Transformers Hall of Fame 2024 voting now open - until Sept 9

[ZacWilliam1]

The one thing I will say about having Megatronus AND Leige Maximo in the Thirteen is that it parallels/foreshadows Megatron and Starscream.

You've got the big brute "Great Bad Guy" and you've got the "Scheming Vain Sly Betraying Liar." It fittingly echoes the Transformers story as a whole.

I'm a little surprised Quintus Prime hasn't been portrayed as an "Evil" member of the 13 as well with the Quintesson connection.


-ZacWilliam, Onyx Prime only got to do things in the universe where he was a fake really, but there's room for him to be something of a Monster as will with his animal nature.

 

[Sabrblade]

Alpha Trion- I love the guy but there was nothing special about him in the G1 show aside from being so old he remembered the Quintesson occupation. He was a mentor but he never seemed mythical. I suppose if you take his slave name literally he was one of the first sentient Cybertronians but ehhhh

IIRC, Alpha Trion was mentioned as being a "first generation" product of Vector Sigma in the G1 cartoon, so he might actually have more bona-fide credentials at being a member of the 13 than any of the other ones who got retconned into being members of the 13.

The thing about Alpha Trion being a member of the Thirteen is that he originally really wasn't supposed to be. Back when Furman first created the concept for Dreamwave (and first introduced it in The Ultimate Guide), the Thirteen were supposed to be so ancient and so mythological that all of them were supposed to no longer exist anymore by the present day (all except for The Fallen, whose unique circumstance of having been sealed away as punishment for siding with Unicron enabled him to resurface in the present as seen in War Within: The Dark Ages). Alpha Trion was written as being alive during the present time of the Dreamwave comics, and while he was depicted as old and tied to Vector Sigma as its guardian, he was but one of the oldest of the current living population of Cybertron, while the Thirteen were so distantly prehistoric that their mere existence had become but a fable. He was more like one generation after that of the Thirteen, one of the first normal Cybertronians rather than one of the first demigod ones.

Solus Prime- I like Solus Prime... in theory. She has a cool gimmick- blacksmith- and a cool motif- fire- and for a franchise that once said "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" to have a female character be the one who forged the Star Sabre and Matrix is pretty nifty.
What I don't like about her is 1) making her the "descendent" of all female Transformers and 2) having her get fridged for the sake of conflict.
The good thing is that this is fixable with future media. Don't make her the progenitor of all female Transformers, just make her one who happened to be a girl. Simple. I swear Transformers overthinks this stuff.
As for the fridging... I'd just rewrite the whole War of the Primes thing to get rid of that. There's no saving it.

I declare, making the girl get melted down into the planet to become Cybertron's "baby-maker" was one of the dumbest things to ever come out of that Covenant book.

Also, you mean "ancestor", not "descendant".

Also the name "Megatronus" is dumb. It's like... bad fanfic levels of dumb.

Then Hasbro did their big reveal of the Official We Mean It Thirteen and not only did they start tacking "-us" on the end of everyone but they did "Megatronus." Which just hurts. It's so bad. It takes a convention- adding "-us" to make a Prime name, which the franchise had actually managed to avoid doing too often before then- and tacks it onto Megatron's name, like it was lifted out of a LiveJournal fanfic about Megatron getting the Matrix.

I don't like Megatronus Prime is what I'm saying

Thankfully, the one saving grace about that name is that the "Prime" part was dropped post haste, only ever making it into the Transformers Vault book and nowhere else. In all of his appearances outside of that book, he's "Megatronus" without a "Prime".

But yeah, the tacking-on of "-us" to any name that ends in "-tron" (or any variation of "-on") is annoying and keeps persisting. When Terratronus first revealed her name in EarthSpark, I was facepalming so hard over how lazy and uninspired her name sounded. The "Terra" part is fine, but it's like they couldn't come up with anything more original and just slapped "-tron" and then "-us" on the end to make it sound "Transformers-y" and called it a day. Had it been me who named her, I'd have tried for something more original like "Terra Maxima", or if it absolutely had to be a name ending in "-us", "Terra Maximus", or even "Terra Firmus".

