And with that, the "Death of BarrenClan" arc comes to an end! Thank you all for reading along and for the wonderful response to each issue.
The comic is not over yet; there are four issues left, plus a series of epilogues, where our cast will have to mourn their losses, pick up the pieces of their lives, and figure out what to do next.
For the last few issues of the comic, I've also decided to offer an early release of the next issue on my Patreon at the $5 and above tier. It'll post in a few days, and if there's continuing interest in this, I'll do the same for the last issues after the preceding one is publicly released.
More Than Meets the Eye #39 — Tarn Has a Religious Experience in the Cocaine Cave
Last we left off, we’d just seen the climax of Brainstorm’s Time Tour to murder Megatron, as well as completing the roundabout on all of our time loops and preventing Chromedome and Rewind’s divorce through the power of guns.
Anyway, let’s check in on everyone’s favorite gang of Decepticons.
No, not that one. The other one.
We’re back with the Decepticon Justice Division, or at least some of them. Because Tarn is the narrative focus for today, we’ll be breaking this issue into chapters, because that’s intellectual or some shit. We’ll also get what might be an almost-illegal amount of narration boxes. While certainly in-character for Tarn, who has already established himself as pretentious in the most irritating fashion, good god does it clutter up the page. What’s Tarn thinking about, anyway?
Oh right, he still thinks that Vos and Kaon are dead.
Vos’s little phrase there doesn’t translate to anything, by the way. I checked. Honestly, I think it’s a shame; why bother having a fully rendered (if simple) cypher if you’re not going to use it?
Anyway, Tarn, Helex, and Tesaurus are just about finished with Blip, a Decepticon who was unfortunate enough to be at the top of The List at the moment.
Tarn isn’t really feeling it right now though, having lost a bit of the spirit. He’s burnt out, you see; on the DJD’s theme song— which I’ll remind you is one of Ultra Magnus’s favorite songs— on all the murder, and the endless churning of a war that never seems to go anywhere.
Still, a job’s a job, and he’s nothing if not a good performer. He tells Helex to take Blip’s brain out of Blip’s mouth, and Helex complies, in the “censored” way. Originally, Helex was going to kiss Blip’s brain out of his mouth, and that idea got all the way to fucking pencils before someone pumped the breaks.
Which brings me to our artist for the issue, Hayato Sakamoto. Sakamoto is known for having drawn a lot of doujinshi— Japanese self-published comics— several of which were rather racy. He’s done a lot of work for Transformers, including package art and Japanese-specific publications, as well as toy designs. His current pinned Tweet, at time of writing, is a link to his print of Halloween Rodimus, wearing pumpkin booty shorts. He’s got everyone covered in the horny department, what an ally.
Getting back to the issue, Helex spits out some brain juice from that kiss that didn’t happen, while Tarn has a chat with Blip about his crimes. What horrible thing could Blip have possibly done to incur the wrath of the DJD?
No idea what these two think they’re sitting on. Tarn must be the squat king of the fucking universe, to hold that pose through his explanation of Decepticommunism’s take on religion.
Blip has objections to his being on The List, and not just because he’s about to get turned into chunky salsa. He’s literally the only guy who thinks he’s a Sparkeater, and that hardly counts as a religious cult, now does it? But Tarn believes in nipping things in the bud, as it were, and he asks Blip if he has any final words before Tesaurus gets ahold of him.
Blip, to his credit, actually throws Tarn for a bit of a loop, grabbing his mask— bastard couldn’t even commit to properly replacing his face with the symbol of his cause. Blip demands to see Tarn’s face, claiming he’s hiding from something. Tarn doesn’t say anything, walking off to let Helex and Tesaurus finish today’s work. His narration, however, is very chatty, saying that the reason he wears the mask is so that nobody can see him looking away from the moments where he denies his victims the “mercy” of being talked to death, instead leaving the finale to his peers.
Back at their very pointy ship, Peaceful Tyranny, the boys head in for prayer time at the dual life-sized statues of Megatron, Helex leading the sermon of all people. They finish just in time to get yelled at by the tiniest and best member of their team, Nickel.
Hold on, let me look something up.
Christ alive, Nickel, you might as well’ve called the man a slur.
Nickel is their medical officer, and also apparently their adoptive mother, as she chastises the lot for their lack of hygiene and health maintenance. When Tesaurus grumps about having health insurance, Tarn threatens to write him up. Still, it seems like they all have at least some sort of rapport going on. Of course, Tarn has to ruin the fun, by telling Helex and Tesaurus to bring their personal development plans for their employment appraisals.
The appraisals of their murder job, where they murder people.
Later, Tesaurus shows up to Tarn’s quarters, even though he bitched earlier, probably because he knows better than to ignore an order from his boss. Tarn is at least a gracious host, offering a beverage consisting of innermost energon that’s apparently from a guy as old as Tailgate.
