Are the first IDW comics still canon?

Discussion in 'Transformers Comics Discussion' started by rikkomba, May 3, 2015.

  1. jcchua

    jcchua Well-Known Member

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    There is no snark there, since you are pretty sure at what you said I recommended you to re-read the story. We can't remember every detail for a book that is already 40 issues long. I personally had to check back as well to confirm.

    You are misunderstanding this. I am not saying Megatron's defection is caused by AHM. I am saying that the EDC aligning themselves to the Decepticons was caused by Megatron now with the Autobots.

    That's a fair opinion, but it still does not remove the fact that they are part of AHM. Perceptor turned into a badass sniper because McCarthy wanted to, and his design is still kept in MTMTE in spite of the many other redesigns done by Roche and Milne. Take note also that the Codas only backpedalled on what McCarthy did with Kup and Perceptor. Even if they never bothered with those, then we just got sane Kup and sniper Perceptor for no reason.

    And I wholly disagree splitting character intros and plot points. Characters are supposed to drive the plot. If it is the opposite and the characters are just behaving because the plot wants them to do, that is called bad writing. Costa's run and the MTMTE/RID "reboot" were sprouted from AHM. On the other hand, AHM did not care much about Furman's run and pretty much only acknowledged the continuity flaws in the Coda issues. Costa did not even also put any significance to Furman's until the Chaos Theory arc, preferring to just focus on how the Transformers that were either stuck on Earth or the moon. So that's why I'm happy that Barber is making all these effort to bring back the mythology built by Furman to be a lot more relevant again.
     
  2. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    I do feel that AHM is effectively a much better story now that it has the codas and later patching, than it was at the time.

    And later patches around Costa's run (like Spotlight Megatron showing some key moments) also helped that one, though it was in a bit less need of it.
     
  3. DrOblivian

    DrOblivian Mad Doctor jAmS

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    well when all else fails and nothing makes sense anymore because continuity is all buggered to hell.
    Blame the Unicron Singularity.
     
  4. Haywired

    Haywired Hakunamatatacon

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    They're canon but better watch out for continuity snarls.
    But it'll take a lot of patching to have it running smoothly.
     
  5. gregles

    gregles quintesson

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    To all the people new to the comics spotlight Arcee is not canon

    no one needs to tell them otherwise
     
  6. Tux Chaos X

    Tux Chaos X Spades Slick

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    Says who?

    And I don't believe it takes THAT much patching to smooth over the continuity issues throughout the series; IMO Roberts and Barber have done a decent job paving over the more egregious parts. Nothing really stands out as "jarring" these days.
     
  7. discoamazing

    discoamazing Well-Known Member

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    Yeah they are trying to stick to the canon, but the tone is completely changed, so they aren't really dealing with the darker/more morally ambiguous themes that we saw in the Costa run and the other earlier comics.

    Edit: am I the only one who really liked Costa's time writing TF comics? His version of Thundercracker made him one of my favorite transformers characters, but his new personality with the screenwriting (and that awful animal sidekick) is just unbearable.
     
  8. jestermon

    jestermon Well-Known Member

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    Anything with official Hasbro approval is canon.
     
  9. Max Rawhide

    Max Rawhide Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ... uh, never mind

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    Costa had some great ideas and his Thindercracker and Swindle are likely among the best representations of the characters. Many others, are not! Prowl and Optimus are probably the worst offenders.

    Costa wasn't really suited for writing TF's: he admitted this himself in an interview.

    The biggest issue, however, was the incredibly lazy to non existent editing at the time, Andy Schmidt. An editor has the job of selecting artist/writers (he several times selected artists who were not capable of drawing TF's or writing them), he's responsible for grammatical and spelling check (quite a few mistakes during his run), he's responsible for making the writer write a tight story (and Ongoing was anything but), and he's responsible for consistency (artist were told to draw the TF's they saw fit resulting in body changes between issues) and continuity (he was the self proclaimed enemy of continuity).

    Although Costa was not a good choice to write the comic, he did all right. With a good editor who was willing (and capable to call the writer out on improvements) Ongoing could've been a pretty damn good series.

    But it wasn't.
     
  10. GWolfv2

    GWolfv2 Deathsaurus - A name you can trust for peace

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    John references Furmans era CONSTANTLY. if he can tie a continuity knot, he does. Look at SPL: Mirage. Who the hell thought THAT would ever be explained? The coneheads references both AHM: CODA to SPL: Ramjet. AHM directly responsible for Marissa. I think the only book NOT to get a reference directly was Max Dinos. And the dinos being such prominent RID characters and keeping the alt modes is at least connected to the events of MD. The continuity issue between SPL: Wheelies and AHM.
     
  11. Magnus' Mate

    Magnus' Mate Well-Known Member

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    Very, very this. Costa gets far too much flak whereas Schmidt seems to get away with presiding over a very low point - most of which he instigated (shall we remember that "Continuum" one off comic which basically rewrote the THREE YEAR OLD continuity simply because, by Schmidt's own admission, he wasn't that bothered by details??)

    I didn't have that much of an issue with Costa's run - like Furman before him, though, he needed a much better editor than he had.

    "For All Mankind" (#1-6) - I quite liked this. Good mix of action and characterisation. Prime's "surrender" is almost "Afterdeath"-esque in its strangeness.

    "International Incident" (#7-12) - issue #7 (almost an unofficial Megatron: Spotlight) was good; #8 was pointless, and #9-12 was the nadir of the run. Poor in every way.

    "Revenge of the Decepticons" (#13-18) - loved the one-off Hot Rod adventure in #13. "Revenge of the Decepticons" itself was disappointing, but not terrible.

    "Chaos Theory" (#19-23) - loved the "Space Opera" arc with Hot Rod again, probably my highlight of Costa's run. "Chaos Theory" was OK as well.

    "Chaos"/"Police Action" (#24-31) - disappointing, but punctuated with some good ideas and moments. Editorial back-and-forthing can really be felt with this story, which doesn't seem to really know what it wants to do/say.

    Andy Schmidt is the weakest link in IDW's Transformers run, and more people need to understand this!!