I wish Barber can just stick editing and have some one else do the writing so whatever Art and writing errors can be corrected before publication. Problem with Barber he lacks the subtlety that Prowl requires to be a great character. Transformers ongoing should be written like a spy thriller with intrigue and subterfuge but it is like they want to write at one level but try to make the 12 years olds understand it instead of trusting the audience has enough background info and intelligence to follow the story.

Prowl can be effective villain where he allow to be mastermind in the shadows and right now he is too in your face. Optimus needed to see who Prowl was but I think that could had been done another way.

 

Prowl: " IDW writers were really high when they made me a constructicon."

 

Thanks

 

Prowl wanting to destroy the spacebridge makes perfect sense. Suddenly Cybertron is reuniting with all it's colony worlds. And Starscream is going to be in charge. At this point Prowl really has given up on Cybertron. He hates the NAILS for running. He hates the Cons for obvious reasons. And he hates the bots because he feels they never listened to him enough and betrayed him. Clearly Cybertron is beyond saving. And if it gets the influx of fresh blood from the Colonies, then you get a new cybetronian empire, and everyone else is screwed.

Let's look at Prowl's flaws. Feel free to disagree or argue, I'm just expressing my own viewpoints.
-He doesn't get people. Prowl has a very bad record of alienating his friends and allies. He sees them as numbers, and thus is often blindsided by the fact people are complex and variable. For example he didn't see how his actions played right into Megatron and Bombshell's hands. Compare him to Starscream, who is very good at manipulating the public.
-Connected to this, he thinks he's the only one who is right, and never bothers to run his plans by anyone else. So he never hears them point out how things can go wrong, and what might happen, and never ammends those flaws.
-He's often blindsided by what he doesn't know. Like not knowing Bombshell had improved his cerebro shells, and Megatron was planning a comeback.

 

K and I also read the comic's finally

 

I've never read AHM but every happened because Optimus didn't list to Prowl about his warnings.

Jesus Christ.

So in a way everything is really Optimus's fault.

^This.

We need to get Nick Roche back.

 

Prowl is the way he is because IDW's grasp of the character personalities are tenuous at best.

 

Prowl is definitely one of those characters where you have to ask if the ends justify the means. I admit I've been finding that I'm beginning to view him as a character who's unwilling to accept the world changing around him. I hope retribution is coming his way at one point. The pummeling he received from Prime was a good start.

 

He's not a psycho dammit. This is why I'm so sick of Barber's smirking cocky Prowl. It's just so out of character compared to the kind of guy Roberts and Roche have established him as.

Prowl is a necessary force in the Autobots to take the greyer matters into consideration in order to ensure their victory and survival. He needs to exist because the more righteous leaders such as Optimus and Ironhide are too dead-set in their "heroic" Autobot mentality to even consider concepts such as sacrifices and necessary evils. He's one of the more sane characters out there, his problem is his arrogance regarding his methods, and his refusal to accept any alternatives. Now that his motivations and reputation have been made fully aware to the Autobot high-command, he has to deal with Prime finally shutting his activities down - which in his perspective, would be catastrophic to the cause.

What makes him so complex in this regard is that he'd be right. He's actually good at his job. VERY good. Someone mentioned before that AHM could have been prevented had Optimus listened to Prowl, and as we learn in the coda the Autobots probably wouldn't have even survived the event had Prowl not gone through the measures to put his voice inside of Kup.

Even on Earth, Prowl salvaged more operations than he did fail them. He's the kind of guy who'd sacrifice an entire race to the Decepticons, but the results would of course be unarguably worth the price. And that's what frustrates Prime so much. He can't argue against Prowl, because Prowl's ways have usually resulted in the better outcome, while Prime's ways had resulted in AHM and Combiner Wars.

He has been dumbed down a bit by Barber, unintentionally, unfortunately, and I really hope to see him under Roberts pen in the future. I'm sure he can still remain a great character, but it takes a really great writer to find the line between villain and complex hero.

 

Has any writer ever read Prowl's original bio where he's described as quiet, competent and very loyal with almost limitless patience.

Why is everyone so willing to write him as a prick?

A friend of mine once summed Batman up for me in one sentence, "the thing about Batman is he's smarter than anyone else."

I think that applies to idw Prowl. He's Batman to Prime's Superman. I just wish they gave him Animated Prowl's fighting ability.

Prowl's always been my favourite Autobot regardless of his various betrayals. The only thing worse than Idw making him a villain is having him beaten up by Optimus and rescued by Rattrap both of whom along with Kup, Prime Bulkhead and Energon Ironhide are my least favourite Aurobots.

 

I don't think that they did. IDW's version almost comes off as if the writers had a story that they wanted to tell, but were made to work on Transformers instead. Their Prowl is about as accurate in its portrayal as All-Star Batman's version of the Caped Crusader.

Maybe we should call him Crazy Steve?  

 

Simon Furman.

This everlasting canon of having Prowl as a prick is precisely something inserted into franchise by Furman, when he started Prowl forever arguing with his Grimlock.

It's a long lasting trend and it's not something created by IDW.

Now, whether the original bios always should apply to continuities different than Sunbow cartoon is a different question. Sure that Furman was changing them even back in his Marvel books.

So it's a kind of split canon at this moment. Some characters are different in their original bios than they were written in books for decades. For an example, I can't recall if anyone before AHM actually made Thundercracker acting as he was characterised in his original bio by Budiansky.

 

Which ones? There´s 30 years of Transformers lore.

Nah, he was always a loyal zero personalty patsy in the cartoon. Such wonderful characterization!

 

Yeah. I wish Roberts could take over Not-RID too...but i suppose we can't have it our way.

Roberts truly understands Prowl...the fact he doesn't write him much is a sin.

 

Everything before Furman needed a foil to his Mary Sue? I'm not sure where the inspiration for each character came from, but Prowl always had a Zhuge Liang dynamic with Optimus compared to Shockwave's Sima Yi style relationship with Megatron. Same way Sunstreaker wasn't a sociopath before IDW got a hold of him.

 

And? Characters happen to change. The Prowl from the cartoon is not the same from the Marvel Comics, from the Budianski Bios, from IDW and from whatever else he popped into. I also never read Romance of the Three Kingdoms stories, so I have no idea, nor do I care about your comparisons.

And I kinda like sociopath Sunstreaker.

 

I haven't read it either. I like Prowl as amoral scheming prick than his first intro in Marvel 30 years ago. Prowl as a special ops is just as believable as Jazz as special ops. I wish he can go back to the shadows and start manipulating people as IDW hinted at. It just written way to obvious and yeah Prowl made some miscalculations and mistakes. I am glad he with Rat Trap may be now Prowl can go back to scheming.

As for the Sociopath Sunstreaker I like to see his char more and it would be interesting.

 

There's a difference between character development and character derailment. I find IDW's Prowl the latter, not the former. As for you rest, relax there, guy. No need for any passive aggressive behavior.  

 

Mileage may vary. What you call derailment, others might call development.

 

Prowl developing into a morally ambigious manipulative bastard is development, Prowl becoming a wise ass jerkass that only serves to antagonize everyone...derailment.