To be honest i found it boring as hell . The only reason i bought it was to make sure i had the finishes to the IDW stuff being published as part of The Definitive G1 Collection .
I actually got a headache reading it and trying to work out what they were all waffling on about .
That said , i did enjoy much of the artwork .

 

You're probably right. The difference is, though, as the comic went on there was less robot content to the stories, and more human. Early storylines, like the difference between constructed cold and forged, outliners, and shadowplay - were stuff that (usually) made best use of the concept of robot-aliens. You couldn't tell stories like that about humans, but you had the advantage of sharp human-feeling dialogue and emotions. That's a really unique story opportunity.

As Lost Light specifically went on, it stayed science fiction but stories were more commonly about human television sitcoms, bar-jokes, quips, being quirky, and whether people liked each other or not. The balance was lost. They didn't need to be Transformers anymore.

//Panjumanju

 

Hmm. I agree with your sentiment. However, there's an argument to be had that a lot of the underlying story could have only happened because the plotlines were built on things that transformers don't normally explore: the sociopolitical elements constructed by IDW in general, and Barber/Roberts in particular.

Stuff like functionism, for example. Various issues regarding shapism and the privacy of altmodes, the sanctity of the amicus/conjunx endura, donations of innermost energon, the Knights of Cybertron, Necroworld, Mederi, and the ideology and concepts behind being an Autobot/Decepticon, all of these things and more were built off of uniquely Transformer elements.

As a result, I think that the characters needed to be Transformers. However, like I've said on other threads, it's a very narrow focus. An exaggerated example would be like cracking open a X-Men comic and reading about Iceman's personal battle with accidentally clogging all of the the X-mansion's toilet and examining the various repercussions that has when you have dozens of people with superpowers and no place to do their business.

It's cute now and again, but at the end of the day nobody is tuning into X-Men to read about plumbing issues. A more accurate thing to say in my opinion is that it went too far, too deep in aspects of Transformers that might be occasionally interesting or amusing... but ultimately aren't the reasons most of us want to read Transformers books.

 

Uncanny X-Men 273.

No, really.  

 

Agreed. All that was great. Even if I didn't like all of those stories specifically, it was still going interesting places, and James Roberts is certainly to thank for a lot of that boldness in storytelling. I hope in new continuities they'll revive at least some of these ideas.

Well put.

//Panjumanju

 

I'd note though like above that the stuff you're writing about came mostly at the denouement of the story, which - given it treads more into the territory that early MTMTE did - likely had many of its beats written well before LL even existed as a series. In many ways I think that's a good thing =)

 

Can't speak for anyone else, but going to assume that the 'too human' aspects being pointed to as a negative isn't regarding socio-political parallels so much as the ridiculous and hyper-clever smart ass quips and come-backs that were in damn near every bit of dialogue like this was an episode of Friends or Sex in the City, or the nearly all-encompassing romantic pairing off like it was the final season of...yup, Friends or Sex in the City.

Pogroms, secret police, hit squads, totalitarianism, failed utopian ideals...pretty sure we're all cool with that stuff.

 

Optimus Prime was a whole lot more boring than MTMTE and LL.

 

I politely disagree and argue any problems Lost Light had was not to do with the human element, which i see as a net positive, but the fact that the plot meanders, the space is padded and Anode eats up page time while being a pain in my backside.

 

Agreed, but if you look at the original post:

In other words, the OP (erudite fellow that he is!) posited that there was fundamentally no different between a Transformers and a Human story. A lot of the "human" elements are couched in Cybertronian culture. Even if they were reacting in an arguably "human" way, they were reacting to elements ingrained in Transformers society. Elements that don't exist in human society. The argument is that the social story chunks necessarily require Transformers, because they're born out of specifically Transformer issues and problems.

To the extent that their reactions are too human (quips, romances, etc.) - that's possible. Granted, I don't know how "human" anyone that speaks like a Diablo Cody movie had a baby with a Joss Whedon show is. However, instead of making them really alien (and thus appealing to a different sort of audience), Roberts decided to roll for the lowest common denominator and decided to have them make human quips, have human reactions, etc. That's not entirely in the realm of stupid, lazy or bad storytelling. Star Trek has coasted on weirdly human aliens for decades and it's a proven strategy that I can't really call Roberts out on.

