#blueike

Recently completed colored commish that's part of a larger origin story for how Strongarm became Grand Strongarm!

Some assorted trivia here:

Slink and Snitch are lifted from the RiD15 children's chapter books, with my designs and personalities for them being heavily inspired by Molly and Mac Mange, the Metallikats, from SWAT Kats. In fact, it goes so far as them being voiced by April Winchell and Neil Ross, reprising the crooks indirectly.

The Grand Device's colors are inspired by G1 Galvatron's original toy, with the Device resembling Galvatron to homage his infamous Unicron upgrade from Headmasters.

Zeta is lifted from Angry Birds, a villainous bird from the game and movies with an ice theme. The same Zeta was one of the flock who was part of Angry Birds Transformers, where she represented Slipstream and Nightbird. Here Zeta's just an RiD-fied version of her movie character design, using Filch and the other Corvicons as a basis. She's actually in Robot Mode, with her Vehicle Mode being based on the Tank Knights Fortress style vehicles Angry Birds Transformers went with.

Windra is from the Japanese RiD15 toy line, ironically colored to more RatBat like than RatBat actually is.

OC Mole Dive is named and colored after Cybertron Menasor (who was named Mole Dive in Japanese). Funny enough, in one of his component mole Beast Modes, I'm realizing he's colored similarly to Grounder from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

In past RiD15 comics I've done, I made references to IDW and IDW2, but now we're entering the Skybound reference era, with Clawtrap name dropping Goliant from Void Rivals.

While I can’t say for sure if K. Rool and Krew will be in Bananza, though there sure is a lot of evidence pointing in that direction, I still wanted to entertain how a potential Kremling Elder would look.

It would appear, according to staff on the movie, that the ships are actually living, organic creatures.

By extension, going by their design similarities, the TFONE Quintessons are likely fully organic themselves.

Prior to the Quintus Prime origin, it was never clear where the Quintessons came from but their designs are clearly mechanical.

Japanese media would offer an explanation of sorts, in the Controverse manga.

In this story Primacron, the ancient sea monkey alien that created Unicron and later Tornedron in the G1 cartoon, would stake the claim that he created ALL mechanical life. When the Quintesson Judge calls this out, Primacron calmly responds that he created mechanical bacterial life once and surmises those creatures became the Quintesson race.

Further manga would reveal this is true, and go the extra mile by revealing Primus and Primacron were ancient beings that existed in the universe prior to the Big Bang (mirroring a similar idea in the Marvel comics).

Primacron was originally Primus’ pet, but as his intellect grew, and so did his ambitions, and once the old universe died and ours was born, Primacron would enslave his former master in what would become The Matrix of Leadership, and it would grant life to his mechanical creations, the Beast Mode Primitives, the Quintessons and Unicron.

It would appear most modern media opts go instead cast the Quintessons as organic creatures, created by Quintus Prime’s Emberstone, that pilot mechanical suits.

Cyberverse’s take on the Judges also goes an extra mile, similar to Primacron, revealing that these Quintessons are born by fusing five distinct lifeforms together, all chosen to judge a universe accordingly. This is depicted by using Starscream as the dominant component….

But unlike the wholly mechanical Judge seen before, Starscream’s Judge form has organic components, with other organic races in the Greys and Velgrox.

While there’s an argument the G1 Quints might be biomechanical, it’s never been clearly defined with Cyberverse Quint Starscream more plainly leaning in that direction.

As for the organic technology present among the TFONE Quints, that potentially has two origins.

The more famous one are the Trans-Organics, the prototype race the Quintessons developed before making the Consumer Goods and Military Hardware robots that would become The Transformers.

A cyborg like race of primitive animals, they were unable to accomplish basic tasks, and gave into their beast like savagery, destroying several Quints before they were sealed away deep within Cybertron.

In the modern era, a group of Quintessons opted to free their ancient beasts of burden, tricking Galvatron into unleashing them so that the Trans-Organics may destroy the Transformers, allowing the Quints to reclaim Cybertron. Inevitability this fails, with the Quints done in by the Dweller beast, an energy vampire worm Trans-Organic.

The Dweller is the most famous one, and spawned other counterparts seen in Cyberverse and EarthSpark, with the EarthSpark versions being a race native to Quintessa, typing it back to its origins.

The second inspiration, if potentially coincidental, could be GI Joe’s Cobra-La.

The GI Joe movie would reveal Cobra had its origins in Cobra-La, an ancient race of snake people that were the original dominant species of Earth before us mammalian humans evolved.

Cobra Commander is native to Cobra-La, originally being a snake man scientist who became mutated in a lab accident before becoming leader of the snake themed terrorist organization that’d slither into America.

He’s further mutated as punishment for his failure in taking over the world in Cobra-La’s name, slow mutating into a cobra.

While the DiC sequel series would see him restored, albeit still as a mutant snake man.

Presumably CC’s still a snake dude when he briefly menaces in the G1 Movie era Autobots as Old Snake.

Anyhow, the relevance to the Cobra-Laians and Quintessons, is the former use organic based technology. Basically, this means they create specially developed animals to use in place of tools, bridges & vehicles.

@bogleech’s own post on Cobra-La discusses other examples of their technology: https://bogleech.com/cobrala

In the GI Joe film, the Cobra-La people are disgusted by humanity’s use of inorganic machinery, and opt to eradicate humans and reclaim the land that was theirs prior to the Ice Age.

In the Energon Universe, this prejudice exists still for humans, as Cobra Commander is instead a human that lives in their ranks, but they’re more offended by the existence of the Transformers after CC’s science team dug out a frozen Megatron to study him.

