I just wanted to say thanks for being sane.  

 

could you explain the "dudes in suits" and alien robot concepts please? don't quite get it

 

Lol, I would be offended by you're harshness Costa...but...I bootlegged your comics.  

 

I'm using the "dudes in suits" as shorthand to denote that they tend to be overly personified - like they're just people in suits of armor running around.

Particularly, I think, in ways inconsistent with their story...i.e. Kup and Ironhide are the "old guys" but they're all thousands of years old fighting a million year old war. So how much older is Kup? It makes the scale hard to judge, so we apply our own ideas of age onto them, but our concept of age is so limited comparative to their lifetimes.

Or, you know, the way their combat is entirely based in the physical realm, when the truth is there should be, like, hackers and stuff, too. There's Bombshell and Mindwipe and stuff, but even they are treated as characters in control of the mind. But it's not a mind specifically. It's a program. But they've had our concepts of hypnotism and brainwashing thrown onto them.

Or, the way they're sentient machines but they use plenty of machines who aren't sentient. What's the cultural aspect there? There might be some one shot or Mosaic where someone like Fixit reflects on the matter, but it isn't ever really explored. Not in a grand scale, you know?

And, you know, I think that's the best way to sum up my frustration with the franchise - there's not really a culture. I don't want them to be too alien, but the Transformers should feel like they came from Tolkien, you know? Like the Elves. They're eternal, they have very specific forms of combat and customs and a language that's very unique when compared to the Dwarves. They're all still relatable, and they can be heroic or untrustworthy and all that, but they're unmistakably not human or hobbit or anything else.

Transformers lack that. They're just written as you would write any human in a sci-fi soldier atmosphere. Sometimes too human, IMO.

 

Yeah, I think I agree with you on that one. Here's hoping he finds some work that's more to his liking. There's not much worse than being stuck in a job you don't like doing.

 

ROFL! 


Okay... so I'm one of the people who interviewed Costa. This thread has been all kinds of WHOA. But I'm not here to cause problems just to say a few words and answer questions if there are any.

Costa was a pleasure to talk with. And no we didn't expect this type of reaction NOR did we pad the questions to get him to that end result. He was completely honest and open with us. Maybe part of that is because he's been on the Underbase before and he brought some criticism to us about our reviews. (In fact he confronted me right on the show, I thought that would have caused some drama back in the day. LOL! If you'd like to check it out it was in April 2011) We had a amicable discussion and I think because we were so respectful he felt comfortable coming back on the podcast.

We haven't really had much interaction with him since April. I think before/after Thanksgiving give or take a few days (?) he came online said to me his last issue was coming out and wanted to come and talk about it as we'd expressed in April it would be good to do a follow up chat about Chaos. It wasn't that he sought me out, we just happened to be online and that chance time yielded that result.

He was fun to talk with. He treated us with respect. He wasn't a jerk. We didn't feel offended by what he said as fans, mostly because lets be honest, fans can be really unpleasant at times. We took his talking about writing completely different than a lot of fans are taking it.

I think in the end, he's not a terrible writer, I think he was an inexperienced writer on the wrong project. (Yes, inexperienced to run a full Ongoing.) But despite this did the best that he could and yeah, he got paid to do it. But lets face it Ongoing wasn't all bad either. I'm taking a few things away that are positive.

I'm not gonna shoot my mouth off about who is responsible because things HAVE changed. There's a new editor, new writers, and a new Ongoing. It is a new world. And it isn't the end of the world either. Wish Mike the best.

 

To quote Charlotte Mearing from dark of the moon

"This is Mike Costa. We dont let him out out of GI Joe much cause he's an asshole"

 

Oh how, like you, id love to see all that explored and put into a tf book <3

 

After the past few years of steadily shit comics I think everyone has a right to be upset.

 

*shrug* I've been enjoying them. If I remove nostalgia from the equation, it's hard for me to remember any era of Transformers comics that were much better. Fortunately, I don't have to remove nostalgia from the equation. But still...

 

I can't say I'm comfortable with the idea of applying "ANY" 20th or early 21st Century ideas to Transformers taken from Computer and Information Technology - it just remeinds me of things i'd rather forget like when they mention Hard Drives or Chips, or when Optimus got his mind downloaded onto a 5" Floppy Disk.

There are work arounds for these things that work a bit like the explanation for why Dinobot's spark was attracted to Dinobot II's body. and those could apply to both the 5" disk issue and Optimus backing himself up to his Trailer's memory.

If you think of their spark being transferred then it does help in those situations, but it also opens a huge can of worms best left closed and makes them less Sentient Inorganic Aliens and more walking toasters if they can swap bodies at will.

