decepticonsensual:

IT’S THE
MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!

…
okay, I have more TFNation posts to come, but I thought I’d break
with tradition and post my notes from the Lost Light panel
before the next issue of the comic comes out tomorrow.  Because the
panel delved into a bit of what we can expect to see, and fuck me
am I excited. 🙂

(I’ve divided these up a bit by subject to make them easier to read, hopefully, but tried to keep the discussion more or less in order.)

_________________________

First
of all, I should explain that the panel this year consisted
of James Roberts and new
lead artist Jack Lawrence.  Jack is a very different presence on the
panel to Alex Milne, though they’re both fantastic to listen to.
In previous years, Alex
would tend to let James do most of the talking, and come in with
(often wonderfully salty) observations here and there; Jack tends to
guide the conversation a lot more, but in a warm, laid-back kind of
way, allowing James (and the audience) plenty of space to shape the
discussion.  It was really interesting to watch.

On the launch of
Lost Light

• Regarding
  the switch from More Than Meets The Eye to
  Lost Light:  James
  said he was proud of racking up the numbers under a single title,
  but IDW decided to use the Revolution crossover
  event to release a lot of new #1s in a bid to boost sales across the
  board.  Even then, it was undecided at first whether this would
  apply to MTMTE, since it had such good brand recognition.  James
  added that he likes both the title Lost Light and
  the new logo better than MTMTE.

• The
  change in title led to a change in plans for the early issues of
  Lost Light.  Dying of the Light was
  always going to cover issues
  50-55 of MTMTE, but if MTMTE had continued with its original title
  and numbering, we would have spent five or six issues with the
  mutineers before the Functionist Universe arc (which
  would also have been
  different in shape).

• Lost Light
  1 is a difficult starting point
  for new readers, but James said it was either start there, or on the
  Lost Light “with a
  horrible captain – although he has his fans – who’s just
  stabbed everyone in the back”.  (I was on the point of letting out
  a whoop when Jro said Getaway “has his fans”, until I realised
  he probably meant within the comic, not in the room at
  that moment. :))

• An
  even bigger change:  Anode would have been introduced differently if
  MTMTE had continued… and Lug wouldn’t have been introduced at
  all (she was created for Lost
  Light). Anode
  was originally going to be introduced in the Slaughterhouse
  arc as someone the LL2 had
  picked up prior to the DJD attack, and she would have been somewhat
  different from her current incarnation.  (James:  “She wasn’t
  going to die at the end of that one.”  Jack:  “At the end of
  that one?!”)

On Jack’s art
and getting into Transformers

• Jack fell in love at age 9 with Laserbeak and never looked back.  He
  also told a great story about going with a friend to the toy store,
  and his friend picked out a Transformer with an incredibly complex
  transformation process, and Jack picked up Ruckus.  Over the next
  few days, Jack bonded with Ruckus, continually transforming him back
  and forth while his friend tried to figure out his toy’s
  transformation. 🙂

• Jack
  joked, “My husband is
  terrified” to find out how many Transformers Jack has in storage,
  and asked softly, “What is it about them?”  (James, teasing:  “Jack,
  your face is wet…”)

• Jack
  and James met years ago in the TransMasters UK fan club (also where
  James met Nick Roche).  In fact, Jack was the first artist to ever
  illustrate one of James Roberts’ comics! (That first collaboration
  was a strip in the TMUK zine.)  After that, however, they fell out
  of touch for a time (James joked, “Jealous of my success, Jack
  retreated into a world of his own…”).

• Jack’s
  favourite new design is Lug’s; he loves her because she’s female
  and she’s a “boxy little block”.  James’s brief for the
  design was that Anode and Lug are female, but that he didn’t want
  to go the “enlarged chassis, cinched waist, long legs, high heels,
  makeup” route that’s so common for female Transformers.  (Jack
  to James:  “I was glad, because I would have had to fight you on
  that.”)  Lug’s
  transformation is close to Rewind’s, because “I’m a massive
  nerd, I want to buy Rewind and make him into Lug!”

• Jack
  prefers to take inspiration from toy designs, but without rigidly
  adhering to them.  He described his approach as a “soft redesign”
  of the toys and of designs from other Transformers
  continuities – but never of
  any of the designs from MTMTE/Lost Light itself.
  With a huge, self-deprecating grin, he declared, “I will not
  countenance continuity problems!” 🙂

• He
  specifically said he didn’t want his design for Rodimus to look
  like “a cloud, or a needle”.

• Jack
  on Transformers [designs,
  that is]:  “I tend to nick them.  [beat]  Which is how I built up
  my collection, but apart from my petty theft…” 😀

On Dissolution

• James
  feels Lost Light is
  settling in and picking up pace.

• Dissolution
  was designed to give everyone
  some panel time.  

• James:
  “I’m proud of the way [Dissolution]
  panned out, but it will always be the story that had to be.”  His
  original idea was that Megatron would continue with the crew until
  the end, but Megatron’s presence was divisive among fans, because
  he was such a dominant presence within the story.  The Functionist
  Universe provided a neat way to end Megatron’s time in the comic.
  Megatron’s emotions and arguments in Dissolution may
  have frustrated some readers, who saw it as “more of the same”,
  but these elements were needed because this was Megatron’s “swan
  song”, all geared towards getting Megatron to where he ends up in
  Lost Light 6.  

