I liked how the Transformers episode included a dramatization of Bob Budiansky getting his assignment.
It's nice whenever he's recognized. I know TF has no singular creator, but Budiansky is amongst the more essential ones. The guy named Megatron!

 

I think budiansky gets shafted because, sure, a lot of this tf comics aren't amazing --- and his work on marvel g1 gets held up against Simon Furman's superlative late run.

Those things don't take into account that Bob was constantly having to work with "great, now introduce these 12 new toys" every three issues, upending most of his storylines. By the time Furman was on the book, those kind of editorial edicts had subsided significantly. Simon had a LOT more freedom during his 20 or issues, and had honed a lot of his chops in the weird world of marvel UK.

I also think the contrast to Larry hama on the gi Joe comic. Hama definitely brought a lot of surprising quality to the book early on.

Yeah, Bob gave us a lot of goofy shit. But he also built so much of the world. He innovated the creation matrix.

Also,I don't hat accountant ratbat and the carwash of doom

 

WOW! I\'M SOOOO EXCITED!

 

I can't tell if that's sincerity or sarcasm.

 

Both.

 

To those reading this, I offer a final summation of IDW:
it was a mixed bag, and, understand, that I don't state that in a condescending tone. No version of TF is innately stricken of flaw. IDW was no exception. They committed many (personally subjective) errs which aggravated me. Combiner Wars flashbacks... But, they, unlike the majority of current fiction, were far more creatively experimental in their approach to storytelling. Taking familiar characters, cliches & concepts, adding new twists to them. I personally enjoyed MTMTE and consider it the deepest, richest narrative ever told in the franchise thus far. The cast felt like real people with troubled pasts, complicated interpersonal relationships, unique POVs, numerous sins, etc. That said, it wasn't a perfect, smooth ride throughout. None of IDW1 or IDW2 was. Bumps aplenty lie on those roads. Still, there was always a fascinating idea, or a character arc, or a funny quote that kept me around. All in all, I'm glad I picked up Infiltration #0 waaay back in 2006 when I first started reading Transformer comics. It's been a funny, aggravating, uplifting, thought provoking, baffling, tear inducing experience. So, thank you: Simon Furman, Alex Milne, Don Figueroa, James Roberts, Nick Roche, Shane McCarthy & Guido Guidi for giving me some good memories.  

 

I pretty much agree with all of this. I had so much fun reading everything from IDW1. (Even Combiner Wars!! There were some really good moments in that one! Haha) I bought the first hardcover of IDW2 and it just didn't do it for me, I read the occasional issue as it came out here and there but I never felt the need to read any more. But that doesn't mean it was awful or any less a part of the Transformers franchise just cause it didn't interest a lot of people. They put a good effort it I always thought.
And MTMTE will always hold a special place in my heart. I try to reread it every year. What an amazing run that really shows the potential of TF storytelling at its finest.

 

That's silly. For starters until the people at the Allspark started praising Roberts for his "diversity" and adding same-sex and transgender relationships in Transformers, it just never occurred to me that's what it was supposed to be. I read the comics for years and I never looked at Chromedome/Rewind or Cyclonus/Tailgate as "gay couples". Transformers do not reproduce sexually, nor do they really have genders since they are sentient machines whose sparks literally grow out of the ground on the moon that is an extension of their eons-old space-god who turned into their planet.   It feels as silly to assign human genders and sexuality to Transformers as it would be to say that of the Borg, for example. (Who while partially organic, do not reproduce like most humanoid species). To me, Conjunx endura was a special ritual to cement friendship among a race who exist for millions of years, which would naturally be not something they would make on the fly for such a long-lived species.

