Book of Logos
From MediaWiki
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| "Book of Logos" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive) | ||||||||||||
| Published in | "Derailment" | ||||||||||||
| First published | December 27, 2016 | ||||||||||||
| By | Jim Sorenson and David Bishop | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars: Uprising | ||||||||||||
It's the end of the world as Logos knows it.
Synopsis
[edit]
Featured characters
[edit]Given that this story is allegorical in its nature, surging back and forward through time, it is nearly impossible to give a traditional cast list. As such, this list is our best attempt at deciphering it, and may not be fully accurate. (Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
Quotes
[edit]Notes
[edit]Continuity notes
[edit]- Chapter 2 seems to describe the events of "Broken Windshields"; the "first brother" probably refers to Lio Convoy and his killing of the "jester" who entertained the elders probably refers to the assassination of Supersonic as the Micromaster emcee opened a Game. The regent on the throne is his clone, Galva Convoy, with an energon matrix he's unable to utilize.
- The "six and ten" elders are the Builder Assembly, a point made fully clear in chapter 6, with their renouncing Primus likely explaining why there's no Prime in the Uprising present, the Builders having sworn off Primes in favor of their own oligarchy (despite, as Logos points out, their rule being pretty awful). The two who aren't chained to their thrones would be Ratbat and Riker, the only two members of the Assembly still capable of moving on their own.
- The "matrix of Carbon" of Chapter 3, verse 1 is the human-built energon matrix, and its handing over to Lio Convoy (the cat of the "tribe of Maximus", i.e., a Maximal).
- The "arachnotron" chapter 3 introduces is Lord Imperious Delirious, his merging with the fortress in verse 7 is likely his becoming part of the Grand Mal, as was revealed at the climax of "Derailment".
- Chapter 4 verse 1 begins with Lio Convoy's staff becoming a sword. "Derailment" notes his former Solipsistic Staff had been reforged into a sword by the time the story takes place.
- The third Prime sounds like it could be Cerebros, with the talk of assembling an army of smaller Cybertronians who turn into guns. "A Brush With Infamy–Prologue" having established Targetmasters were an Autobot invention... but the mention of "the madman" and "visionaries" alike fighting them suggests it could be his opposite number, Zarak.
- Chapter 5 seems to be describing Galvatron's campaign against the Human Confederacy, with his "mighty host from the nebula of the stars" (i.e., Nebulons) and "the smallest among us" (the Cyberdroids of Master). From the sound of it, verse 6 is describing the Grendel Gambit mentioned at the end of "A Brush With Infamy–Prologue", which is revealed to be Galvatron and his troops trying to disguise themselves as humans, only to be found out by the humans, followed by humanity's disproportionate response on all Cybertronians, which was established in the cybertronix text in "Micro-Aggressions".
- Additionally, the verse mentions those who "condensed energon" being chastened (read: told to up and leave their planet by humans), which would be Omnitron and its inhabitants, previously established in "A Brush With Infamy" as having been involved with the war around the Scouring of Nebulos.
- The sixth Prime chapter 7 talks of sounds like it's Rodimus, whose career as Autobot leader was noted to have been met largely with failure; it's noted that he does not have a Matrix of his own.
- The final Prime Logos sees is definitely Optimus himself, with mention of a head wound (Optimus's wound from Megatron's attack on him), and his head turning out to be a smaller bot (Apex, who was identified by "Derailment" as being the boss 'bot's Headmaster partner), and fighting Galvatron. Logos states he was given the power to "continue" for only a brief time, since Optimus' upgrade was previously mentioned to take a lot off of the two who took it.
- Chapter 9 answers the question of how Optimus died the second time, after his resurrection as a Triple-Threat Master: Fighting the Swarm (which was established to exist in the later-released "The Inexorable March"). It just seems the major difference here is that the Swarm didn't (or couldn't) revive him. It also handily explains a long unanswered question as to just where the Matrix of Leadership had gotten to, it having been entirely absent and unmentioned from the Uprising verse until now: the Swarm ate it.
- Also, Optimus sacrificed his second life to save Earth from the Swarm, making mankind look like even bigger jerks than they already did. Talk about ungrateful.
- Chapter 10, verse 3 is quoted during "Derailment" itself, and reproduced here.
- Chapter 10 verse 4, with its talk of the "oceans of Andromeda" and "the white bands of stars like milk", sure sounds a lot like the Ammonite / Cybertron war mentioned in passing at the end of "The Inexorable March".
- Chapter 10 verse 6 and onward is talking about Thunderwing's messing about with the Underbase (the database of databases), with mention of the "head of evil" (the Grand Mal; "mal" is a word and prefix in several languages that is derived from malus, Latin for "bad") and the beasts "arising" from the aftermath. In "Derailment", Overshoot and Stiletto noted that the mechanimals returned to Cybertron after Thunderwing's little rampage.
