Spotlight Arcee

[sandhog]

I noticed that Steve has added a Spotlight Arcee in the comic shop, any info preview pages knocking about somewhere to shed some light on this one?

[MissingSea]

Announced in Simon Furman's Blog - simonfurman.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/and-the-next-spotlight-is/

Looks interesting hopefully this'll shed light on why fembots exist

[sandhog]

I read the info on the blog but who is jhiaxus? Is that Fortress Maximus on the cover? Looks like she is a tough warrior and the cover somehow reminds me of Megatron Origins 1 where Megs has just minced another transformer

[Omega Steve]

Jhiaxus is/was a character from the Transformers Generation 2 comic (which ran from 1993-94). He was a liego centuro in the Cybertronian Empire.

The idea was that while the bots and cons were slugging it out on Cybertron, a whole bunch of other TFs had deserted millions of years back and subsequently built-up a galaxy spanning empire with numerous Cyber-formed worlds. The demon-like Leige Maximo was the big cheese but we only saw him in the last issue. Jhiaxus was a tough bruiser able to take on Prime or Megs.

Most likely he'll have been reinvented for IDW though.

[Omegastoopreme]

This be him

[Chris N]

Jhiaxus was mentioned by Omega Supreme in the Optimus Prime spotlight.

It seems that, in this continuity, he was Nova Prime's chief scienticist bloke.

[rb]

Jhiaxus - best TF name ever!

[Omega Steve]

Hey, check out what Simon Furman is saying about Spotlight Arcee on his blog. It sounds promising.

November 5th, 2007
Been a while since I did one of these, and there’s a few to catch up on (Devastation #6, TF-UK #8 etc), but for now here’s my post-script pontifications on Transformers Spotlight Arcee. The storm of comments that accompanied my earlier announcement of this particular Spotlight (which encapsulates the whole divisive issue of gender in Transformers) has served to make me only too aware how much this whole business seems to get fans riled up, one way or the other. For those who need some context here, Arcee was introduced in the original Transformers animated movie, joining the (limited) ranks of what have become known as fem-bots (robots with distinct female characteristics) in the Transformers universe. Personally, it always seemed strange to have any kind of gender demarcation in a machine-based species that didn’t reproduce (at least, not in any conventional sense). I did a 5-page story back in the Marvel UK days called “Prime’s Rib”, which explained away Arcee as an attempt by the quote-unquote ‘male’ robots to be politically correct. It wasn’t intended to be taken at all seriously, by the way. This time around, within the context of the new IDW/TF-verse, Arcee is a much more troubled and tormented character. When we first meet Arcee, ’she’ is on a personal crusade, a vengeful rage and adrenaline-fuelled tilt that brings ‘her’ into inevitable conflict with law-enforcement officer Ultra Magnus. It’s not pretty. This in turn leads us to Garrus-9, an Autobot detention facility (something readers have speculated about since we showcased a Decepticon penal colony in Spotlight Hot Rod). Garrus-9 brings the authoritarian Fortress Maximus into the mix, and a story thread running on from the end of Spotlight Optimus Prime (concerning a certain sextet of captive combiners!). Add into the mix Banzaitron, some Combaticons (minus Swindle) and Jetfire and the Technobots (oh, and Arcee of course!) and you can start to see there’s one heck of a showdown/melee in the offing. Oh, and Arcee’s ’state of mind’ ties into the Dead Universe storyline (which all starts to kick off in the last couple of issues of Devastation). And yes, why ‘he’ and ’she’ are or aren’t used is most definitely addressed. Alex Milne is on art duties, and if his two covers are anything to go by, you’re in for a treat. Spotlight Arcee hits in Feb 08. I can almost feel the discussion thread stormclouds looming already!

[sandhog]

Duh my lack of Gen 2 background knowledge is really causing me problems here. Who is Banzaiatron? I read spotlight Prime (finally) and Monstructor was well cool Quite nice to have characters in who I know nothing about. I read an overview of the gen 2 series to get a bit more clued up ;D

I like Furmans new take on Arcee, sounds interesting. All the suspense waiting for the spotlights to actually come out is driving me nutts.

[chrisp500]

Banzaitron is the head of the Cons secret service, as far as I know he was an Actionmaster toy but never appeared in any of the old comics before the IDW run.

[rb]

chrisp500 said:

Banzaitron is the head of the Cons secret service, as far as I know he was an Actionmaster toy but never appeared in any of the old comics before the IDW run.

He was listed in the DW encylcopedia thingy IIRC.