When Shockwave came back post-Dark Cybertron.

Remember when you were little and there was always that friend who always had to one-up everybody to the point of it not being fun anymore? That's how I felt once Shockwave came back with the whole Onyx Primal ordeal.

Talk about a textbook case of "overpowered comic book villain."

*Shockwave dies*

*comes back to life through elaborate comic booky explanation because we can*

 

When readers were subjected to two of the Combaticons having daydreams about robo-humping each other I started wondering about the direction of the fiction.

 

Typically I think a jumping the shark moment is found when looking back when you realize you don't enjoy something as much as you used. With that being said I have two answers.

While the books were coming out I found Dark Cybertron to be the point. It wasn't so much that it was bad (it was) but the story never rebounded from there. I think on the boards that's where we really started to see the division and discontent ramp up.

On rereads I was shocked to say The Death of Optimus Prime was the jump the shark moment. I thought I loved the period between that and Dark Cybertron. The great parts of mtmte are still that, but the lesser stuff is grating the second time around. It's like once you know the Roberts-ism it's hard to not see them and be distracted/annoyed. There's also not nearly as many great parts as I remembered either. I can't believe I ever liked or defended rid, aside from the art it was pretty bad all around. I now find the underlying conflict, premise and many characterizations absolutely ridiculous in rid.

The other thing I find I really dislike about phase 2 is pushing the both sides are just bad retcons. It really didn't vibe with phase 1. Roche's stuff was enough to show the Autobots weren't angels and in war the good guys end up doing bad things too.

 

Had the ending of the continuity via "Unicron" not disrupted anything, Optimus Prime would likely have died several times over, his brain circuitry slowly unravelling.

Day 3,705:

Shockwave: And, and then- everyone pay attention, this is a good bit- then, two million and four years ago; don't get it confused with that other awesomely evil bit of unexpected arc welding I did two million and five years ago, when I went to Eternia and cosplayed as Bludgeon and called a king a royal tit or something- that was great but this is even better, two million and four years ago I was the superbly logical Neitzschean mastermind behind both Battle Beasts and Sylvanian Families and the epically awesome hitherto totally unsuspected link between- a chilling revelation that will spell DOOM for both those pizza-scoffing turtles and Peter Rabbit! And I did it all as part of my totally supreme and fantastic masterplan- a plan which was pre-ordained by the nature of time itself!!!!! But... and hush, everybody, because right now we're coming to the really good bit... and good news, I've totally remembered to bring along slideshows, and my laser gun mode doubles as a slide projector! Hey, where did everybody go?

 

Now I'm having flashbacks to Rumplestiltskin from Once Upon the Time. Unless Shockwave is Rumple, too  

 

This is the real reason the IDW continuity had to be rebooted. We were smoothly moving toward a point where the only logical denouement which would have made thematic sense would have been for the final issue to conclude with all masks removed, and the shocking, ironic realisation that everyone in the entire sodding multiverse is actually Shockwave in disguise, it's just that most of us didn't realise that everyone else was too.

This would have made the final shot of the series to be Tailgate, holding his Tailgate mask in his hand with his real Shockwave head exposed, looking at Unicron, in turn holding his Unicron mask aloft to reveal his real purple-one-eyed face beneath, and one saying to the other:

Shockwave: Well... this is awkward.

 

so true.

yeah, the emperor had no clothes.
It became so apparent to me so fast that he was just doing this Warren Ellis by-way-of Chris Claremont riff, but wasn't nearly as talented as either of them and then just kept getting deeper and deeper into his own worse tendencies as things went on.

 

What.

Seriously?

Who in IDW hasn't killed a few more people than they're admitting to having killed?

And on what planet does IDW Optimus Prime have moral high ground regarding anything?

I have always thought it was idiotic that IDW Optimus Prime:

1. tried to blackmail Soundwave of all people in the universe;
2. over killing someone who had to be killed because he was going to betray every other member of his faction in Autobot captivity;
3. which was therefore operationally necessary and certainly not something that any Decepticon who wasn't in love with Horri-Bull would take issue with;
4. and that Soundwave of all people capitulated, instead of laughing his head off, confronting IDW OP with evidence of his own stupid decisions and moral lapses, and volunteering to announce that he had done exactly the thing OP was threatening to reveal and why, while at the same time spilling all his tea and flashing every single one of his collected receipts.