If they must reveal his identity... Liege Maximo. Maximo is one I don't take issue with as a member of the Thirteen but he and Megatronus kind of share space as "the baddie" and muddle things. Like if the Thirteen shattered because Liege Maximo manipulated Megatronus why did Megatronus get the HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED treatment but Liege Maximo didn't?
It just seems easier to have Liege Maximo be The Fallen and just have him play the general Satan/betrayer role.

While I don't necessarily agree about making those two the same guy, it did always strike me as weird that both were supposed to be the evil members of the Thirteen.

Unless...

Unless The Fallen was the only one of the two who took direct action to betray the others and was punished for it, while Liege Maximo rather bided his time and kept his plans to himself. In fact, Furman may have originally intended that the Liege's initial plans (in the rebooted Dreamwave continuity, since we know from Alignement what his plans were to have been in Marvel) simply be that Primus's children be divided into two warring factions, making the Decepticons go bad, to ensure that the Grand Plan never comes to pass (after all, Furman hinted in Marvel G2 that the Liege was the progenitor of the Decepticons, so he must have had some kind of subtle influence over their turn to evil). That's something that would have only been commenced after the Thirteen were no longer around, making Liege Maximo's plans subtle and long-term, and his villainy more noticed by only the readers instead of the characters in-universe, while The Fallen openly allying with Unicron in direct defiance of his brethren made his villainy very apparent and historic in-universe.

I wasn't paying attention when I filled out the form, but that just makes it all the more annoying. They're insisting on only one response per answer, but chose the checkbox feature (which allows you to choose more than one before they tell you not to) rather than the radio buttons (which default to only being able to choose one). They're using Google Forms without even understanding how it works!

Even though it uses checkboxes, they set it up so that a red warning message pops up at the end of each section if you select more than one box per section.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

The thing about Alpha Trion being a member of the Thirteen is that he originally really wasn't supposed to be. Back when Furman first created the concept for Dreamwave (and first introduced it in The Ultimate Guide), the Thirteen were supposed to be so ancient and so mythological that all of them were supposed to no longer exist anymore by the present day (all except for The Fallen, whose unique circumstance of having been sealed away as punishment for siding with Unicron enabled him to resurface in the present as seen in War Within: The Dark Ages). Alpha Trion was written as being alive during the present time of the Dreamwave comics, and while he was depicted as old and tied to Vector Sigma as its guardian, he was but one of the oldest of the current living population of Cybertron, while the Thirteen were so distantly prehistoric that their mere existence had become but a fable. He was more like one generation after that of the Thirteen, one of the first normal Cybertronians rather than one of the first demigod ones.

This is so much better than how the Thirteen have been handled ever since. How did it go so wrong?

 

[LordGigaIce]

This is so much better than how the Thirteen have been handled ever since. How did it go so wrong?

They let Rik Alvarez canonize his bad fan fiction.

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

Even though it uses checkboxes, they set it up so that a red warning message pops up at the end of each section if you select more than one box per section.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. They could have just used the "Multiple Choice" (radio buttons) and not have had to worry about telling folks they can only select one, because the form wouldn't make it look like you could to start with!

 

[lastmaximal]

This is so much better than how the Thirteen have been handled ever since. How did it go so wrong?

Honestly this is the best way the Thirteen make sense. They're prehistory, shadowed mythical figures. They're not supposed to be within reach, let alone have one chilling right there while another one could have arisen in this new guy. This distancing allows The Fallen to remain unique, and heightens him as a threat from before recorded history, on another level from anything anyone of today knows.

Aligned took a bold step coming up with it and writing it all down... only to demonstrate why sometimes the not knowing is infinitely better. So many narrative missteps from names to planetary lady parts to Is One Of Them Optimus Prime?

