Trying to... resist... and... can't...

I'n't Josh Boyfriend BRILLIANT!

 

This. I honestly can't stand the direction Thundercracker has gone in. He was quite well done during Costa's run (believe it or not) and now he's bad comedy, scrambling on his hands and knees looking for Buster (that scene he stumbles upon the conehead clones). I think I'd be able to take the script or the dog, but having both is overkill and makes TC a buffoon. TC, his script, Buster, Marissa Faireborne, and the EDC are holding back this post-DC chapter of RID. I generally really like what Barber does but each of those elements to me is cringe-worthy.

Edit: PS I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade; I totally understand how it's cute or funny for some people. Just to me it's overdone. Rant over haha.

 

Agreed. I'm generally enjoying RiD but the various cutesy elements are getting a bit much. Thundercracker's writing, Buster, Marissa, Jetfire's Pokemon or whatever that thing is, etc have all long since worn out their welcome.

 

"-Your dialog is trite to the point of being unspeakable, the Susan Journeyer- good lord- storyline is cliche. Plus... it's pretty hacky to use a voice-over."


Seriously, the only one that fits is the voice over (which is rather different for comics than TV anyway).

His dialog is fairly good (characters have strong and distinct voices, dialog usually flows, [the occasional clunk, on the flipside the occasional memorable line too], etc.), his Prowl/Bumblebee/Metalhawk/etc. storylines are not particularly cliche... really, if you think that is a 'hilariously accurate critique of Barber's own writing' and Barber is either being 'meta or oblivious'.... uh, well, I really don't know what to say except, well, it isn't.

Not to say Barber doesn't have issues and various 'your milage may vary' things (like, UltraMagnus3786 finding TC's portrayal too cutesy? I get that! I can see exactly why he says that. Or how his plots make things seem like things are fairly constantly going bad-to-worse for Autobots-especially-Bumblebee, even if in the wider picture the 'Bots are winning), but... well, again, I don't actually have much response, I'm just not seeing enough to even tell where you're coming from with these ones. To me it just looks like it's being done out of habit or something. It's lazy critiquing, is what it is.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to make an account here using the name "Josh Boyfriend"

 

Well I did enjoy him once, but then of course I was very, very drunk.

 

Thundercrackers script and the cute dog element show that Barber is at least trying to lighten things up a little as for me one of the biggest problems with rid season 1 was that it seemed a little grim compared to mtmte with most of the cast being endlessly unsure of themselves or being complained at by douche nails.

It sort of works and makes its point but it is starting to grate as the joke wears thin when repeated and it is starting to make thundercracker seem stupid and like a comic relief character in the worst possible way.

What could help is the same thing that helps mtmte get away with all its outlandish humour; counterbalance the silly with the sinister and moments of brutal heartbreak. Adding these to Thundercracker would be incredibly easy as he was formerly high up in the Decepticon ranks so it is highly likely that he is no stranger to war crimes and genocide so having him change to expressing himself as a writer and struggle to form an emotional bond with a delicate alien is begging for subtle emotional complexity and tragedy as for example when the dog inevitably gets squished or dies of old age it’s going to be a bit difficult to put it mildly. I personally want to know more about where his head is at in this supposedly post war world and the self referencing jokes don’t have to get in the way of this but currently they are.

 

Do they? Do they really? Why does practically every Decepticon who isn't Soundwave, Megatron, Galvatron, or Starscream sound like some generic wannabe mobster street thug then? You could take a random line from any of them and without the pictures to tell you otherwise it could be said by any one of a dozen characters from Dreadwing, to an interchangeable Constructicon to Ravage. What a blessed relief that Roberts got Ravage, and actually gave him a voice and a brain and character and a vocabulary that consists of more than the word 'Boss'!

 

No... it is?

All I can say is that after reading the opening pages of Thundercracker's script, going right into Marissa's complaints, and then into the Cybertron flashback with the hacky voice-overs and stilted dialogue... I was convinced that Barber was going full self-parody.

And that's just it... he does have a history of overusing internal voice-over. His characters do speak their emotions out loud in dull, expository ways. His dialogue is trite. These are all criticisms that had been leveled at him before Dawn of the Autobots, so it becomes conspicuous when they are parroted by a character on the page. Any time in a story that you have a character writing his own script, and especially if there is also a harsh critic involved, it almost inevitably takes on a self-reflexive aspect, and calls attention to the process of writing and dealing with critiques, often in a nudge-wink sort of way. MTMTE had even done much the same thing, back in #22. This is a common structural method and literary device. Saying you "don't see it" doesn't mean that it's not there... just that you're not seeing it.