Swapping bodies should be very hard to do, and I feel like mode scanning it should have some consequences.. (like how the Playskool Gobots needed to use a mineral Gobrillium to change bodies each time).

If a Transformer can move it's self mentally to a new object or another Transformers Body then it just wouldn't be the same franchise.. I don't want Bumblebee acting like Megatron's Polarised Spark.

Those sorts of ideas are OK to touch upon but if adopted wholesale just change the franchise far to much away from it's roots.

But then there's always been things I really dislike with Transformers like how Megatron is practically indestructible for no obvious reason or how they can sometimes overplay the Gladiatorial thing.

I can understand why some might think they are to human at times but I think they should be seen as Alien Mechanoids not as Machines in a human sense - that is to close to making them human built in the first place.

And to return to the ideas of the past just look how silly the idea of Optimus transferring all he is on to a 5" Computer Disc now seems. or even the Autobots being beheaded and mounted on a wall, or Optimus being chopped up and turned into a Crocodile seems a bit wrong to me now. it's to "Dehumanising" for my tastes.

 

I'm just rewatching my Beast Machines DVDs. I mention this because there's an extra on Disc 1 which is an interview with Marv Wolfman, where he basically says fans are egotistical, nostalgia-fixated children who don't really know what they want, and their wishes should be ignored for the sake of telling a better story.

It turns out other writers feel the way Mike Costa does too, and looking at the TFW2005 message boards I think they may be right. If online fandom got to set the creative direction of Transformers, the whole franchise would have completely disappeared up its own arse a long time ago.

 

Ok, I've read a lot of other people's take on this, and pardon my french, utter shitstorm; so here's my take on this.

Yes, that's why no other writer has been able to understand them. Oh wait, many great and more talented writers then yourself have understood these characters and have done wonderful things with them.

Wait, so why does energon exist? Why do they take stasis naps? Why do fembots like Arcee and Blackarachnia exist? Why are Sunstreaker and Sideswipe always referred to as twins? Did you do any research at all before you took on the job?

How is it insane that robots would have sentience and have personalities like humans? Do you also think it's insane that characters like R2-D2 or the Vision also have personalities like a human?

It's in the fucking tagline and the second line in the original theme song: "Robots in Disguise". They do it so they can hide from their enemies; it's a defense tactic.

Complete bullshit. They can be as expressive as you want them to be and you obviously didn't give two shits about making them expressive.

They're a sentient race of robots from another planet; they're aliens. If you can't understand that simple fact, it's no wonder you failed.

Complete and utter bullshit. I was reading Marvel and DC comics long before I got into Transformers comics and I'm still way more invested in the Big 2 then I am in what IDW has been putting out for the past couple of years. The only good Transformers story that IDW has put out, that I have read, is The Last Stand of The Wreckers. That's it. Everything else, excluding those awesome two issues from the ongoing that James Roberts wrote that I still haven't read, has been complete garbage.

Gee, I'm not surprised. Especially with a lot of the terrible stories that IDW have put out, I'm not at all surprised that Transformers comics are viewed this way.

Wait, you're blaming Dreamwave for you're failings? A company that went out of business in 2005? Shit, that is the worst attempt at shifting the blame I have ever seen. Oh, and by the by, most of the stuff that was coming out of Dreamwave near end was actually very well received by the fandom.

Same thing happens in every fandom dumbass, it's not just exclusive to this one. You'll actually find that it's a lot worse in other fandoms, so I'd count yourself lucky if I were you.

Of course the market is shrinking. Most of the world is still trying to get out of the GFC, which means many people can't justify spending $2.99 or $3.99 on a comic each month. Combine that with the declining quality of the Transformers comics, and you have a lot of people just flat out not buying them.

Same thing happens with every comic fandom; you're never going to find something that fans can agree on. If you've written comics before, you would know that by now.

Gee, coming from you, that means absolutely nothing. You've probably got a worse case of "tunnel vision" then anyone in the fandom, so I'd shut my fucking mouth and get off my damn high horse.

As Kickback points out, there is over 6,000 people registered and posting on TFW, way more then the number that you pulled out of your ass. And TFW is just one of the many Transformers forums that exist on the internet, so yeah; you fucking fail at life.

Wait, are you sure you're confusing the number of fans actually enjoying your comic with the ones complaining? Because there are at least a couple of hundred people that hate your work, so I'd stop pulling numbers out of my ass.

Yeah, Mike Costa; you can go fuck yourself.

 

I know you didn't read anything I wrote, but you managed to prove my point nicely, so thanks anyway.  

 

^What point?

 

Now i have no opinion on Costa's work as i haven't read the IDW series in years and not read any of his run.

but seriously this thread needs to be shut down and buried before it inevitably turns inward and you guys start tearing each other to pieces .

