What do you think of the scattershot style of presentation that we have been getting where each issue contains multiple snippets of a ton of different stories?

Personally I liked it at first but there has begun to be a bit too much swapping in and out for me. It's jaring to constantly be rotating which part of the story we are viewing, especially since there is no longer any regard as to which "title" you are reading.

 

I think the intention of the scattershot style was to 1) allow new readers who get these as pack ins to see both MTMTE and RID and 2) to try to encourage readers of only one of MTMTE/RID to buy all of DC and continue both in the future.

The result is less than ideal. What it ends up doing is slowing things down because so little can happen 4 pages at a time. Plus, you end up with conflicting art styles and moods.

Once DC is done, I wonder how easy it would be to re-cut it into separate MTMTE and RID stories? Although I do imagine (hope) that the finale does actually involve a crossover of the casts. My real biggest disappointment in DC is that we have not actually had a meeting of characters, just two plots that are related.

 

I kinda feel like if they wanted to run it in issues of MTMTE and RID, they should've kept the Lost Light cast's story (plus the Dead Universe?) in MTMTE and the Cybertron cast's story in RID.

As it is, it doesn't really matter which name's on the cover and they might as well have just put the ongoings on hold and released it as a twelve-part maxi-series.

 

Pretty much this. Dark Cybertron is its own thing to sell the figures, and the real MTMTE will start up after.

For Dark Cybertron itself, I understand what they were TRYING, but it's failing in execution. Had they kept it MTMTE/Dead Universe in the MTMTE, and RID/DU in Robots in Disguise, with the OCCASIONAL shifting of scenes for things that were happening simultaneously (IE: Starscream calls Magnus for some reason in RID, you see the MTMTE scene, then in MTMTE when that point comes up, you see the RID section to connect them), I don't think it would have been that bad. But, as mentioned earlier, it's a way to sell figures, and they want to cram as many as possible into each issue, so that's how they're doing it.

 

Agreed there, but hopefully after the crossover, they'll be able to build the characters up where we like them.

 

I think even in a crossover your individual issues need to have a satisfactory starting point and work towards a good ending point.

I find myself not invested in the individual threads because the advancements between them are minor.

When I take a step back, I think the story is moving in some interesting places overall, but I can't find myself caring about individual pieces. Someone died last issue, and the net effect on the plot is basically zero.

 

Usually IDW Transformers avoids this, but it's definitely "writing for the trade."

 

Well, it's not a COMMERCIAL per se - after all, it's coming WITH the toys, not something separate to PROMOTE the toys the way the normal comic/cartoon cross-promotion works. That particular scene doesn't have to make you WANT Tankor - you already BOUGHT Tankor.

 

I get what they're trying to do by showing what's going on with each cast concurrently - and I guess give new readers a taste for each series - but the execution isn't exactly great, and as a result there's too much going on in an issue to really get that invested in any of the storylines. Things start to get interesting and all of a sudden it shifts to something else and sort of kills your interest a bit, like a rubbish cliffhanger that leaves you feeling unfulfilled and a bit pissed off rather than excited for the next instalment.
I think it would've worked better by keeping the literal crossover in each book to a minimum, with the Dead Universe stuff split between the two, until the two casts properly meet up in Dark Cybertron #10.

 

I have to say, by revisiting Dark Cybertron 1-6 and reading it from scratch, the story flows one HELL of a lot better back to back, allows you to become accustomed to the artists handling the three locations and lets you pick up on dialogue that is important and not throwaway.

It isn't playing to the total strengths of its writing team, has got some ridiculously hokey moments like the Slug/Slag thing and Nova and Galvatron's daft dialogue, but it's far less of a toy pack in effort than my criticisms of it have been.

The events on Cybertron,

Spoiler

particularly Shockwave's spoilerific vision and Scoop's lambasting of the prophecy regarding Starscream and the Necrotitan

work so much better read as a whole without waiting for the next issue to come out.

