Screenrant's 15 reasons that MTMTE/LL is the best story in the franchise.

Discussion in 'Transformers Comics Discussion' started by Omegashark18, Jan 28, 2017.

  1. Noxex

    Noxex Well-Known Member

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    I'm trying to think of what TF story is better than MTME/LL. The cartoons and movies are generally pretty terrible, and even the best of series (like "Beast Wars") don't exactly have complex, emotional stories. So its gotta be a comic book story. "Last Stand of the Wreckers" maybe, but that's almost a part of MTME really. As great as Marvel UK was, Furman never really totally hit it out the park - "Matrix Quest" and "Target: 2006" are both great stories, but are pretty standard comic book stories. MTME is one of the best comic runs of all time. Just my opinion, of course. I guess I don't think its really that close. Transformers just haven't had very many great stories, and none not written by Furman or Roberts.
     
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  2. raindance773

    raindance773 Well-Known Member

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    Again, while it's an opinion, I don't think calling MtMtE the best piece of Transformers fiction out there is justified. It's good, but it's not that good. I certainly disagree that it's one of the best comics runs of all time. That's saying it's better than or on par with things Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, or Stan Lee (among others) have written. When it wins a Pulitzer, I'd say that's a justifiable statement, but until then it's barely more than a niche fanfiction being published for a subset of a fanbase.
     
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  3. Noxex

    Noxex Well-Known Member

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    To *me* it ranks up there.

    For what its worth, my top 10 all time:

    1) Lee/Kirby X-Men
    2) Kirby Fourth World
    3) Usagi Yojimbo
    4) All-Star Superman
    5) Frank Miller Daredevil
    6) MTME
    7) Simonson Thor
    8) Morrison Batman
    9) Batman Year One
    10) Lee/Ditko Spider-Man
     
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  4. RNSrobot

    RNSrobot Keeper of the Waspinator Swarm. Blam.

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    Imo this is something I agree on. For the sheer volume of media associated with transformers, only a small amount of it is above average or something so good it extends beyond fans of the franchise. I wouldn't say ONLY Furman and Roberts, I'd put bw a big higher, but, yeah.

    The concept, toys, and general mythology of tf is what's kept my attention all these years, more so than the actual quality of the various media.

    Except in this case, mtmte has done what few if any tf series have done: grow an audience besides the built-in existing transformers fans. Maybe it's not huge, but the very concept that people who have never read or never liked a tf comic love this book, along with comics media acclaim that is rare for a tf book, shows that mtmte is/was doing something special and beyond the usual box that tf media exists in.

    I mean, no, I don't put the mtmte run up in top ten of all time. I don't think many are saying that. Best run of tf comics ever? You can disagree, but it's not that big a stretch (and it doesn't have THAT much competition). What I think is important here is that mtmte stands strong in comics in general, not just tf or licensed. I'd easily put it up with Brubaker's phenomenal cap run, Brubaker/rucks Gotham central, sport's shehulk, the first 75 issues of fables, etc. Maybe not on the level of Bone but a *very good comic book.*

    (Also, fuck, I need to make buying those Usagi yojimbo covered volumes a priority this year.)
     
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  5. raindance773

    raindance773 Well-Known Member

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    LOL, now we are considering different items. Introducing new fans and critical acclaim isn't the same as being the best.

    To me, to have something be considered "the best ever," it needs to do it consistently for most of, if not the whole, run, like Grant Morrison did with New X-Men. Maus, Bone, and Watchmen are some other great examples. IMHO, for TF, the GOAT title falls to the Beast Wars cartoon, because of the sustained, superior story-telling over the majority of the show. And if we are talking acclaim hardware, Beast Wars garnered its creator an Emmy. To me, MtMtE just has been so incredibly inconsistent, which negates calling it the best ever. The writing is feast or famine. This time a year to a year and a half ago, everyone was moaning about how the story was going nowhere, and about how it was getting lost in Swerve-world, personality ticks, etc.

