All Hail Megatron 12 Preview

5 pages of AHM #12, starting here, on Guido Guidi's DA account.

And news: AHM will last unitil #20 (so, it's AHM Coda Bis, or AHM Coda Squared?).

Edit: art & dialogues on tformers.com

Coda was set to 16. So we're getting at least four more issues under the moniker. Hmm...

Ok.....Devastator is just insanely too big.

All Hail Megatron 12 Preview - Transformers News

Devastator should be nowhere near the size of Omega Supreme, but whatever.

Mass shifting?
Autobots mass shift down in robot mode.
Decepticons mass shift up in robot mode.

Kup is fun.

Lots of Action. Decent Art and Universe toys diving in. Dropshot and Universe Sideswipe.

Kup was cool. So what skywarp said kind of referenced spotlight kup?

oh this looks wonderful can't wait

nice i might try to pick this series up again got bored with it for a while. Loving they made Devastator the right size, people don't realize how big quarry construction vehicles are sometimes.

But... http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transf...guidos-da.html

Oh it is so nice to see well drawn humans again and dynamic panels

ZOMG action.

Oh, and Kup. You so badass.

Love.

This series has rocked. The sales have been good and yet I heard Shane MacCarthy isn't going to be writing the ongoing.

What's the deal with this?


Is it down to some of the more ahem - vocal - fans, who've pissed and moaned since it started. Y'know the ones who are unhappy if Simon Furman hasn't written every TF book ever?

I don't get why IDW haven't given Mr. MacCarthy a longer run. I like it when Transformers have actual characters instead of them all sounding the same -it's great.

Wait, please don't tell me Furman is coming back to the ongoing. Shane got me back into the comics. Furman will send me off again. AHM has been very exciting and I loved every minute of it. And I agree about the characters sounding the same, I hate the way Furman writes them. Shane was spot on.

I haven't been able to get any comics in like 3 months now, I have alot to catch up on.

Sweet.

I'm the opposite. AHM was the first time I ever dropped a TF book... It reminded me too much of the cartoon instead of the comics...

Awesome!
AHM is the title that brought me back to the comics.

can some one fill me in on who the Cybertron Scattorshot repaint is?.... is it FLAK!!?

Any ways I just look at that devastator and how some how a cement mixer is apparently that big and I cant really get past it (I guess thats not really a good thing on my part but it just bugs me)

I'll see how this ends out. I've always admired the art, but McCarthy's run, I feel, lacks the same sense of continuity and grandness Furman was planning with the -ation series.

I mean, I don't need Furman writing every single TF story, but McCarthy's run has been average. IMHO, the human characters are forgettable. Give me Mowry or even former DW writers, Patyk and Brad Mick a shot with IDW's mainline.

It's not a matter of people being upset over Furman not writing, it's a matter of AHM not being an enjoyable read. Some people want more than cartoon dialogue and giant robots smashing things, AHM fails to provide those things, so the widespread complaints. The fact it seems like a complex, well thought out Transformers universe (a war on many fronts that didn't consist of 5 or 6 transformers running at oneanother, shooting ineffectively) was utterly destroyed (the Autobots were wiped out across the galaxy, all off panel) to make way for what feels like a Dreamwave retread only makes things worse. As far as giving him a longer run goes, he's had 12 issues plus spotlights to win people over and it's not happening, it's not like he's had a horribly compacted run like Eric Holmes had on Megatron Origins.

I'd be happy to see a Furman/McCarthy team up on the ongoing, Furman handling plot and Shane on dialogue(The Transformers dialogue is one of the strong points of AHM, but not the humans, his human characters are bloody awful), but neither of them will be writing it so it's just a pipe dream.

I think it's suppose to be Dropshot.
What he's doing in AHM I do not know.

That scene of Omega shooting a hole through Devastator and the Statue of Liberty is rather surreal...Don't know what that's all about.

Yes, the decepticon launcher is Universe 2.0 Dropshot.
And he actually first appeared on issue #5 page 21...

Yup - Coda #...14 or 15 according to Nick Roche @ BotCon will clear up how Kup got from the loony-bin in his Spotlight to the kick-ass Drill Sergeant of AHM. He wrote the Spotlight, iirc he wrote the Coda-tale as well.