 

EDIT: Never mind. You're clearly having way too much fun waving your virtual pitchfork and calling for the blood sacrifice of Mike Costa's firstborn anyway.

Besides, deathsheadx is probably right. The majority of active online fandom is quite simply incapable of taking the kind of long, hard look at itself that it would take to put Mike Costa's comments into any kind of context, so the chances of this thread ending well are virtually zero anyway.

I'll quite happily go back to what I've spent most of the last 5 years doing: lurking in the background and ogling the "let's see some cool stuff" thread.

 

You seem to be trying very hard to prove that the entire Transformers Fandom really is just a bunch of assholes who have nothing better to do than air dirty laundry.

And you are referring to an interview with a writer who was exposed to literal death threats from the fans because of a series that Hasbro pushed and prodded into a direction that many have found to be distasteful at best, and downright ugly at worse.

I enjoyed Beast Machines when it originally came out on the air, I was in the minority of fans who actually liked what I was watching, maybe because I 'got' what they were trying to do. Maybe because the toys are leaps and bounds ahead of what the animators actually did with them. Who can say.

Beast Machines as a whole recieved a very negative reaction from a vast majority of fans because it didn't give them what they wanted. Two more years of Beast Wars.

Bob Skir and Marv Wolfman created something radical, it did what Mike Costa claims can not be done, delve into the mythology and religions of the Transformers. We were introduced to the concept of The Oracle, the Death and Rebirth Saga of all Transformers Sparks, the angle between Primal and Megatron.

It was a revolutionary series made at a time when the fans were a hell of a lot more isolated than normal, the Internet was a new thing and messageboards were only just starting out. According to that Interview Marv expressed his displeasure with the fans because of what happened then, just as Mike Costa is doing now.

And no one is really arguing that a good number of us can be that way, just look at all the controversy and all the negative responses Bay got for his Trilogy. You're darn right the fans complain and bitch and moan and think they have entitlement, but it isn't all of us. And when you start lumping all of us into one general description of Transformers Fans then you start insulting those of us who aren't negative, who aren't badmouthing and complaining.

Throughout my posts I have tried not to attack the man directly, I doubt I succeeded very well, but I didn't once complain about the direction of the comic. I don't like it, but I don't hate it, some of it was good, some of it was bad.

So when I found out what he thought of things, how he viewed the work he did, I seriously got upset with him. You have to take pride in your work, and admit when you made certain mistakes, you don't just go blaming everyone else under the sun. I certainly don't, if an audience fails to react to my story in the way I thought then I say, oh well, I like it, but it's just not working out. So I try something else.

I certainly don't go around blaming the readers who chose to read it for their failure to understand what I was trying to write. Or for being too stupid or stubborn to accept it for what it is.

Comparing Mike Costa to Marv Wolfman isn't going to work, he probably thought we were all a bunch of whiny primadonnas with expectations too high back in the day, but I'm sure his opinion of us has changed somewhat thanks to his run on Transformers Animated, one of the most lauded and adored series from recent times. So much so that the fans still demand Hasbro find a way to continue it.

Mike Costa however has done things in the here and now that have upset a lot of fans, not just his antagonistic haters, but also those of us who supported him all this time. He also did it in a much easier accessible place, a lot of fans haven't seen the Beast Machines material, I know I haven't as the box set never sold in Canada and I haven't been able to purchase all the past series I've wanted to get. The way the fans acted against Marv and Bob and Beast Machines is a matter of record, the way they acted against Mike's run at IDW is also a matter of record, but it's far more recent. There may be a bit of a comparison, but it doesn't hold a candle to what Mike has said and how the perception of the fans have taken it.

I mean even after what happened with Beast Machines I'm certain a lot of us still respected Marv because of his work in other fields. Aside from his Cobra material (which I haven't read in a long time because collecting both Joe and Transformers titles became just too expensive for me.) what else does Mike Costa have under his belt that could be better than his Transformers run? I can tell you one thing, it's certainly no Batman TAS or Transformers Animated that's for sure.

 

Lots of trolling by both sides going on in this thread.

 

What stat is the 6,000 based on as the board main menu say Registered Members= 58,368 ?

The "Nostalgia fixation" comment is interesting as I've been farming about the idea of add on and weapons sets for Beast Wars etc.. and I usually get blank looks and Why would I want them kind or replies - so it seems that G1 or Classics seems to be many people focus to the exclusion of many other things (which is odd as I listen to a lot of podcasts and several of them often seem very keen on Transformers Animated).

But people seem to see more of a role for Quintessons etc than they do see a need for Beast Wars bits & Bobs. which is a bit of a shame if the nostalgia you have isn't for G1 it's for Beast Wars.