    Yes, Roberts had some great issues that have justifiably garnered some well-deserved acclaim. And yes, MtMtE has put Transformers on the map in ways that other mediums have not. I am not sure we can verify which has brought in more fans, (i.e. the comics, the movies, book, video games, television shows, and toys), but I would agree it has at least brought industry interest beyond the norm. However, I also feel that necessitates honesty in our assessments of it. MtMtE beat out a Hugo Award-winning comic book for a Comics' Alliance Award (which isn't an industry vote, but largely a FAN vote), but it hasn't won a Hugo or even an Eisner, either of which would equate to the Emmy of BW. If it wins one of those, hands down, single best Transformers comic of all time.

    Now, if you wanted to say certain runs of chunks of MtMtE, like season one, are some of the best ever, I'd say sure. Absolutely. I would put it on part with some of Furman's great runs in the Marvel US and UK books, or on par with Beast Wars.
     
  6. SouthtownKid

    SouthtownKid Headmaster

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    Yeah, that extra 10 people is a tremendous accomplishment.

    I mean, honestly, of the 8-9k people who read it, how many do you think were not already TF fans? Are we TF fans of such small numbers? Because people here act like almost all TF fans like MTMTE. So how many slots are really still open after that?
     
  7. RNSrobot

    RNSrobot Keeper of the Waspinator Swarm. Blam.

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    Meh, get over it. There is an audience, small it may be, that has never read transformers and loves this book and its characters. Shit on it as you may.

    Yeah. If there is a major caveat to that article? It's that lost light has yet to become that book.

    Mtmte season 1 is where the acclaim lies, and it was uniformly high quality. It's one of those runs every comic wishes to have. And I'd be fine slotting season 1 into the number 1 spot of "best transformers stories of all time."

    Season 2 never maintains that clip but how on earth could it? That's why I wasn't really "let down." It was going to come down to earth. in hockey terms, their shooting percentage was unsustainable. It remained extremely high and while I don't begrudge anybody their disappointment, I do think there was a level of over-reaction to some of the criticism. There were fair critiques, of course, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I was let down by the tarn reveal

    Beast wars season 2 is probably my number one. Matrix quest didn't hold up quiiiite as well as I could wish when I reread it last (the desert planet story is pretty bad, albeit Nightbeat's chapter and the finale are bar none two of the best single issues, period, Geoff senior ftw). Some of the UK collected stories are great. I need to do a rewatch of animated and figure out where it slots in. Season 1 is largely "ok" until the end, but season 2 into 3 ramp up the quality (and stakes) spectacularly.
     
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  8. SouthtownKid

    SouthtownKid Headmaster

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    That's my line. You act as if it's this amazing thing that IDW has attracted a handful of new people to the franchise. Well, guess what? Marvel attracted over 100k new people the franchise right out of the gate in their first month. That's more than 12x the number of people who read More Than Meets the Eye/Lost Light TOTAL, never mind new people. More than a hundred thousand people who had never even heard of Transformers -- because it didn't exist previously -- became lifelong fans because of the Marvel comic.

    So let's try to keep things in proportion here.
     
  9. RNSrobot

    RNSrobot Keeper of the Waspinator Swarm. Blam.

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    Ok, and? The comics industry was an entirely different beast. Sales were exponentially higher. The entire concept of a tie-in cartoon/comic/toyline was new.

    It is special that new readers have come to the book, and more importantly, found meaning and resonance in the story mtmte told. There are tf fans who have rarely felt "part" of fandom that found representation or something powerful in mtmte. That matters. Mtmte matters to people regardless of how much some would like to diminish that power. It matters to me. Makes a difference to me. For Christ's sake, I brought Chromedome and rewind to my graduation photo session. It's not perfect, it's not immune to criticism, but is the argument here that if you don't rip it to shreds in equal measure of praise, you are invalid? It has warts, and so what?

    (I say this loooooathing Anode and lug and Lawrence's art. But that's lost light, not mtmte).