Not helping, it's too easy to conflate the Thirtern with "ancestors" rather than leave them as "unknowable predecessors"; Barber at least played with this well by having Shockwave create the Thirteen-as-ancestors out of, well, ancestors who were "just" millions of years into the past rather than dawn-of-universe divine beings.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

side note- I love how IDW1 had Hot Rod adopt "Rodimus" himself because he noticed a pattern with "Nominus Prime" and "Optimus Prime" and just wanted to feel important.

It's even funnier when you remember that Swindle came up with it to butter him up as part of a con, but Rodimus kept it later anyway.

 

[LordGigaIce]

I declare, making the girl get melted down into the planet to become Cybertron's "baby-maker" was one of the dumbest things to ever come out of that Covenant book.

I forgot about that! Yeah that's an even bigger level of dumb on top of everything else. Solus is so cool as an idea but everything they did with her outside of having her forge the Star Sabre and Matrix was dumb.

Also, you mean "ancestor", not "descendant".

D'oh. Yes.

Thankfully, the one saving grace about that name is that the "Prime" part was dropped post haste, only ever making it into the Transformers Vault book and nowhere else. In all of his appearances outside of that book, he's "Megatronus" without a "Prime".

Another thing that bugged me about the Thirteen is that they wanted them all to be "Primes" but some just didn't have the title. Alpha Trion and Liege Maximo are Primes but didn't rep the title? Why not? Hell, Dreamwave canonized "Alpha Prime" as a thing...
It just bugged me. At the time same dropping the idea that they're all "Primes" and just having Prima himself start that lineage would be a cool idea. Make the rest gods/demigods who don't have the "Prime" title?

But yeah, the tacking-on of "-us" to any name that ends in "-tron" (or any variation of "-on") is annoying and keeps persisting. When Terratronus first revealed her name in EarthSpark, I was facepalming so hard over how lazy and uninspired her name sounded. The "Terra" part is fine, but it's like they couldn't come up with anything more original and just slapped "-tron" and then "-us" on the end to make it sound "Transformers-y" and called it a day. Had it been me who named her, I'd have tried for something more original like "Terra Maxima", or if it absolutely had to be a name ending in "-us", "Terra Maximus", or even "Terra Firmus".

It's interesting to me that "-us" is the stereotypical to the point of joke addition to a name to make it "Prime-y" but if you look at every new Prime character introduced between Rodimus and the Thirteen the only one who followed that convention was Nominus. No one else had it.

And then Hasbro went nuts adding it to a good chunk of the Thirteen and now it's everywhere again.

While I don't necessarily agree about making those two the same guy, it did always strike me as weird that both were supposed to be the evil members of the Thirteen.

For me it comes down to simplicity in narrative. Simplicity or following tropes isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Something can follow recognizable patterns and still be good.
In this case you had Prima as the leader and twelve other Primes. Sounds kinda like Jesus and the twelve Apostles. Or Zeus and the twelve Olympians.
Not to get too deep into theology and mythology but if you want to broad strokes mirror that dynamic the most straightforward narrative is making one guy the evil one who messes with the rest.

If you add Liege Maximo to the group... he's your evil guy. And the thing is... "Liege Maximo" isn't a name. It's a title. So if you make him the Fallen you can play with the character's true name still not being revealed.
It just cuts down on muddled narrative threads and lets the mythology focus a bit more.

Unless The Fallen was the only one of the two who took direct action to betray the others and was punished for it, while Liege Maximo rather bided his time and kept his plans to himself.

That would be a fun twist and would explain how Megatronus got the stricken from history treatment while Liege Maximo didn't... the problem is that so little fiction actually explores these ideas.
One of the few that did... IDW1... had Liege Maximo's own tribe lock him away for his deceptions and lies. Meaning that his deeds must have been fairly well known, at least after the fact.

Aligned took a bold step coming up with it and writing it all down... only to demonstrate why sometimes the not knowing is infinitely better.

