Because they've been away from Cybertron for a long, long time and have presumably either taken on altmodes native to planets that had other sentient life that they interacted with, or designed and modified their own altmodes and/or robot modes themselves to their own taste. That's what I assumed, anyway.
yes, that; but the one thing that irritated me was the one panel where those new arrivals are greeted by Bumblebee and Metalhawk and you can see that the crew of his ship all have very different altmodes; the leader looked like he'd transformed into a tank, one I don't know (black and blue) and the other one was a tripod. Those irritated me the most the tripods and the R2D2-clones with the tentacles.
Why do Transformers with non-humanoid or non-standard robot forms irritate you? The point is, as above, that these NAILs have been gone from Cybertron for millions of years. Over that length of time seperate they're pretty much assured to have changed and evolved in different ways. That's the idea. These are beings that have been gone from Cybertron so long they've become their own societies and types of robots. While I think it's a very good idea in general I think the book could really benefit from developing them and their crews and factions more. The NAILs are clearly not all one homogenous group but have been said to be hundreds or thousands of seperate crews and societies who all returned to their ancestral home now. The book needs to tell us who their different groups are. Where in the galaxy they came from and why they've adapted like they have. It needs to show us their customs, and individual (clashing) societies and ways of life. -ZacWilliam, RiD is a good book so far but that's what it's missing to be an AMAZING one IMO.
I agree and understand what you are saying, yes they have been gone for millions of years and of course would have evolved. Yet somehow, looking at them, they just don't look right - maybe they have evolved to the point where they are now an entirely new species?? Look at the 'Insect' looking one above for example. At first when I read that issue I thought it was a different alien altogether.
Another thing the comic isn't touching on is language. If the NAILs have been gone long enough to develop new body forms, then their language has probably changed as well. English changes so rapidly that even books written a few hundred years ago are almost unintelligible, so imagine how much change must have happened to the Cybertronian language after millions of years. Even basic communication with the NAILs should be an ordeal. The R2D2 types rub me the wrong way too. I think it's because they're so crude and simplistic, like the types of robots portrayed in 1950s B movies. I love the more complex ones like the centipede guy, but a TF shaped like a trash can seems like reverse evolution or something. Agreed! But there's so little space in a 22 page comic that I doubt we'll ever see much of this. Each issue should be a hundred pages long...I'd happily hand over my wallet for it.
The thing is I can really see Roberts pulling it off if his book wasn't set across the Galaxy. He's just SO good a context and suggesting vast backstory and characterization in single panels and brief lines of dialogue. I feel like if the creative teams on the books were reversed we'd already know the names of multiple "factions" of NAILs and some super intreaguing details of their societies, histories, culture or religions. Roberts just seems to breathe this sort of detail into the background of everything he writes. Not that this is meant as a swipe against Barber. He's doing a great job on the whole, this is just the one facet of the book that I think could really stand to be pushed more and would push the book to even cooler levels if it happened. -ZacWilliam, IT's definatly stuff that would mostly be in the background (although something like 1 special NAIL centered issue would be cool) but I think it can be done in the background for the most part and still be done well.
My biggest "Ehhh" factor to them is that they don't look like Cybertronians. If you showed me a picture of Metal Hawk, I'd say, "Huh that kinda looks like a Transformer." Show me a picture of a bunch of the NAILs we've seen and I would recognize them at all. Even on Earth, the Transformers still had their Cybertronian features in robot mode.
<--- is wondering if zalwilliam has an anthropology degree stashes somewhere in his comics collection--- i hear what your saying. and yes james does a great job with it in MTMTE, but dropping hints and flesh out chraracters is a more simple task than backstorying one tribe vs another vs another for all the Nails that have returned. I would like to see taht stuff as well, but i personally wouldnt want it to take away from the plot development. It's only issue 2--- slow down a little, i think they need to focus on setting the stage between the main characters a little more, and while some people are really keen on that stuff- i dont know if it will sell the comic to new readers. (though maybe they could include little bios and that stuff in the TPB- like bullets in LSotW? that would be a nice little addin to encourage people to buy the TPB- short stories about the nails or whatnot to help felsh out the world some) as for Cybertronians that look weird- Skylink- with him as a template, cybertronian can look as weird as they want. Spoiler and in Autocracy 4 OP calls him "old-timer; - -so he's had that form long before the war... I think the reality is IDW wanted to give generics that didnt look so generic (ie humanoid) cause its more interesting than having a bunch of WFC-looking generics walking around with different paint schemes. across the mediums, has anyone really gone into why Skylink looks the way he does- or any of the non-humanoid TFs for that matter.
Heh, Anthropology Minor actually, (Major was English Lit.) but close enough. Yeah, I'm definately into that stuff and LOVE to see Transformer and Cybertronian culture fleshed out. We get so little of it reletive to 30 years of TF fiction. I know it's early, and I'm not so much being impatient as just pointing out what I'd like to see more of coming up. Not really. Probably the closest is "Call of the Primitives" that at least considered this time of TFs a "type" related to Primacron (or his assistant's) original creations. ZacWilliam, perhaps they are early forms more closely related to Mechanimals? I don't think IDW has established how TFs are "born" in their continuity at all that I can recall...
Once it would have bothered me but with Beast Wars, the Baymovies, Animated and Prime, the Transformers lost their traditional look years ago. A pity because as a kid, Tf's always looked different and cooler than generic robots. It's a shame they've lost that. I don't think I'll ever accept Bulkhead, TF 1 Starscream or Frenzy as cool looking Transformers. What I think the intorduction of the various factions among the Nails would be great for would be to bring Transformers from other series into G1. Whether it's factions like Maximals or Omnicons or single characters like Movie Barricade or Animated Wasp. That said, I'm still loving what we've gotten so far in terms of story and characters.
They lived on other planets all across the galaxy. Their forms were probably altered for a number of reasons because of the diverse and unique environments they spent so long in.
