Cybertronian Homesick Blues

« The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #13 »
"Cybertronian Homesick Blues"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
Published in	More than Meets the Eye #13
First published	February 6, 2013
Cover date	January 2013
Story by	James Roberts
Pencils by	Guido Guidi
Inks by	John Wycough, Juan Castro, Guido Guidi. and Marc Deering
Colors by	Josh Burcham (pg. 1-10, 13, 14, 17) and Joana Lafuente (pg. 11, 12, 15, 16, 18-22)
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	John Barber
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Current era (2012)

Well-kept secrets come out when Swerve takes his friends on shore leave on the pleasure planet Hedonia.

Synopsis

Blaster has repaired the Lost Light's long-range subspace network, and Swerve has bribed him with free drinks to let him send the first transmission back to Cybertron. He records a message for his old buddy Blurr, explaining the ship's explosive departure and the progress of the quest, and then begins to tell the story of the events of the previous day...

A horrible howling sound emerging from Tailgate and Cyclonus's hab-suite catches Swerve's attention on his way to work, but before he can open the door, he is yanked away by Drift, who is preparing to storm the room with Aquafend. They proceed to kick the door in, to discover that the noise was Cyclonus singing a hymn in Old Cybertronian. Suitably chastened, Drift returns to Rodimus's office to carry on teaching the captain parrying, and Swerve tags along, asking the ninja-bot to become his new room-mate. Moments later, Ultra Magnus comes storming in, wound tighter than ever and rattling off a list of the crew's preposterously minor protocol infractions. Rodimus suggests he relax, and proposes that the crew take some "shore leave" on the nearby planet Hedonia, convincing Swerve to show Magnus the planet's sights.

On the trip down to Hedonia, Swerve and Tailgate chat about the latter's choice in roommates and Cyclonus's past, and Swerve's friendship with Blurr, while Magnus desperately tries to relax. Setting down on the planet, Swerve's "posse" employ new auto-generated, personality-based holomatter avatars to find a mechanoid-friendly bar; Magnus's choice of a self-designed avatar based on Verity Carlo leaves them all asking questions. Swerve convinces Magnus to deactivate his fuel intake moderation chip so that he can enjoy drinking, but Whirl exploits the opportunity to slip him a mickey—weapons-grade Nucleon, which knocks Magnus out completely. Two hours later, the rest of the group are playing the "nemesis game", naming their worst enemies, when Magnus begins to come around and everyone but Swerve immediately flees in fear of repercussions. The sozzled Magnus mopes about his predicament to Swerve, about hating the quest and being hated by everyone and wanting to go back to Cybertron, and almost confesses to enjoying music when he notices Swerve's Autobot badge is missing. He dubs the little 'bot a shirker before gulping down another drink and passing out again.

A little later, the others return with trinkets bought from the gift shop; Rung has purchased a new model ship that reminds Skids of the Ark-1, prompting Rewind to play some millennia-old footage of the opening ceremony for the ship's launch, in which the crew was named. Suddenly, Cyclonus flies into a rage, flipping over the table and getting into a scuffle with Skids. Tailgate intervenes, urging the others to head back to the shuttle while he calms Cyclonus, and Swerve realises they only have twenty minutes to do so. Whirl quickly flies everyone back to the shuttle, after which they project their holomatters avatars back to the bar in order to transport the still-unconscious Ultra Magnus back via a short-cut through an organics-only area. To do so, he must be in his alternate mode, so they drag him out of the bar and begin jumping up and down on him in order to make him involuntarily transform, and they eventually succeed... except, he's upside down. After managing him to flip him over, the group drives back to the shuttle, happily commenting on what a good time they've had.

And back at the bar, a perfectly calm Cyclonus reveals something to Tailgate: he knows that he is lying, that he was not on the Ark's crew manifest - there was a Tailpipe, but no Tailgate. Tailgate realises that Cyclonus made a scene to save him from discovery, and sadly confesses that he never worked in bomb disposal, or the Primal Vanguard: he was actually a waste disposal 'bot, and he lied about himself because he was despondent over having never even been looked for after he fell through the Mitteous Plateau while on the way to rinse out the Ark-1's coolant. Cyclonus points out that he'll be caught out one day, but offers to share his method of easing sadness: he teaches Tailgate a song in Old Cybertronian, and the pair sing together in the empty bar.

