Beast wars comics "THE UNPUBLISHED" by Simon Furman

Discussion in 'Transformers News and Rumors' started by Spalah, Feb 21, 2012.

  1. clankizle

    clankizle Well-Known Member

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    I dropped a small nugget reading this news.
     
  2. Mako Crab

    Mako Crab Well-Known Member

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    The problem is that he's trying to force a story inbetween the cracks of the cartoon continuity instead of telling his own story from scratch. I love BW probably more than any other TF show, and I have high regard for the stories and characters, but if it were me, I would've ignored the show and done my own thing. IDW had already established its own separate G1 universe. Why not do the same for BW?

    And I will admit that I liked Simon's work on Nemesis part 1 and 2. Proof that, with a couple head-writers/editors looking over his work and having to write within the constraints of children's TV, he can produce excellent work. And even then he still got to sneak some mass slaughter in.
     
  3. Lumpy

    Lumpy Taylor Swift Action Master Super Mod

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    interesting... i'd be interested in this, it'd be nice if IDW could release it as a 1shot book or something...
     
  4. GizmoTron

    GizmoTron Roobaticon Commander

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    The way I see it, The Gathering was an example of the best of Furman, while The Ascending was an example of the worst of Furman.

    It really seems like this story would have been more like The Gathering, and therefore a good read. And I think DW would have insisted on keeping the stories tightly connected with the cartoon series, so we wouldn't have had characters killed off with one blast, as well as someone actually using either "Maximize" or "Terrorize" when they transformed. (Which are the things that bothered me the most about IDW's Beast Wars)
     
  5. Macross7

    Macross7 Well-Known Member

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    Frankly I hated the BW comics they did. I could give a flying crap about non-show characters. Was it too hard to come up with a story involving the show characters? Set it between episodes. There were more then enough spots they could have set it.

    It seemed some of the times, they were just trying to fit as many toys into the shot as possible then they'd all dissapear a panel or two later.
     
  6. ORIO

    ORIO Team Sentinel Prime Moderator News Staff

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    These two posts might as well be in spanish to me.
     
  7. Valkysas

    Valkysas Attack Buffalo

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    The Gathering was an okay transformers story, but a terrible Beast Wars story. You expect a certain kind of spirit with a Beast Wars story, and that was completely lacking in the comic. It did not have the same feel as the Beast Wars TV show.

    Some might say that's due to a difference in media, but.. no. The Animated comics (both Arrival and Botcon) captured that series sprit perfectly. They felt like Transformers Animated.

    Furman just doesn't "get" Beast Wars, and that's what was wrong with The Gathering.
     
  8. Mako Crab

    Mako Crab Well-Known Member

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    The Gathering and the Ascension just fail on so many basic levels. Not only does he fail to "get" what makes Beast Wars work, he just goes and crams every single last non-show character into the things that he can. There's no way to create any characters that people are going to care about in that kind of scenario.

    Like, hey, here's Razorbeast! He's our star, and here's his 100 buddies and the 100 Predacons they're fighting! OMG, Unicron! OMG Razorbeast is dead! Isn't his death so touching and tear-jerking? Well. . . no. It's not. I never got to know Razorbeast really. He comes across as just a good Maximal that's good at his job. Nothing else, really.

    Meanwhile, an episode of BW like, "Proving Grounds" with its primary cast of. . . 3. . . tells a far more personal and character-oriented story. What was at stake? The fate of the universe? Time and history as we know it? No, it was all about how Blackarachnia wasn't fitting in with the Maximals and was about to leave them. That's all. Nothing Earth-shattering. But it feels more poignant and important than anything in Simon's BW comics.
     
  9. Sparky Prime

    Sparky Prime Well-Known Member

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    The Gathering felt like a set up for a new series to me. New cast of characters ending up stuck on pre-historic Earth after a botched attempt to recover the stasis pods... I think there was a lot of potential in that set up personally. Granted, it introduced a huge cast of characters compared to what the show had, but there was a focus with smaller groups of characters. The majority of the Maximals didn't even arrive until the last issue, and the Predacons focused mainly on Magmatron's inner circle. And I'd point out the show didn't exactly flesh out all of its characters in the first two episodes either.

    Unfortunately, The Ascending didn't live up to the potential that The Gathering started. It rushed the story by pulling an 'epic universe shattering' bit rather than keeping things down to Earth, so to speak. Not to mention the mass killing off of characters we didn't even get to know yet.

    At any rate, I've always been curious to see what the DW BW comic would have been. Great that Furman is releasing the script for fans to read.
     
  10. Mako Crab

    Mako Crab Well-Known Member

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    To me, it seemed like they knew they weren't going to get an ongoing BW comic, and so he just threw everything and the kitchen sink in.
     
  11. Sparky Prime

    Sparky Prime Well-Known Member

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    Well The Ascending does leave some loose ends seeing as there are still Maximals and Predacons stuck on pre-historic Earth at the end of the story, which would seem to indicate room for more, had it been more successful like The Gathering had been to warrant another sequel. And the way IDW was publishing TF comics at the time was one mini-series to the next rather than an ongoing.
     
  12. Kickback

    Kickback @GeekWithChris Administrator News Staff

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    Cool. Not a fan of Grimlock though, and was unhappy that he was thrown in to The Gathering/Ascending/Whatever.