#idw highbrow

[zephyrrhiesfyrian]

A few things about this:

hi Highbrow, it's nice to see you

Brainstorm you aren't supposed to have your briefcase in the bar

Percy, don't be shapist, you look like Quark in another universe

BRAINSTORM'S FUCKIN FACE

HE LOOKS SO DISGRUNTLED

"Quark's head is beautiful, you second-rate lightscope-"

[lastnewage]

2023 Random TF Doodle

[4ce160]

I distinctly remember saying once that I'd make more fanart of this guy and then I think I never posted anything :pensive:

[devilart2199-aibi]

On my quest of consuming all Transformers media... or most lol. I have binged "Transformers: The Headmasters"! It's a great continuation of the original show. I enjoyed how they focused on a core cast for this one, but still hopped around sometimes.

I had forgotten that Fortress Maximus and Scorponok were rivals/equals! It's so interesting considering how Max is in IDW compared to Scorponok. Gives me lots to think about when doing my design of him 🤔 How will Cerebros mix in? I dunno haha.

Speaking of Cerebros! I really liked him!!! He was actually a good leader and tried to figure things out or stop things and was actually concerned for others. I was so shook when they said "you're the leader of the Autobots now" and Rodimus flew into space never to be seen again 🤣 Classic G1 Rodimus (outside the OG movie)

Also!!! Poor Chromedome 😭 this bot cannot escape his loved ones being killed off by a phase sixer 💀 Sixshot is so capable lmao. Magnus was done dirty OTL

Besides that, Chromedome is great! He gives me Hotrod vibes, kinda brash, has something to prove, young bot. He always wants to protect everyone and it's so cute 🥺

As for the other Headmasters, Hardhead is so fun and so is Highbrow!! He's a little enabler to Daniel haha. Brainstorm was probably my least fav out of them, but i just think I'm just so used to mtmte him. He was the mature one here.

The Trainbots are cool, wish we got to know them more 😔 also love the Decepticon Headmasters, they are so dorky 💜

Anyway, it was a fun watch and after reading quite a bit of the comics it was cool being like "Ah! That's where you're from!" Or "I know that guy!" Haha.

I just started "Transformers Super-God Masterforce" in hopes of seeing Overlord's first appearance 👍 much more anime vibes in this one.

Also! If you have a TF comic or show recommendation or one that's obscure! Pls share! :3

[cybertronia-obscura]

Feature Character of January

Mainframe the Autobot Action Master!

Toy bio:

"A program is only as good as its programmer." A walking, talking computer terminal. Would rather attack fourth order differential equasions than Decepticons. Totally committed to his work. Views the galactic conflict as an inconvenience he must tolerate rather than a struggle in which he must participate. Is often compelled to flex his intellectual muscle, when needed. Equipped with 200,000 mega-byte capacity. His pugnatious partner, Push-Button, prefers converting to self-propelled proton rifle mode and disintegrating Decepticons over his assigned task of debugging Mainframe's various programs.

Mainframe was introduced to the franchise in 1990! When he was introduced, he was a non-transforming toy with his smaller robot partner, Push-Button. His modern toy transforms into a large computer similar to Teletraan-1, complete with the Sky Spy.

His first was in Transformers Animated where he is a member of the Autobot Ministry of Science and he shows up in a few episodes, most notably working with Highbrow on the memory-wiped Arcee. His largest role was in the 2005 IDW story, More Than Meets the Eye, where he occasionally shows up and says some lines. He also pops up in the 2006 IDW Beast Wars comics, the Classics comics, the Of Masters and Mayhem, and the 2019 IDW continuity! His name is mentioned in a Transtech story and in Rescue Bots.

[novafire-is-thinking]

PFFFFT

I can definitely see this happening.

In retaliation, Perceptor makes the parental controls as strict as possible on each of their profiles 💀

I need to go back to making silly edits like this. They're fun.

Anyway. The only reason Brainstorm OR Highbrow have access to the account is because they sat on either side of Nautica at the bar one night and peer pressured her until she gave up the login info. Evil behavior.

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Mosaic #152 - "The High Line"

Originally posted on May 9th, 2008

Story - Martin Fisher Art - Rick McGroarty Colours - Ian Lea Letters - E.T. Dollman

deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk

wada sez: Probably an IDW strip; Highbrow wouldn’t appear in-continuity for many more years. His view of war as barbarism stems from his Budiansky profile. Many readers were quick to point out that a helicopter shouldn’t be able to fly on a desolate moon like that; a less obvious (but similarly understandable) error is that “the Cybertron system” would really imply that Cybertron is a star, not a planet.