Swerve finishes up his recording, but when Blaster tries to send it to Blurr's personal hailing frequency, it does not go through. Swerve flashes back to the last time he met Blurr, and we learn it was the only time: he and Blurr were never friends, Swerve was just an over-eager fan who shared one or two sentences about opening a bar with Blurr while getting an autograph, and was fobbed off with a fake hailing frequency. He glumly returns to his bar, and in time, Ultra Magnus arrives, finally recovered from the previous night. He hands Swerve a new Autobot badge, revealing that he remembers everything about the drunken escapade. Swerve cautiously asks him if he'd like to be his new roomate, but Magnus simply chides him for his familiarity, making implicitly clear that nothing has changed between them.

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks other than the extended one that makes up the main body of the story.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"MUTINY! Everywhere I look I see rules being stretched and laws being broken and protocols being dragged outside and kicked to death. I've made a list: one, Skids keeps using the maintenance droids for target practice. Two, Waverider and Sureshot insist on playing hand-grenade tag outside my office. Three: the warning signs that Dipstick's put up in the engine rooms are riddled with misplaced apostrophes. Four: Sprocket keeps touching his—"
"MAGNUS!"

—Ultra Magnus and Rodimus

"Maybe I have been taking things too seriously. Maybe I should try and... and... whatever. There's a word for it."
"Relax?"
"That's not even a word. I'd have heard of it."

—Ultra Magnus and Rodimus

"If anyone can cheer [Magnus] up, you can!"
"You say "cheer him up" like it's something other than a centuries-long undertaking destined to end in madness and suicide."

—Rodimus and Swerve

Rewind: "These holomatter avatars are brilliant—they even come with fake I.D.s! Say hello to 'Joe Human.' Who are you, Swerve?"
Swerve: "'Mr. Person.' I dunno, these pseudonyms are a bit weak, aren't they?"
Skids: "Least you've got a name—mine's blank."
Rung: "I think the program is struggling with human gender—do I look like a 'Mary Sue'?"

Rewind: "'Course, you know who Misfire reminds me of..."
Swerve: "Shaddup."
Rewind: "And you're a bad shot!"
Swerve: "Not as bad as Misfire!"
Rung: "My head begs to differ."

"I'm a serious person, Swerve! I can't help it! I only have two expressions, and the second one is just an angrier version of the first!"

—Ultra Magnus

Rewind: "'Join me!' says Rodimus. 'Help me search for the Knights of Cybertron! Explore strange new worlds! Seek out new life! Jump up and down on the Duly Appointed Officer of the Tyrest Accord!'"
Swerve: "I don't care what happens next: this quest just made the top three..."
Rung: "Do you think this type of thing happens to Bumblebee and Prowl?"

Notes

Continuity notes

Though epic, his quest for Roger Ebert's approval was to no avail.

• Swerve's top ten list of quests include the "Moonquest" for Luna-1 he mentioned going on in issue #1; a "Matrix Quest", referring to the story arc by that name from the Generation 1 Marvel comic; a "Titan Quest", which presumably doesn't refer to the events of the 2012 annual, since Swerve didn't go on that mission; and something called a "Thumb Quest", which he describes as legendarily bad later in the issue (and yet still makes #5 on his top ten!).
• In this issue only, Aquafend was shown with an exposed mouth. He hasn't been seen without his mouthplate in subsequent issues, so it's up for debate on whether he has a retractable mouthplate or if it was simply due to the artist's differing art style.
• The luckless Pipes got hit by Brainstorm's existential gun at some point off-panel — another incident he can add to his growing list of unfortunate events.
• Cyclonus sings in Old Cybertronian, the ancient language from several previous Roberts issues, most famously spoken by Vos. He is also noted to have a Tetrahexian accent; he mourned for the loss of Tetrahex back in issue #1.
• Swerve is looking for a new room-mate since his previous one, Red Alert, was put into cold storage in issue #11. In the course of the story he is turned down by Drift, Tailgate and finally Ultra Magnus, ultimately leaving the spot vacant and Swerve alone. This becomes a key plot point later.
• Swerve recalls his time on Kimia, and Cyclonus's attack on the facility, from the "Chaos" storyline.
• The unrealistic nature of holomatter avatar hair is flagged up, originally mentioned in issue #5.
• Swerve plans to visit simultronic suites while on Hedonia, a form of virtual reality escapism seen in Spotlight: Blurr.
• Magnus chummed around with Verity Carlo during the Last Stand of the Wreckers mini-series. She appears on the cover in her sports-bra-and-hot-pants getup from that mini, while in the comic itself she 'appears' in the clothes she wore back during the "-ations" era. Magnus recalls the nickname she called him in Last Stand, "Uncle Magnus".
• Killmaster (the one with the wand), mentioned before in issue #5 and Spotlight: Orion Pax, is revealed to be Whirl's arch-nemesis, and consequently—not too surprisingly—quite dead, according to Whirl.