Yeah, energon being as diverse of a substance as it is really makes for some weird implications.
Anyway, Tesaurus and Tarn get through the appraisal pretty quickly— turns out the guy who turns into a giant blender on treads is really good at dismembering and murdering. While they do this, Tarn’s narration boxes go on about the importance of administration and professionalism to the Decepticause.
I fucking guess, Tarn.
Tarn notices that Tesaurus is even less into this process than usual, and asks what’s up, even though he already knows the answer. Tesaurus is thinking about Vos. And Kaon, but he feels like a bit of an afterthought. I get the impression Kaon’s the weak link in this team.
The events of the Alternate Lost Light Super-Murder Power Hour took place eighteen months ago, when Quantum-Duplicate Brainstorm called up the DJD to come nab Overlord. His only stipulation? No one else gets hurt, as to not blow Brainstorm’s cover. Yeah, that’s why. Absolutely not because he cares about these stupid Autobots. Tarn agreed to the terms, fully intending to keep this shit covert.
It’s just too bad he and all his coworkers were fucking tweaked out of their goddamned gourds at the time.
The DJD, high as balls off Nuke, because that’s real professional, ran into Drift— who is on The List for defecting, back when he was Deadlock— and they saw red so hard, they painted the interior of the Lost Light pink. With robot blood.
They eventually went back to the ship, at Nickel’s insistence, to steal the quantum engine, only to find that the Galactic Council and the Black Block Consortia were there for the exact same thing. This happened a month ago.
Which makes me wonder why the fuck Rewind spent nearly a year and a half laying inside his brother-in-law’s chest cavity. Maybe it was a “Tailgate in the hole” situation.
Kaon and Vos got lost in the fight, assumedly killed in action. We, of course, know that they are very much alive, and actually feeling well enough to commit heinous dismemberments, thanks to the magic of blood donation. It would seem that the twinksome twosome haven’t been able to contact Peaceful Tyranny though, so Tesaurus doesn’t know that.
Tarn acknowledges that they retreated without going to pick up Vos and Kaon from the planet, and Tesaurus makes a comment about Decepticons not abandoning their own. Tarn takes this slight against his Decepticonism, to his Decepticon-masked face, in his room that appears to only have Decepticon badges as decoration, relatively well.
Tarn grabs Tesaurus by the head, practically sticking his fingers in the guy’s mouth, and gets in kissing range as he gives him a taste of the murder-voice. It wholly looks like Tarn’s about to kill Tesaurus over this comment, but he backs off, because he understands how stressful this has been for everyone. In fact, he tells Tesaurus that they’re going back for Vos and Kaon’s bodies, as he pats Tesaurus on the cheek in a way that looks like he’s about to snap the man’s neck. Again, Tarn is just the epitome of professionalism.
Helex interrupts this absolute HR nightmare to report that he just teleported Vos and Kaon aboard, and, wonder of wonders, they’re alive! Yayyyy! Tarn is astounded by this news, but he ain’t seen nothing yet, because Helex then hands him that new version of Towards Peace that Kaon grabbed from Trailcutter. The one where Megatron denounces the Decepticause. Tarn takes the news relatively well.
Tarn reflects on the destruction of the only thing that makes up his personality, going so far as to take off his mask to stare at it contemplatively, like the dramatic bitch that he is. We only get to see the bottom half of his face, as he tells Kaon to meet him in the fueling chamber. I do want to stress, knowing what this son of a bitch looks like literally doesn’t matter, as we’ll find out towards the end of MTMTE.
Deep down in the abandoned mines, the DJD have set up their fueling chamber. Well, they call it a fueling chamber, and it’s technically correct, but what it actually is is the cave that they do their space-cocaine in. Tarn floats in a tank, hooked up to about thirty tubes that pump Nuke into his body while he screams in pain. Kaon, the motherfucker who doesn’t have eyes, is in charge of watching Tarn, as Nickel provides commentary. Nickel’s never been down here before, having been picked up by the ship relatively recently. Kaon tells Nickel that the nucleon down here is special, as it’s been structurally rewritten by temporal bullshit— thanks, Brainstorm— and their stash is irreplaceable, though he’s certainly tried.
Which I guess means that Kaon is their plug. No wonder they keep him around.
Nickel is a little worried about Tarn having hooked every major vein in his body into a bath of liquid cocaine cut with time travel and gas station dick pills, convinced that the guy is trying to kill himself. Tarn’s narration boxes confirm this, as he reflects on his life. Skids is there. I’m sure that doesn’t have any unfortunate connotations.
Tarn opens his eyes to see Nickel slapping at the glass, and he has a change of heart, busting out of the tube and flopping onto the floor and catching himself with his suddenly terrifyingly-large hands.
