Spotlight: Arcee

« The Transformers Spotlight #12 »
Graduated from St. Trinians with honors.
"The Transformers Spotlight: Arcee"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	February 20, 2008
Cover date	February 2008
Written by	Simon Furman
Art by	Alex Milne
Colors by	Josh Perez and Kris Carter
Letters by	Chris Mowry
Edits by	Andrew Steven Harris
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Devastation

Sometimes vengeance and saving the galaxy from an empire go hand in hand until you get thrown in prison for it. Figures...

Synopsis

"Oh, I finally get it! 'Jhi-ax-us?' Gee, ax us!"

An enraged Arcee has been tearing a path of destruction through the universe against the forces and machinations of Jhiaxus and Nova Prime... but Ultra Magnus only knew it as a needless rampage, with no knowledge of Jhiaxus and Nova still operating, and so he hunts her down to bring her in as allegedly authorized by the Tyrest Accord. After a protracted battle, she gets knocked out by a flash/concussion grenade and taken into custody by Magnus. As they leave the area, a couple of apparent drones surface and talk to a monitor—promising that the Nega-Core has not been detected and/or taken, which elicits a confirmation from their master that preparations for the Expansion will continue.

Garrus-9 penitentiary: Arcee's spark is being held in a cell, along with some notable others. Warden Fortress Maximus confers with Jetfire and the Technobots about when they can incarcerate the Monstructor components in the same way; Jetfire notes that they can't break through the destructive programming far enough to rehabilitate/reform the sparks (as per Optimus Prime's orders), and as such, haven't pulled the sparks from the frames. As they confer, the Decepticon Onslaught leads his Combaticons in a perfectly-timed (as monitored by Banzaitron) assault on the facility, striking at precisely the right grid-sensor-shuffling moment and breaking into the penitentiary.

Fortress Maximus has no choice but to unleash the "threat-level-9" Arcee on them, with the sole caveat of destroying her spark (via a spark casing g-force crush) if she attempts to escape, and mentions to her that Omega Supreme brought the Autobots up to speed on Jhiaxus being Nova Prime's strategist and still alive and scheming. A furious battle ensue as Arcee tears into the Combaticons, but after she cuts through Blast Off and plows through Brawl in vehicle mode, the Combaticons (who recognize her when she first attacked) manage to teleport out with the unconscious Monstructor components (whom Banzaitron wants to join his Secret Service).

Arcee proposes that she be released to hunt them down or killed on the spot. When asked for her motivation she grows angry, commenting that "you don't even know you're DOING it... you unconsciously SENSE a difference." She then reveals that Jhiaxus tampered with her CNA, to give his idea of a feminine shape and to cause people to unconsciously gender Arcee with feminine pronouns, "because he was curious, because he could", just to see what introducing gender to the Transformer race would do, and then abandoned her since, according to Arcee, she "didn't measure up to whatever ideal he'd hoped to achieve," leaving her to a "maddening maelstrom of contradictory sensory input," that were a result of the CNA procedure. Traumatized and vengeful, all she can think of is wiping out Jhiaxus and all trace of his tampering in this universe.

Fortress Maximus disagrees, pointing the remote spark-casing-control unit at her, but Jetfire tells him to let her go (he'll back up whatever story Maximus concocts for her escape), as they have precious little to lose at this point.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Others
Arcee (1) Ultra Magnus (2) Fortress Maximus (4) Repugnus (5) Longtooth (6) Nosecone (11) Strafe (12) Fastlane (13) Cloudraker (14) Scattershot (15) Jetfire (16) Kick-Off (27) Jackpot (28) Rad (29) Skyfall (30) Windbreaker (31) Over-Run (32) Turbofire (33) Vroom (34) Rollout (35) Sprocket (36) Afterburner (41) Lightspeed (42)	Skyjack (7) Ransack (8) Bludgeon (9) Axer (23) Banzaitron (24) Gutcruncher (25) Roadblock (26) Brawl (37) Onslaught (38) Blast Off (39) Vortex (40)	Jhiaxus (3) Monstructor (10) Scowl (17) Icepick (18) Slog (19) Bristleback (20) Wildfly (21) Birdbrain (22)

Notes

Production notes

• Part of Furman's work in early IDW was coming up with new, coherent reasons and rationals for various toy gimmicks. This Spotlight controversially aimed to give a reason for why Transformers have genders, something Furman thought didn't make sense for robots that don't produce sexually. It was not considered by him to be a story about Arcee's gender being changed or touching on any trans issues (both things fans had brought up at the time) as, to him, there was no gender.

Continuity notes

• Jhiaxus and talk of the Expansion is part of the growing Dead Universe storyline, which will pay off in Revelation, and then again in Chaos, and then again in Dark Cybertron.
• Later stories will clarify it's not being a lone female in a boy's toyline that traumatises Arcee, but the fact of being experimented on against her will and then discarded.
• Arcee states that she was the first female Transformer experiment and it is implied she is something rare and (perhaps) unique. However nothing in the issue states that she was the only female Transformer created due to Jhiaxus's program. Indeed, in Megatron Origin and All Hail Megatron a number of female Transformers make cameo appearances. However, as the comics went on, Arcee would be treated as the only female Transformer by other writers until "Dark Cybertron" introduced ones from other worlds. Lost Light #8 would later retcon that the female Transformer cameos were Cybertronians but weren't the result of Jhiaxus, instead the result of Cybertronians going offworld and coming to self-realisation that they were female.
• Arcee's reference to gendered pronouns makes little sense in the original context. It stands to reason that a race originally entirely devoid of gender would lack sexually-oriented pronouns in their native language. So the use of "he" and "she" would likely be supplemented with a uniform variation of "they" for everybody. Once female Transformers were retconned as having previously existed, the existence of the pronouns makes sense.
• Arcee's backstory of being an unwitting experiment comes up in "An Uneventful Night", where she's out to destroy the Enigma of Combination so nobody else can be altered against their will, and more broadly in the second half of Barber's Transformers ongoing as she's mistrustful of 'great men' figures on a cause.
• Arcee stabbing Blast Off with her sword gets a minor call back in Till All Are One #1.
• First appearances: Arcee; Repugnus, Longtooth, Skyjack, and Ransack appear as disembodied sparks only; Cloudraker, Fastlane, Jackpot, Rad, Skyfall, Windbreaker, Over-Run, Turbofire, Vroom, Rollout, Sprocket; Roadblock, Brawl, Vortex; Jhiaxus.