Stupid crotch badge.

• What the rest of Swerve's pals get up to after ditching him with Magnus for a while is revealed in the short prose story included in the back of this issue, "Signal to Noise".
• Magnus tells Swerve that Tyrest promised him things—and that he took them. Swerve struggles to understand, but what these things were will be revealed soon enough.
• Magnus also confesses to a love of music—something that will be revisited in the Christmas special, Silent Light.
• Swerve mentions his last Autobot badge got damaged. Really doesn't sound that important, does it? He also mentions that he had a "temporary" badge, but adds that "it looked stupid". Back in issue 1 (drawn by Nick Roche), we saw that his "temporary" badge was located on his crotch. Once Alex Milne took over art duties beginning with issue 2, he kept drawing Swerve without a badge.
• Skids buys Rodimus a Galactic Council captain's hat from the gift shop, hearkening back to Rodimus's comments about funny hats in the 2012 annual.
• The memorial plaque for the Ark-1 seen in issue #9 included the name "Tail-", obstructed by shadow. Now we know that was not Tailgate, as we were supposed to think at the time, but another guy called Tailpipe.
• The partially-faded inscription on Tailgate's arm, it is revealed, originally said "Waste Disposal", but he had Ratchet replace the damaged text with "Bomb Disposal" prior to issue #6. In an artistic error that was presumably the result of foreknowledge of this twist, the first few instances of the "fixed" inscription seen on Tailgate's arm in said issue actually did read "Waste Disposal", which was later corrected for the trade paperback collection.
• As many fans correctly theorized, Tailgate's odd behavior in issue #12 was indeed him leading Rewind into explaining to him what he should do in order to defuse the bomb correctly.
• The song Cyclonus teaches Tailgate, like Vos's dialogue from issue #7, uses the Cyberglyphics substitution cypher from the Titan Transformers comic and translates to "I've got my own". (Tailgate initially mispronounces it as "I've goq my xwn".)
• Rewind pokes fun at Swerve, saying that he is a similar personality to Misfire's—right down to his poor aim. Swerve and Misfire would later become friends, bonding over their abysmal aim and distaste for the fourth wall.
• As the Lost Lighters return to the shuttle, Rung says "Savor this feeling, everyone... you never know what's around the corner." Definitely foreshadowing...

Transformers references

• Whirl describes himself as having "no known weaknesses", a term used to describe especially powerful characters in Bob Budiansky's original The Transformers Universe Generation 1 character profiles.
• A Torkuli from the original The Transformers cartoon episode "Webworld" can be seen outside the bar on page 7.
• During the Hedonia escapades, Rung wonders whether Bumblebee and Prowl ever get into similar situations. This is a meta-reference to sister title Robots in Disguise, where those two are lead characters, and a book tonally different enough from More than Meets the Eye that such events would be completely out of place there.

Real-world references

• This story is named after the Bob Dylan song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
• Rewind's avatar wears a shirt of the Northern Irish band The Divine Comedy. Bespectacled frontman Neil Hannon even appears in silhouette on a patch on his shoulder on the issue's cover.
• The Mobius Circuit is a reference to a Möbius strip.
• Rung is concerned that the avatar program has assigned him the name of "Mary Sue". A "Mary Sue" is a literary term springing from Star Trek fanfiction to describe a wish-fulfillment character inserted into a story as an avatar of the author themselves, who is awesome at everything and is loved by everyone. However, the reactionary nature of internet fandom has led many to immediately slap this term on any self-created character an author adds to a previously existing universe—some have accused Rung of being guilty of this crime.
• Skids's ID, meanwhile, is a blank black pocketbook. While on the surface this calls back to his missing memories, it is also evocative of the 'psychic paper' employed by his avatar's inspiration: a blank piece of paper that causes viewers to see whatever form of identification they expect to see.
• Whirl offers Magnus a drink called "Mood Whiplash", named for the storytelling trope—coined by website TV Tropes—that sees fiction snap from the heartwarming to the horrifying with distressing speed. This is the second drink named after one of TV Tropes's tropes, following Nightmare Fuel from issue #11.
• As the Autobots jump on Magnus, Rewind, quoted above, is of course cribbing from the opening sequence of Star Trek.
• A Vorlon alien from the television series Babylon 5 can be seen on the cover underneath holo-Rung's arm.
• Blurr's lap times, as mentioned by Swerve, are evocative of issues of the Marvel UK comic: Blurr is in #117 and #118, where Ultra Magnus is knocked out (foreshadowing his experiences later in this story). The significance of #111 and #123 is not apparent.

