Have to say. Given some of the reactions people have been having to the interview comments elsewhere, I was somewhat afraid of the angle this would take.

Instead, it's a fair summary. You couched most of Costa's quotes in the relevant context.

Surprised you didn't mention any of the Heart of Darkness bits though, with how Abnett/Lanning were originally going to do a second Ongoing, but plans changed due to their availability.

 

Pretty harsh words against the fandom. Though in his defense, a lot of it was at least somewhat true (obviously aside from the whole "only 100 fans on the Internet" thing, for one), as he did get a crapload of criticism, both [IMO] warranted and unwarranted. Still, he's got quite an ego on him, especially lumping blame on Dreamwave for fatally wounding Transformers comics.

Either way, it's clear that this guy should never have been a Transformers writer, as he seems to hate both the franchise and all 20 or so of us. This interview made me flip my perspective on this guy, and I'm really glad he's gone from this franchise.

 

^totally unrelated but what episode is that with all the "6th" rangers?

 

Kickback, thank you for posting this. It disappoints me that Costa had the privilege to write Transformers and yet he spits on the franchise and the fandom.

 

This was the first sign this interview was going to spiral out of control. Way to not even understand TFs at all. Transformers are not "beep-boop I am a ro-bot" they're people.

Goodbye Costa, I won't miss ya.

 

I've yakked about this a ton for the past 24 hrs, so I'll just wrap by saying this:

I think the biggest thing I took away from this was that nothing that was wrong with the comic was his fault. Everything had a reason or excuse. No accountability; no responsibility. Which is funny, as even Andy Schmidt eventually owned up to how awful Continuum was...

I likened Costa to Chuck Austen on the IDW boards... X-Men readers will know what I'm talking about.  

Anyway, Costa's done like a overcooked baked potato, fans can listen to the interview and perhaps see the man in a new light*, and we have GOOD Transformers comics to look forward to in the months to come.

If this kind of thing bugs you (and who can blame you if it does), please don't hold it against the new books. I know IDW has really bungled quite a but in regards to Transformers, but they may have finally got the right ingredients. Plus Regeneration One is coming soon, and that will be the bee's knees.

*I encourage even fans of his work to listen... you may well learn QUITE A LOT about the kind of fellow Mike Costa seems to be

 

Ah, lovely. But hey, at least he [apparently] understands how to write humans. Too bad he's still going to be writing about how much greater humans are than Transformers.

Though now we know why Costa kept shoving that idea down our throats...

But even then, it looked like he was really going somewhere with Thundercracker. At least now there's a decent background for a much better writer to give TC a proper character treatment.

 

It's from the current sentai show, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.

 

Well, good riddance to Costa. Way to go out with class. Except not.

Saw Andy Schmidt at Botcon and he was very gracious, humble, informative, approachable, and actually seemed proud of what he did with his time, not regretful. Costa should learn from that example.

 

wow...just wow. What a guy....

 

I enjoyed the ongoing for what it was worth, but yeah, this guy is grade-A 'WTF' material.

My favorite was about how TF comic readers don't read other comics. Okay, dude. My stacks of Young Justice, Batman Beyond, TMNT, and Invincible disagree, but whatevs. Besides, I'm only 1 of 100 TF fans who post to boards. What do I know?

 

I kept buying the Ongoing title, because at the TIME, I liked what was happening. Although to be quite frank, some of the decisions were questionable, now I understand why the hell they happened the way they did. Mike Costa never knew what he was getting into to start with, and failed to respect the material and creative teams of the past who managed to contribute better planned out ideas than his mediocre attempts at story arcs.

I will admit there are several redeeming aspects of some of the story arcs, but from what I've seen of Chaos so far, as I still need one or two more issues of that to complete the arc, it strikes me as being a wasted potential.

With a solid build up, the likes of which he got from James Roberts, you would think he would have been able to handle something at least marginally better than what we got. Sadly, he just didn't 'get' the characters.

He failed miserably at grasping the significance of the fact that these aren't simply robots, they are living, breathing, thinking machines from an alien planet who can adapt to their environments and blend in, they have numerous abilities that defy conventional sense because they originate from a completely different planet from our own.

Basically what Mike Costa boiled the Transformers Franchise down to, was something he could have easily picked up from the Live Action Movie franchise, where Bay features the Humans more than the Robots. Although to be fair, when Bay features humans and robots together, at least he gets why they're important.

Costa's utter contempt and disinterest in the franchise makes me question why the hell he even pitched to become the writer of the Ongoing in the first place. What was he trying to accomplish for himself? Get something important like writing Transformers on his resume to shop around with all the other comic companies due to the fallout/success of the trilogy?

Were I a petty, vindictive and as egotistical as he came off in that interview, I would be sorely tempted to calculate the costs of all those 35 books and then demand he pay me back for buying them out of his own pockets, simply because I gave him that money through his paycheck and now I'd like it back to use for something better. But I'm not so insane as he seems to think the Transformers are.

Farewell Mike Costa, I was enjoying your story arcs, and I probably still will (in future re-reads), but thanks to your attitude towards the fanbase which was supporting you the past two years I will gladly hope that for Chiristmas this year you recieve a Pink Slip, because you have effectively dug your own grave in IDW's comic book readerships eyes. After all, a fair percentage of Transformers Fans also happen to be GIJoe fans.

 

I fall into the category that I read fewer comics than others - but I still do read the occasional Batman and X-Men comic.

I liked *some* of what Dreamwave did, and I liked *some* of what IDW have done. The best TF fiction of late was Last Stand of The Wreckers and I would love to see that level of quality bought to the main TF comic stands.

It's not too late to redeem the TF comic book side of the franchise. Enough is known about the characters with the general comic book/geek communities so a solid writer and a drawing style that doesn't change every second issue then we could see numbers increase significantly.

The attitude present by Costa is condescending and patronizing. I'm glad I won't be supporting his work further.

 

here's what I don't get ~ on one hand he says that "it wasn't fun", "that the characters are difficult to Understand", "that he doesn't get why they have personalities", and that their "are huge limitations on what you can do as a writer with them*", that "they don't have motivations", etc and then on the other hand he blames the fandom for not liking his stories about the characters he doesn't understand the motivations of and isn't having fun writing.

*given how many near-blank slate characters there are in the TF universe, I'd argue you can do most anything with them if you want to tell a good story: see everybodies favorite example "Last Stand of the Wreckers" or some of the nobodies that Furman made into fan-favorites...

 

Hmmm.

 

One might be forgiven for taking the view that a writer who struggles to see the transformers as characters, struggles to see and understand their motives and struggles to understand why they even transform is possibly not the best guy to have writing Transformers stories.


It's not hard, Mike. Simon Furman and Bob Budiansky wrote the character bios for you quite a while ago. Just connect the dots, perhaps?

Can someone please hand his freshly vacated chair over to Nick Roche?