[bleeding cool] IDW to lose the Transformers license in 2022?

Discussion in 'Transformers Comics Discussion' started by justiceg, Nov 29, 2021.

  1. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    I'm definitely one of them. IDW2 is very much a 'this is written for the long-game' thing with a lot of stuff set up in the early issues (when people complained about how it was going) paying off in spades now, plus the past events unfolding and having a lot of cool stuff, I feel like it's already more fleshed out than any prior 'old war before the great war' in various TF settings. And having both new characters and old playing major roles- Skywarp showed up recently and he's a gem, major badass.

    I'm betting the ending now will have to deal with the defeat of Exarchon, since I think that's the biggest plotline they can revolve in time.

    For those not up on things-
    Exarchon was the big bad of the prior war, sort of an infection spark who can hold onto three bodies at a time, created/modified by some enemies of Cybertron. Thought dead, turns out he's alive, and using this war to potentially come back. We saw one possible future where he infects Megatron and wins, pretty much devastating Cybertron.


    The great war doesn't have to last the same length of time- Animated had a much shorter war after all. That said, timeskips.


    I'm guessing the original plan would involve the war spreading out some, time passing, reaching Earth, etc., and then going from there. We're just no-where near the natural end.


    No, it's going notably faster. It's a lot like the first season of Beast Wars but with new characters in the fold, both from the start and the protoforms. Like they introduced Razorbeast (who was the lead in BW The Gathering comic from awhile back) two issues ago.
     
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  2. Rob

    Rob Prowl Fan

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    I'm cool with Skybound/Image getting the rights.
     
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  3. Magnum Dongus

    Magnum Dongus @DiddlyDipstick on Twitter

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    I hope they do something truly unique. Like, something that would be considered a new “universal stream” in terms of the wiki’s classifications. Interesting (but recognizable) takes on classic characters and concepts, and such.

    I’ve commonly complained about the movies not having anything to do with the source material, but that’s because they’re the main, most public version of the brand. They should serve to show the general public who can’t be bothered to read a comic book what transformers is all about. Meanwhile, the more experimental stuff should be more for cartoons and comics. That’s why I have been so annoyed at the current state of things, because it’s been the other way around. The movies made by people who don’t care at all about transformers, while the comics and cartoons have been nothing but retelling the exact same story but slightly different.
     
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  4. Matthew Haskett

    Matthew Haskett Well-Known Member

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    Can you name an activist with no writing background that is currently writing the comics that are bothering you? I keep hearing/reading this type of comment and I don’t get it.
     
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  5. kmc

    kmc Well-Known Member

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    I'm in for the license change, but one year of no new comic is sad news.
     
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  6. Nemesis Scar

    Nemesis Scar Behind Blue Eyes

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    Are these activists in the room with us right now?
     
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  7. Focksbot

    Focksbot Skeleton Detective

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    I know everyone's already comprehensively dumped on this post, but I just wanted to add that this is a fascinating example of the way stories work. What you're telling us (and yourself) here is a story. It's made up, partly out of genuine facts but mostly from imagination. You've conjured up in your head this idea of corporations hiring 'activists' to sell stories, and the public abandoning them in droves because people "read comics to escape".

    What purpose does this story serve? It exists to explain and contextualise your feelings. You've subscribed to this narrative because it turns your own complex swirl of emotions into something straightforward and logical. And in a way, that is part of the function stories serve, the real reason we buy them and read them and become attached to them – they make daunting complexity seem simple, orderly. By choosing to believe that Marvel and DC have gone mad, like a mad scientist in a movie, and switched to a completely different kind of writer – one who is some kind of dastardly 'activist' – you are explaining the world to yourself in such a way as to make your frustration and disappointment totally understandable. If you were to face reality more starkly, and accept that US comics are not really any more 'political' or 'activist' than they were when they started out, it would leave with the mystery of why they antagonise you, and the possibility that it's something in yourself that needs to change.

    And so it is with so many stories, certainly in terms of their broad shape. They rationalise hardship as something we must bear if we want to ultimately win, or they tell us that making things right is a simple matter of defeating 'evil', or sometimes they get (in my opinion) pretty close to the truth in the way they portray aspects of reality.

    Something to think about!
     
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  8. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    I would be more up for that too. There's now, what, 4 major G1 comic continuities? (Original/Dreamwidth/IDW1/IDW2)
     
  9. Magnum Dongus

    Magnum Dongus @DiddlyDipstick on Twitter

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    Either that, or I’d like to see a continuation of a previous continuity. I don’t know how many times we have gotten a reboot of essentially the same story in cartoon/comic media when it would have been arguably more interesting to see a deeper dive into another part of the universe, or just a direct continuation.
     
