It was okay. Nothing special, but a fun read. Right now at least, I don't see much that could have huge repercussions in future RID issues....bar what happened to Ratchet as said, possibly.


RiD #12 was better I think. Though they're killing me not letting on what's going down with Ironhide, Superion and the Dinobots!

 

Yeah, that was my assumption also, like he tossed off the script in an afternoon... but it still is what it is. Kinda meh.

True. Though I'm betting that a lot of that annual was already written and mapped out beforehand (or gradually over the year). It's very integrated into the larger threads in the series. This Orion Pax, not so much.

Yeah, I'm not sure I can say that keeping your audience away from everything that's intriguing, and instead focusing on the dull stuff, is exactly a good writing strategy.

zmog

 

I don't normally complain about the art but I feel as if, had Milne or Roche drawn this, it would be received a lot better. Zeta and some of the others just looked...odd in this style.

Of course you get whiners about art no matter what so *shrug*...

 

that last panel is just meh...orion pax doesnt look heroic at all..and it takes up the whole page? not a good way to end this story

 

I agree, instead of looking symbolic it just looked plain funny. As if dad's family portrait was drawn over by an overzealous kid with crayons.



I'm not even kidding.

I agree with this: a comic book is/should always be about both the story and the art. However, I think the story is always a bit more important in the end. Bad art does take me out of a story though, and good art helps to boost a mediocre story - but never to the point that we can simply dismiss a bad story simply because it looks nice (the comic book equivalent of blockbuster movies, where people try to discourage you from making valid points about a bad story because, oh my god, it looked totally awesome).

Another good example is the latest Ultimates book from Marvel. While the previous story arc finally put the Ultimates back on track with an interesting, bold story and some amazing art, the current one once again features a mediocre story, complimented with terrible art. If only it had the same quality of art as the previous arc, I would have thought it was 'ok', but not good. Now it's just bad.



But hey guys, I just realized: we totally proved Mike Costa wrong! We don't like everything that has Roberts' name on it!!  

 

Eh, it was just okay.

And everytime I hear Killmaster's name, I have to think of that one Allspark fancharacter, who has guns everywhere. I keep confusing the two!  

 

Ha! Did Costa actually say that?

I mean, I'm always happy to prove Costa wrong, but that would have been a pretty bone-headed thing to say. Roberts is a relative nobody as a comic writer. The only reason people would like stuff with Roberts' name on it is if it were GOOD. Now, after he's been consistently amazing for a year, he's gathered a following (despite the occasional dip like this). Costa didn't manage that in two years. He can complain all he wants, but in the end it comes down to him not understanding the franchise (and IDW's management not understanding that a guy who was successful on GI Joe will not automatically be successful on Transformers). He was doing it wrong, and now Roberts is doing it right.

Except this issue, in which he just does okay.

zmog

 

I feel like everyone is missing the point of the last panel there. I'm pretty sure its not supposed to be him looking epic, i almost see it like him sitting there pouting under that faceplate, stubborn as all hell. Orion Pax Shenannigans as opposed to Optimus Prime Epicness.

 

I think at the end of his run Costa was so bitter he made a bunch of really silly complaints about Transformers fans. I'm sure he's a nice guy in real life, but he did pretty much mess up his entire run on Transformers, and he deserves most critism he got.

He implied that, since Roberts co-wrote Chaos, fans had to pretend they liked those issues (and would not simply trash them as they did with all of Costa's other work). This is of course after the two Chaos Theory issues that stand miles above the rest of the ongoing's material.

It doesn't even matter if it is tongue-in-cheek or not, making a stab at the fandom using another writer's good track record: classy!

 

It's a good theory though, I mean I hear "Written by: James Roberts" and my ears perk up. And like you said, he came onto the ongoing and it was suddenly better (imagine that).

 

I agree... that's how I took it. It's suppose to be funny.

Yeah, I read that interview, and it was seriously petty and out-of-line. He came across as pretty pathetic... I mean, I can understand defensive, since he had taken a lot of flak for his run, but his response was all about blaming the fandom and the franchise in really denigrative ways, rather than just coming clean by saying "I really didn't understand this franchise when I came to it, and that uncertainty comes out in the writing. It wasn't my thing." and leaving it at that.

Exactly. Huge douchebag response.

Yeah, I guess I remember that... after Chaos Theory and Wreckers, fans were really starting to twig to Roberts' style. But considering that Costa had been on the book 2 years already, I think he just had to face facts... he was not making an impression. That wasn't Roberts' fault. It was his. And I don't think anybody pretended to like Chaos... it had plenty of criticism. For my part, my main enthusiasm for Chaos was that it signalled the end of the crap and the beginning of something new (and as it turned out, much better).

zmog

 

I liked the dialog between pax and bludgeon. The art was ok didn't bother me.

The nugget I liked was the diaclona tribe running in packs. It reminded me of the diaclone commercials of all the convoys, black ironhides, etc.

 

also made me think of the diaclona packs being almost like their ancestors, like how we have cavemen, or whatever you want to call them lol.

 

Heh... yeah, that's a nice way to look at it. Probably what he intended, "pre-Transformers" and all...  

zmog

 

Lol, Diaclona! I completely missed that, they are throwbacks indeed  

 

Was I really the only one bothered by the fact that Nightbeat's altmode is just a completely normal looking Earth car with windows and side-view mirrors and everything?

 

Yeah, it does kind of look that way, but to be fair to the artist, that Cybertronian Nightbeat design dates back to his Spotlight from 2006. I remember thinking 'wait, is that an Earth mode?' when I first read that issue...

 

Yeah, that bothered me too (along with the Tumbler mode for A3, which smacked of laziness). I felt like this Spotlight was a half-assed effort from all involved.

zmog

 

  Totally.

zmog

 

I wonder who did 'very heated debate' with A3  

I'm already making theory:
Alpha Trion visits Dominus Ambus. A3 does something rude to Rewind. DA demands apology. A3 doesn't understand why DA cares so much about a data receptacle. They start discussion, so the fight begins...