[naaaaaaaaaash]

「Scorponok x Highbrow」

Surprise Pic for my sister ( @oh4geez ) !

Highbrow‘s design is also hers.

↓ R18 VER. on Privatter ↓

https://privatter.net/i/6099982

do not repost without my permission.

[askvectorprime]

As "Highbrow" was a nickname like that of his New Institute pals "Brainstorm" and "Chromedome", what was his original name?

Dear Institute Intellectual,

I believe that Highbrow originally went by "Chopter".

[four-flames]

Four Meets MTMTE #1-18

Lads it's been five minutes.. this mission was really doomed from the start huh

Man really sucks to be on the LL huh, why do we put self inserts on here it's a death trap jdvbjsdbdj

Yeah no shit kefskfbsj oh jeez protect roddy he's had a rough day

I really like the name Fizzle too that's so fuckin cute I'm gonna a hyperfixate on him now hope he's not dead

[anotherramblingfangirl]

Originally, I thought this title as self-explanatory.

The “Malware Brigade”. Obviously the sorts who specialise in hacking and cyber-attacks, particularly directed towards the Senate apparently. Either that, or the Senate just happened to get in the way of whatever their goal was.

But then I noticed something else here in the tf wiki, a particular stated member:

Who we also know for working at a very particular place known for it’s very shady-head-practices:

The New Institute.

Leading me to question one, very, very important thing I did not think I’d have to question:

What was it exactly that the Malware Brigade were hacking?

[zephyrrhiesfyrian]

a wip for that sparkeater fic i mentioned: Perceptor and Highbrow bond over noms (the noms may or may not be a former crewmate, it's unclear)

what is Getaway looking at

i do not remember why i drew this tiny hoist

Protectobot snuggles!

BLADES, DOWN, DOWN BOY--

Senator Shockwave has a crisis

[grandhotelabyss]

Two points, though, are not raised in either the essay or the thread: what is the source of the ideas and the power of this new “universal middlebrow,” and what in the cultural landscape runs counter to it?

In answer to the first question: there is still a very much “funded” highbrow regime operating in the same institutions that operated the old highbrow regime. It is an academic discourse, dictating to and parasitic upon the middlebrow artistic fare discussed in the essay, whose job is to vet it for ideological conformity to a series of propositions borrowed from both liberal and radical traditions and now pressed into the service of the corporatist hegemony. The new highbrow regime generates the moral ideology informing the lowbrow/middlebrow artistic content. You can tell this ideology is highbrow because it’s enforced the way the old highbrow was: through an unspoken but brutally enforced knowledge of the comme il faut, which, if you lack it, outs you as an out-caste. 

For example, when an organ as venerable as The Nation publishes something like this—something that bears very little resemblance to the published political utterances of, say, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Toni Morrison, or Cornel West—one is not, on pain of being thought a philistine or a rube or far worse, supposed to notice that it is a racialist hate discourse, which, in its resemblance to prior forms of corporatist-fascist ideology, is basically incompatible with the “structure of feeling” that used to prevail among American left-liberals as recently as a decade ago. (You won’t catch me noticing any such thing—I’ve been to college!)

Second, and in counterpoint, evident everywhere we see the quiet and creeping influence of a so-far not-quite-denominated emergent counterculture—let’s call them the post-liberals, a formation that ranges up and down cultural registers and from left to right in politics, but which converges on an essentially aesthetic hostility to the new highbrow regime and its middlebrow art-troupers described above. I wish some sociologist would visually map out this counterculture, but it’s not a spot on the political compass so much as a sensibility rhizomatically tangled under the whole field, with roots traversing the “dirtbags” on the left (the Chapo crew), the IDW and its fellow-travelers in the middle (Yang, Siegel, Greenwald, Chatterton Williams), and NRx (Land, Yarvin) and Catholic reaction (Deneen, Ahmari) on the right, as well the superficially apolitical avant-garde literature, art, and music worlds and the Thiellist dissident wing of Silicon Valley. 

Some names, by no means exclusive, might include Anna-and-Dasha, Logo-and-Kantbot, Justin Murphy, Default Friend, Geoff Shullenberger, Alex Kaschuta, Adam Lehrer, Mónica Belevan, Aimee Terese, Malcom Kyeyune, TrueAnon, Gio Pennacchietti, Bronze Age Pervert, Barrett Avner, Deanna Havas, the Perfume Nationalist, Zero HP Lovecraft, Delicious Tacos, and more. (“But some of these individuals and cliques hate one another and fight one another all the time,” those in the know will object, which is true but not relevant to my point, since they fight within the emergent milieu I’m trying to define.) 

