Spotlight: Arcee

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« The Transformers Spotlight #12 »
File:Spotlight arcee.jpg
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 IDW continuity
Chronology Devastation

This ain't the Fembot we all know and love, folks...

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, necessitating Ultra Magnus to hunt her down and bring her in as 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. A furious battle ensues, 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, turning her into a female, "because he was curious, because he could", just to see what introducing gender to the Transformer race would do. He then discarded her and left her to her fate. 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.

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots Decepticons Others

Notes

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 her, 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 Replay a number of female Transformers make cameo appearances.
  • 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 "it" 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.

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. 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" [1] and that her current form is "who she was always meant to be" [2].

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".[3] 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."[4] 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. [5]
  • The 2011 movie The Skin I Live In has some similarities to Arcee's backstory as presented here.

Errors

  • Maybe not an error, but Fortress Maximus's shoulder's design differs from the one seen in "Spotlight: Blaster".

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.

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References

  1. ↑ "New Cybertron Part 5: Future Glories Lost"
  2. ↑ All Hail Optimus Part 3: The Medium and the Message
  3. ↑ Shotgun Mermaid (Mairghread Scott's tumblr), December 27 2013
  4. ↑ Furman Q&A: "Response to Maigrhead Scott" (and comments
  5. ↑ Colorist at deviantART
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