guys, on subject of "15 million years", why not use civil war in other countries as an example ?

 

Because the human race hasn't existed for 15 million years yet?

 

     

Seriously though, millions of years always seemed like a ridiculously long timeframe. Hundreds or even thousands of years makes more sense. I think the movieverse mainly takes place over 10,000 years or so, although I don't think it's ever explicitly stated.

 

Oh goodness, that was a bit tough to read, but im going to read TF#31 and from the preview, its looks adorable.

But this made me laugh:

Wat

 

IDW never has the four million year nap, neither does Prime (at least I do not think Prime did). I think the war has been literally been going on for that long, which as expressed in previous issues, the war would have long period of stand stills (going from cold to hot). The longevity never bothered me, just Costa's human superiority to the Transformers and the whole 'lack of change' concept.

 

I mean to use as an example why the war has gone on for so long

Hell, there are hot spots all over the world.

 

I still don't get what you mean, because there has never been any war anywhere in the world that has lasted anywhere near that long. As I said, 15 million years is longer than the entire human race's existence. A lot longer.

 

of course I wasn't talking about 15 million years ! That be stupid ! I'm talking about long term wars, the crusades, WWI and II, the cold war why not, all that !!!! They certainly didn't end in a year !

 

Just to add to your point the 100 years war.

 

So many points to address I can't quote everyone so I'll just number the points and reference the original poster ;

1) SMOG : It's interesting that Costa's Spike is often seemingly more reviled than even Kicker is/was ! Not sure how he compares to some of the other cartoon kids though some people really despise them ; I really like the girls though usually they are kinda cool or quirky young lasses.

2) Hobbes-timus Prime : I guess it's sometimes hard to escape from the bagagge of "Robots" as some might understand them - perhaps it is an idea to think of other robots who share some characteristics with them than ones who don't like say Red Dwarf's Krichten or Marvel's 'The Vision'.
I think one point to ponder on is that Robots are usually not often listed as denizens of a place in sci fi they are more often described in some way like Autobot is kind of a description of what they are like Scutter or Cylon is - but Cybertronian, (Junkion, or Quintesson too) is a very humanistic term of description it means they are from Cybertron and therefore is a way of describing them that is more akin to an Alien race than to a "Thing" regardless of how you see them as Robots or Aliens I would hope that not to many fans thinks of them as Souless 'things'. or they are kind of missing the point in my view.

Anyway I usually only use the term Robot as a short hand the correct term of description for a mechanistic alien race in this case would be 'mechanoid'. Robot makes some sense if you are thinking on the context of the quintesson derived origins - but even that said 'Robot' does not have to mean "Slave" or 'Chattle' as it is often translated it can be translated from the original Czech to English as 'Indentured servant' or 'Serf' too which are terms applied to Humans too and are both slightly less dehumanising than "Slave" is and the original usages of 'Robot' were various until it settled down to what we think a robot is in the 21st Century. even now Robot can mean simply "Automatic" too such as in Robo-chef.

But also things change over time just take what the Auto in Autobot stands for it used to be for 'Automobile' then it was 'Automatic' and now it's 'Autonomous'. but that still carries the inference of the word Robot in the word Autobot = 'Autonomous Robot' I note.

3) Kaijumaster : This is a hard one to explain concisely as alot of the explanations for it are "off-screen" and derived from things said by the writers the gist is that The maximals evolved and DNA scanners and the great downsizing all from a selection of influences the Maximals are a mix of influences they are partly the children of beast Transformers like the Predacons (note the name) the Insecticons (Note the Tripredicus council) and the dinobots even, they are also direct descendents of the Micromasters and to some extent Pretenders which is why some of them are rather on the small side and others are not so small and are a bit bigger like Rampage & Depth Charge was as they don't derive from Micromasters like origin.