Aghast at a cold, mechanical planet populated by giant metallic robots, Cobra-La sends Pythona aboard a space fairing … whatever this fella is…

… to Cybertron to nip this so called invasion in the bud.

It would appear she takes a semi unintentional detour, dealing with matters in the Void Rivals series first, where she’s set to battle the Skuxxoid in particular. (I’d laugh if she became the wife he constantly talks about.)

The Quints and Cobra-La sharing the concept of organic technology is honestly very interesting, and while I do think it was created independently of GI Joe, should more TFONE content be made and the Transformers and Quintessons go to Earth, a further connection to Cobra-La would be really cool.

It’s theorized in the Energon Universe that the Quintessons could’ve created or at least influenced the Cobra-La people, and such an idea isn’t unheard of, as the Zertonians and Agorrians of Void Rivals are revealed to be descendants of Transformers via a new character called Zerta Trion. It’s implied but not yet totally confirmed the Quintessons created the Transformers also via the G1 cartoon as well, and I just think it’d be hilarious if the proud, organic Cobra-La people would discover they’re related to the fully mechanical Transformers via the Quintessons and be utterly mortified. (I don’t think they’d like their Zertonian/Agorrian cousins much either since, despite being organic they have technology based Energon ports on their heads.)

Commission for @dynared ~! Based on current, as of typing, events in the Skybound TF comics, as well as a rumor about a 5th season of EarthSpark.

The additional kids are also partnered to Terrans, based on a trio from EarthSpark toy promotions before the toyline ended. These kids feel like characters the Maltos WOULD be friends with if the show didn’t treat them as somewhat antisocial to most (non robotic) people.

The boy partnered to Medix, the black girl partnered to Dropshot (the horsebot) and the glasses girl partnered to the Powerdashers (interrogating Kickback) who can Combine in this scenario.

Defensor is here for the same reason as Devastator is in my usual EarthSpark musings, to increase Combiner presence as he makes the most sense as a GHOST operative over Superion.

Commish for @dynared focusing on comics vs manga somewhat as Skybound Starscream and Skybound Wheeljack duke it out using what they liked from “man-guh”.

Gonna be honest, if you weren’t already onboard with EarthSpark, this probably isn’t gonna change your mind.

This reeks of the same waffling back and forth that plagued the Star Wars sequel films where they couldn’t really decide what they wanted to be. The final film seemed to go back to what semblance of ideas were presented in Force Awakens and ignored Last Jedi, so I wonder if this is the same idea: partially ignore the last two seasons and go back to the first season’s ideas. Hometown Heroes certainly leans in this direction from what I’m seeing. This feels like it’s them reviving an old episode plot about the kids getting cocky and paying for it. Which is good, but again why did they wait until now?

Robby being framed is odd, more so in who is doing the framing. Is it Fairemaistro? He’s the only human villain left and certainly not a popular one at that. Is it Starscream? That’s the only other guy I can think of, and Starscream is usually petty enough to do something like that. Is Robby an adult now? The mention of years is throwing me off, because it most certainly hasn’t been that many years, I think it was a year time skip? I might be misremembering. Still the Autobots and Maltos toppling many a foe is laughable because we all know the Autobots have done jack all here, it’s usually the human Malto kids Steven Universing the problem away on their own, so thank goodness the final season did the bare minimum by letting Terratronus and SOME of the Terrans bisect the Quintesson ship.

I think what I find the most interesting is Optimus running into an old enemy.

I’m slightly wondering if Megatron has gone back to being evil, he’s notably absent in the write ups, and you’d think they’d go out of their way to mention Megatron’s reactions to Cybertron’s current predicament. Plus Megatron falling back on villainy was a plot point in the pitch bible so it’s certainly possible, especially in a transitional phase where Megatron has gone back to being evil in new media like CyberWorld and Wild King. Optimus being beside himself with the problem on Cybertron feels more Megatron adjacent, and that’s really the only thing that would result in such a reaction in this universe. Optimus has no major rogues gallery, his only true rival is Megatron thanks to Hasbro writers, and fans never truly experimenting with anyone else. Marvel G1 Scorponok is the closest thing here, but he wound up becoming something of an anti hero, and that’s only because Zarak was in the driver’s seat. The Fallen kinda fits, but he’s just “a” Megatron, and Primordial Megatron working for Unicron or his own warped goals is still just Megatron. Nemesis Prime/Scourge (via RiD01 and RotB) is really the only other guy, but Hasbro doesn’t really use Nemesis for anything other than a convenient black repaint to boost toy presence, rarely does Nemesis Prime actually do anything on his own in fiction.

This version of Nemesis, back when he was Scourge, is really the only noteworthy one that actually did anything and almost succeeded. He’s also the most popular by default due to his rivalry with Optimus and Sky-Byte, and his plans to control Fortress Maximus for his own ends. If Nemesis-Scourge is here instead, would he be trying to use the Cyber Sleeves for ultimate power? We don’t know until it airs.

Both write ups feel like what the show should’ve been in the first place, so better late than never, but also too late. The fanbase has moved on. The only saving grace this has is Weismann hopefully still having the chops to guide the crashing ship into a tree rather than a bustling metropolis.

Like this sums up EarthSpark’s tumultuous production and legacy with fandom. The concept of the Terrans is cool, Nightshade being a nerdy owl is fun, and Grunkle Megatron is neat on paper, but the writing of the series is atrocious and the lack of confidence in what this show could be is appalling. Trying to fix it now when people have moved on to CyberWorld, Wild King, and Energon Universe, all infinitely better stories, if simplistic, because they’re confident in what they want to be.