Honestly, if Barber had been doing it deliberately, it might have been the savviest turn I'd seen from him. When I read that bit in the preview, I dared to hope that after the mess that was Dark Cybertron, he was trying to address his faults, and was signalling it with a bit of inside humour. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way.

I think the problem with Barber is that, mechanically, he's a smart and capable writer. However, his sense of voice... his feel for narrative flow and character and dialogue, motivation and cause/effect... is all a bit blunt. I think this is Barber's customary lack of subtlety in characterization at work (see his clumsy, hamfisted handling of Starscream over the last 2 years), and it's a little bit like the literary equivalent of getting punched in the face.

With a big overstuffed glove, but still.

Nah, that wasn't lazy critiquing (though I do really appreciate your attempt at a cheap shot. Stay classy, you!). That was an astute reading of the subtext generated (deliberately or not) by Barber's foregrounding of writing conventions in his script.

It's kind of like Roberts' recurrent metatextual "editing/revision" motif, except not really as clever or integrated.

What is a lazy critique, though, is that I couldn't be bothered to actually spend the time replying to you, so most of the above is actually copy-pasted directly out of my comments from the discussion thread for RID #28 last April.  

zmog

 

YES... very much so. All of the above.

I think that Buster meeting a dire end is probably almost too easy and too predictable. The only way it would be more of a cliche would be if it's an Autobot who is inadvertently responsible, spurring Cracker into a vengeful rage, and reinstating the Decepticon status quo (I fully expect this to happen in the next few issues). The problem with flipping between tragedy and comedy is that you have to have a really deft hand to pull it off. Roberts gets it right most of the time, but it often comes down to a certain panache that not every writer has.

But I agree... Thundercracker's emotional state and interior development is a rich vein to mine... but instead, the cheap laffs are kind of obscuring that potential.

Yup. I genuinely think that Barber tries. He actually makes an effort of some kind to focus on the individuality of the characters (as opposed to Furman's IDW run, where 90% of the characters were just plot-narration dispensers)... but he doesn't always get it. And so we're left with awkward repetitive blue-collar vernacular, and a heavy reliance on dry, ultimately-not-saying-much internal monologues.

zmog

 

I like the Josh Boyfriend stuff a lot.

I also really like Buster. Here's hoping he turns into the very first Dogmaster!

 

It's almost unfair in a way for Barber that TTFKARID is running alongside MTMTE, purely because that's what we keep holding it up to and comparing it with.

I mean I mentioned Dreadwing above, and basically his story arc was to show up, spout some 'Urrr, I'm 'ard I am' stuff, get shot by Shockwave, resurrected by the plot device, be a henchman, and then die again. Which tbh, under most circumstances would be absolutely fine and dandy.

Except over in MTMTE, you've got Pipes. Pipes had a similar amount of panel time, and served a similar function. Kick off the plot, say some stuff, hang around for a bit, and then die. But in such a short amount of time we learnt stuff about Pipes. His hopes, his dreams, his aspirations. We learnt that he was naïve, and funny, and chipper in the light of the universe continually dumping on him. When Overlord's heel stomped down we felt genuine concern and sadness, and as he dragged himself along to set off the alarms with his last message repeating in his head and his final act contributed in no small way to saving the entire crew, we wept.

It's a level of engagement in a character that Barber doesn't really appear to be capable of, but which under most circumstances we wouldn't even be aware of or care that we were missing it, other than perhaps a vague feeling that there could be more to what we're reading.

 

I don't really think Josh Boyfriend was worthy of his own thread, but I think it's rad that Barber has a good sense of humor about his own work and by all appearances has been inspired to evolve his style and try some new stuff.

 

Ok, I can see more where you're coming from now, but I kinda feel the amount of criticism I see for him is over-the-top for 'blunt writing.'

Oh yes, quite agreed. I like TTFKARID more than Costa's run and I think even Furman's. I like the politics a lot (which does occasionally bump it into 'TF comic I'm most interested in at the moment.' Sometimes MtMtE gets a bit too irreverent for me and I like the serious side and scheming and such, even if it is blunt). It just has the misfortune of being the sister comic to the best-written TF comic.


And heck, let's not forget Barber is editor- he is *part of why* MTMTE is so great.

 

Really? I knew he had potential for doing good in a small part of writing a comic.

 

God bless Josh boyfriend. I would crowd fund the hell out of a one shot drama about his life

but then i also think if MTMTE wasn't around RID would be hailed as the best TF comic since wreckers...ah the curse of being good running next to the sublime

 

My response to any digs at Barber and creative vision

Andy Schmidt.

NEVER. Forget.