The reason for the big alterations in history is many and varied and it involves Earth, Primus, The Vok, An off camera version of the G2 events and many other things that changed the whole face of Cybertron up until the time of the 25th Century. Basically the short hand to think on this is this is all the S**T that hit the fan since 1984 and coming to earth/waking up on earth that changes Cybertron and accelerates the change of pace and evolution of the Transformers species.

personally I would date the time of the thirteen to 15 Millions years ago the time of the first generation Transformers who came after to up until 9 Million years ago and the great war as starting at 9 million years ago and carrying on through a couple of 'great shut downs' till now.

Basically great shut downs work like ages or eras and often lead to great changes on cybertron after everyone is rebooted and Cybertron comes back online. the newest 'age of cybertron' would be post 1984.

But if you wish to see previous eras technological developments as coming from a past epoch then it's a good place to slot in things like Triplechangers, Pretenders Combiners and Miromasters/Minicons.. and Cybertron is even older than the mechanistic phase as can be clearly seen many times in both the G1 cartoon the Marvel comics and even beast machines (again I won't get into that here as that is a big hole to dig into in this time and place).

I'll post what I have now and finish later.....

 

Continued from the earlier post ; had to split in two due to extreme size of reply so sorry to double post.

4) Billzilla : I try to not focus to much on things like why when we first saw Transformers on Cybertron in their native modes (Like Jazz, Wheeljack & Bumblebee) why did they have tires on them but no obvious wheels on their vehicle modes - surely most of them wouldn't need wheels. it did slightly irritate me that Classics & Animated Blurr have wheels but I got over it by remembering that Lightspeed has wheels and he's even faster than Blurr is. but other wise I might be annoyed that Generations Blurr is expected to drive at super sonic speeds on road tires.
Now instead I just wonder if a guy who moves so fast he vibrates is an ideal guy to carry a sniper rifle that required calm and quiet to use effectively... Is he trying to train himself to calm down - to mature even ? or is it just a shoddy character re-design.

5) SouthtownKid : Cybertron has changed a lot over the years they had the invention of Transformation, then flight, mass-shifting, Triple-changers, Combiners and so on... then later on another step change or two in the biology of Transformers follows with great evolutions via The scions of Unicron, The Masters era, Micromasters Pretenders, the Beast Era and eventually Binaltech & Alternity. As I said earlier though the 300 year thing makes sense if you think of 1984 as the begiining of a new epoch of change and that the arrival and interaction with Earth has had a profound effect which is also in part the whole point of the Beast Wars and hwo it ties to G1 and what comes afterwards too.

6) Acteon : The UK Transformers comic used to be advertised on UK TV there's not many comics that can say that (other than the beano and it's ilk). And at one point it was selling a shed load of copies and outselling a great many of marvels main titles in the U.S. it was selling many tens of thousands still even when it got cancelled. Even though I'm not discreet observer I would Rate Transformers higher as a franchise above many of say DC's or Marvel's second string titles. Even if I might like some of them a fair bit to be fair to the other comics though they were perhaps better written in the mid eighties than the licensed titles - that was no longer the case later on though when comic started to suck a bit post crash.
I liked that slight odd but interesting Thundercats comic series more than I did many of the more normal titles published at the same time - for example.. so later on I'd say licensed titles were often stronger than the original properties - take note of things like Dark Horse were doing with Aliens or Terminator.

7) SouthtownKid (again) : I think Micronauts & Rom was almost seen as a Marvel mainline title as neither of them had that much to do with the toys they derived from. and the guested a fair bit in other things too.
I've never even read a USA He Man comic so I can't comment on that The American MASK comic was not half bad though - I though the slightly more kiddy written UK one was better though as the art was really superb (even if it was black and white a lot of the time) it's still stands up now as really really good art though.

I think they had a point looking down on the licenses in the 1980's but post crash it seems a bit silly to do so - as everyone is in the same boat after that. The comic book market like the videogame market seems to be in the middle of an extended run of directionless running about like a headless chicken that's lasted a couple of decades now for both.