Megatron Origins was unreadable.

Disagree about many of your points on AHM. Fail to see how AHM was all 'cartoon dialogue'. Pretty far from it really. The cartoon wasn't really known for character exposition was it? As far as destroying the IDW-verse the Autobots weren't wiped out were they? I mean there reports of massacres - yes, but the Cons thought they'd wiped out Prime and Kups units and hadn't, so who knows about the rest? I like the fact we don;t know it all, it gives the writers something to tease out.

Ultimately, you must be wrong about Shane 'having 12 issues to win people over and it's not happening', because it clearly has been happening, as the sales must have been good to extend the series to 20 issues.

I wasn't slagging off Simon Furman BTW, (I've enjoyed lots of his work) just people who want him to write every issue of Transformerrs.

I do think Shane's style has been a breath of fresh air though, and he deserves a longer run than 12 issues IMHO.

Megatron Origins was written as 6 issues but cut down to 4, like Revelations, it seems that it suffered greatly because it was compressed, any flow it was intended to have had was lost, Megatron going from oppressed miner to gladiatorial killing in the blink of an eye, and so on. As far as the cartoon dialogue comment goes, that stems from the most common bit of praise I've heard about AHM is the characters sound like they did in the cartoon, I can't say either way because I can't sit through the toon these days as it hasn't aged well, same as most toons from that decade.

I've seen no evidence outside of the claims of the higher ups at IDW that AHM has been selling well. TFArchive list the estimated sales from diamond and they're no better than Furman's run. If Shane's comics were selling tremendously, why would he be off the book post Coda? I think it's more a case of keeping the name to try and retain some of the new fans they've gathered so as not to shake things up too much until they have the details of the ongoing sorted. I'm surprised there's been no leak of any of the details for the ongoing outside of who isn't writing.

the covers for AHM 14 and 15 are also up

the person writing the ongoing is neither Shane nor Furman

i was surprised IDW didnt announce who he is at Botcon but i guess SDCC is where that'll be said
ah well!

It seems to me that if there are new fans that they want to hang on to, then people have been won over.

Sounds like this title may be doing well. Here's hoping it is: It's the only comic I buy any more.

WTF!! The one and only questioned I asked at Botcon was if they were going to do an ongoing series. They told me that they have a comic out each month already so they don't need one.

Considering IDW has not, to my knowledge, released a skerrick of information on AHM's sales figures, we only have IDW's word on the matter, which, considering they lied about AHM's origins, their word probably isn't worth very much.

Meanwhile, Diamond's independent estimates suggests AHM isn't doing any better than Furman's run.

Ahh, but one must take into account people that have been lost since the "soft reboot".

so what is the state of IDW's comics now? I gave up when news of Maximum dinobots hit since I got fed up with all these different comics crossing over and supplementing each other when I was only interested in 1 comic and maybe the odd spotlight per month.

I dunno at least with DW I knew that it was just one comic for G1 and one for the main line toys and that their spin offs didn't really mesh in with the other story's and when they did they didn't impact the main story so if you did just get that one comic you didn't feel like you were missing parts of the story.

Ptah. Devastator was apparently the "secret weapon" the Cons used to defeat the Autobots galaxy-wide, and he is taken out in one page?!?

It seems to me with this series that Shane just wasn't planning anything... just making up as he goes. And after 9-10 ultra boring issues where the Autobots were sitting on Cybertron twiddling their thumbs, and Megatron was quitely waiting for Starscream to betray him (again) and stopping the conquering of earth with destroying New York... it gets into ultra-fast action and exposition-dump (love how Bombshell explains that he caused Sunstreaker to betray the Autobots, making Streaker's guilt over it and his suicide totally pointless. Also apparently, Hunter is dead? THE BASTARDS! [/Cartman])

This guy just doesn't know what the meaning of the word "Story Arc" is. 12 issues. Compare this 12 to Furman's Escalation and Devastation - there were no fillers, we got tons of characterization and while there was a main plot, side-threads were also set up or tied up.

Give Furman the reigns back, or get a real writer (Greg Weisman comes to mind, he can do wonders with a long-story arc), IDW. You are going down the path DW did... and we all know where that leads.

its been kinda un-officially announced by Denton over on the IDW Forums some time ago

Not that I would expect Devastator and Omega Supreme to be brilliant conversationalists, but I have to say... the page of dialogue for Omega vs Devvie... ?