    This is a franchise that reaches out to new child viewers on the regular basis, but only traditionally caters to a narrow kind of "lifelong" fan. Mtmte broadens the sandbox of what a tf comic can be in a way few parts of the franchise have ever done. I've been on this train since the beginning and it's pretty fucking rare.

    So, shit on it if you will, hate it, I don't really care anymore. You have some well-articulated and thoughtful comments and critiques, but we're not having a conversation. I feel required to write a list of pros and cons for folks like you, and if the con list isn't equal length to the pros I'm "doing it wrong." The pro list is much, much longer.
     
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  10. SouthtownKid

    SouthtownKid Headmaster

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    I am neither shitting on it, nor do I hate it. And if you read my first post in the thread, you will see I list the Rewind/Chromdome relationship as one of the article-writer's examples that I strongly agree with. I'm not diminishing that in the slightest.
     
  11. Probe

    Probe Well-Known Member

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    Unfortunate for the writer of the piece that they misspelled "Second Best"

    [​IMG]
     
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  12. raindance773

    raindance773 Well-Known Member

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    That ax swings both ways. There are people (some users here and elsewhere) who feel MtMtE lovers, particularly online MtMtE lovers (again, like other users here and elsewhere), have their fingers in their ears and are shouting "MtMtE is THE BEST EVER!!!" rather than hearing anything to the contrary.

    For the most part, I don't think people are trying to degrade the MtMtE, and like you, I've been following Transformers since the '80s. However, there is a large group of people, particularly in the online community, who are violently opposed to anyone saying anything detrimental to MtMtE or Roberts. And there are several types of TF fans who read MtMtE and don't agree with with each other on their analyses of it. There are those who read TF comics exclusively and who don't really enjoy comics otherwise are very prone to being part of the MtMtE is THE BEST EVER!!! group, and they gush about it and Roberts incessantly, as one person said earlier in this thread. There are others who are casual TF fans and to them, MtMtE is still really, really good, but not quite to the level of THE BEST EVER!!!. There are others who love TFs and have read a lot, if not all of the available fictions, and still read a lot of other comics (and therefore have a different frame of reference) and scratch their heads when the first group says MtMtE is THE BEST EVER!!! in either TF fiction or comics as a whole.

    Ultimately, MtMtE is an acquired taste, even for TF fans, just like anything else. Yes, a lot of people love it, particularly here. However, there are also a lot of people who are ambivalent (like me), who don't like Roberts style (as it comes across as pushing an agenda a lot of the time), or who straight out hate it. In the end, those are all opinions, and you rarely are able to alter opinions. Similarly, many of the reasons people like MtMtE are also why other people hate it. I think you'd find if we compared "pros/cons" lists, we'd fine many common elements, but they'd be listed in different columns.
     
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  13. Javelin

    Javelin Well-Known Member

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    I think the thing to remember, and it's a simple thing, but one always overlooked, is that everyone has a right to their opinion, but keeping in mind you may be disagreeing with someone who feels strongly about a thing, it helps to be polite.

    As an example, I am (probably) the previously mentioned "gusher" (and oh how wrong that sounds, lol). I don't have ANY problem with someone saying to me, "I don't like Roberts or MtMtE because" this or that, or "I don't like how he portrays so and so" or even "It makes no real sense to me because ABC." What I and a lot of others DO have a problem with, (and it just shows that we're human as well), is when someone says something like, "MTMTE being THE BEST? LOL! IT SUX and anyone who likes it is an IDIOT lolololololol!"

    It comes down to learning how to give criticism sensibly. Seriously, if you disagree with a certain view, it's FINE! You ARE ALLOWED! But present your thoughts like an adult and explain. Insulting someone because they like something you don't isn't going to convince ANYONE of your views and you're only going to get insulted right back, and from what I see often, it's what starts a LOT of these flamewars on sites like this. just...seriously, people, show courtesy and respect and you WILL get it right back! I Promise!
     
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  14. Murasame

    Murasame 村雨

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    Good article, very true. I've read and seen everything and MTMTE / LL is the best by far. What a time to be alive :) 
     
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