I guess I'm quite lucky as I was introduced to comics in a minor way when i was a bit younger and yet started buying them in a big way at roughly the same sort of time as the toys started to matter to me so I just bought everything I liked.. I used to get all the cheap clearance comics out of south Africa and they were so cheap you could buy the lot so I used to get 85% of the mainline Marvel & DC off the shelf in the newsagent but i had to actively chase the Transformers & Gi Joe comics from a comic shop as they almost never came through as clearance comics. that all stopped when the crash happened and so I just carried on buy Transformers comics when they made them and I will admit only really the licensed one as well and didn't bother with Superman etc any more not because I didn't like it but just because I didn't want to pay a post crash premium price for them any more when i could spend that money on toys or videogames instead.

I'd say liking Gi Joe more and more because of the comics actually stopped me buying other comics as I had to feed the Gi joe collection and i'd rather of had them than Hawk & Dove or Moon Knight comics.

8) Kaijumaster : I think Kup, Optimus, Megatron, and Grapple and some others must have changed over Millenia and surely we saw Rodimus learning before our eyes in season 3 ? Not to mention both Skywarp and Thundercracker change into the future quite a bit if you take 1984 as your starting point.

9) Anguirus : I think a lot of Transformers in the beast Era are "new sparks" so they may have been created to repopulate the planet after a major catastrophic event which was not shared with use but was extensively hinted at. I think the consequences of the Beast Era have been fudged a bit in subsequent media but you will have to take that up with Fun Pub I guess.
But when I think of Iacon being shut off and closed down and Cybertronoplis being the new capital it does seem a little odd for it to be so glossed over. It is like some one buried Washington DC under 500 foot of dirt and everyone there had moved to Portland Oregon while you'd spent two weeks in Hawaii.

10) ARCTrooperAlpha : Final point I was just going to say that the Crusades might be a really good way to think of the Transformers great war as the first Crusades were separated by many years - generations even, and if you want to be a bit more generous to the Decepticon agenda you can even use the crusades in that way too with Autobots and Decepticons both doing what they see is right from their point of view. and idea Bob Skir used to sometimes express. but also like the crusades individuals and small groups can do really nasty stuff to civilian populations and small groups (remember Cybertron used to have Neutral civilian populations until they nearly all got killed off or became little better than zombies roaming the acid wastes as 'empties'). and the city state thing (in middle europe circa pre-renaissance ) is also useful too - especially if mixed with comic exclusive villans like Straxus and the ideas seen in the Victory generals... even throw in World War II Dresden too. There's certainly lots of ideas from Human history that would make for very interesting ideas if applied to the Transformers story some of which might have been used already and some which could be expanded upon or used in creative ways.

For example imagine millions of years ago each of the Combaticons were a group of barons/lords who were in charge of small town or cities on Cybertron and they were each famous for particular things like Swindle was great at trade and business - Onslaught was hiring out mercenaries etc.. and they got co-opted into the Decepticon agenda with promised of power and eventually became Bruticus but in the process lost their independence and perhaps saw their realms suffer for it (as Starscream did his own)... if you tell a story like that if years later you give that power back to Bruticus/Combaticons then it makes a lot more sense than randomly making them a co-ruler of Cybertron out of the blue does in Victory. not only doe they become usurped to Megatron they also become usurped to the power they can wield - but only when they combine - it's an addiction to greater power that in the end lost them everything ...

Just a little idea I'm throwing out anyway.

 

I think that requires just as much mental acrobatics to make work as simply ignoring the "300 years" thing altogether, which is what I choose to do.


Like Anguirus points out, 300 years is not enough time for beings who live for millions to have "ancestors". By their scale, such a thing would be "older brothers" at most. 300 years isn't enough time for the rise and passing of multiple generations that is implied. Whatever explanation anyone wants to try to make fit with it, I think it is simply a case of the writers not yet having a grasp of the implications of the timeline and the Cybertronians' longevity. The bottom line is that "300 years" is presented in such a way as to suggest the passing of a significant amount of time. And to Cybertronians, it just isn't. To them, it is the blink of an eye.

 

The whole point is that the Maximals are a bit different from the Guzzlers if they breed more easily then they might not even live as long as a guzzler. this seems to be pretty much implied by the time you get to the Techno-Oranic era.

