedome screams as he feels the memories, though he is able to confirm that whatever it is he saw, it's trouble, and it's hungry. Figuring this, Ratchet states it'll likely go after the brightest Spark on ship, but that shooting it would be bad. Rodimus decides to wait where he is, having a hunch as to what the creature will do. Upstairs, Animus finds himself the unlucky victim of the Sparkeater, which devours his oddly bright-green Spark. Whirl, having witnessed this snack, decides to shoot the creature, only being stopped by the timely arrival of Trailbreaker, who stops Whirl's missiles from blowing up half the ship. The creature flees, with Red Alert figuring out who it's going after next. It's Rung, who is saved from being a Sparkeater snack by the timely arrival of Skids.

In their quarters, Cyclonus tells Tailgate a highly abbreviated recount of the War, asking which side he would've chosen. As Skids and Rung flee the Sparkeater, they get a call from Rodimus, telling them to head down to the engine room. On the way, they encounter Brainstorm, who is left for dead by Skids. However, as he brandishes his briefcase at the creature, Brainstorm notices it's already gone...

On reaching the engine room, Rung is grabbed by Rodimus, who tells Perceptor on the bridge to start up the engines. As he does, Rodimus throws Rung aside and grapples the Sparkeater, before the engines turn on. The ship jumps, and when it stops, the Sparkeater is totally mashed into the wall, along with Rodimus' arms. Fortunately, he's quickly able to get them replaced. As he marvels at his new arms, Ultra Magnus tries chiding him for his behaviour, only for Rodimus to immediately tell Magnus he's not in charge. Behind them, Ratchet is examining Tailgate, and finds a piece of shrapnel in the little fellow's cog he didn't notice before. As he removes it, Tailgate talks about alliegances, and proclaims his desire to be a Decepticon.

This issue contains examples of:

• An Arm and a Leg: Rodimus sacrifices his arms to kill the Sparkeater, though he gets some new ones made before the issue's up.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Shock lists the many catastrophic events he and Ore survived, before saying they also welded Prowl's hands together as a joke.
• Asshole Victim: In a flashback to Megatron's Decepticon Uprising, Starscream is seen executing Senator Proteus.
• Berserk Button: Rodimus doesn't take being criticised well.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Rung's get a mention, as his most identifiable feature, when Skids saves him from the Sparkeater.
  Skids: C'mere, eyebrows.
• Body Horror: How the Sparkeater feeds. First it breaks someone's jaw, then it makes them vomit their brains out, and then wrenches their Spark from their chest.
• Call-Back:
  • Skids still won't put that gun down.
  • Still with Skids, someone else notes how they thought he was dead.
  • Animus being a member of the Ethics Committee, which he was in his cameo in Last Stand of The Wreckers. Apparently he lied to get the job, and got found out by Magnus.
  • Veras Centralus gets a mention, along with its similarly named relatives Varas and Verus Centralus.
• The Cameo: Sideswipe, Grimlock and Impactor all appear during Cyclonus' description of the war.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Tailgate's problem with transforming, which Ratchet puts down to some shrapnel he didn't notice before.
  • When Animus is killed, his Spark is shown to be bright green, unlike everyone else's bright blue.
  • After eating Animus, the Sparkeater goes after Rung, since it feeds on the brightest sparks on the ship first.
  • The fact that the Sparkeater chooses not to eat Brainstorm.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Simanzi gets a mention by Shock. Apparently he and Ore survived it.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Chromedome's mnemosurgery, and Rewind's attitude towards it, sound amazingly like someone with a long-term substance abuse problem, especially when Rewind says Chromedome had told him he'd quit.
• Early-Bird Cameo: 'Vos' makes his first appearance here, as the rifle Megatron was using in one of the flashbacks.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Sparkeater, in that it has two legs, two arms and a head. From there, any resemblance to anything human comes to a screaming halt.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Skids' reaction to being locked in a room is to immediately try and get out. He doesn't shoot his way out because he figures Ultra Magnus would be upset.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Shock's body has decoloured by the time the crew find it, probably a reference to bodies going discoloured in other Transformers media before.
  • On hearing Perceptor's warning, Rodimus notes they're "Duly noted, and ignored."
• Nightmare Fetishist: Rodimus's reaction to learning a creature that can horribly kill everyone on the ship is loose?
  Rodimus: ... Cool.
• No Sense of Direction: Swerve, who in looking for a room winds up in a bar instead. He adds to this by claiming, as he and Skids are stumbling about in the dark, that he once navigated the Mitteous Plataeu. He doesn't finish his claim as he walks into something.
• Painting the Medium: Chromedome claims that the memories of the dead are "sketchy". We see them from him point of view, and they do indeed look like the artist's sketching, lacking ink and colour.
• Power Floats: The Sparkeater, which hovers above the ground.
• Redshirt: Shock, the first victim of the Sparkeater, and the second Duobot. He just so happens to be bright red.
• The Reveal: The Duobots were the ones Prowl called in issue 1, and were working on his behalf. Ore was in the engine room to place a tracer on it, presumably so Prowl could keep an eye on it.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Apparently if Whirl's missiles had hit the Sparkeater, it would've taken out half the ship. The ship is later established as being several miles along. That's one big explosion.
• Unfortunate Names: Ultra Magnus mentions once arrested a Decepticon who thought he was a Sparkeater, who called himself the Cybervore, and the Nightmare of a Thousand Names. His real name was Blip.
• Unreliable Narrator: Cyclonus tells Tailgate about the war, albeit in a highly skewed version that leans towards favouring the Decepticons, rather than the Autobots. Tailgate decides he wants to be a Decepticon as a result.

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