Agreed. Prowl under Barber is a bad joke

 

must be a cold day in hell; livio ramondelli was the best thing about the issue

 

After this issue? Yes.

 

nah, it's the person that wrote the script. it would have made more sense to have optimus make his speech, leave, then have ironhide deck prawl

 

Prime is a total idiot. Have not read this issue yet, and not sure if I will, but don't forget this is the leader that straight up abandoned his Earth team to commemorate receiving the Matrix ages ago, with the excuse that 'things had been quiet for a couple of weeks'.

No dude, no. Tension was basically at its highest level at that point and it was a very stupid move that in the end led to the Combiner Wars.

 

I dunno, he did a pretty good job of politicing in CW, making sure there'd be a council and such, despite both Starscream and Prowl messing with his plans.

He specifically tasked Arcee to keep an eye on Prowl before, though, unlike the rest who were to focus on other matters.

 

But to be fair, Hasbro wanted him back on Cybertron asap. I'm not sure if the issue did a good enough job trying to resolve various plot points that came about as a result of combiner wars. However i give it a B- for trying!

 

Well given his status on Caminus, he could have done a better job with regards to Starscream. I mean my biggest issue with SS being elected as a leader boils down to one argument:

Why would the majority of cybertronians reject Optimus and the rest of the autobots but have very little issue with SS even after all of the atrocities he has his name attached to.

 

James Roberts once said in an interview that the reason Optimus is not a part of the LL crew is that the quest to find the knights would be over in about 5 issues.

Which tells its own story,

 

Because majority of Cybertronians does not see Autobots as any heroes, but as a continuation of the corrupted regimes of both Senate and functionists.

For a regular NAIL there's no difference in evilness between Bots and Cons.
For them Autobots are former Senate enforcers, as hated and distrusted as are Cons. By some NAILs probably even more hated.

And Cons can be seen as enemies of the old regime.

Oh, and Optimus is a Prime. Not exactly a title held in the highest regard by anyone but Autobots.

Bonus points for Starscream no longer being seen as a Con at time of his election.

 

I think Optimus' reaction is pretty realistic here. The problem is not only that Prowl commited all those crimes, the real problem is that Prowl is Optimus' friend and he's disappointed, angry and sad that things had to be this way.

Really, I think this is the most human that Optimus has been portrayed so far.

Is much worse under Roberts where he's an actual joke which everybody laughs at.

 

Prowl is doomed by the story mandate.

Since good guys needs to be heroic and succesful and be right, he can be only wrong.
His more realistic and disillusioned look at things will be always proven to be false.

In a more realistically written story, he'd be allowed to succeed at least from time to time save the day, like maybe finally outsmarting Starscream.

But in this story he ends as an annoyance, only casing more troubles for everyone.

 

Im wondering is IDW Prime becoming more like movieverse Prime now?

I can imagine the movie Prime doing that to Prowl too.

Its not necessarily a bad thing. Sunbow Prime is dead.

 

OK, firstly, whether Optimus' reaction was human or not is beside the point. He's the authority talking to a prisoner and he attacks him, that's completely unacceptable.

Besides which, Prowl has never been Optimus' friend. Right from the beginning they show not even the slightest amount of affection for one another. Are you forgetting the Prowl totally rejected Orion Pax, wanted to escape Cybertron rather than be involved in war and willingly worked for Sentinel Prime?

As for your comment about Roberts, that's utter rubbish. Characters joke behind his back, yes, but he's been portrayed as nothing but competent in his appearances and The Death of Optimus Prime and Shadowplay gave him more significant character development than Barber's given him in his entire run featuring Prowl as a main character.

 

Okay, that's just wrong. There's definitely been some sense of respect between the two of them in various war flashbacks--they weren't begrudgingly working together or anything like that at all.

 

When exactly was this? All evidence suggests Prowl joined the war late in the game and all of his most prominent appearance has him openly plotting behind Optimus' back.

 

"Late in the game" when his trying to leave was said about to be around the very start? The -acy stories show them as friends, plus various other flashbacks scattered the books. The -ations also showed them two of them working together and respecting one another pretty dang well, without any "openly plotting behind Optimus' back."

Also not so sure it's accurate that MTMTE has portrayed him as "nothing but competent in his appearances" when he was a victim of Chromedome and has definitely had emotional outbursts there, too. Megatron's trial also didn't work out so well for him.

 

The "-ations" series was written well before Prowl was given his characterization by Roche and, correct me if I'm recalling wrong, but involved Ironhide having to call in Optimus without telling Prowl?

A

Having his memories altered by Chromedome hardly counts as being incompetent especially when the fact remains that Prowl's plan totally worked. He got Chromedome to find out how Overlord was made.

How was Megatron's trial Prowl's failure? Optimus was the one that was tricked into letting the trial be on Luna 2.

 

Doesn't matter. The -ations still happened. You can't just discount them because "they happened before Roche wrote him!", especially when they're still referenced.

And Ironhide's calling in Optimus had nothing to do with Prowl plotting or hating Optimus--Prowl just wanted to follow regulations before calling Prime.

 

Prowl didn't have any characterization in the "-ations" series. How would ypu even know what his opinion was? I did specify prominent appearances.