Another thing to consider is that even here on Earth, with a wide array of social and political constructs in various countries - from the biggest democratic superpower to the tiniest of indigenous tribes, we all enjoy and suffer the same range of emotions, generally have analogous day to day struggles, and generally carry on to the point where every culture no matter how bizarre or unusual have romance stories, horror stories, and funny stories. Transformers engaging in that behavior is just a storytelling avenue. They're sentient, sapient creatures and one of the conceits of the book is that they're Star Trekky aliens and "Hey look, they have problems just like we do!".

It's not that any of this human-y stuff happened, or that they were too human, in my opinion. It's that they did it too much. Bumming about, quips, romance, that's all fine and dandy. There was just too much bumming around. Too much quipping instead of acting. It was an overdose.

Honestly, if you ask me they didn't act human enough. Picture this - you're at a job, and there's a zany guy that fashions himself as a leader and consistently leads people into projects that result in people getting hurt. There's a core group that allows him to give rise and get traction with every fool idea that comes to his mind. The human reaction would be to leave. Nobody sane would put up with that. Who wants to survive a multi-million year war only to die hunting the Loch Ness Monster, who has apparently relocated to the Bermuda Triangle and only appears on Friday the 13th during sharknado season?

But that's what MTMTE/LL was. Reticent acceptance of Rodimus The Magnificent Bastard. There was nothing sane or human about it. Any reasonable crew would have tried to lynch the son of a bitch for launching the crew repeatedly into frequently insane, foolhardy missions... and when they finally did? Uh oh! It was a Bad Idea! Shame on you for not liking the guy that'd just as soon play Yahtzee with the lives of nameless, gormless crewmembers he wasn't trying to nail and/or knew on a first name basis.

 

I haven't read the Lost Light, but at least they haven't had them use the bathroom. I've haven't read about any fan complaining about that. It could've been much worse.


As I said before, they should be human around a minimuim to meduim level. Go no higher then the yellow zone.

 

Grimlock wets himself

 

It's also stated that at least Grimlock has a waste pipe to sluice out. Unless Grimlock is some magical freak of nature, you could take this as an implication that IDW Transformers do in fact poop.

 

CRISIS MODE

 

There is a line in Vandermeer’s excellent novel Borne, in which a scientist wonders in abject horror about what kind of godlike power a creature must have if it didnt excrete anything.

As for the original thesis of this thread, its a pure false binary; there is no science fiction without human emotion and the consistent urge of the tfw commentariat to argue otherwise is resoundingly redundent in light of a cursory history of (tf) fiction.

 

To be fair to OP, I'm not sure the argument was for no human emotion in sci fi - he was arguing that there's a really effective balance of the "human factor" with sci fi treatises, and that the series eventually became somewhat overbalanced with the former taking a backseat to the latter.

 

I agree with the first part (the op certainly said that there is an effective balance) what i dont agree with is that the two elements are somehow seperable circles of a venn diagram. Categorically speaking stories of human emotion might make sense without science fiction, the reverse is not true however.

Criticising stories for being too human is too broad a generalisation to be effective as criticism as such.

 

In bold is the text I don't need to say, because you nailed it.

Don't forget the ways that their minds / personalities were reprogrammed - with Nautica cutting out her feelings for Skids, the Matrix-ish virtual world the Protectobots were put into in order to stop resisting Getaway's rule, or the heavy focus on Mnemo-surgery (Overlord, Chromedome, Sundor, etc...)

 

Then forget about a venn diagram, let me put it another way: a story where transforming robot aliens don't actually transform (unless they're having an alt-mode party) does not take best advantage of its subject matter.

Instead, James Roberts chose to focus on jokes and inter-personal politics—which I nominally called "too human". Those can be good, and well written, and compelling, and at times entirely necessary for a good story. However, over-focus on those social-human aspects squanders the story potential of Transformers.

I liked it, it was fine, but...

//Panjumanju

 

Exhaust gasses and heat as excretions are one thing. Urine and feces analogs are another. Frankly I didn't care overmuch. A bit eye-roll-y but hardly a huge offense. Just another marker if you're going to see how "human" Roberts made his Transformers.