 

This gets said a lot... but I think it might be a bit overstated. While the effect of comparison on a monthly basis certainly casts a shadow, it's not like it completely suspends our ability to make critical evaluations. I think that all the things I find annoying about RID would still be annoying. To compare with Costa's phase... yeah, it's mostly better, but the flaws in Barber are constantly poking me in the ribs, where with Costa, they were poking me square in the eye, accompanied by a softly whispered insult.  

To put it even more succinctly, Dreadwing's appearance felt like exactly what it was: product placement.

Now obviously, the whole idea of a Transformers comic (at least from a Hasbro marketing point of view) is "product placement" of a kind, but I think it can be productively argued that there is a range of merit there. Not all product placement is created equal.

Yes, he has done that. He's definitely trying new things stylistically, with mixed results... so I realize I'm maybe too hard on him.

I think his writing still sits very much on the surface, and for me his characters almost never seem to take on life of their own... but that's an ephemeral quality that is hard to nail down. Would The Transformers Formerly Known As RID come across better if it wasn't cast in contrast with something unprecedented like MTMTE? Maybe. But the issues I have with the series would still be the same... my sense of vague dissatisfaction as palpable on each reading.

I'm not sure if Barber's new attemps to infuse the series with more wit and humour are successful overall. The lighter tone works, but a lot of the humour is repetitive or falls a bit flat. I think he just needs to find a softer touch all around. I still think his dialogue needs work, and we've all had those moments where a plot development has elicited a "seriously??" response.  

Some of it is subjective, of course. There are probably quirks in his writing that bother me especially, in ways that Shane McCarthy's didn't. For the sake of comparison, I'd say they're not far off from each other, though Shane is a bit more fluid with his dialogue, and Barber is much better with overall plot dynamics. All things considered, even Costa was a passable writer... except that his contempt for his subject material trickled into the stories, and the lack of enthusiasm permeated the whole thing.

That depends... do you see banal-to-average writing as stimulating and worthwhile? Or do you see it as a flat landscape, where every little spike or pothole becomes all the more apparent. When I'm reading a Barber story, I rarely chuckle or inhale sharply when something cool or fascinating happens. Instead, I find myself going "tsk" quite often.

If I were not already a Transformers fan, I probably wouldn't have collected RID for 2+ years. It always relied heavily on my investment with the franchise to hold my interest... by contrast, MTMTE is a series that brought many people who didn't care about Transformers into the fandom. It's actually interesting enough to surmount an initial rejection of the premise and characters. I think that distinction says a lot.

Admittedly, because of my longtime affinity for Transformers, I'm probably also going to be fussier about how the characters and setting are handled.

I think my personal tastes just tend to be tickled by something that compels me to follow along, not something that I have to push myself to read. And Barbers' little foibles as a writer are just enough to keep him on the other side of that neutral line.

Maybe I expect too much. That may be why, despite being a "comics" guy my whole life, I only follow a few titles these days. Maybe the baseline for comics is just not quite enough to hold me now...  

It seems like he's doing a decent job on that front... and I get the impression that it's his job to deal with the incoming creative demands from Hasbro as well (and why I think most of the product placement stuff ends up in TFFKARID... he knows how badly it would crimp Roberts' style). I think Barber has some good ideas, but it's his follow through that usually puts me off.

zmog

 

Yep, he's senior editor. Meaning he does stuff like approve storylines, has a big say in decisions on who writes/draws what, works on longer term plans, and the basic setup of the two-ongoings era (Cybertron politics [/Earth intrigue] vs Lost Light) was likely mostly his fault.

 

Ah, I quite disagree there. I have a very strong sense of what Metalhawk is like, his Arcee, his Prowl, Skybite, Ironhide...

Milage may vary, but I view good characterization as one of his strengths.

See, I've read a lot of DC and Marvel and other comics. I've seen banal writing, bland characters, inconsistent characerizations, characterization bending for the sake of forced conflict, poor pacing and action, etc. etc.. I've seen people worst get book after book (Jeph Loeb, Millar). I've seen cranked-out bland stories that are readable but leave nothing sticking in the mind, or that make plenty of poor story decisions or that don't get around to anything interesting before they end or change course on a semi-regular basis leaving little to get involved with (DC's nu52, looking at you).

Barber I put more as 'average to goodish'.

Heck, he managed to bring the 13 into play in a way that *didn't suck*. That is not easy!

I can name pleeenty of moments off the top of my head when I get an inhale on something fascinating. Starscream's big political moments (Starscream made me chuckle a lot). The Black Room reveal. Starscream taking down Turmoil... then Metalhawk. "Remember what's important." Prowlstator on Earth.