So even after I realized that some people viewed the relationship of these characters like this, it did not matter to me, nor could I "not handle it", I just never considered it in this light.
No, what ruined Roberts' stories for me was how his characters eventually fell into a rut, how he could not move past a mix of gruesome space horror mixed with awkward comedy, how no matter how characters came and went, there was always someone on board who would engage in witty banter - essentially, his characters became interchangeable. Also, it got tiresome how he dragged his rampant atheism and anti-establishment views into a comic meant to entertain fans of a franchise... Don't think it was lost on me how every major antagonist they encounter is always some Autobot higher up gone mad with power/science. Also, to me a Transformers comic should be equal parts about both Autobot and Decepticon, and Roberts really could not write the latter, making most of the Cons either murderous barbarians or - as soon as they joined the crew - become the same wacky chatterboxes as the main cast. Autobot Megatron remains one of the worst ideas I have seen in a TF comics, right after the Deceptigod and whatever nonsense the Kirby-hommage GI Joe crossover was (listen dude, if you love Kirby so much, maybe apply at DC and write/draw a New Gods comic for them, not do some fever dream from 80ies toys.)
And that's on Roberts. On Barber, well, he was never good to begin with.
I have, after some consideration, put up all 7 volumes of TPBs of MTMTE for sale (yet, nobody in Hungary seems to want them...) and from IDW, the only things I am keeping are:
- The original Furman arcs - Infiltration, Escalation, Devastation and the last one that was released in Spotlights
- Stormbringer
- Maximum Dinobots
- The older Spotlights that were mostly good (save for Cliffjumper's, which was a prelude of the horrible things to come under Shane)
- The Wreckers trilogy
- Re-Generation One
- Furman's Beast Wars comics (I keep forgetting if that was IDW or still DW?)
- Transformers 1984

All in all, we got some good stuff from IDW, but same as with DW, we got a lot of bad with the good.
Unlike with DW though, where I disliked Sarracini/Brad Mick's stuff from the get-go, with IDW it took me quite a long time to see the flaws in Roberts' writing, and it kinda made me dislike his work in retrospect upon re-reading them. I guess, at the time, after so much Shane McCarthy and Mike Costa crap, his work felt insightful and deep in comparison (especially with Chaos Theory). However I already had some issues even with those stories, and as time went by, I realized more and more why that is.

You are not the only one to ask that... Kup himself wondered that about Hot Rod!  


While the answer is, that Hot Rod feels younger because he is simply put, immature   ... There is more to this. After all, as Optimus finds out in his vision quest connecting to the Matrix, Primus did not create the whole Transformers race all at once. Via "budding", more Cybertronians were born later on, a process most forgot - except for the faction created by the Leige Maximo, Jhiaxus among them, who restarted it. Which explains why Optimus Prime does not know Jhiaxus - he was born after he and Megatron left Cybertron.

Guess you never watched seasons 3-4, where we have Bots and Cons fighting together against Quintesson invasion, characters switching sides, grand sacrifices and meaningful deaths, and what never happened in any Transformers show before, a lasting peace being established between Autobot and Decepticon.
Cyberverse quickly become probably my third favourite TF show ever. And I too grew up on Paul Dini and Greg Weisman.

Thing is, earlier during both DW and IDW we at least had multiple writers writing separate stories. You hated one, there was at least another. I hated Barber, there was Roberts to read. I hated Brad Mick, there was still Armada/Energon and TWW to read from Furman.
During most of Ruckely's run, which has been what, 3-4 years, we barely had other comics - Transformers G1 #0, 1984, a few issues of Galaxies which was mostly more of the same, and then just now King Grimlock which was lackluster.
We come here and complain because we want better. Same way we complained during the "dark ages" when Transformers cartoons were exclusively anime. Because we want at least something that caters to us. Because we are FANS. If we would just disappear and forget about Transformers, what sort of fans would we be? - let me tell you: fickle, not serious, surface level fans. The same people who loved Bayformers because it vaguely reminded them of a show they barely remembered from their childhood.

Amen to that. After the renaissance these properties had in the early 2000s-2010s, when at least some care was given for continuity and to not try reinventing the wheel, what happened to these franchises later was often, close to a death knell. You can add Terminator, Predator, Alien to that mix too. I seriously doubt many of these can even come back and be profitable for the companies investing into them ever again after some gigantic fiascos. It took a nostalgia-dump movie like Afterlife to bring back Ghostbusters from the brink of death, for example, and it was Mandalorian that saved Star Wars from a financial crash after the sequels.
Transformers is luckily, not ruined as there are so many continuities and franchises under the TF aegis that'd be impossible to do. But Transformers comics need to come back with a bang to be profitable again.