One of this varied and contentious formation’s major traits is its appropriation of much of the last-but-one highbrow canon, the politically heterodox high theory displaced by the orthodox left-sociology canon of the new highbrow regime. So we see an interest, for example, in Bataille, Weil, Foucault, Deleuze, Girard, and Baudrillard, not to mention Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schmitt, Strauss, and Jünger, along with American mavericks from Lasch to Paglia to Illich to Mumford, and a handful of “based”-seeming Marxists like Lukács, Žižek, and Fisher. All of these thinkers are aggressively anti-middlebrow, most of them either operating at a level of abstraction that makes them hard to read for the philosophically unprepared or issuing astringent judgments and formulations impossible to reduce to any sort of moral uplift—or both. Most are openly illiberal, though one or two (Foucault and his nemesis Paglia, for example) deliberately translate their sub rosa liberalism into an alluringly illicit doctrine of monstrously absolute license. 

For minimal entry to this counterculture one must emit a signal of some sort that one does not affiliate with the new highbrow regime and its moral priorities: the ideological litmus test can be passed with any form of nihilism, most forms of conservatism provided it’s not lowbrow American (except if relished as irony), or a form of line-them-up-against-the-wall leftism that has no truck with empathy-and-Arendt bromides. What used to be called postmodern irony is still alive here, after its millennial demotion by the plaster saint DFW that inaugurated the present epoch; it is really the affective core of the tendency: “It’s dark but just a game,” as one of the movement’s few approved mainstream pop figures recently crooned. Also preferred is some cognizance of the interests behind the new woke highbrow regime’s installation and what these interests have been up to in the past: mention the CIA, the foundations, the NGOs, the defense contractors, and who killed Kennedy.

My point in making this very rough sketch is to detail the consequences of the dilemma I wrote about here. If the new highbrow regime cannot survive the potential economic collapse of the institutions that materialize it—academe, journalism, etc.—we’re seeing what will replace it in successor institutions, not least because this emergent counterculture will fascinate the artists and thinkers to come with its irony and lack of ready answers. Ambiguity—not what the right-Trotskyists of the Bush era and the left-identitarians of our own time have extolled as “moral clarity”—is the engine of cultural survival. John Ashbery wrote, “The new conservatism is / Sitting down beside you”—and he, I think I read somewhere, voted for Nixon. New as it is, we’ve been here before, a century ago, to be precise, for better and for worse (the best art, the worst politics): they used to call it modernism.

[4ce160]

This turned from a serious character design study into doodles and I'm happy with that-

[thanksjro]

Spotlight: Trailcutter - Trailcutter Threatens to Kill Several People For a Good Noodle Star

The Spotlight issues- the one-shots that focus on a single character in an effort to get readers interested in them (and sell toys, of course)- are a funny thing. The ones relating to MTMTE characters within the timeline of MTMTE’s events were written nearly a year after the events during which they are set.

The Spotlights as a whole don’t stick in my brain terribly well, and that’s probably because when I first read IDW’s run back in 2016, I went by publication dates instead of story chronology. I don’t think that really leaves itself for a properly cohesive reading experience, at least not in this particular case. It doesn’t help that a lot of the other ones weren’t super awesome reads, in my opinion. Spotlight: Cyclonus isn’t exactly my favorite thing, for example.

The Scavengers storyline gets interrupted anyway with the Annual, so I figure I might as well slot these in here as well. Really, I should have covered this between MTMTE #5 and #6. Well, technically, I don’t have to do anything in any order, but it’s what I would have preferred.

Anyway, let’s see what's up.

Looks like the Lost Light’s seen better days. It’s had a hole punched in the side of it, and Trailbreaker’s been asked to use his forcefields to keep the vacuum of space from doing its thing while all the Headmasters slap some duct tape on the rip.

No, they aren’t actually Headmasters in this continuity, but it’s not often Highbrow gets to exist in the story proper, so I figured I’d take advantage of that.

Rodimus, impressed by the quick response to the damage, decides he’s going to hold a little ceremony for the boys- not Trailbreaker though, because I guess nobody told Rodimus he’d pitched in too.

Soak it in, Highbrow, because this is the closest thing to main character status you’ll be getting this whole comic run. Be mindful up there now, because if Chromedome turns too fast he’ll take your head clean off with those massive shoulders.

Each of them receive a Rodimus Star, a medal with Rodimus’ face on it signifying that the owner has done something exemplary to earn it. It is in no way shaped like a star.

Trailbreaker, bummed out that he wasn’t recognized for the work he put in, decides to drown his sorrows at Swerve’s, which at this point is still technically not on the up and up and is running illegally. Unfortunately for Trailbreaker, the afterparty is also being hosted here, so he’s not actually escaped anything.