 

The only shark jumping in IDW1 is Sky Byte barhopping tbh.

I liked it. Did it have it's downs? Yes. But it had more ups in my opinion. Even if there was a crappy issue or story arc, or decisions made that I didn't like, I was always excited to read the next issue. I was always looking for the issue preview pages that would get released before the actual issue. I'd talk with friends on Discord and we'd share theories and headcanons on where the series was going. Honestly the worst part was that it was cancelled and the writers had to scramble to tie up as much as they could with the limited time they had left. That and I remember Jro posting on twitter that had the run continued he would have made a new series solely for the Scavengers and us being denied the continued adventures of the universes best Trash Boys is the true tragedy here.

IDW2 just doesn't have the same charm. I'm not excited about it in the same way and aside from a few bits here and there I just feel kind of bored with it. I'll still check up and read new issues every few months but it doesn't have the same charm or excitement to it that IDW1 had.

 

Going to Phase 2 I focused more on the MTMTE side of things than RID going forward. I only read Barber’s run up to Dark Cybertron and saw JRo’s stuff through to the end. That said, I can very easily live with the Personality Ticks, Swearth, and Autobot Megatron. The former two were fun one-offs that still worked in some character, Swearth especially, and while Autobot Megatron’s introduction felt kinda rushed, JRo did a great assuaging it in the series proper.

No, my shark-jump moment was the bait-and-switch with Tarn’s reveal. It didn’t add anything to his character, and only served to make Roller less interesting. It really did set the stage for how much of a decline Lost Light would feel like. Everyone knew how the sales were doing then. JRo should’ve known better than to bank hard on the relaunch to fix things and plod along like nothing was wrong. It’d be one thing if the ending was all that felt off (though pulling a Ready-Player-Two-but-somehow-worse doesn’t help), but even the start of Lost Light was pretty whack and full of new characters and returning ones that mostly just proceeded to contribute nothing to the story. Occasionally to the plot, but never the story. Anode, Lug, Roller, completely worthless addendums to the group dynamic, while characters like Chromedome, Rewind, Tailgate, Ratchet, and Drift were just shafted, despite the ending trying to turn the latter two into the crux of a big pathos punch (that JRo would then proceed to retract so hard I think he broke his proverbial hand).

 

Which reveal about Tarn are you talking about?

Some of us still aren't over the way Drift looked at that funeral, dude.

 

I’m talking about the whole thing with JRo leaning hard on hints of Roller being Tarn. Whether he accidentally made a red herring more compelling than the alternative, or switched it at the last second when he realized people were already on to him, making Tarn some random background character (Glitch) doesn’t really add anything to who Tarn was one way or the other.

It just takes away from what Roller could’ve been. Instead of being an insecure comrade of Optimus that was accidentally abandoned, leaving so many routes you could go with his relationship to the Decepticon cause, now he’s just a nothing character clogging up cast space.

I’d be in the same boat if JRo didn’t immediately walk it back with a “Don’t worry everyone, they all had quantum duplicates that went on adventures forever! Isn’t that grand?” It cheapens everything about the other ending.

 

Recollecting Roberts' history as both a Marvel UK fan and later a Transmasters fanfic community superfan, I suspect this whole thing may have been vaguely influenced by the unintentionally trifurcated way Furman's Marvel era ended; the US storyline with a definite ending, the UK future storyline left hanging, and the UK Earthforce storyline with its "The Adventure Continues..." style ending. One gets a satisfying ending, but the other two are obviously more fruitful grounds as a jumping on point for fanfic.
Roberts explicitly in the draft ended the "ongoing adventures" quantum storyline with a handover to the fanfic community to write their own "what next" ( "Over to you..." ) , so in a sense, one is meant as Roberts' ending to the series, whereas the other is "Ok, here's your ship and crew and premise of you want to write "Year Four"." If that really was the reason then it seems less baffling irrational, but still decidedly self-indulgent.