 

Me looking at this cover: "I literally have no idea who that is"
Guess this is as good of a summary of the end of IDW as any, a cover showing a character no casual fan walking into a comic shop would recognize. Kind of the opposite of what sells comics.

It's called "difference of opinions" and "discussion".
Y'know, kinda like real life.
So far people have been pretty civil, especially compared to what I see in youtube comments or twatter.

Isn't the third BW cartoon Beast Wars Neo, chronologically?  

It remains one of the great losses of this fandom, and many others, that he quit the comic industry back in the 90ies to work in advertising instead.

 

I DID sit through those seasons. Quint Scientist was a fun character. Loved his Boris Karloff impression. Still couldn't salvage what I viewed as a watered down kiddie show. People keep raising Cyberverse up onto this increasingly higher & higher pedestal, but, the whole time I'm sitting there, dumbfounded. Like, we clearly had very different viewing experiences. I stand by my prior assertions that it was too childish. The way characters talked, the quality of dialogue, felt very off. Like what a kid smacking action figures together would come up with. By contrast, Animated & Beast Wars had more naturalistic interactions, snarky back & forth. Also, it began to resemble G1 in the worst way. Too many characters. Alot were simply there to occupy space, serving as crowd filler, never afforded any focus. That's a pet peeve of mine towards the 80s cartoon & a huge chunk of Furman's library. Just shoveling characters into the storyline.

Now, as for the subject of "TF sexuality" yes, I do agree that, as far as the IDWverse goes, they are entirely asexual beings. That said, you seem to not understand that love, romantic attachment, can exist separately from lust. Caring deeply about another person, more than anyone else, enjoying their company, wanting to build a life with them, doesn't have to be predicated around shacking up.

 

It was a toon made for kids. of course It was childish. But it was mature enough also that characters did die, change sides, or evolve in their personalities.
I actually LOVE if there are many characters. That means a different one can get a focus every now and then. Like how Clobber evolved from a random dumb thug to a character I totally love and find funny. One of the problems of CGI shows, true for Beast Wars but especially for Prime, is how it limits the number of characters that can be used. By the nature of the toyline alone, Transformers should have a lot of characters.

I consider Cyberverse compared to TF Animated, which is my #1 favourite TF show, like I compare Mummies Alive to Gargoyles. Both are similar, dealing with mystical ancient beings surviving and fighting in modern times, both deal with dark elements, but one takes itself less seriously than the other. To me, both have their place among my favourite cartoons. And the same goes for Robots in Disguise 2015.

 

First page: there\'s a comma slice and cybertron is shaped like a jellybean

Will these \"professionals\" please go back to McDonald\'s?

 

A limited cast means tighter focus on the ones you have to use. Dinobot wouldn't nearly have as much depth if the writing for his series was given the 80s cartoon approach.
Tonally, Animated is a superior show than Cyberverse.
It too was a lighthearted, fun, colourful show but the dramatic story beats hit harder. The issue with Cyberverse's jokier, less serious way of carrying itself, is, I can't take it seriously whenever it asks me to. Whereas I feel TFA balanced things more evenly. Serious situations felt serious, the dialogue & character actions reflected that, with levity sprinkled in (Sumdac using the Headmaster unit to commandeer Starscream's body, only to immediately get pwned by Megatron) by just the right amount.
Also, I cringed at Soundwave's eulogy.
Hotrod:"Soundwave was an evil Decepticon..."
You see what I meant about this seeming like it was written by a child?

 

Hey BB Shockwave I want to thank you for your posts and I want to address the points you raise because even thought I don't agree with them I appreciate the fact that you took the time to write them! I did just want to say though that in issue 43's defense, this is the 43rd main issue of an ongoing series, so you do have to assume that it knows its audience by now (ie the people who have and are reading 42 other issues, at the very least). besides which, this is one of three covers, the other two of which are explicitly using legacy/big name characters, so I don't know if the point you're making is supported by the evidence you've presented.