Half way through now and a total reappraisal of the book from me.

Those of you waiting for it to be released as a trade, or waiting until all volumes are out or whatever, I actually think it'll be worth it.

Still flawed, but not half as bad as I initially thought.

Also, I needs that Crosscut toy.

 

I get what they trying to do. The problem is to many of the styles in one comic book is distracting. I found the later issues are some what better art wise.

 

Probably because they've settled down to just the three artists rather than having a few pages per each artist. Now the art shift is RID-based story, DU based, and MTMTE-based. Granted, they're not the artists we know and love, but at least the shifts NOW are more controlled.

 

Dogshit

 

I really want to know how Dark Cybertron comes across to someone who doesn't read the comics and is getting these with the toys.

Personally, I'm enjoying it well enough, it really does read better all in one chunk.

 

Barely. I held off and read all up to now and its like, oh wow 5 issues and an issues worth of stuff has happened, but at least we get super great info like Astrotrain has bad eyes

I always wanted to know that

 

Dark Cybertorn in a nutshell.

I would be SUPER pissed if anyone picked up a Deluxe and comic and was turned off comics because of this.

 

Disjointed art and a disjointed story with random toy appearances.*

Plus, it's cutting into months where I could be reading new MTMTE. Perhaps that's my biggest problem with it.

IDW is constantly on the edge, for me anyway, when it comes to Transformers. They've done enough stupid stuff over the past few years that even one misstep brings my negative feelings to the forefront. Anything Nick or (especially) James have a hand in, I'll follow. Beyond that... IDW has burned me too many times, and Dark Cybertron is yet another example of why it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to like this. I was going to drop RiD but I held on because of this. A huge mistake, yet again, on my part for somehow trusting that IDW had a coherent plan for Transformers.

It's really strange; I LIKE IDW as a publisher. They have amazing reprints of all sorts of things, and tend to have interesting ideas about licsened properties. I don't get what it is about TFs that they just keep missing the boat on (MTMTE not withstanding). I mean, even when this whole thing started, encouraging Furman to trade-write and starting the series with the SLOWEST burn possible, to nipping things in the bud when they were finally heating up, to McCarthy, to Costa, to HoD and Chaos (ugh ugh ugh) to miscast artists (still a problem today) to Andy friggin' Schmidt to the mediocrity of RiD to now dragging down MTMTE with this anchor tied to a noose of a crossover.

No more crossovers. Let MTMTE (and James) do it's own thang.

*When I was a kid, shoehorning the latest toys into a Transformers comic didn't bug me too much. Nowadays I'm a wee bit more cynical and it bothers me a great deal- particularly when suddenly Rattrap or Tankor or Scoop for no good reason at all. Ech.

 

I can certainly say I'm enjoying the story, but not nearly as much as I'd like. The way the story is presented is comprehensible, but it's so scattered. Having two issues a month really helps with feeling like the content isn't too entirely shorthanded, but there's so much going on that it doesn't entirely feel like there's much going on at all in some issues. MTMTE 25 was a very boring affair.

I would much prefer it if the issues were a little more focused on one group or another rather than every group in every issue with a slight emphasis on one more than the other. The RID characters for RID and the MTMTE characters for MTMTE. Perhaps have them converge later as the story progresses. There's actually so much interesting stuff happening, but the narration is so wildly all over the place that it's hard to keep the events properly organized in my mind after I've already read it, leaving me with a mental summary that doesn't get much further past "Stuff happened."

From an artistic standpoint, I find it completely frustrating. This is not a knock against the artists but a knock on the fact that each artist has such a wildly different style. There's three or four styles going on in each issue, and I find that horribly distracting. This is a series that should have had 2, maybe 3 artists at maximum, but not all on the same comic. I would have much preferred to appreciate them all individually than be bombarded by them all at once.

I can somewhat admire this approach. It allows each artist to be able to more or less focus on one subplot or group of characters, but I think this would work best if there was some sort of loose homogeny between the styles.