Something happened - something big between 1984 and the 2500 and that lead to the extinction, reformatting, shrinking or removal of 90%+ off all classic style Transformers from Cybertron.

We know Cybertron has had previous ages from various media and that period is just the epoch as I said where another huge changes happens to make the Maximal era.

After all the change in age is one of the reasons why Beast Megatron is so put out by the change in the age putting the Predacons on the back foot by declaring peace with the Maximals and it's inferred this may have even started with Optimus Prime making 'all one' some centuries before.

I think Transformers history has periods of intense activity followed by periods of reconstruction and relative quiet. and if you wish to include the great Shutdown idea then that not only partly explains why Cybertron is so empty but also why the war can last so long.

If you take more recent ideas and muddle in some of the other ideas only used sparingly in G1 then you can also take heed that perhaps the war moved from Cybertron completely for ages at a time... especially now they like to spread the Cybertron/Galaxy Force concepts back into a G1 derived continuity - this also explains the fate of the Minicon colonies.

So Nn I'm not worried at all about any possible contradiction in the great war lasting about 9 million years and yet the step change to the maximal era seemingly happening in only a few decades across 4 centuries.

I just concentrate on the factor that could have lead that to happen the human influence the destruction caused by the G2 Swarm to the Earth and it's aftermarth.

Not a problem to me at all.

 

No, I think you are inferring that for the sole purpose of trying to make sense of something (300 years) that just as likely may well have simply been poorly thought out when it was said.

There is absolutely nothing in the actual fiction of the series itself to suggest the Maximals have shorter lifespans than Autobots. What race of beings would purposely "upgrade" themselves to having drastically shorter lifespans? From millions of years to hundreds?! Millions to hundreds. That is ridiculous. It would be like humanity deciding the average human lifespan of 70 years is too long and shortening it to 7 months. NEVER HAPPEN.

IMO, the 300 years thing was an honest mistake, made early in the storytelling process from a group of writers new to the franchise and without oversight, either from fans or previous franchise writers. The convoluted fan-created retcons attempting to make sense of it only make it more conspicuously out of place, imo.

 

I think they picked the 24th Century for 2 reasons 1) look at the huge difference between 1984 & 2006 and then extrapolate that forwards 300 seems if anything an over estimate it's enough for a big upset then to have it calm down again.

And why is it so odd that a lot should change in just a few centuries when if you look at the toyline or the Marvel comics that take their cue from it then look what you get in short order - from a modest base of normal Transformers + Triplechangers, you soon get additional Combiners, Headmasters, Targetmasters, Powermasters, Pretenders, Micromasters, Actionmasters etc... in a handful of years - hows that for a pace of change !

And reading BWTF at the time I get the strong impression that the whole good part of the reason Cheetor is irritated with Primal is that he does see the change to Techno-organic as a backwards step and primal Himself is putting population grown before longevity.

But that said the way techno-organics are subsequently handled by Funpub there's nothing about them at all that suggests them having a reduced lifespan or enhanced breeding rate.
And Transorganics and The Quintessons are also a form of Cyborg and they are virtually immortal.

I'd not discount a reduced life span though if anything it adds wait to the madness of Optimus Primal in Beast Machines that he wants to do that. and more heroism to Cheetor for trying to stop him or at least slow him down and make him think.. it looks likes everyone's plans in Beast Machines are a bit wacky though.

 

I apologise for necroposting, but I just read Chaos and Police Action for the first time and I am going to need some brain bleach.
All things considered, Transformers 1-31 was quite bad, and this interview to Mike Costa explains the huge difference with what followed.

 

Ah, the memories. Mike Costa's flippant arrogance towards the fanbase still tickles me to this day.

 

He may come off as kind of a jerk in that interview, but man his Cobra series was fantastic. Probably the last time I can recall my jaw actually physically dropping at a comic was the issue were Chuckles

Spoiler

blew away Cobra Commander   and let the nuke obliterate the island they were on.