Transformers references
[edit]- "Logos" is probably Logos Prime, who ran into the Beast Wars Megatron and Optimus in Beast Wars Reborn.
- Logos sees seven Primes, much as Revenge of the Fallen had only seven original Primes instead of the more standard thirteen. Jim Sorenson had previously intimated that the original Thirteen did not exist as such in this continuity, and "The Inexorable March" followed up on that idea by portraying the Uprising version of Vector Prime, Vector Convoy, as a post-24th century Cybertronian rather than hailing from the ancient past.
- The book refers to the colonies of Chela, Navitas, Prion, Carcer, Vigilem, Tempo, and Caminus, all lost Titans who founded colonies in the IDW continuity.
- Some months later, however, Till All Are One #8 depicted "Carcer" as a pseudonym for Vigilem, making them one and the same. Evidently, as has previously been the case with some characters in the Uprising verse, they're separate beings.
- Logos foresees seven Golden Disks. Translating the purple prose, one is the Sounds of Earth launched on Voyager and the great time-spanning war it foretells is the Great War that will reach Earth in 1984.
- The dread figure he foresees is Beast Wars Megatron (who "took the name of the fallen devil of yore", meaning the original Megs but Logos mistakes this for Megatronus), identifiable by his right hand being a "mouth full of teeth" (i.e., Megatron's T-Rex mode head). Megatron as a prophesied terror was done in "Nemesis Part 2", where it turns out there's a mythical Megatron in the Covenant of Primus and that myth turns out to be himself.
- The description of Galvatron's attempted infiltration of the Confederated Fleet, with its talk of looking like humans, sounds like it's talking about Pretender technology, which "Derailment" had established as existing in some form in the Uprising verse.
- Chapter 5 also mentions "the Cube" and "the harvester" being found on Earth, the plot devices of the first two live-action Transformers films. The Inexorable March had already had Deluge mention an incident with a Stellar Harvester happening before.
- Chapter 6 states that the dead will rise from Kalis. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened.
- Chapter 7 talks of "the spawn of chaos" being freed by "the daughters of carbon", which sounds like the origins of the Mini-Cons from the Armada cartoon, where they were Unicron's creations until given free-will via the human companions of that series time-travelling. Mini-Cons being Unicron's spawn is a origin point for them that pretty much every depiction since that series has discarded.
- Continuing the Armada references, the sixth Prime (Rodimus) is given "two wings of a great deatheagle" and a "mighty megaweapon" to fight Unicron. While the term megaweapon sounds fairly generic, the combined form of Armada Optimus Prime and Overload is known as the "Optimus Prime Megaweapon;" the wings, then, are those of Armada Jetfire. Presumably, then, Rodimus combined with versions of those characters to fight Unicron.
- Logos says that the final Prime could "command cities", almost undoubtedly referencing IDW Optimus's ability to command the city-former Titans.
- Chapter 9 is one big reference to the events of the Generation 2 comic, with the Hub, and the Cybertronian Empire reproducing so much they diluted what little of Primus's essence was in them, and Optimus sacrificing his life to stop the Swarm eating Earth.
- Logos states the Liege Maximo (or whoever was sitting at the center of the Hub) was waiting for the "Alignment". The events he describes later on in the chapter do sound an awful lot like the events from that story.
- Chapter 10, verse 11 says of the Oracle, that before Cybertron was it was, just as Vector Sigma did allll the way back in "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1".
Real world references
[edit]- The Book of Logos uses a lot of text from the Bible's Book of Revelation, with some words altered: "the seven colonies which strewn through the stars", for example, is the Transformer equivalent of John writing to the "seven churches in the province of Asia"; the phrase "I am the Alpha and Omega" becomes "Alpha and Omega Trion", the alleged first and last of the species; the seven seals are seven Golden Disks; Megatron replaces Jesus Christ in a vision that strikes Logos dead; rather than the Throne of Heaven, he sees the Builders Assembly symbolically oppressing the proto-races.
Errors
[edit]- Chapter 6, verses 6 and 7 are mislabeled as 8 and 9, and it continues from there.
Other trivia
[edit]- This story was released within "Derailment", in Cybertronix sprinkled through the story at each page break.
- Logos' vision finally gives an identifier to what the Predacon faction symbol is based on, just as The Predacon Manifesto identified the Maximal symbol as being based on a luponoid. It's an insecatron, which Derailment identified as the beast mode of Buzzsaw, who turns into a wasp, the very creature the insignia's based on.