 

So let me get this straight, you're saying it's okay to lie about people your friend has killed only because they're your friend "because everyone's doing it?"

Think that'd hold up in court?

Where did he say Optimus had the moral high ground? He said Windblade had no purpose standing in judgement of Optimus Prime because she was just as shitty a person. Because she was. She was sanctimonious and horribly written, and her giving Optimus' eulogy is practically a distillation of everything wrong with IDW. IDW had and still has no direction, no cohesion, and no purpose. No character had any consistency or development because multiple writers kept jerking them back and forth between whatever they wanted that character to be.

IDW jumped the shark when it tried to make Transformers a "universe." Because Transformers is too small and limited. For its wealth of obscure toys to use as inspiration it only has a handful of characters who stand out as truly defined over the decades, because it only really works when you have a tight cast and a simple story. IDW was just a joyless mess of murderers and dropped plot points you don't want to read.

Roberts cheapened a lot. He cheapened his own stories and characters, and even the ones that came before him. He put playing games above writing a compelling narrative.

 

In this universe, no. But we don't actually live in a universe where everyone else is in fact doing it, either. Who knows what the courts would say there?

It's fiction, so if it's too morally grey for you, you can always read something else.

When he used the words "moral high ground"? If Windy didn't have it, than OP must have had it. And OP in IDW is a blackmailer with just as many blue flowers as Megs, per Word of God.

Transformers is so not-small and limited that trying to graft Rom, GI Joe and a shit ton of other stuff onto it completely failed. And I obviously did want to read it.

Write a fix-it fic, it'll make you feel better.

 

Oh no I figured. I just don’t think that kind of meta brouhaha services the story when you try to have it both ways like that.

I like fanfics as much as the next guy and respect JRo’s background in them, but things can, and should, end sometimes. Doesn’t even need to be perfect closure. LL’s non-quantum ending certainly wasn’t. But it was an ending, and idk about anyone else, but the idea of shoving them all back on the ship to go on static adventures forever instead sounds like a kinda morbid alternative to me.

 

IDW1 was not morally grey or deep in any way or shape.

IDW1 only was edgy. The depth of it never exceeded high schooler fanfic level.

It's OK that it's Dead Universe now.

 

Everybody's got an opinion and you have the right to yours too...

 

As a fan of weird sci-fi stories, I'd actually read this.  

IDW2 really should have been started by an actual fan of the franchise, not a gun for hire first of all. Second, I was honestly pretty excited about the potential of IDW2 the way that short prose before launch about titan-ships and high tech Cybertron because it sounded like a sci-fi TF setting. I kept picturing Blade Runner-esque Cybertron, with massive Titans hovering overhead and owning the sky. Instead...we got what we got.

As far as jumping the shark goes, I successfully blocked out the parts that didn't jibe with me in favor of all the wonderful stuff IDW1 has/had on offer.

Having said that, Hasbroverse made me have active *disdain* for a Transformers story (Rom vs TFs excluded) so as forgiving as I am, that should tell just how much I disliked the other franchises being shoe-horned into a pre-established TF continuity that made zero mention of them prior.

Still, I did make it all the way to Unicron/LL and Op #25 and don't regret it. They just never should have introduced the Hasbroverse so late in the game.

 

That makes an interesting point actually; fair to say that one problem with the Hasbroverse was how it was all crammed in at one end of the continuity, making it feel somewhat like "Bollocks, Barber's run out of plot before Roberts has finished shipping, and we've not finished drawing Unicron yet. Quick! Tell Roberts to get a shift on and pick up the pace with a deus ex machina or twelve- hell, have his characters just sit down and tell everyone their backstory for an issue or two if you have to, and get Barber to fill in with "Transformers vs. Cabbage Patch Dolls" or something, that'll do it."

Had the Hasbro stuff been spread out across the franchise and used appropriately without being overdone- say, Prysmos as one planet visited during phase one with the war still on, MASK doing Skywatch's job during the Costa ongoing which might actually have risked making sense- VENOM using pirated- or allied- Decepticon tech, for instance, set "Spotlight: Cliffjumper" on Equestria, etc, then it could have added to the franchise rather than detracting from it.