"You are nothing!"
"Wrong. I am Omega Supreme"

Pretty weak sauce, McCarthy. Pretty weak.

This is why even though I've been a big supporter of AHM, I still think McCarthy has some growing to do. I like his approach, but his execution still needs some... polish? The scenes are great, but the dialog is sometimes just really clumsy.

And Omega and Devastator are WAAAAAAAAYYYYY too big in those images. I mean, beyond the domain of artistic license even. Ouch.

zmog

Huh? Where?

Pretty sure that was Hunter.

God damn it. Shane does not write good characters. Well, except maybe Thundercracker.

Everyone else is contrived crap; Perceptor, the sniping badass. Drift, the mysterious ninja badass. Megatron, the empty rhetoric spewing badass. Spike, the human badass.

Oh, and Deluge and Bombshell, the giggly mad scientists.

Now, I'm not saying Furman is a perfect writer, but Cyclonus, in his solitary spotlight, manages to trump all of these characters who have been given 11 issues to develop and grow. Cyclonus, the Cybertronian patriot, resents the Autobots and Decepticons for destroying Cybertron. He now longs for order and control, but gradually realises that this is just a facade he created in order to tame his naturally violent and destructive nature.

Oh, and lets not forget Omega Supreme's amazing character:

I am Omega Supreme.

Sooooo cooooooooooool.

I would be a happy person if Shane never wrote anything ever again.

Hyperbole.

Cyclonus is hardly a deep character. He's just a "self-loathing soliliquizing badass", to use your formula.

Furman's problem is that 99% of his characters all sound and act the same, and make an utterly indistinguishable contribution to the plot. In effect, he doesn't write characters... he writes plots.

I could care less about the Dead Universe, the techno-organic evolution of some dull, badly designed alien planet, and Nemesis Prime's vaguely defined motivations. I'd much rather see characters I know, behaving in-character, and interacting with each other in new ways, and so far McCarthy has been doing a much better job of that than Furman... even while adding his own touches to the canon, like explaining the origins of the Insecticons, showing Ironhide and Kup's shared history, etc...

Mind you, I don't hate Furman. He started very strong on Infiltration, and only start spinning his wheels later on. McCarthy is a less mature, less polished writer than Furman, but I think his sensibilities are a better fit to Transformers. The core of Transformers has always been the characters... otherwise the stories could be told in any space opera setting with any characters. Furman seemed to be losing sight of that.

It's easy to harp on easy targets like Drift or Perceptor being the "silent badass" characters, but to do so would undermine the fact that Ironhide, Sunstreaker, Jazz, Kup, Megatron, Starscream, and Bombshell have all received substantial character development.

To address 2 in particular that you singled out...

Megatron has more going on than just spewing empty rhetoric. This is actually the first time, perhaps ever, that Megatron has openly expressed his esteem for Starscream, and hinted at his ultimate plan for the Decepticons beyond "total conquest" or whatever. This is a far more calculating, motivated, and believable Megatron than we've seen before. There's a bit of badass posturing as well, but hell... it's Megatron.

Bombshell has his moments of fiendish mad science, but far more of his page time has been spent exploring the oft ignored aspects of his personality... that of a psychological warfare specialist who plies his trade compulsively on those around him. He's like a rogue analytical profiler, who is constantly watching, testing, poking and probing at his victims' insecurities and misgivings in order to unbalance them. It's a nice touch, and it would be cool if the other Insecticons got more exploration (they haven't).

I have my issues with McCarthy's work, but the excessive degree of hate thrown around seems to be mostly from people who aren't actually reading the series, and apparently are basing their opinions on the free preview pages that are released online.

I'll say again that I started ALL HAIL MEGATRON with the utmost skepticism... I think it's a testament to what McCarthy is doing RIGHT that I've now become a defender of the series, and look forward to each issue as it's released.

zmog

Devi: "You are nothing"
OM:"Wrong, I'm batman... I mean Omega supreme"

McCarthy dude really, your un orginal, boring and awful at pacing and any kind of on going plot and now your basically ripping off DC laimest gimmick, AHM has finally some entertaining action I'll give it that and primus know we've waited long enough for it but really IDW tf universe is becoming a total joke.

