I think the roles would be different... not identical to what we have now... but still fufill a similar type of story function.

Powerglide's G1 personality, if given the right reading, is that of a show-off kid, who brags about his accomplishments and gets in over his head. In that sense, that's close to what Tailgate was when he first got to the ship... so I could see it working along those lines quite easily. He probably wouldn't have seemed quite as vulnerable right out of the gate, but I think it would have still developed nicely.

Instead, Roberts used Tailgate as a blank slate, with no real springboard from his G1 personality (which admittedly was less vivid and well-known than Powerglide).

Blitzwing... I agree, he doesn't seem like the introspective type, or the kind of Decepticon who would change. It's a tough one for me, because he's much more defined by his bio for me, than his later cartoon portrayal...

But even though he would have been quite different from Cyclonus, in terms of story dynamics, he could have played the same sort of role. Ignoring his Season 3 turn, Blitzwing is the quintessential Decepticon brute. He's not some old honourable warrior, he's a big mean, obnoxious SOB. So rather than being the stoic traditionalist type, I think he would have been the more caustic, abusive, gruff kind of guy, who resented being saddled with some little twerp... but then gradually warmed to him over time... y'know, like how they give puppies to violent offenders in prison.  

WHen you think about it, a lot of the same set-pieces would have worked, like when Cyclonus filled Tailgate's head with all the Decepticon rhetoric, and convinced him he should be a Decepticon. And then When TG finds out he's been had, he throws a tantrum, and Cyclonus just loses his shit and beats him down. In a way, that makes way more sense for a PG/Blitzwing scenario. I'm willing to bet the scripting of that changed very little.

HOWEVER... I really like Cyclonus as a presence in the series... his neutrality, his traditionalist stoic machismo, his patriotism and spirituality. I think it works. Out of all the substitutes, he's the one I would really miss if things unfolded differently.

zmog

 

I can agree with you there.

 

Something that has started to bother me more recently is that I really do feel like I'm reading about Minimus Ambus and less about Ultra Magnus. I still like the character development, but ever since Mini called the suit a suit I've had a bit of a sour taste in my mouth over the whole affair. I might have written about this before. I'm rereading the entire series again and that might be the reason.

 

I can sorta agree with that. I originally defended the Minimus reveal but in season two, Roberts seems to be purposefully separating Minimus from Magnus. The character doesn't really do much and whenever he does get a really good character moment, it's usually about how the Magnus armour is a disguise for Minimus. I understand that it's necessary to analyze Minimus' mindset and explain why he wears the armour, otherwise the reveal is pointless but with so little else being done with him, it's like Ultra Magnus has ceased to exist.

 

Yeah, that's a good point, both of you. I agree... Magnus really has become less of a character. Part of that is his absence as a physical presence. And when he does show up, I really do see him as being distinct from Minimus. Hrm.

zmog

 

A lot of the old characters I liked a lot and thought deserved more character development have sort of been pushed aside.

Still waiting for Rodimus to get any sort of development.

 

Yeah, the shift in focus to the 'new cast' does feel like the characters I was invested in got shafted in the process.

Mind you, they still get a fair amount of face time. Whirl and Cyclonus and Tailgate and Brainstorm have carried over nicely. Even Rodimus shows up a lot (even if his personal development is pretty much frozen). It's only been the last... um... ugh... year, that things have felt like they've lost momentum. The chain of events between Slaughterhouse and Elegant Chaos was pretty decent, but since then it's been hit and miss... and miss... and miss...

And even know, I just can't bring myself to care one shit about Nightbeat, Nautica, and Riptide. I'm still good with Megatron and Ravage though. More of those guys, please.

zmog

 

Hey I'm new here.

MTMTE is great but if there was one thing to dislike about it, it would be the Swearth issue. I don't mind a bit of humanity in my bots, but that issue was pushing it.

 

I stopped buying Transformers comics because of this comic. The Transformers kept changing art / alt modes every few issues (Bumblebee from traditional VW to backwards MP-styled VW to hood-chest movie-inspired muscle car, then going to movie-inspired ugly-face bots), and the stories are just too dark and grim. I want something that's much lighter fare like the actual G1 cartoon, and feature some of the rarer characters like Bumper or Hubcap. I don't like Prowl turning into some manipulator or Galvatron existing eons before Megatron. Then those characterizations end up polluting future TF cartoons and comics. I want escapism, not gloom and doom. I'm also tired of the "Wreckers" sub-group showing up everywhere since it appeared in the UK series, and that dumb siamese-twin robot joined at the arm with no hands. It's become its own trope it seems.

 

Let's face it, this book is still well written, but it's not what it once was.
AND I wholeheartedly agree about Nightbeat, Nautica and Riptide being lackluster. Nightbeat had a few moments to shine, but he's barely a character under Roberts' pen. Nautica and Riptide are... barely background dressing. Megatron has been the star of the comic in season two.

Splitlip: I agree with you as far as Rodimus is concerned. He started out as reckless guy with wild dreams, and by the end of season one turned into somewhat of a noble character - minus the fiasco with Thunder Clash. Season two had him revert to his initial character and then some.

Again, I still like the book, but I just don't get the direction it's heading. The last few issues have been a giant improvement, but that's not saying much considering the overall arc of season 2.

Welcome! Yes; Swearth has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I didn't have a problem with it at first, but it really did break the overall flow of the comic in season two.

 

Um... the funniest part of your post is not just that everything you mention is totally out-of-date (like, by at least 5 years), but that nothing you mentioned actually happened in this series More Than Meets the Eye. You're just complaining about IDW stuffs in general from years ago.  