The other point re: 'what sells comics" is a much thornier topic and I suppose, if you're interested, watch this space? Also the other points, because it could be helpful

 

Hot Rod was grinning the way you do when you're laughing through tears when he said that--because he loved Soundwave and knew his s sense of humour. Soundwave wouldn't want people to talk about him being a "nice" person, because he wasn't. Hot Rod didn't love Soundwave because he was "nice". Hot Rod loved Soundwave because they became close fighting a nearly unwinnable battle under extreme stress and they believed in each other and made each other stronger. He looked like he was about to break down when he said that.

Hot Rod and Soundwave were becoming closer and closer all through the Quintesson arc. Whether they were lovers or best friends is open to interpretation, but: Soundwave had been plotting his final act in that episode all the way up to where the artefact was.

But when Tarn attacked Hot Rod he jumped into the fray and openly defied Tarn instead of doing what he was clearly planning to do, which was make Tarn think he was on his side until he got a chance to stab Tarn in the back, grab the McGuffin and do the thing he did at the end without having to die.

Shadow Striker signed the treaty for the Decepticons, not Hot Rod. I've always thought it was because she wasn't in love/best friends with an Autobot and there was no question of her wanting the peace treaty for personal benefit.

1) Conjunx endura is a romantic relationship. Eternal best friends is amica endura, not conjunx endura. I disagree with you that they're canonically asexual just because they don't reproduce sexually. In canon, they behave exactly like humans do with regard to their dear friends and romantic partners.

 

jesus christ i can\'t wait for IDW to stop making TF comics so the same fucking three people will quit dragging the same two complaints out over and over and over 

oh who am i kidding this is TFW they\'ll be doing this shit after i\'m fucking dead

 

HOLY SHIT HOOPER X

y'all motherfuckers get to steppin'

 

I can't wait for it so both sides can feck off.

 

To quote a philosopher king, "It never ends".

Also, I write this fully acknowledging the contradictions and inconsistencies of Transformer representation and writing and what not, and jus thope you can take this in good faith.

Looking past the Allspark comment, the most interesting bit of your first paragraph is “it just never occurred to me that’s what it was supposed to be”. I don’t want to make assumptions (beyond a healthy necessity) about your media consumption habits or the literature you enjoy, or how you navigate it, but it does indicate that you’re not someone who is outwardly concerned about romantic or intimate relationships, in a way. “Transformers do not reproduce sexually” and “nor do they really have genders” are also interesting because things that do not reproduce sexually still have deep, meaningful, emotionally fulfilling/complex and romantic relationships. Romance and reproduction are narratively linked but they’re not necessarily essential to one another; reproduction can (and does) happen because of other social/political/economic reasons, and romance happens outside of a need to, or ability to perform, the biological production/gestation of a new person.

Similarly, a gender isn’t the same as biological sex ( Gender and health ). Transformers are consistently written not as purely mechanical objects but as beings who perform in a human way; feelings of desire, hatred, love, acts of war, of kindness, of friendship, imbibing/substance abuse, culture, so on. Transformers are and have been written with gender in mind, otherwise we wouldn’t have things like Elita-1 or Arcee who perform gender as much as Jazz or Ironhide. Transformers are fundamentally different to something like the Borg, an actual machine collective (I guess, I haven’t watched Picard) which strips away an individual’s ‘humanity’ (and I recognise they do this to non-human species who again, exhibit/display human-like tendencies and experience life in a similar way to human beings) for the purpose of mechanical reproduction and expansion.

And it’s cool you can conceive of conjunx endura in your own terms, but you also ought to accept that it’s explicitly determined by Roberts/IDW/Hasbro as being an explicitly designation for a romantic relationship between sentient robots, as stated by RNS as being explicitly different to other bonds between sentient robots.


On this last point regarding how to consider relationships, and I mean this with all due respect, it is possible that you experienced something when something you identified with acted in a way that you couldn’t properly process/understand, and that others who you viewed as being other/less-than were more on the mark than you. You begin to feel excluded, and in turn this… I don’t know, it does things to people, I get it.

I fucking love this bit and I want to thank you for writing it. Why do I love it? Because in some ways I actually completely agree with you: there is something incredibly insufferable, to me, about how Roberts writes the second half of MTMTE, and in some ways LL. It’s the flagrant pop-culture references, his reverance for shit like Dr Who and Dan Harmon, the ‘soy-banter’ witticism machine, the… well, the list goes on.