Foreshortening be damned, they shouldn’t be this huge.
Smashcut to Peaceful Tyranny floating outside of Deathsaurus’s warworld, which looks suspiciously similar to the Rod Pod. Deathsaurus stole this warworld for the purposes of joyriding around the galaxy with all his friends, and that’s the reason they’re there, right? Though the DJD seem to be going out of order of The List, which is pretty out of character for a guy like Tarn. Vos is over by the controls, in his default gremlin pose, maybe he can shed some light on the situation.
…Well, at least we know he’s trilingual now.
Kaon bumps that estimate up to the thousands, having gotten an earful of the inter-Decepticon radio frequency. Tarn claims that Deathsaurus’s defection is a mystery, though he images it wasn’t for any rational reason, knowing Deathsaurus. Tarn then informs his men that this is, in fact, a meeting, and not a super-murder death spree. Seems like a bad idea to not tell your men what the hell is going on until it’s basically already happening, but what do I know? I’m not a murder tank with a hard-on for workplace synergy.
The DJD board the warworld, Deathsaurus greeting them with a box under his arm, seemingly in the middle of something. Up on the topmost catwalk, a couple guys slap the wall for no discernible reason. Vos seems ready to go crab-mode at a moment’s notice.
Deathsaurus asks Tarn to hold his box for him, even as Tarn is requesting a moment to discuss the Megatron issue. Deathsaurus makes a jab at Tarn’s well-known thing for Megatron, asking where his Autobot mask is, then tells him to go stand on the X.
And Tarn does it, because he is the stupidest bitch alive.
Literally how has this man survived this long.
Tarn is, of course, blown the fuck up, though he takes it rather well, only getting somewhat singed. Deathsaurus knew from the moment Tarn called, he was trying to trick him into trusting him enough to get killed. Which he actually wasn’t, for once, but you can’t blame Deathsaurus looking at the statistics and making a call with his self-preservation in mind. Tarn, lamenting how his talents precede him, fires a warning shot, but Deathsaurus is on a roll now, fully intending on removing this threat from his home. The rest of the DJD watch from the doorway. Kaon suggests they do something, but Vos and Nickel know that Tarn wouldn’t appreciate the help.
Tarn asks Deathsaurus to be reasonable— which is a stupid fucking thing for him of all people to say— before immediately using his murder voice. Deathsaurus, knowing this trick already, cuts off his audio sensors. It would seem that he didn’t know that the DJD had a communications officer, however, as he’s surprised when the inter-Decepticon frequency gets hijacked. Tarn finally has his in, having finally gotten enough of a leverage to force Deathsaurus to actually listen to him.
Tarn uses this leverage to talk about the Decepticons’ foundation, which I’m sure is one of his favorite topics. In the beginning, Megatron was sweeping the board, win after win after win, basically taking Cybertron overnight, before looking at what he could do to the rest of the galaxy. Seeing the universe as staunchly anti-robot, he decided he would remedy this injustice by committing genocide on countless organic races, a lot of which didn’t even know who the Cybertronians were.
I fucking guess, Tarn.
Deathsaurus is sick of this history lesson, demanding that Tarn get to the goddamned point. Tarn admits that he’s been a bad Decepticon, equating Megatron to the Decepticon cause, having placed the man on a pedestal that reached into the heavens. But he had a revelation during his drug-induced stupor, when he opened his eyes to find Nickel trying to get him out.
Nickel was picked up by the DJD because her planet— a colony world that was populated by Cybertronians who had come there by Titan— had been razed by a plague created by the Black Block Consortia. Tarn realized that the real purpose of the Decepticons was to correct injustices, and the mass murder of Cybertronians by organics is one of the greatest injustices he knows of. He asks Deathsaurus and his men to join him, in exchange for being removed from The List.
Deathsaurus has an additional condition however; he wants Tarn to kill the rest of the DJD, as repayment for all of Deathsaurus’s men that he’s killed in the past. Tarn, to his limited credit, considering how Tesaurus’s appraisal meeting went, refuses Deathsaurus’s demand.
Deathsaurus then says that they have a deal, much to Tarn’s confusion. Deathsaurus was testing Tarn, to see if he’d be someone worth following. Now knowing that he can be trusted, at least to some extent, Deathsaurus gives Tarn control of his men.
Tarn’s new goal, as an embodiment of the true Decepticause, is to destroy Megatron and those who are currently affiliated with him, seeing as he’s directly opposed to the Decepticons now. The new List currently consists of Megatron and the entire crew of the Lost Light. Tarn’s pretty sure they already got those guys, but he’s not gonna question how they’re all fine now. It’s been a long day for Tarn.
Anyway, time for a group photo! Everyone say “mass homicide!”