  10. Diesel

    Diesel The Legendary Super Saiyan

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    No, there are several examples of the activist writers
    No, Einstein. I didn't just make this up in my head. There are several examples of these activist people inserting their own political nonsense into their comics for Marvel and DC. I just neither have the time or the inclination to type up a 1,500 word post with a dozen links and references. Off the top of my head I can think of the recent Superman comic where he's holding up a sign about climate change and participating at a high school protest. There's also an X-Men Green comic where one of these new mutant people (I forget her name because frankly i could care less about the character.) sees a turtle choking on a plastic grocery bag so she goes to the store and murders a cashier by stabbing him in the neck with scissors because he happens to work at the store that the bag came from, because this is how you take care of people who litter. This girl is supposed to be a good character, by the way, one of the X-Men. There's dozens of other examples but I don't care to do a bunch of research for you. So don't sit and tell me I'm making it up in my head there, genius.
     
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  11. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    Activist writers like Jack Kirby and Stan Lee! Chris Claremont! Larry Hama! Siegel and Shuster!

    Names like those should never have been allowed to touch a comic page, amIright?


    Writing inherently involves someone's thoughts and views, to do otherwise would be difficult and sterile. It's more likely the writers you don't consider activist are putting in just as much politics, just ones you don't personally have as much interest.

    Like you actually used Superman in an example?

    Where in Action Comic #1 he strongarms a governor to prevent an execution and beats up a wife beater and threatens a senator for being paid to push a bill, all in his very first issue? That Superman?

    X-men? Aside from... their whole deal, plenty of the recent books deal with moral ambiguity and it sounds like you're making some simplistic assumptions on what's happening there.

    People who don't actually know anything about comics probably shouldn't try gatekeeping them. Nor should people who do, but even so- you clearly know jack squat.

    You don't want Superman and X-men, the immigrant and the minorities, to have political messages? The long and short is you don't want comics in your comics.

    The problem isn't that you think activist writers exist. It's that you think they're a bad thing when they're pretty much a hit list of comic's best.


    "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"- Some activist writer 'Bob Budiansky' trying to put politics into Transformers!
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2021
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  12. Bee427

    Bee427 Still here and queer

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  13. Hobbes-timus Prime

    Hobbes-timus Prime Well-Known Member

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    The more things change, etc. etc....

    The Past.jpg
     
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  14. Focksbot

    Focksbot Skeleton Detective

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    As the three posters above point out, it's not that you're imagining the writers putting politics in the comics; it's that you're imagining there was a time when they didn't.
     
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  15. Andersonh1

    Andersonh1 Man, I've been here a LONG time Veteran

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    Sometimes comics are political, sometimes they aren't. There are eras when the politics are more visible, and eras when they almost entirely vanish. The question is, do I feel like I'm reading a story where the politics fit the characters and the scenario, or do I feel like the author is beating me over the head with his or her personal beliefs? The former I'm generally fine with, the latter gets on my nerves. When I want a sermon, I'll go to church. Comics are my escapist entertainment, and an author on a soapbox for an extended amount of time can be a good reason to drop a series, because it can cease to entertain me.
     
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  16. Diesel

    Diesel The Legendary Super Saiyan

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    Precisely. Do you really want to read a comic book about Superman bitching about climate change? Really, the one person WHO COULD LITERALLY ALTER THE EARTH if climate change was such a life-threatening thing but no, he'd rather wear a mask and hold up a sign. What a shitty, horribly-written piece of trash.
     
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  17. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    The only time I can think of when politics wasn't as big was the 50s-60s, and that was because the comics code choked out all but mainstream acceptable ones.

    The 70s had Green Lantern/Green Arrow Hard Traveling Heroes, about how Hal Jordan did a lot for aliens but not enough for black people, Ollies' sidekick got addicted to heroine and needed help recovering, etc. The start of the X-men as much more a political story with Magneto shifting from 'muahaha magnets,' to 'Charles your approach won't protect mutants from humans and a hard line stance is needed!', and so on.


    I'd want it to be addressed considering that Superman dealing with real-world issue was literally there since issue 1. And if not that? Then something else relevant. Superman's at his best when he deals with stuff, and the ones where he's only dealing with wacky Supervillains tends to be, long-run, less impactful.

    You having issues with climate change doesn't make it a bad story, it means you've got a bug up your butt on a specific matter. That's not on them, that's you.

    Btw, I highly recommend 'Superman vs the KKK,' one of the better Supes books of the last few years.
     
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  18. misfire19d

    misfire19d Not a writer. Not an illustrator. Just a fan.

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    It's easy to identify the activists. They're the ones snarkily denying they're here. Ignore them.
     
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  19. Magnum Dongus

    Magnum Dongus @DiddlyDipstick on Twitter

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    Generally when I see people complain about politics being in comics, it’s less that they were never there and more that they were a lot more intelligently written. Today’s political messages in comics are a lot less subtle and a lot more “I am (character) and I’m here to say: the (actual real life person/group I don’t like) is bad and we gotta stop them!”

    Something I’ve noticed about low effort political messages are that they either overgeneralize (I.e. anyone slightly in agreement with a particular ideology is an awful person and extremist) or it’s something that’s already obvious to the vast majority of readers (I.e. murdering people for being minorities is wrong)
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2021
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  20. agp

    agp Well-Known Member

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    When the creatives are announced we'll see how serious they are about these titles. It would be nice to see the checkbook opened up for Milne.
     
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