I, Lowtech

Template:Comicnav A high-ranking TransTech businessman finds himself inexplicably trapped inside a lowtech body, and will stop at nothing to regain what is rightfully his.

Stats

Writers: Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop
Pagecount: 47pp
Originally published: online exclusive for the Transformers Collectors' Club on September 17th, 2008
Illustrations: Nick Roche
Colors: Winston Bolen

Notes

• Scrounge isn't very good at being Xaaron. He claims he has a Matrix and that he's from universe Primax 093.0 Epsilon. Decoding that technobabble allegedly pegs him as an Emirate Xaaron from Transformers Fan Club fiction published in 1993. Yyyyyeah.

Transformer references

• Early on in the story, Bulletbike rolls past Timelines Flareup and Animated Bumblebee, indicating that this tale occurs concurrently with "Bee in the City", where those two characters teamed up for a while.
• The Swindle, Swindle & Swindle shop and Ego's showroom are stacked with Transformers easter eggs:
• Swindle, Swindle & Swindle's shop features Catilla's helmet, Bludgeon's helmet, Jetfire's arm guard, Bumblebee's "Bee-Yotch" air freshener, a box full of empty Matrix containers, the bird sculpture from Pz-Zazz, Starscream's crown, one of Omega Supreme's rails, a Golden Disk, the Magnificence, jars with a T-Rex, a gorilla and a spider on their labels, a Powermaster engine/suit and a sheet full of faction symbols.
• Ego's showroom, meanwhile, displays Leozack's gun, Stalker's missile, an Autobot jet pack, Scorponok's claw, a time-jump mechanism, Skyblast's Energon Spear, Blacker's sword, Tantrum's sword, Battle Ravage's tail-mace, Star Saber's Saberblade sword, Skywarp's arm guns, Megatron's fusion cannon, Soundwave's weaponry, Fistfight, Optimus Prime's ion blaster, Ultra Magnus's gun, an Exosuit, a Velocitronian Cyber Planet Key, the All Spark and the Matrix. While not pictured, Ego's desk is said to be built out of the shield of a Scorponok hailing from Primax 787.3 Alpha (in English, it's the Scorponok from the Japanese The Headmasters cartoon, so it's likely the Zarak Shield), and a sword labeled "Sword Of Megatron" hovers over it. Also not pictured but mentionned are a Requiem Blaster, a Reconfiguration Matrix and a spherical Vok instrument.

• "Ego" is Generation 1 Starscream's French-Canadian name. He runs "C-Kar Technologies." Argh.
• Likewise, "Bricolo" is Scrapper's French-Canadian name. And he's an artist making furniture out of Transformer parts.
• "Corvo" is Skywarp's Italian name.
• Cheetor and Stungun muse that the whole Bulletbike fiasco could easily be set straight if only they could explain how TransTech Bulletbike's spark ended up in the lowtech Bulletbike's body. (As it stood, there was no evidence of spark transfer, so that wasn't a viable theory.) Additionally, the impostor Bulletbike recalls much of his forces to his building to protect him from the rampaging lowtech Bulletbike. This has the added effect of leaving the Transwarp Complex open to attack. Taking into consideration the events of the Transcendent story, a possible answer appears. Topspin's spark-manipulation abilities would easily explain the spark transfer, setting up the removal of the guards from the Transwarp Complex, allowing Alpha Trion to escape to his home world.

Real-world references

• The title is a reference to Isaac Asimov's famous novel I, Robot.

• The plush lizard in Ego's office is the Winslow, a central MacGuffin of Phil Folgio's "Buck Godot: Zap Gun For Hire" comics.

External links

• Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive fiction (must be a logged-in member to access)