However, I would also counter with the fact that I don’t think a Transformers series that was either a. explicitly post-war and b. explicitly trying to react and process the social/cultural/political vibe of the period in a meaningful and deliberate way. It is also interesting and I think something of merit to have someone with a distinct voice (even if it’s a bit of a weird Russel T Davies/Roiland mash-up) making their mark on something. This is literally something that had never been tried and it was going to miss the mark for some a bit, and it was also going to alienate people who had, lets been fair, fairly consistiently served with a product made for them since the DW Transformers rennaisance (more on that later). When we write, when we have a medium to express ourselves, we always run the risk of imbuing it with our own ideology and our own preferences. I’d rather have something try and fail at bringing about meaningful change than sit stagnant, for fear of taking risks and living in the past as if it was the only good place to be.

(Deceptigod was shit but Costa is a subject for another post, or something, because again, something in there is interesting).

And Scioli’s TF vs GIJoe is actual art because it was one of the few times TF in recent years actually tried to tap in to the frenzied, imaginative, unrestrained child-like thought process of getting a shitload of toys and making an absolute god-damn mess of things.

Likewise, I don't think Roberts can be blamed for writing Decepticons as simplistic because I think every TF writer has done that to some extent. Likewise I think one of the consequences of doing a post-war story in Transformers is that you don't have the traditional lines between 'autobot and decepticon' and this happens a lot after conflicts, or whenever the status quo is shifted irreversably.

Has his uses, lol.

A totally valid and legit argument about age in Transformers and not one I’ll argue with. I will, however, argue that the desire to display age is using the human experience, as has been consistient with Transformers from the get-go. And if you’re going to go to the effort to write alien creates as largely human, well, you’re always gonna run the risk of borrowing more than some people are willing to account for. This was one of the issues with Costa, where he (at some point) admitted that TF was a difficult thing to write because “they fight over energy, and then dont, and then do” (paraphrasing, i know). He couldn’t conceive of them as people and as such was severely limited in his imagination and what he could/couldn’t do.

Two amazing entries that again I thank you for. The first is great because of the word ‘fickle’, that is, the dedication to being a fan of something that at the end of the day cannot and never will meet your needs, especially as you grow older and more invested in the ‘hey-day’ of things, and as the owners of IP look to reach new audiences and consider the practical realities of doing business in (insert year that isn’t 1987). There is a loyalty to IP from Hasbro, a company that will literally drop you at a moments notice if you aren’t profitable. A company that you likely will never have any say in. A cultural product becoming more and more divorced from what you want or need and who will never truly come back. You have almost an entirely one-way consumption-based relationship and I’d argue that this isn’t healthy



The other post does something I hadn’t considered. For a while, I’ve been mulling/posting about the fact that for some people, the only thing that could satisfy some people is a return to the 80s, to pure G1, because they wanted to feel that feeling they had between the ages of i dunno, 6-12, where the idea of space-faring galactic-spanning shape-shifitng robot badasses fighting one another was novel and cool and interesting and wow. And the truth is, you’re only really a child once, you’re only really able to entertain that naivety once or twice in your life before the dopamine rush from this gets less and less, but because you haven’t become curious about the world (or are shunned, which happens) you don’t know how to move on and you keep expecting the things that made you feel this way to come back and do it again. And it ain’t possible…



…except in the early 2000s, when DW and others revitalised 80s nostalgia properties by injecting just enough ‘maturity’ to make them feel edgy and relevant and interesting and exciting again. But this fades, as does interest in just spinning the same wheel again and again, and it won’t last, because the circumstances leading to that exact moment cannot be re-created. It may have seemed like it for a slew of teeangers and 20-30-somethings, but it wasn’t anything of substance because ultimately there is something incredibly hollow about the media we consumed in the 80s. Tragic, I know.

Sometimes we have discussion. I’d like to think that’s right now, but it only came from people being a bit uhh… I dunno, maybe needing other hobbies.

Just to clarify, are you arguing with the assumption that either gender is the same thing as biological sex, or are you arguing that gender isn't a real thing?