Trivia

• A whoooooole lot of material had to be cut from this script. One scene was going to have Rodimus bring in the local dignitries to meet the famous Ultra Magnus, to prove the Autobots weren't crude warmongers; since Magnus was blitzed out of his head, Whirl and the gang would be moving his limbs around to make it look like Great Boo's up he's 'up'.^[1]
• The avatars on Alex Milne's cover all differ somewhat from Guidi's interpretations within the comic, but Rung and Skids's are especially different. On the cover, Rung is an effette, dapper Victorian gentleman, while in the comic, he is an unremarkable, tweed-wearing nebbish; Skids, meanwhile, is essentially James Bond on the cover, but in the comic, is basically the Eleventh Doctor, complete with bow-tie.
• Tailgate's avatar makes much more sense following the revelation from "This Calamitous Life".
• Since the phrasing is unclear, James Roberts has confirmed on his Twitter that the 50 shanix Rodimus got Drift to give to the crew, was from Drift's personal account.
• In 2018, he clarified that the reason Skids names Misfire of all bots as his nemesis is simply that Skids was looking at his Misfire-colored drink at the time.^[2]
• Ultra Magnus's steering wheel is in the right-hand side of his cab, a feature that only appears in vehicles from countries who drive on the left side of the road, such as England.

Errors

"Make sure to obscure the shoulders when seen from the front. The Autobot badge should not be visible." - "Got that!"

• Guido Guidi's pencils are credited to "Guido Giudi", though his inks are credited correctly.
• Drift has both his swords on page 2, when page 4 shows us he should be missing one, which he has left with Rodimus during their lesson.
• Ultra Magnus denies that "relax" is a word, claiming that he's never heard of it, despite the fact that he used the word in a previous issue.
• Scale's a little wonky. The first time we see the holomatter avatars, they're just big enough to sit at the bar. Then, when the Lost Lighters return to the bar, they're the same size. This includes Magnus, who is slightly larger in-person. However, later, when they're trying to transform Magnus, either Magnus grew or the crew SHRUNK.
• When Tailgate reveals the truth about his original occupation to Cyclonus, he shows him the "Bomb Disposal" inscription on his arm, which has "Bomb" and "Disposal" written in two separate lines. Yet back in issue 6, when the fixed inscription (which had previously just read "osal" before Tailgate had Ratchet "fix" it, as he tells Cyclonus in this issue) was first shown, both words appeared in one single line. (In the original single release of that issue, it erroneously read "Waste Disposal", thereby accidentally spoiling this issue's revelation early; the trade paperback reprint had it fixed to read "Bomb Disposal", though still written in a single line.)
• Swerve's flashback scene (set four million years in the past) depicts him in the same body design as his present-day self, rather than (for example) the design seen in issue #28 and #30 of the 2009-2011 ongoing. This isn't exactly an error for this issue per se, but it somewhat becomes one when Swerve's change of body designs (specifically, his shoulders) becomes a plot point in issue 43. Although it would appear in retrospect that the script for this issue specifically asked for the scene to be laid out so Swerve's shoulders would be subtly obscured when seen from the front, a view of Swerve from the back reveals that his shoulders are still made up of large wheels, like on his present-day self, which completely defies the purpose of this plot point. Even worse, Guido appears to have specifically used Nick Roche's design for Swerve from issue 1 as a reference, with the Autobot insignia on his crotch deliberately removed (but still retaining the general outline), in contrast to the completely blank crotch Swerve had sported beginning with issue 2 (which is also used for the present day scenes in this issue). To be fair to Guido, changing the body type would perhaps have distract from the pathos of present-day Swerve realising he had been given a fake number through using the same words Blurr had used in the past.

Crew manifest

• Rung is up and about again after reawakening in issue #11.
• 5 deaths, 5 new arrivals (plus 20 or so Faders), and 1 boxed since the launch.

Soundtrack

• "Now My Heart Is Full" by Morrissey
• "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan
• "The Underdogs" by Rialto
• "The Good Old Days" by The Lodger
• "The Man Who Loved Beer" by David Byrne
• "Pamplona" by Pelle Carlberg
• "Lonely Hearts Still Beat the Same" by The Research
• "Last Night I Nearly Died" by Duke Special
• "It's Not the End of the World?" by Super Furry Animals
• "Bar Italia" by Pulp

Foreign localization

Japanese

• Title: "Cybertron-jin no Homesick Blues" (サイバトロン人のホームシック・ブルース, "Homesick Blues of Cybertronians")

Swedish

• Title: "Hemlängtansblues" ("Homesick Blues")
• This reprint retains Whirl's line about not having killed anyone, in spite of #22 proving that statement false and the Vol. 3 TPB editing said line out.

References