I slag this off and yet I will go out and buy every issue... sadly this says more about me than I care to think about.

Anywhere where they denied the rumour that it originally had nothing to do with Furman's story.... *pause* Yeah, sorry, what I just said wasn't very helpful.

Is my trade.
I'll admit, I exaggerated. But Cyclonus is a deeper character than anything I've read of in AHM. He has motivations and layers, and those justify his actions, which, in turn, move the plot forward. His Spotlight epitomises the best of Furman's writing.
First time he expressed esteem for 'Scream? I credit that to Devastation, when he says 'Nevertheless, the battlecry has been honourably raised. Decepticons, attack!', after seeing Starscream single-handedly taken on the Reapers.

As for Megatron being calculations and motivations? I believed it more in Infiltration, where he puts down Starscream's unit, and Escalation, when he slowly loses his cool as he is corrupted by Ore-13, and, the beginning of Devasation, when he has been driven to near-insanity by the humiliation he has experienced, and, finally, the end of Devastation, where Starscream's revival and Sixshot's deactivation serve as a sobering moment for him, as he realises all the crap that's been going on around him.

In AHM, he seems to be ambling around with not much to do. I could almost respect McCarthy's attempt at a 'grand motivation' if it wasn't at best, murky, and at worst, contradictory and poorly thought out.
Okay, I'll admit, I haven't read much of Bombshell, as I stopped buying AHM after issue 4. But the very fact that he stated his purpose as 'torment' made me want to throw up, and the dialogue of his I've read, and read about, just seems to portray him as a 'Ooooh. How delightfully evil!' style character.
Hmm.

I'd say he writes characters that work into the plot that he conceives. Their motivations and actions are what move the plot forward, be it Ratchet's desire to save the humans in the first half of Infiltration, Bludgeon's obsession to 'appease' and thus restore Cybertron by devastating other worlds with Thunderwing, or Grimlock's longing for retribution that causes him to fire upon the Dinobots and Shockwave.

I'll admit that sometimes, such as Spotlight: Doubledealer and Spotlight:Sideswipe, when he is forced to compress the plot, the characters become irrelevant and interchangeable. Also, many supporting characters, such as Thundercracker, are essentially blank drones.
McCarthy creates characters that are utterly superfluous to the plot. They exist as separate entities.

Even the only character I like by McCarthy, Thundercracker, does jack-all. Okay, he shows outrage at the Swarm. Why does it matter? Does it need to be said? Will this morality impact upon the plot ever?

The fact is, every character in there has to be in there for a reason. This is another flaw of Furman's, introducing characters as cannon fodder. The only character in AHM that move the plot forward, because of their personality, is Sunstreaker. And that is a generic character at their most generic: 'I was a traitor, and now I feel bad, so I'm going to Heroic Sacrifice'. He is nothing but a thinly veiled plot device, like the Swarm; a desperate attempt by Shane to add tension to his static Cybertron scenes.

I presume all the other characters are meant to show the consequences of defeat/victory, but are handled incompetently as a series of short, disjointed skits, simply using the 'plot' of AHM as a backdrop, without advancing it in any way.
I felt that Furman lost sight of that with a few of his Spotlights, namely Optimus Prime, Galvatron, Doubledealer and Sideswipe, and the last half of Devastation was severely fudged, but for the most part, was showing skill at balancing character and plot within the IDW universe.
Like I said, I stopped reading AHM after issue 4. I'm basing my opinions on plot synopses, quotes and judging people's opinions of it online. Maybe there's something I'm missing out on by not reading it directly anymore. Though I very much doubt that all my criticisms would be alleviated.

I agree, though... I find it extremely difficult to take them seriously when they assert that AHM was always planned to springboard from Furman's run.

I think you're still exaggerating.

Cyclonus talks a lot (like all Furman characters), but his "internal struggle" and actions generally end up falling into the same old cliches. There's not much nuance there.

Yes, there is that... it's hinted, though in that instance is was basically a device to explain why Starscream is allowed to live in the end.

The real meat of their relationship and their mutual respect comes in the form of their conversations in AHM... that is where you really come to understand their motivations, as well as Megatron's admittedly "Sith apprentice" model for Decepticon succession.

