Comic Book Resources have posted a new interview talking about the upcoming Combiner Wars crossover with creators Mairghread Scott and John Barber.
A few of the key points of the interview include:
- The Combiner Wars will be on two fronts – both an information war, a “war of influence”, and a physical war. Starscream is at the heart of all of it, of course – with Optimus, Windblade and Prowl all being key players.
- Superion has a few new moves – he’s described as a cross between “an NBA star and Godzilla”
- The seeds of Combiner Wars have been sown since Windblade first appeared in Dark Cybertron.
- On an unrelated note, we’ll also be seeing more Transformers of more body types – not only female characters but more diversity in general, more religions, creeds and classes.
Check out the full interview at Comic Book Resources, which includes some spoilers for the background of the crossover event.
TF14
Acid Storm I would guess
johnbonhamatron
Wait, what, Bombshell's on that page?
Autobot Burnout
Whoever Cyclonus gets made out of in TFTM.
ZeroiaSD
Oh, true!
Still, his facepaint being less elaborate likely means something… maybe an apprentice City Speaker?
Hm, and the bot next to him has a bit more, which is still less than Windblade. I think we're seeing a definite hierarchy here.
TF14
I think the fact that he's relaying things that Caminus is saying to Afterburner is what really makes it clear that he is a city-speaker
ZeroiaSD
Is he really a cityspeaker? I mean, the eyemakeup is a bit different, different patterns could mean different things.
spiritprime
Excuse me while I squeal over Hot Shot being there and being a fucking Cityspeaker!
Mirimus
You shan't live well, sir…you shan't live well.
ZeroiaSD
Maybe it's the 'drop of a hat' factor, and the specifically the targets. Like, MtMtE will kill Rewind and similar.
People weren't freaked out when it looked like Ultra Magnus was dying because, well, Ultra Magnus dying after a battle with a top Decepticon warrior? That's how you expect him to go. Rewind dies at the same time, and that's not how people expected Rewind to go. And Tailgate? Old age? Cute bots aren't supposed to die of old age! And such.
RiD casualties tend to be military leaders and grunts in combat, bots who piss off Arcee and Galvatron, and similar ones where you knew they were in danger and probably knew what they were signing up for. You often don't know it's coming specifically (like Metalhawk's), but when you see them you go, "Yea, that makes sense," rather than "Nooo~!". It may be a good death scene but it's a different thing.
Like, if Cyclonus really had pushed Whirl to his death, we wouldn't be shocked like the Rewind death, because even though we care about Whirl, that's Whirl. Someone pushing him to his death for being a jerk is how we always kinda expected him to die, and it'd be more along the lines of the RiD deaths.
General Magnus
Oh dear, a bunch of anonymous folks on an internet forum think I have low credibility. However shall I live now?
TFfanatic88
I see Hot Shot, Litebright, and G2 Afterburner in the first page. I loving Sarah Stone's artwork.
Autobot Burnout
I think MTMTE gets brought up more about the deaths because it really makes people dying all the more weighted, thus having much more effect on readers when the fan favorite suddenly gets offed at the drop of a hat.
Like, for most of the main TF shows, they can't really get away with killing off a lot of characters time is spent on, because of toy sales and – as proven nearly 30 years ago through the death of Prime in TFTM – kids really do not take it well when they see their heroes visibly pass on (the fact the mythical extra three seconds of gray Prime crumbling to dust did not ever get put into the film probably was an unintentional silver lining for Hasbro later on). Also, they have to keep the cast size low when they can since characters have voices and animation models and stuff.
With the comics, the idea is probably that the adults are made of sterner stuff and the comics the kids generally get have all kinds of crap censored out of the toy pack-ins (the word murder was replaced for Trailcutter's pack-in spotlight in one of Swerve's speech bubbles, for instance).
Infosaur
In fairness, I think they did a huge disservice to the narrative by bringing back Rewind.
Not that I don't love the little guy. But it was one of the few cop outs this book has done yet.
GWolfv2
Mairghread confirmed Caminus is dual gender AAAAAAAAGGGGEEEESSSS ago. We see a male city speaker in WB 1 or 2 as well
WilyMech
I am not going say that Camiens are all female. I do not believe that is the case. Excluding Arcee most of the females are Camiens are obviously so. The Camien CNA expresses gender more than the Cybertronian does. It could easily say that base on the Holo avatars might indicate the Cybertronians who identify with either male or female gender. Roberts himself said both Tailgate and Cyclonus will have female avatars. Mirage is not confirmed but I suspect to have one as well. The fact is we can not go on actual physical appearance to judge gender. Also I suspect that there are a group of Transformers who do not identify themselves of having a gender. That is why I always felt that the female and male gender had always had been on Cybertron. Jhaixus made sure that the female genes in Arcee's CNA were expressed as dominant so in essence she could had been male at one point. I suspect the female frame is not common frame and it is actually rare. Like with humans some of us have more male and female hormone levels than others in our gender it could play a role in Cybertronians.
Fanatic97
Is that…Thundercracker fighting with the cons?
Or Skywarp I can;t tell T_T
RED342
HOT SHOT JaAm
ZeroiaSD
Hm, it's funny that RiD doesn't get as much complaints on the 'death roulette' angle, even though it has a good number of deaths
Oh, Dark Cybertron has some significant deaths. Do the books get split credit for those? I think it should get at *least* half credit for the final one.
ZeroiaSD
In the book formerly known as RiD, but yea, Scott wasn't behind it.
No, they're too old for that.
kaijuguy19
They're just saying that the Transformers themselves have clear genders despite not having or at least not that we know right now any indication of sexual component as well as many other types of transformers that are yet to be explored that are vastly different from the ones we're used to in the comics so far. Besides as for the whole transgender thing they're just likely referring to both male and fembots like looking like each other's design which isn't different from how humans today do similar things. With the exception of a few transformers that were built AKA Cold Constructed Cybertronians aren't exactly normal machines from the beginning because since the franchise began they've always acted like humans in a lot of ways so if anything what IDW is doing right now is only expanding that concept. Wasn't the way they felt more human then robot was what made us love them in the first place?
Also the idea of the 13 being in IDW was something that MTMTE if I'm right brought in first way before Scott came into writing for IDW so no she's not responsible for that.