I never got fiction's obsession with writing it all down. Transformers is far from the only franchise guilty of this.

Look at our own mythologies on Earth. Norse mythology is only preserved in two books, both of which written post-Christianization and both of which make vague allusions to stories they don't detail, hinting at a much larger picture we don't have.

Greek and Roman mythologies are better attested but even they were peppered with secret cults whose own histories and mythologies we don't know because everyone who did know died without writing it down.

My own religion, Judaism, forms the theological and mythical backbone of the world's two largest religions and Judaism's own origins are in the murky past of myth from Mesopotamia where we can't really fully parse it out. There are bits from Judaism's origin story- Abraham leading his family to Israel- where they just make references to wider mythologies and belief structures we just don't know about because it's been lost to time.

So wouldn't it be cool if a franchise with significantly developed lore just said "yeah the deepest origins of X are myth and legend. Here are some basics but who knows what's true and what's not?" and just refused to elaborate? It would be very true to life.

And make for more interesting ideas.

 

[Sabrblade]

They let Rik Alvarez canonize his bad fan fiction.

I feel like it was the few steps in the interim between Furman and Alvarez that played a bigger role in this, steps taken by one Forest Lee.

When the Cybertron series rolled around, Vector Prime was introduced as a really ancient dude that Lee declared (in the Fun Pub Cybertron comics he wrote) to be one of the Thirteen, and Hasbro just rolled with it. Then we got yet another member of the Thirteen built up to piece by piece over the course of five years from 2005-2009, Nexus Prime, in Fun Pub comics also written by Lee.

This made two more members of the Thirteen who were definitely alive and well in the present day, in total opposition with Furman's original intent of them all being just gone and lost to the ravages of time as mere myth and legend. But, the fandom was high on the Thirteen as a concept at the time and just didn't care, wanting to see more and more of them. Then Alvarez was like "Ask and ye shall receive," and then we were like, "Oh, uh, guess we should've been careful what we wished for, huh?"

(In between Vector and Nexus's debuts, though, Hirofumi Ichikawa introduced Logos Prime in Beast Wars Reborn. Those that were aware of him believed he was yet another 13er due to the immense similarities he had to Vector Prime as a being, but Ichikawa later refuted this notion saying he didn't feel comfortable arbitrarily adding to the Thirteen's roster on his own.)

 

[LordGigaIce]

In between Vector and Nexus's debuts, though, Hirofumi Ichikawa introduced Logos Prime in Beast Wars Reborn, whom those that were aware of him believed he was yet another 13er due to the immense similarities he had to Vector Prime as a being, but Ichikawa later refuted this notion saying he didn't feel comfortable arbitrarily adding to the Thirteen's roster on his own.

I'm still kinda peeved Hasbro ditched Logos Prime from the Thirteen. As you point out, the Thirteen were never conceived of in one go... characters just got introduced on their own and got lumped into the group later.
So when Hasbro decided to canonize the group they didn't even keep Logos and ousted him for OCs who kinda sucked ("Amalgamous Prime"? GTFO).

But, the fandom was high on the Thirteen as a concept at the time and just didn't care, wanting to see more and more of them. Then Alvarez was like "Ask and ye shall receive," and then we were like, "Oh, uh, we should've been careful what we wished for, huh?"

Ha! Indeed.

I didn't mean to imply that Alvarez himself took the idea from "long gone dudes from the ancient past" to "super important and relevant today," but once that idea was introduced with Nexus and Vector Prime it clearly gave him ideas that he then canonized.

Ideas which, frankly, sucked.

 

[Sabrblade]

I'm still kinda peeved Hasbro ditched Logos Prime from the Thirteen.

I think the simplest answer is that they just didn't know about Logos.

Beast Wars Reborn wasn't exactly known about outside of those who read Hydra's TF Pulp translations, and wasn't translated all at once.

 

[lastmaximal]

One thing all that suggests is that if it weren't Alvarez it would have been someone else; that was likely to be Furman. So the roster and story was going to be written either way.