I agree that the Starscream/Megatron dynamic was improved in Furman's run. Also, based on the characterizations in the first issue of AHM, I was extremely disappointed to see them tumbling back into the tired old cartoon routines. That issue was so bad, I was ready to drop the title on the spot.

Fortunately, McCarthy seemed to wake up a bit and shift gears into smarter territory as he scripted the following issues, and things got much better.

Hm. See, Furman implies Megatron is a colder, more contemplative character in his run, which I liked very much as a change from oldschool ranting Megs. It's how I always thought the character should be treated. However, in the examples you cite, Furman doesn't really show Megatron to be all that on the ball, nor explore his plans or motivations.

I agree that Megatron doesn't seem to DO much in AHM... and while that could be defended on the grounds that it's "supposed" to be that way to show how lost the Decepticons are with no immediate goals for conquest, or how Megatron has everything figured out several steps ahead of the game and is just waiting for things to fall into place... but I agree, it feels like dead time that isn't handled well. As I've said before, McCarthy is still finding his legs, but I'm enjoying what he's trying to do, and the fact that he seems to be getting better at it as he goes along... rather than Furman's writing, which was starting to feel... stagnant.

One of the biggest fallacies about AHM is the notion IDW keeps trying to put across that it "puts the emphasis on the Decepticons"... which is total bullshit. The Decepticons are really NOT the focus at all. Besides the periodic character bits, and the Megatron/Starscream heart-to-heart chats, nothing is happening with them at all. The heart and soul of AHM is still with the Autobots and their plight... which is fine with me, because I'm enjoying that too. But it's kind of a joke that this series is supposedly "more about the Cons".

For an example of how the "villains" can become the real main characters of a toy franchise, McCarthy should read Marvel's GIJOE line, starting around issue #15 or so. It becomes very obvious at a certain point, that the main Cobras and their various internal machinations and plots are the ones really driving the plot, and the Joes themselves are largely just a rotating cast of colourful interlopers who get in their way sometimes. It's pretty cool.

I agree, the "Torment" response was pretty... spanky. That was one of those cliche-pitfalls McCarthy falls into occasionally, letting his 12-year-old self supply dialogue against his adult self's better judgment. That's part of the reason AHM was an interesting read for me... it literally felt like I was watching an immature writer growing up a bit more with each issue, and correcting mistakes as he goes.

Occasionally Bombshell uses cartoonishly effete dialogue... but more and more what I've noticed about him is the way he undermines and picks at the scabs of his fellow Decepticons to manipulate them. It's a valid and welcome interpretation of the character, and I want to see more of that, and less "deliciously eeeevil" cliches. Even with these issues in consistency, McCarthy's made Bombshell more of a character than he's been... well... ever.

I dunno. To me, it feels like things are happening because Furman says so. The characters don't really have a life or "voice" of their own in most cases. Maybe they get lost in the bigger plot events, but what I missed in Furman and appreciated in McCarthy was the fact that characters seemed to have more down time to talk to each other, and reveal their characters, rather than just being mouthpieces for the plot.

Try Skywarp, Thundercracker, Blitzwing and Astrotrain... did any of them ever exhibit any particular personality traits that made them stand out? Did they express themselves differently? If their word bubbles had been swapped around, would you have recognized them?

As opposed to that flashback in AHM to when the Insecticons were being developed, and everybody immediately picked up on the fact that Thundercracker was incorrectly coloured as Skywarp, because his lines were unmistakeably HIS.

I disagree. Drift... yeah. Sparkplug, and most of the human cast... yeah, them too. The others... no, I'd say they inhabit the plot rather well.

See, that's exactly the problem here. Furman wouldn't bother showing that element of character. He'd just push his all-important plot along, and have Slag or Afterburner give a scientific/philosophical sidebar of expository dialogue to tell the audience how they should be feeling. That's the Furman way.

The cast of distinctive characters is the soul of Transformers. We want to recognize them in these stories, we want to see them get their moments, we want to feel like these plots are populated by real characters, not just a bunch of interchangeable puppets.