• Megatron’s
  fate has been the biggest deviation so far from James’s original
  plan for the series.

• Jack
  said that he wanted his design for the Functionist Universe to
  retain the elements that had been introduced already (like the
  hovering blimps and the propaganda screens), but without
  compromising on style.  The Functionist Universe isn’t
  grim and gritty – it’s
  gleaming and sterile.  He also included a lot of Unicron Trilogy
  characters in the Functionist Universe.  Since they haven’t been
  seen in IDW before, he was allowed to use them to populate crowd
  scenes without either having to create detailed new designs, or to
  keep the details of the images vague on purpose.  Jack mentioned
  that the Functionist Universe enabled him to draw many similar
  chunky characters, because they’re workers – and he likes
  drawing chunky TFs.

• If
  he’d had more time, James would have explored the “obligatory
  happiness” of the Functionist Universe.  For example, the Sky-Spy
  in the opening scene would have conducted a “mood measurement”
  of the new arrivals (this was changed to a
  chest cavity search for the
  final comic), as the Functionist Council used the
  presence of negative emotions as a gauge of the potential for
  rebellion.  The
  arc would have touched on the AVL using mood
  stabilisers to fake happiness for the checks, which also would have
  tied into the Rod Squad’s use of mood dampeners to cope with
  Skids’s death.  James also would have spent some time exploring
  questions of individuality:  there are fewer deviations from core
  designs in Dissolution than
  we saw even in The Custom-Built Now…

On writing and
drawing the series (and what could have been)

• The ending of the DJD’s arc was originally going to be CD-ROM
  related (because of Dominus’s role in the story), and we would
  have encountered the Scavengers again.

• Going even further back:  Ravage was originally going to be onboard
  the Lost Light from the start as the “token Decepticon”,
  instead of Cyclonus.  James:  “I’m not saying there would have
  been a Tailgate/Ravage thing… although that would have been
  interesting, wouldn’t it?”

• James on progressive politics in Lost Light:  “It’s
  difficult to write something and for your politics not to show
  through,” but he doesn’t want the comic to be a soapbox.  He
  draws a distinction between wanting to provide representation (which
  he does do) and actually making political points.  The latter, when
  it occurs in Lost Light, happens organically – for example,
  the need to give Megatron an arc came first, the politics involved
  in that second.

• That said, Megatron’s speech at the end of Dissolution (“Peace
  Through Empathy”) may be one instance of James saying we’re
  heading in a bad direction and it’s good to remember these things.

• Otherwise, political tidbits tend to be Easter eggs, like the Ofsted
  reference.

• Jack is a “massive fan of Alex’s work, but we are very
  different” – he references Alex’s designs, but uses his
  own style.  (Jack:  “I didn’t want to change everything -”
  James:  “Into clouds!”  Jack:  “… into clouds.”)

• Jack especially enjoys drawing Alex Milne’s Megatron design and
  Nick Roche’s Rodimus design.

• James mentioned that he’s been criticised both for changing the
  portrayals of canon characters, and for introducing original
  characters.  One audience member asked whether he’d received
  backlash for turning traditionally heroic characters like Star Saber
  and Getaway evil.  JRo said that he was surprised that some people
  really took against the change to Star Saber.  He felt that one
  could go too far in calling MTMTE Star Saber “evil” (he’s
  following Tyrest’s orders, and certainly believes in what he’s
  doing), but Star Saber has historically been depicted as a
  “Thunderclash type” and there was some backlash against that
  changing.  Getaway was a different case, James said.  “I wanted
  Getaway to be trusted and liked and charismatic” so the reveal
  would be a shock.

• We’re definitely past the midpoint of the series.
• If Jack could add one cast member to Lost Light, it would be
  Ruckus, although “last time we saw him, he was being trodden on by
  Thunderwing”.  (James:  “Is he dead?”  Jack:  “No! He’s
  Ruckus.” :))

On what’s
coming up next!

• Jack on planning future Lost Light issues:  “We had a
  one-on-one meeting in James’s bedroom… and I just realised what
  that sounds like…”  James:  “It was very creative.”  Jack:
  “I’ve been walking with a limp ever since.”  (There is no way
  I can describe the expression on James’ face when Jack said this,
  but he was both grinning and a shade of red I don’t think I’ve
  ever seen on a human being. :D)

• More
  worryingly, Jack said he genuinely did tear up on seeing James’s
  outline for Season 3… then added, brightly and unconvincingly,
  “It’ll all be fine!”

• Lost Light
  9 will be the concluding part
  of the Troja Major arc.

• This
  will be followed by the Mutineers’ Trilogy, a three-part arc set
  exclusively on the Lost Light.
  It will answer questions about Getaway’s captaincy and
  how he’s been keeping the crew under control, as well as the
  reactions of the other mutineers.

• Following
  the Mutineer’s Trilogy will be a “lighthearted” (DC’s
  comment:  I do not trust anything James Roberts describes as
  “lighthearted” since getting punched in the gut with Magnusfeels
  during the “fun beach episode” issue way back in Season 1) issue
  titled “Sardines”, featuring the Rod Squad on a planet called
  Skip.

• Soon
  after this, we’ll have the return of the Scavengers, which will
  wrap up some elements of their storyline.

• And
  after that, the beginning of the next “phenomenally large” epic
  arc!  This will bring back many elements and characters from earlier
  in the series “in unusual circumstances”.

And
there you have it! 🙂  I can’t wait!