Later retcons

• After bringing Arcee to the fore in the Robots in Disguise and Optimus Prime comics – and introducing numerous other female Transformers along the way – author John Barber would sporadically touch on the events surrounding Arcee's origin story, fleshing out background details and providing some subtle retcons.
  • Windblade would introduce the lost colony world of Caminus, where female and male Transformers naturally coexisted. This would lead into the idea that ancient Cybertron did have female Transformers, but had lost them for unknown reasons. Rather than a Frankensteinian attempt to force gender on the species, Jhiaxus's experiments were an effort to reintroduce a lost element of Cybertronian society.
  • Glimpses of Arcee's internal thoughts provided some context for the otherwise troubling circumstances behind her transformation. Nick Roche's Sins of the Wreckers #3 implied that Arcee had, to some extent, consented to these experiments because she did not see Jhiaxus "for what he was". Other dark mutterings mentioned that she had 'allowed' him to "do that" to her, suggesting that her troubled mental state following the change was the product of something other than the alteration of her CNA. Later issues suggested that Arcee was struggling with identity issues even before falling in with Jhiaxus, noting that her prior self was a "lie [she] told herself" and that her current form is "who she was always meant to be". This was brought full circle in the Optimus Prime finale issue where Arcee would explicitly refer to herself as being transgender, having been born into a male body but identifying as female. It was also retconned that she volunteered for Jhiaxus' extreme procedure and that her violent behaviour was in large part motivated by the side effects compounded with Jhiaxus' non-existent aftercare, and that moreover, fellow trans fembot Anode's disappearance in 1516CE was what cued the start of her rampage, in part since Anode had been helping her with her medical issues.

Transformers references

• This issue's cast is another deep dive into the tail end of the Generation 1 line. Most of the Garrus-9 guards are Action Masters; we also get a smattering of later-run Pretenders.

Trivia

• Six years later the comic caused a brief conflict between Furman and Mairghread Scott, who developed IDW's second female Transformer, Windblade. Scott implied that Windblade wouldn't have a special origin for being female and when asked about Spotlight: Arcee, she said she found the implications of Arcee's gender making her mad and a woman being the aberration "upsetting". She clarified that she didn't believe Furman was trying to make any gender comments, that "in a vacuum, Furman’s story is completely legitimate" (but sadly stories do not exist in a social & cultural vacuum), and pinned the blame on how rare female characters were in the brand; "Arcee’s origin is offensive because we don’t have any other female origins to balance it". Furman considered this a personal attack, "accus[ing] me of apparently setting out to be offensive to women", and also took issue with another creator "sling[ing] mud", believing they had a duty to be respectful when discussing each other's work. "However ‘carefully’ Mrs. Scott chose her words, the message was the same: Spotlight Arcee was some derogatory and misguided portrait of all women and we’re going to fix that." Scott and Furman talked and "ironed out the bumps" a few days later.
• The issue contains bonus sketch art by Alex Milne, including color tests for Arcee.
• Cover B was colored in a style that pays homage to the cover of Akira Vol.1.

Errors

• More of an inconsistency, but Fortress Maximus as previously (and briefly) seen in Spotlight: Blaster appeared to be based on his traditional G1 design, whereas Milne debuts a brand-new original design for him in this issue. Seeing how close the two comics were released, this is probably just a matter of reference material not being available at the right time.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Arcee, Nova Prime, the Pretender Monsters, Ultra Magnus, Fortress Maximus and some dead guy by Alex Milne and Josh Perez.
• Cover B: Arcee being assembled by Alex Milne and Josh Perez.
• Cover RI: Uncolored sketch of cover B.

• 
  Kiss me deadly
• 
  Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors...
• 
  RI Cover

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Reprints

• The Transformers: Spotlight Volume 3 (September 17, 2008) ISBN 160010245X / ISBN 978-1600102455
• The Transformers: The Premiere Collection Volume 2 (June 17, 2009) ISBN 1600104371 / ISBN 978-1600104374
• The Transformers: The IDW Collection Volume Three (March 2, 2011) ISBN 1600108563 / ISBN 978-1600108563
• The Transformers: Spotlight Omnibus Volume 1 (April 15, 2015) ISBN 1631402463 / ISBN 978-1631402463
• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 42: Revelation (October 17, 2018)

• 
  Spotlight Volume 3 – cover art by Marcelo Matere
• 
  The Premiere Collection Volume 2 – cover art by Nick Roche & Josh Burcham
• 
  The IDW Collection Volume Three – cover art by E. J. Su
• 
  Spotlight Omnibus Volume 1 – cover art by Jeffrey Veregge
• 
  The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 42: Revelation – cover art by Don Figueroa and Nick Roche