Thing is, even given Furman's hits and misses, I think I'd trust him a bit more with that. But who's to say, I guess.

 

[Sabrblade]

It still baffles me that the Last Autobot from Marvel G1 wasn't included in the roster (the one Hasbro uses, not the "multiversal Thirteen" AVP gave us, which did include him), since his whole thing was being the last of the original generation of Transformers created directly by Primus himself.

I've heard that Furman even originally came up with The Fallen for later stories he had wanted to tell had the Marvel comics not been canceled at Issue #80, so even back then was Furman planting the seeds for that first generation of original Transformers made by Primus. Alignment likewise revealed this to have also been the intention for Liege Maximo, which Furman affirmed officially in The Ultimate Guide.

And then there's the Covenant, the group of 12 TFs Furman created for Reaching the Omega Point, a very similar concept to what would later become the Thirteen.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

The Last Autobot's whole thing is that he's a legend that's discovered to be true. Beyond that, he doesn't really have a character, he's just supposed to await the arrival of the chosen one and initiate a reformatting a cybertron.

Which basically the role the Arisen has in the current 13.

Now, I'd be fine with booting out "The Arisen" and replacing him with The Last Autobot. (My own personal cannon has Xur being on of the 13 and the Liege Maximo is more of a god of war than a trickster god) as I prefer Optimus to be a normal guy thrust into extra-ordinary circumstances, just like Megatron, a not the reincarnation of a demigod.

 

[LordGigaIce]

One thing all that suggests is that if it weren't Alvarez it would have been someone else; that was likely to be Furman. So the roster and story was going to be written either way.

Thing is, even given Furman's hits and misses, I think I'd trust him a bit more with that. But who's to say, I guess.

Furman's batting average has gone down the longer he writes, but I'd still take him over Alvarez.
Also if Furman did it, it likely would have been confined to IDW. When Alvarez did it, it was used as the canonical Hasbro approved list of the Thirteen.

The Last Autobot's whole thing is that he's a legend that's discovered to be true. Beyond that, he doesn't really have a character, he's just supposed to await the arrival of the chosen one and initiate a reformatting a cybertron.

Which basically the role the Arisen has in the current 13.

Now, I'd be fine with booting out "The Arisen" and replacing him with The Last Autobot. (My own personal cannon has Xur being on of the 13 and the Liege Maximo is more of a god of war than a trickster god) as I prefer Optimus to be a normal guy thrust into extra-ordinary circumstances, just like Megatron, a not the reincarnation of a demigod.

They coloured "The Arisen's" Prime Master like the Last Autobot in the Optimus Primal Prime Throne set.

 

[lastmaximal]

I like The Last Autobot more as an Autobot creation than as one of the Thirteen, which I also prefer predating the factions. (The deceptive Liege Maximo begetting the Decepticons I like, but more as an inspiration -- making lies work for them, "you are being deceived" -- than a biological progenitor.) But that's pretty neat about the Prime Master!

Very not a fan of the whole Thirteenth/Arisen thing. Again I'm with Furman in feeling the Thirteen should be more archetypal, not connected to the present-day Transformers in that sense. Even real-world religions that have an element of "x deity will return at some point" rarely push the idea that "oh, x deity might actually be your faction leader!" (the religions themselves no, trash opportunistic fringe versions yes) because that's just ridiculous. And this is on top of essentially hijacking the Optimus Prime character too.

I go back and forth on things like Transformer types dating back to the Thirteen. A combiner, a Mini-Con, a beast. I can see the merit of it, but it can be a bit reductive. I also waffle on the Artifacts a bit; I love me some lore, but they can also subtract more than they add (combiners aren't feats of engineering, they happen because of this magical doohicky). And some are so ill-defined and overpowered that they should just not exist as anything more than tall tales -- sadly, Alpha Trion never just wrote "and then the Decepticon leader's head exploded" or "and then all the Decepticons laid down their arms" as needed. But the Quill aside, a make-anything hammer and a life-making stone are tough to manage narratively.

