i agree with most of what you're saying even if i can't relate to living in the U.S. in my opinion, with this IDW universe they tried too hard to make the Transformers complex characters, that's not what Transformers is about, for me personally, Transformers has always been about war, the problem with IDW is that they ended that war and they kept going on, when there's no going on, when the war ends in Transformers the amount of stories you can tell after is 0, Transformers in itself is a brand of conflict, IDW especially MTMTE is trying as hard as it can to put that conflict aside and focus on characters, that's like if i was to try and have a emotional conversation with my shotgun, it wouldn't make sense would it? fortunately for me, exRID even with the super cop has maintained a little of that old school Transformers so i could enjoy that, but now even that it's over for me, but anyway i agree 100% with the fact that Orion Pax should be a 10%(regular guy) that goes to 90% (Prime) old school instead of 75%(super cop/well trained) to 85%(kinda Prime?) IDW

 

I'm sorry, I caught your post out of context then.

 

OP, a thorough write up and I can see where you're coming from and why you feel like you.

I honestly have no issues with the IDW approach to Orion Pax. Maybe this is because although I saw the original cartoon when it aired, I never was that big of a fan of it. The Marvel comics were my G1. And in that (and in the UK version which I read much later), before becoming the Autobot leader, Optimus wasn't a blue collar dock worker, but a military commander albeit much lower ranking, who slowly climbed through the ranks until through his actions he was deemed worthy of becoming the Autobots (military) leader. (The UK comics gave some more background with a life prior to the military.)

The IDW comics by having Orion be a police officer, to me find a very nice middle ground between these two. He had a background that makes it believable that he would become the Autobot leader, while at the same time grounding him in streetlevel job.

And Orion is still in a position to find things about Megatron being impressive. But instead of being impressed by the simple fact that Megatron can fly while getting shot and nearly killed leading to his insight, IDW's Pax is attracted to Megatron's ideas of equality and opposing the oppressive system of the council. That I find far more attractive.

They really read up on their Marx.

Marx his way from capitalism to communism had among its steps an oppression of the elite by the workers. First the workers would revolt grabbing power, then once they had power they would oppress their former masters, this in turn would lead to a necxt revolution which would eventually result in a society of equality.

Of course, Megatron went from being Marx to Lenin and mostly Stalin -- and the last two had very little in common with Marx his oriignal ideas.

 

That's what I was talking about in the post I deleted. In Marxist theory, every state is a dictatorship which enforces the rights and privileges of the upper classes by oppressing the lower. This includes the liberal democratic state, which evolved hand in hand with capitalism as the bourgeoisie came to control the economic base of society (previously controlled by the aristocracy). It's primary function is to maintain the conditions of their ascendancy. Marxists call this... the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Socialists seek the abolition of class and state. (This does not mean the abolition of government, people will always need to govern themselves). In Marx's time, the debate was over how this should happen; was it going to be the baked in result of Progress and the triumph of Reason, would it be achieved through expanding the franchise and mobilizing the poor to vote for socialism, would there be a revolution immediately followed by a peaceful anarchy?

The Leninist response was, no, none of that would be adequate. We must overthrow the old state and establish a new one: the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in disestablishing the rights and privileges of the bourgeoisie would be able to enforce the rights of everyone.

That is the idea of dictatorship that should be celebrated.

"But but but, violence, the military, those things are doubleplusungood". No, they aren't. Like, not to Godwin it up, but I assume everyone is glad that military dictatorships were used to disestablish the Confederate state and the Nazi state. And in that first case that dictatorship did not go far enough in establishing a material base from which the freed slaves could exercise their freedom, because the Union did nothing to change who owned the means of production. Americans are still living with the legacy of that 150 years later. That sort of outcome is why I read these books and think, "shit, I don't care what Roberts wants me to believe, Megatron was right".

 

I always liked the sunbow origin and the relationship between Prime and his Autobots. Prime and the sunbow Autobots were a lot like how the movie Braveheart depicted William Wallace and his compatriots, regular guys banding together to fight for freedom. I think the premise makes for a compelling story for both children and adults.

Super cop Orion Pax doesn't inspire me. The premise isn't bad, but light on character journey to Optimus Prime. IDW Prime doesn't often feel like a man of the people. Cop doesn't typically scream man of the people, their authority is derived from government. Dockworker fighting evil on behalf of the downtrodden derives his authority from the people. The dockworker origin could of been reworked for an older audience. Man of the people, to me, is integral to the character of Optimus Prime.

I like the IDW universe but I do think there are too many shades of grey. Some of the appeal of the original concept is lost in IDW. I think the success of the overall narrative somewhat relies on an emotional investment the reader made in the characters before ever opening the comics.

 

Guys, discussion of political parallels in the comics is OK, but please steer clear of discussions / judgments of those real world politics:

THANKS!

 

Interesting thoughts. I definitely agree that there has been little character evolution on the part of OP, and that's unfortunate. I'm not frankly a fan of the dock worker or clerk origins of OP. Both seem, to me, a bit contrived. I'm tired of the trope of the apparent nobody being destined or selected by God (or, in this case, the Matrix) to greatness. I like better the idea of the hero being someone in a position to play a role in the big events, then assuming the role through his choices in that position. In that sense, OP as a mid level cop makes sense. But I agree that they went too over the top with OP as a paragon, missing the chance to see him grow into that role as military *and* moral leader.

 

And yes, while the megatron as a well-intentioned populist hero who lost his way into maniacal tyranny and genocide is interesting in theory, but they haven't done too well, IMO, in showing the journey from one to the other.