Off to the side, Chromedome and Brainstorm are chatting with Tailgate, who notes the theming of the award-winners’ names, and thinks it’s very funny. Chromedome explains that they’re actually nicknames, from when they all worked together.

Back at Trailbreaker’s table, he’s trying to keep himself entertained, when Whirl happens. Whirl, being Whirl, makes a rude comment about his face, claiming he has an expression he makes whenever he uses his forcefields. Trailbreaker denies this, but he totally does.

Whirl asks what’s eating at Trailbreaker, not that he really cares, and after a bit of hemming and hawing, finds out that Trailbreaker’s really bothered by the fact that he was the only one on the repair team that didn’t get a star. As it turns out, Rodimus has been passing these things out like hotcakes, because Whirl’s got one too. Pretty much everyone but Trailbreaker has a star at this point.

Whirl decides to cut out the middle man and yells at Rodimus to get his McDonald’s-looking butt over here and proceeds to cut to the heart of the matter.

Implying that Drift doesn’t already have twenty Rodimus stars for just existing.

C’mon Rodimus, just give him a star. You obviously ordered way too many if you’ve given one to Whirl by this point, and Trailbreaker’s obviously feeling low.

Whirl, not satisfied with this answer, decides to inflict his special brand of help on Trailbreaker, and decides that it’s time for a little self-improvement.

But y’know. Not like he really cares.

Totally.

The first step in the Whirl Self-Help program is to throw away your old identity while insulting/infatuating over Ultra Magnus.

Now the Spotlight subtitle makes a lot more sense. Trailbreaker/Trailcutter is one of the many characters within the Transformers franchise who suffers from trademark issues, which is why he’s got more than one name. We’ll see him flipflop between the two in MTMTE- or rather, other characters flipflop between them- OR RATHER Roberts flipflop between them.

As is, Whirl takes to the change immediately, probably because he himself has gone through the process in the past.

So, talking yourself up is the next step, but Trailcutter doesn’t really want to reinvent himself, per se; he just wants to be a little more than the guy who does forcefields. He wants people to see him for him, y’know?

Whirl thinks the answer to this conundrum is to get Trailcutter a gun.

They go find Brainstorm, who’s currently busy trying to figure out just what exactly the ship hit to punch such a big hole in it. They’ve brought in the big metal something, and he, Perceptor and a couple other nerds are giving it a good once-over.

As Whirl gushes over Brainstorm’s many inventions- lot of love coming from Whirl this issue- Brainstorm questions Trailcutter’s desire to get into traditional weaponry, seeing as he’s got some sweet stuff going on already, namely the forcefield thing and the magnawheels, which we’ll get to see in action later.

Trailcutter leaves to go take a depression nap.

When he gets to his room, he finds his roommate, Hoist, to be absent. Hoist is off on his own adventure, which is covered in his very own Spotlight. Of course, because Trailcutter is playing the buttmonkey today, he still doesn’t get left alone, as he receives a call from Swerve, who’s probably super jazzed that he’s not the most beat-down character on the ship for once.

Swerve’s supposed to be doing a sponsored silence in exchange for a Rodimus star, but he’s find it very difficult, thanks to the whole “cannot shut the hell up” thing. Swerve, much like everyone with teeth in this issue, looks like he’s got a retainer in, showing that little bit of artistic license off as he asks Trailcutter for a favor.

And on that note, let’s take a brief look at the artist for this issue, Matt Frank.

Frank’s only worked on a couple other things within Transformers, one of which being the second half of the Animated comic “First (and Second) in Flight.” His style is very different from our regular artist, Alex Milne. While Milne seems to prioritize the more technical aspects of the Transformers designs, even in the relatively streamlined looks for MTMTE, Frank’s art is much more simplified, almost soft-looking. Characters look as if their faces would squish if you grabbed them by the cheeks. There’s a lot of expression, almost to the point of looking straight-up cartoonish. While I’m not sure that this style would have worked with the more serious storylines of this series, I think it’s a shame that this was the only entry from Frank that we got to see. It’s a little funky in spot, but I like how emotionally open it feels, if that makes sense.

Getting back to the story, Trailcutter hangs up on Swerve and plugs in for beddy-bye, wishing that he were a normal dude and that everyone would just shut up about his forcefields.

See, I told you- depression nap.

Trailcutter, feeling that something’s up- both with the ship and himself- heads out to find a friend. What he finds instead is profoundly disturbing.

Clearly there is a dark evil at work, if Huffer’s smiling. He shouldn’t be able to DO that.