I don't mind conflating Liege Maximo and The Fallen, although there's merit to having them be separate characters (Liege Maximo serving as a corrupting influence, allowing The Fallen to, well, fall). In either case, though, "Megatronus" is a terrible idea. It's hilarious that even in the Exodus novel, the narration feels the need to justify "Megatronus" turnng into "Megatron": "Something odd happened as the chant intensified. The last syllable of the moniker started to fade out as the crowd made a collective choice to end the chant on a strong syllable." The book wasn't particularly gripping before that, but this took me right out of it.

 

[lastmaximal]

I never got fiction's obsession with writing it all down. Transformers is far from the only franchise guilty of this.

Honestly, as much as I complain about it, I'm part of the problem. I crave lore and lore possibilities, and I grew up with an affinity for the "official" versions of things. I distinctly remember asking for a 64-piece Crayola set just so I could know the "official" names for different colors, what a nerd. I at least temporarily backtracked to get some Handbooks to the Marvel Universe so I could pore over the schematics and technobabble for Wolverine's gloves, Spider-Man's webshooters and Cyclops' ruby quartz visor, and later got the Ultimate Guide books so I could see how they explained the utility belt and its contents.

There's just a strong appeal in backstory, in finding out the roots of things, and so on. Hell, even now I crave whatever drip-fed lore I can get from the MTMTE Notebooks. And as much as the quality got muddled as MTMTE turned into LL and so on, I wouldn't mind more backstory where Roberts could arc-weld some more and flesh out the thrown-out terms and names and jargon from the worldbuilding he did. But as even he demonstrated in-universe with the Knights of Cybertron and Cyberutopia, there's a lot of power in the not knowing, and the version we grow in our minds is typically more satisfying than the singular "truth" that is officially revealed.

And that's even more true with story elements that gain meta- significance and stakes like the Thirteen. Whatever does get made is going to struggle to please the manifold expectations that mushroom up, especially if what it delivers is Fooled Around and Killed Smurfette.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Honestly, as much as I complain about it, I'm part of the problem. I'm crave lore and lore possibilities, and I grew up with an affinity for the "official" versions of things.

I admit I was like that, but the older I've gotten the more I've realized that's ok to leave things vague and not answer every question.

After all JRR Tolkien would famously remain coy with people who wrote him wanting more detail on various aspects of Middle Earth's backstory.

There's just a strong appeal in backstory, in finding out the roots of things, and so on.

That's why I'm into Sentinel Prime as a character. It was me in my younger years going "a Prime before Optimus? Neat! What's that about?" So I definitely feel ya.

Even in academia, my focus ended up being medieval history. And so much about my field of study devolves into educated guessing when you go back far enough, but damnnit! I wanted to know!
We just don't though and likely never will.

And in that way a fictional universe that kept its own backstory vague would be beautifully true to life.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

It's okay to explain it all if they actually have a good idea.

Alvarez just didn't.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

It was the bits in IDW where we see the early days of Cybertron, primative wars with roving bands of barbarians, beating each other over the heads with melee weapons, fighting in the names of the Thirteen. For some reason struck a chord with me and I just want to see more of the concept explored.

Like, the comic I would have wanted most out of IDW before they lost the license is just a "Conan the Barbarian" or "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" style story that took place in that time. Hell, I'd still take it, it doesn't need to be in the IDW universe at all. Make it its own thing, have the Thirteen be more like the Olympian gods, who come down to test or trick, reward or punish. In fact, if it's its own thing, you don't have to worry about the primary weakness of the story if it was IDW (who are the main characters, who are any of these characters that aren't the 13?) as you can just have the big name characters show up. Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime takes on a radical new context in this setting, for sure and I can think of some interesting things to do with Megatron in a setting where Megatronus is still active.

I'm fine with a setting where the Thirteen are less mysterious and more mystical (or technomystical, your mileage may vary).