Yes. So far this one seems okay. But in general, it's been really bothering me more and more. True. But I kind of like the way she's drawn at least. DISAGREE. Furman may have made her that way, but it's Barber who insists on continuing to writer her in ways that reinforce her most irritating characteristics... and who seems to actually get off on it as well. It's not just her "threat-level" that makes her obnoxious, but how she is used in stories. Also, I'm not seeing that much development in this character at all. If anything, I think her behaviour has been pretty contradictory and in service to the convolutions of the plot, rather than to any kind of internal or intuitive logics. Exactly. zmog
FLATLINE? That settles it, I'm camping out for this issue. RiD has always been internal-monologue heavy. Whether it's around skulking political machinations or pitched city-wide battles, we always have the ubiquitous internal monologue boxes. At their worst, Barber uses them like bandaids, but much of the time I have no problems with them at all. If other people aren't noticing them, maybe no one else does either and they only stand out when they're a bad idea. That said, I haven't liked a lot of the recent choices made in RiD so I am wary, and can only be tentatively (very) excited for this issue.
But he couldn't just suddenly change her portrayal either or that would be a huge and complete disregard over what Furman had already written and established for Arcee in the beginning, which has always been just as annoying for fans of the IDW universe. Besides, I personally think a wildcard character like Arcee was needed to help make this kind of story work, to keep things unpredictable. But now with the first story arc over, we can have this issue finally get her POV in thoughts instead of just her seemingly random actions.
Frankly this is Barber's version of Game of Thrones with robots, each chapter is told from a different character's POV. And for the most part, it's been working.
Completely agree with this. She is the RiD equivalent of Spike in the sense that the more people hate her the more she shows up and does exactly what we hate her for. Some scenes with this character, like her attack on the pen in issue 11 don't even make sense when the the complete narrative is viewed in hindsight(yeah yeah, someone said it was just in case Starscream was watching, but that's STILL stupid) unless it's just to show us how awesome she is. Even more obnoxious than Arcee though is Beebee, who has had his fat face filling way too many panels in RiD since it's beginning. With issue 17 we finally got a really great Tfs tale, focusing on a character some of us actually care about, and then on the last panel it says, "Next Issue: BUMBLEBEE and the AUTOBOTS!!" That really did feel like somebody knows how badly some of us have disliked the nature of this series for so long flipping us the bird.
After RiD #15 and #16, I tend to agree but that's a symptom of almost all of the characters in RiD to some degree or another. I've been pretty supportive of RiD, even tho' MtMtE is my clear favorite by a wide margin but #14-#16 has been illogical plot where things were happening because the writer wanted it to versus the more natural ramifications of character motivation. #17 w/ Shockwave was pretty awesome tho' so hopefully #18 continues the trend. If anything, it seems to me that action isn't Barber's strongpoint as I've generally liked the political and character stuff leading up to the reveals (and the RiD annual with Megs and Screamer was swell) but once the action hit plot holes and logic gaps killed Rid for me.
Exactly. Furman made her but no one said she had to have more casualties than most Phase 6er's. Putting her in situations where she's able to hack things ups would be plausible if he made character likable in the first place.
Since #1 of Robots in disguise? 2, both fairly minor characters. 3 if you count the nobody she killed through the wall. But to be fair they were named characters while Blackshadow's 1000's of deaths were all no names. Am I like- missing a bunch of deaths here? and not just for robots in disguise, for mtmte too, before #15 all anyone talked about was how there was so much death in the series when the only main character death to occur was Flywheels. Sure there's more with Spoiler Ultra Magnus and Tailgate dying, and Rewind and Pipes already dead. But all in all people seem to view both comics as equal to G2 in amount of deaths when it is barely close.
People talk about death in MTMTE because James Roberts offed most of the cast of LSotW after making us fall in love with them. It's not that they're just piles of bodies, but rather piles of bodies of characters we didn't care about before the story but now do. He's also killed people in nasty ways in some of his pre-official work material. But yeah, with RiD the death talk was because of Bombshell/Sunstorm/the Constructicons/Horri-Bull/Ratbat. Of which only two were actual deaths. And it was a great gambit too, as I totally bought it until my jaw came unmoored from my skull when I saw that splash page.
Again, to repeat my earlier point, it's not just her "threat-level" that makes her obnoxious, but how she is used in stories. What Furman did is done... nobody said Arcee can't be a badass. However, repeatedly using her in ways that only serve to maker into a smugly irredeemable, unsympathetic, unrelatable fanwank badass with no discernible personality beyond making other important characters look lame and insignificant... that's a whole other order of writing. Barber had loads of options and directions he could have taken with this character, and went totally Mary-Sue with her in the least interesting ways. That too. Roberts has actually redefined Drift, making him sort of an interesting character who is not dramatically changed from his origins, but who has been developed from his initial cliche in organic directions. In Arcee's case, Barber seems to have instead went with "less crazy, more irritating". Game of Thrones is not exactly high art, but at least it's reasonably compelling, with a truly expansive cast of characters, who all have very distinctive perspectives, and who transmit all sorts of valuable world-building information through their varied stories. Also, we actually experience their reality through their perspectives. In Barber's case, we just get regular comics... sure, it often focuses on a different character from issue to issue, but in terms of "perspective", we mostly just get a lot of meaningless verbal diarrhea in caption form, representing meandering, uninteresting internal monologues, none of which seem to actually say that much, about the characters or in general. I think the "voice over monologue" style can work, but I wouldn't say it's working particularly well here. It's far too bland. That's just weird. Oh, absolutely. I just think it's been particularly problematic with Arcee This issue looks like it might be okay... based on 4 pages. At the very least, it might be nice to get some worthwhile character development for Arcee finally. zmog
As far as the first-person-narration caption boxes go, I think RiD's a little written into a corner with them now. Sometimes - most of the time, I'd say - they work. But there are a few issues here and there where, heck, they just aren't very necessary. Where they don't do anything for the story but have someone talking over the top of it, not saying much. But they're there because they're part of the book's methodology.
Yeah, if you mean they are arbitrarily overused, even when the author has nothing to say, I agree. I think this was particularly in evidence during the recent big battle sequences, and... Bumblebee's (I think) ruminations in "voiceover". It just felt so utterly superfluous. He wasn't saying anything insightful, fresh or meaningful. It only served to pull us out of the immediacy of the action. John Barber... you are not Terrence Malick. Give it up. zmog
It looks good. I mean it almost interesting to see how Starscream fail. I must admit Arcee looks good in this issue. Fixit is sure in bind. I wonder if he would renounce the Autobond.