Considering that half of AHM's story is supposed to be about the breakdown of purpose within the Decepticon forces, Thundercracker's outburst plays an important role... it shows the disparity between the elements within the Cons. Disillusioned idealists like Thundercracker, simple-minded goons like Skywarp, and twisted shit-disturbers like Bombshell.

Although they are never given much attention, I also liked point that the Constructicons sided with Starscream... while Megatron was sure that most of his crew of cheap thugs and sociopaths would follow him blindly so long as Megs gave them the promise of more fighting and conquest. He figured Starscream's erudite notions of a "grander purpose" would fall on deaf ears, but failed to consider the preferences of his resident engineers and scientists... which lead him to a run-in with Devastator. A nice little twist.

I think you've fallen into the trap of wanting to criticize something so badly, that you're taking aim at the very contrivances that MAKE a story... not seeing the flesh for the "bones" of the plot, as it were. If you strip away the smokescreens and mcguffins and devices from Furman's plots... and indeed ANY plots, you end up with the same empty framework.

Saying "every character has to be in there for a reason" doesn't preclude that those reasons would be creating atmosphere, cultivating tension, showing emotional ties, etc... Furman is so plot-driven, there's hardly any character left. McCarthy is coming from the other direction, where the "plot" is only there to provide a framework upon which to hang a character-driven story.

There is some truth there... the story does become largely a series of vignettes, with nothing particularly pressing or important going on in the background. It becomes more a serial drama... a ROME or SOPRANOS of Transformers (though certainly not of that caliber of course), rather than a summer blockbuster action movie, or epic crossover comic book event like DC has been wallowing in of late.

But after DEVASTATION, that was a welcome change.

Well, you already have it in your head to tear it down, based on your ongoing comments in the forum... I doubt you'd turn your opinion around completely, but I think you'd at least see the progression and improvement in the writing that I was talking about, and recognize that while it still has it's flaws, it's also just a different, more character focused, less linear, style of storytelling than what we've had in Transformers for a while... and that can be worthwhile in itself.

zmog

Just because it doesn't pick up on every story element in that continuity doesn't mean it was never meant to take place there.

Even if one doesn't agree, it doesn't seem fair to call them liars, or spread opinion on the matter as truth (which I've seen a lot of beyond this thread). Especially since those who do aren't even privy to the information they're talking about.

I realize that, and I still find it odd that so many people treat certain notions as undisputed fact, when in fact IDW has stated exactly the opposite.

However, while Shane McCarthy is very well-spoken (I listened to the whole interview he recently gave... about 70min or something?), I couldn't help but feel he was a bit disingenuous on a few points (including the original concept of AHM). Obviously I can't call him a liar, because I have nothing to go on but a vague instinct on the matter, but I imagine there's a certain "official" version that IDW has decided to maintain, for whatever reasons.

I imagine this is to a certain degree simply professionalism. If there were issues or tensions at IDW concerning the handover to McCarthy, and the change of direction, I would understand why they would want to keep that stuff in-house and not let is spread around the rumour mills of the internet.

That said, my own impression of the end of Furman's run lead me to feel strongly that Furman had caught the scent of blood in the air, and was trying to entangle his story hooks as deeply as possible, and to leave as many unresolved elements as he could to make it that much harder for IDW to bump him from the main line-up.

Total speculation on my part, of course... but that's how the writing at that point felt to me.

zmog

I like both writers.
Different is good. As long as the quality is there, great art and a follow through with the story I'm pretty happy.

The "ation" string was great. AHM is great. In both cases I'm wondering what will happen next, if my wheels are turning and my imagination is stirred I'm happy. 1 or 2 solid G1 comics a month is an enjoyable distraction from the world.

My problem with McCarthy is-

His dialog tends to-

It has this way of-

Characters can't complete-

It gets really annoying to-

I just don't like-

Well said. I think Furman's run ended badly, and by that point, I was happy to have a change. Shane's writing is a bit... amateur (?), but the tone suits my tastes better. But I was entertained by both of them enough to keep following the line.

I really do want EJ Su back though...

Hm. I've never actually noticed that as being a particular trait of his dialogue style. No more than any other comic book guy, that is. Though... maybe it just seems that way to you because Furman was the king of improbable self-consciously verbose long-winded dialogue.

And this is coming from a self-consciously verbose long-winded guy!

zmog