This series is still escapism. I'm not sure how the presence of violence and bad guys makes it not escapist. It's giant robots fighting in space... if that's not escapist, I have to wonder what kind of life you lead.  

Anyway, I'm glad that IDW's approach is not directly imitating the cartoon for kids from the 1980s. I already did that in the 1980s (and honestly... even then, it wasn't the best). I don't read comics for candy-fuelled self-contained 30 minute stories where nothing ever changes or gets any deeper or more interesting. I prefer a good, more grown-up, ongoing plotline with lots of twists and turns. And that's what IDW tries to do these days, since the big writing and editorial turnover they had about 5 years ago. But hey... IDW has a comic based on the current Robots in Disguise kids show. That might be more up your alley.

zmog

 

Howdy!

I think that the Personality Ticks 2-parter was the real slog for me... at least Swearth was just a single-issue story. I don't mind it when you have like ONE off-beat story in a year to keep things loose. But for this series, they just hit a bunch in a row... Swearth was definitely the oddest though. There are bits in that story I liked, but for the most part, the overall plot didn't do much for me.

zmog

 

Minimus Ambus is just the 1986 cab robot given its own name and a redesigned appearance. I assume you've had this sour taste in your mouth about Ultra Magnus just being a suit of armor to a smaller white robot since 1986...?

 

I haven’t read every issue, but I suppose I don’t agree with Roberts’ philosophy on time travel. Yes, a silly thing to moan about, the ‘rules’ of something completely hypothetical and likely unattainable if not impossible no matter how technology progresses, but I just have a problem with the whole ‘it was always meant to be’ line of thinking. I’m more of a Doc Brown ‘you change something in the past you’re going to have an entirely different timeline’ type of guy.

Basically, Megatron was constructed cold, blue spark and all. So he goes on to be a miner, he stages an uprising (it’s conceivable that even as a non-POP he could crush the guard’s head and all that, lots of powerful blue sparkers out there), he incites rebellion (his battle with Sentinel in Apex mode really didn’t show him ‘overpowering’ so much as outmaneuvering, so still plausible with a blue spark), but he never would have dominated Overlord to the point of giving him a complex, and he’d have been killed at the Sherma Bridge and anywhere else he faced Optimus in hand to hand combat. And if he died at any one of those points, or even failed to achieve what we know he achieved, he never would have gotten to the point of being of being put on the Lost Light and sent back in time. Fry can’t be his own grandfather, the original John Connor replaced himself with a ‘half-brother’ by sending Kyle Reese back in time to fertilize the ovum that some 1984 dude was meant to fertilize (likely the guy who cancelled the date with Sarah, made it up to her the next night, bom chikka wow wow), and Megatron doesn’t get to ‘always’ have had a green spark because he and a team went back and gave him one. Doc Brown is right…heck, Hot Tub Time Machine is more accurate with time travel impact than MTMTE (the first one, haven’t seen the second).

So there’s my quibble. Yeah, very minor, and silly, and definitely worthy of a ‘who cares’, but…yeah.

 

Oops. They spelt his name wrong.

 

Ooooh... out come the fangs.  

I think you're misreading the situation here. Calm down.

I think all of us who have commented just now actually liked and defended the "Minimus" twist in MTMTE. What we're talking about now is how, in the wake of this reveal, it really does feel like Minimus and Magnus are two different characters (and we're getting more of a focus on Minimus). It's just a feeling. It makes a certain amount of sense, because Minimus would feel like he has to wear a certain persona in the armour (which is probably part of why he got so neurotic) and when he's out on his own, he feels like a different person himself, so he acts a bit differently.

However, the result is that the Magnus we got used to in this series just doesnt' seem the same anymore. That's good in one sense, because his OCD was getting absurd. But it also feels like something is lost somehow. Instead of our stalwart, uptight, pedantic straight-man, we have this pensive, philosophical little man. They feel like different guys.

I've never had a problem with the "inner robot" thing. When Dreamwave did it, I thought it was a clever little twist. When MTMTE did it, I have to say... I'm just not big on Minimus' visual design, but I don't think the idea of 'Magnus' as an identity inherited throughout the war 'ruins' his concept. I like it.

But... to be fair, he wasn't a smaller robot wearing armour in 1986. Not in terms of the fiction in any way. Not in his G1 bio, not in the cartoons, not in the comics. It was just one of those weird toy repackaging dynamics.. an unadvertised feature... a random thing. That didn't find its way into the canon until what.. 2003? Whenever the second Dreamwave G1 series concluded.

And also, although I don't agree with them, I think critics are correct in pointing out that in that sense Ultra Magnus was always a guy wearing outer armour. But it was the same guy. It was Ultra Magnus. It wasn't a chain of substitutes, impersonating a famous hero.

I don't think it really changes his IDW character that much though, since Minimus is really the only Magnus we've ever gotten to know in this series. So whatever. Same guy, technically. But the stories feel different now.

zmog

 

I was going to respond, but Smog better wrote my feelings about the minimus ambus situation far better than I could.

 

Just because we didn't see the cab robot in the cartoons and Marvel comics doesn't mean it didn't exist. A modern day writer is well within their rights to have the cab robot step out of the Ultra Magnus armor in the cartoon or Marvel continuity.

 

I guess? I'm not saying I have a problem with it. You can go back and read my posts about it - I enjoyed the reveal. It's when the robot inside the armor acts like a completely different character, and calls his outer... carapace a "suit" that I think a little differently about the situation.
 

 

By comparison, Peter Parker also acts like someone completely different when not wearing the Spiderman costume. And yes, Spiderman is just a costume rather than its own person. The same goes for many, but not all costumed super heroes. Minimus Ambus is his civilian identity whereas Ultra Magnus is his superhero costume.