Trailcutter wanders around the ship, finding more of the same strangeness going on: everyone is frozen in place, even Rodimus as he yells at Rewind over those snuff films Red Alert found, firmly setting this issue for having happened right before issue #6.

Trailcutter heads back to his room, and is about to answer a call from Hoist- who is still on that mission from before naptime- when a laser blast explodes his monitor.

Zounds! Some Decepticons have snuck aboard the Lost Light, and they’re looking for trouble. Thinking quickly, Trailcutter pops out of his hiding spot to forcefield the pair… except he doesn’t, because something’s wrong. His forcefields aren’t working.

The art’s a little hard to follow here, but it looks like Trailcutter just ripped Whirl’s tit-guns off and used them to shoot that guy. Radical.

With the enemy fully distracted, Trailcutter jumps over a chair and bolts for the exit, using his magnawheels and showing us exactly why they’re called that.

They’re wheels that act as magnets. That’s why.

He hacks the door to the medibay and uses it to kill a man, crushing his head, then gets the other guy with a pair of resuscitation pads. Day’s saved! Good job, Trailcutter!

Just kidding, we still have another half of this issue to get through.

The guy Trailcutter just knocked out with medical equipment gets a call. Good thing Trailcutter’s good at impressions.

Turns out, there’s a LOT of Decepticons on the Lost Light at present, and they’re after something in the shuttle bay. Looks like Trailcutter’s got some work to do. Might as well set yourself up for success, huh pal?

Gee, Brainstorm, wonder how much of all this nonsense is your fault. I’m going to guess at least all of it.

Trailcutter stocks up on the heroic necessities, and heads over to shuttle bay 3.

Lockdown’s here, and he’s brought a third of the villain lineup from Transformers Animated with him. Trailcutter brings on the bravado, dumping the two Decepticons he took out earlier on the floor and asking just what the hell these guys think they’re doing on his ship.

Lockdown isn’t terribly impressed.

Trailcutter, what the actual, genuine fuck is that even supposed to mean?

Stealing Whirl’s little talking-up speech, Trailcutter frames himself as friggin’ death incarnate, again not impressing Lockdown very much. Honestly, Lockdown just wants to grab that big ol’ something the Lost Light ran into yesterday and go.

That big ol’ something, you see, is a Titan thumb, and Lockdown and his crew are in the business of Titan hunting. Trailcutter makes it pretty clear that he’s not going to let them take the thing, seeing as Lockdown and his goonies are probably going to use it for nefarious purposes, and so seals himself in the role of the hero for the evening. He informs the Decepticons of his claim to fame, even though his forcefields still aren’t working, then pulls a little magic trick by turning off the artificial gravity for the room, claiming it to be the work of his highly-specialized skills. He lets them go up… then lets them come back down, hard.

Then Trailcutter ramps up the psychological manipulation significantly, using his anime eyes to convince Lockdown that he’s planted a tiny forcefield within his spark, and that he’s fully capable of letting it expand until it rips said spark asunder.

Lockdown and company get the fuck away from Trailcutter as fast as they possibly can, completely terrified and also maybe just the slightest bit flustered by our forcefield specialist. Once they’re out of sight, Trailcutter allows himself a moment to reflect on a job well done.

ARE YOU FUCKING-

Roberts, please, we can’t keep doing this. The sad, proud smiles, I can’t take them.

Trailcutter plops down in the captain’s chair to take a load off, only to get spooked by the hand of Rodimus clapping down on his shoulder.

Later on, Hoist’s returned from his mission to their room, and Trailcutter regales him with his tale of derring-do. Turns out that everyone being frozen was absolutely Brainstorm’s fault, and the only reason Trailcutter wasn’t affected was because he was sleep-forcefielding.

Of course, we can’t just let the guy be happy, now can we?

Okay. I looked it up, and it turns out, the British use “snap” when they’re in a situation where they’ve got the same X as another person, i.e. two people show up wearing the same outfit to an event, or some such. It comes from a matching card game. In America, we say “snap” as an exclamation, like “wow!” or “Jesus Christ!” or “dangit!” Snap is a very versatile word in the States. So there’s your little culture lesson for the day.

Trailcutter, sinking back into his sour mood from earlier, decides to go get plastered, because he has a drinking problem, but not before he goes to make a threat on Rodimus’ life over a goddamn sticker. Thus ends dear Trailcutter’s Spotlight.

[quetzalpapalotl]

Eugenesis Chromedome, Brainstorm and Highbrow all worker at the Institute of Higher Programming, just like in Mtmte!!!

Except not, because the Institute of Higher Programming is a school here and also in IDW, Orion Pax was a student there!

The Institute Chromedome and co. worked in Mtmte was, well, The Institute