 

I personally like the way that IDW/Roberts/Barber/Whoever has at least taken what on paper will always seem a trivial and childish set up (Toylines, Comic Books, TV Show) and at least tried to provide some world-building to explain why some people root for the Bad Guys.

The Decepticons have always been a problem for me. Admiration, moral justification and "Wow, cool uniform Bro!" For their cause in any form has the ominous echo of a past that should be uncomfortable for us. And is.

Making Megatron "Super Hero Marx" seems like an interesting starting point, but any "sympathy" for the guy has to evaporate at some point when balanced against his actions. And over millions upon millions of years He has performed so many impossibly "evil" actions that the starting intentions for "why" can provide NO fig leaf for a "Megatron was right" statement that wouldn't need "but he became the Galactic Standard Definition of totally and utterly WRONG" appended to it.

At some point the Mutineers are actually "right." When does Justice for the past kick in? Most narrative has to have moral balance otherwise we just stop reading and grow uncomfortable with redemption being easy. Kill Trillions but now feel a bit apologetic about that? Sure, no problem. Pay a fine over there at the desk and promise to be a Good Guy from now on. Arc completed.

Optimus is harder to pin down in relation to all that. I don't need him to be some cliche of Lowborn Virtue to feel comfortable with him becoming the TF version of Diety's Chosen Right Arm.

The Matrix intervening in Cybertronian Society and "deeming" a Leader for them is never something that those not fortunate enough to be "Chosen" should feel comfortable about and the current state of Cybertron reflects that quite well. But it leads to messy, who really should be in charge now conflicts such as we've seen in RID.

And trying to find Our World analogs that transpose comfortably onto an Alien Society where Divinity is still manifest and plays a role in Governance (Primus may/May not be the Planet, the Matrix is one of the Original Angels, Titans are God's Actual Chariots) makes Communism/Capitalism seem a bit small as comparators.

Prime is as good, as compelling or annoying as whoever is writing him. Same with Captain America or whoever was feeding scripts to John Wayne on any given day. If a writer "gets" Prime then he's a Character with infinite potential and an interesting portion of journey ahead. If he has to be hamstrung by plot device, mid-life crisis or bad writing (there has been plenty of that) or just out and out removed then obviously He is less compelling. Or necessary. And not as cool as the Big Bad.

Comics don't tend to allow enough space to adequately explore deeply complex themes, that MTMTE and RID have at least tried is why I still read them, for good or bad, they have rarely been dull.

 

Agreed. While the redemption of Megatron is theoretically interesting on s small scale, any consideration of the real implications and it falls apart.

 

But there's hundreds of TF stories set during wartime already (including lots of IDW ones too). Having the war go on ad-infinitum means you are just treading over the same ground, there's a limited number of interesting stories to tell. Why not break new ground and go off into new territory, develop characters, show what happens with these characters in new scenarios. When the war ends in Transformers the amount of stories you can tell after is infinite.

TFs have language, faces, are capable of thought. That's always been the case. A shotgun has none of these. If a shotgun did have a voice and was capable of thought, but was unable to control how it was used by humans, now that would be a story.

 

"TFs have language, faces, are capable of thought."
language=they should have/use codes so Soudwave or others couldn't spy on each other
faces=they should have face-plates, just like the best bots have, it's war, they need armor not faces
thought=if they were capable of thought they wouldn't have started a civil war over who gets to play the leader role

i disagree, i don't know where you see hundreds of stories during the war, all the comics have the same Orion Pax & Megs origin story at the start of the war then rush through it, all the animated shows are pretty much after the war but they still keep the fight going with Megatron still being a bad guy and still keeping the fight alive, i love TF Prime, but even in that i though that ending it with Megatron changing his belief was stupid

you said that the wartime has been explored 100% already, how? the war was 4 million years long if i remember? or it was 4 billion years long? how can we have explored that much time worth of stories lol, we still don't know almost nothing about The Knights Of Cybertron, 13 Primes, titans/guardians, colonies and pretty much every TF mythology, the only thing that has been explored are the politics with Zeta/Sentinel and Orion Pax origins and the start of the war, i'm sick of these, i want long arcs of stories about detailed phases of the 4 million years long war, the best medium that i've seen doing the war was in the book Exodus, there they detailed the war really well but even that was just a short sum up, i'm tired of TF media that has the war as a backstory, no, TF has a lot of backstory even before the war

all these TF stories keep rushing the origins in a backstory then do their own "original" after war/on earth bla bla story, no, we need a definitive origin and setting of the Transformers lore, we need a reboot that is only on Cybertron, no earth, no non mechanical colonies, just bots

 

There´s only so much plot you can write with "pew pew pew" as a main source.

 

I think that Orion Pax, Supercop, is by FAR the best incarnation of pre-Prime Optimus I've ever seen. I never bought the dockworker or the harried clerk. The truth is that good military commanders have a type. They tend to be quick on their feet, able to mobilize quickly, and able to assess a situation & use whatever's at hand. This is best illustrated in Chaos Theory when Pax uses his friend's alt mode, despite the squickiness of using a corpse, to attack his attackers and re-imprison Whirl.

Roberts did really well at showing that Pax was, unlike Megatron, a person motivated by direct action and evidence to immediate change. It sets the war in an interesting light: Megatron envisioned the better world, Pax became the pragmatist fighting for various forms of change. It makes for a great relationship because Optimus, in his heart, still sees himself as a cop, doing what is right to preserve people's lives and freedoms, meaning that he is always responding to Megatron, and I think he kinda hates that, and wants Megatron to become part of the solution. (I wish Roberts could rewrite Autocracy, because going from Roberts' complex arc through Chaos Theory/Shadowplay/Elegant Chaos to Autocracy is like reading an Orwell novel that was finished by drunk Snookie.)