What do you absolutely love about IDW comics?

Discussion in 'Transformers Comics Discussion' started by AnomusPrime, Mar 27, 2017.

  1. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    To go into detail about the 'Arcee' you mentioned- it managed to take a character who, first appearance, was little more than a berserker with a cringeworthy origin, and over the course of the series, on the one hand, turn her into an assassin then a soldier then a squad leader, but on the other hand, someone we get to see develop socially from practically zero, on how her combat abilities didn't help her fit in (and sometimes were pretty much a crutch for her lack of social life), who could have heart-to-hearts with pretty much only Prowl to someone who actually has some idea how normal social interaction works and a lot more confidence in who she is without leaning on rage.

    They really put effort into the character and it paid off, I've enjoyed watching her grow and change.
     
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  2. RNSrobot

    RNSrobot Keeper of the Waspinator Swarm. Blam.

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    Man, I love that synopsis of yours. She really has grown and evolved over time from Furman's terrible introduction. Like, I really like her, a lot, and I'm happy to see more of her. Even right now in OP, the closest thing she has to a friend is Sideswipe, and even that is based more on both of them being ass-kickers, but it's enough she desperately wants to save him.
     
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  3. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    To paraphrase a western-
    "What're you doing this much for?"
    "He's a friend."
    "Hell, I've got lots of friends!"
    "I don't."

    Or to phrase it elsewise, Arcee's social life has improved so much she has one person she can arguably call a good friend, and she aims to keep it that way ^^
     
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  4. DireChymeras

    DireChymeras Triorian Guard

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    honestly the history they've created for cybertron is incredible, concepts like funtionism, the corrupt primal lineage, and the senate add some insanely cool dimensions to it. also the logical expansion and exploration of the culture and personality of a race and characters who have been fighting for longer than the human race existed.

    also I must concede...whirl is awesome.
     
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  5. jumbosaber

    jumbosaber Walking Talking Jumbo Jet

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  6. Javelin

    Javelin Well-Known Member

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    It's no big surprise that for me, it's mostly mtmte. I love that they took g1 and made them "real people" and not just icons of either good or bad. So much morality in the stories. Good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. The whole religion, sexuality, friendship, right from wrong, when is revenge justified, it's all done here, but done so well none of it feels bulky or artificial. It all fits so well.
     
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  7. YoungPrime

    YoungPrime Herald Of Primus

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    Simon Furman, James Roberts and to some degree John Barber are the reasons I enjoy IDW comics.

    Simon set the groundwork for the new exploration of TF while still hanging on to it's G1 soul.
    James took took that world and made it a multi-verse with new characters and concepts. He also took a few of the lesser known characters and made them mainstream.
    John, has the gift of fixing continuity flaws which really helped patch up a lot of Costa's era as well has filled in the gaps due to Simon's abrupt leave during the "-ations".

    Groups and factions like Phase 6ers, The DJD and Scavengers stand out as well.

    Storm Bringer, LSOTW are my favorites with too many favorite Spotlight and Annual books to name. And although I'm aware that many weren't fans of the Autocracy trilogy I did really enjoy the first 2.

    Looking forward to more to come.
     
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  8. skarmorite

    skarmorite armadalover420

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    goofs!

    also i just like stories with enjoyable characters just interacting with each other. i love how the characters have developed on their own and with each other and theres just a ton of potential in the concept of people that have spent most of their lives dedicated to something (esp when it defines the franchise) are now moving on and readjusting whether they want to/are ready or not
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2017
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  9. SparkPlug24

    SparkPlug24 Named after the Mini-con, not the Witwicky.

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    Even from before MTMTE brought in new, character-driven aspects to TF story telling, I first loved how IDW's main artists came up with new designs for even the least popular characters of G1. Things started off with the technical intricacy of both the robot modes and vehicle modes drawn by E.J. Su for Infiltration, best shown I think with Runamuck and Runabout who were prominent in that volume. Then Don Figueroa, already famous in my nook for War Within, pushed the envelope of his non-Earth designs with Stormbringer. Whirl, the Technobots, Skullcruncher, the Pretenders; it was so intriguing for me to compare those designs to the classic toys using profile books of Dreamwave that I dug up from clearance comic bins. I could go on but I'd be gushing at that point, so next I'll sing praises for Nick Roche and Alex Milne. In "Phase 1" of IDW's Transformers comics the former captivated me with his interpretation of Kup as a skinny outmoded Cybertronian, and the latter impressed me with the awesome brutality of Megatron as a gladiator. When they both shared design duties for MTMTE, I was just blown away with the treatment they gave to the G1 Autobots and Decpticons who were frequently sidelined in previous media. I never felt as happy as I did when I found comic-accurate toys of Swerve, and later Skids, from TakaraTomy. For a guy who got into Transformers from reading the Aramada comics, I wouldnt have expected to be so thrilled about these G1 second-stringers, but with character's appearance complementing the fresh new intepretations established by the writing, I couldnt have asked for better artists than these.
     
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  10. darkeros

    darkeros Well-Known Member

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    Alex Milne's art
     
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  11. Strife

    Strife Well-Known Member

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    Cripes where to begin....

    (1) The start of the war. The single best version of it. The politics (functionalism and it's legacy), the role of the primes. It's so much more interesting than Megatron just wanting to conquer.

    (2) The revamp of certain characters. We've got our (by far) most interesting versions of:
    -Galvatron (ancient warrior, co-founder of Cybertronian society)
    -Arcee ("transgender" experiment, badass assassin, trying to find herself)
    -Ultra Magnus (the immortal cop)
    -Prowl (machivelian spymaster)
    -Megatron (freedom fighter who become a monster in a war that never ended and couldn't be won nor lost).

    And so many others. They made essentially the definitive version of characters that had no interesting story. Who want's Rewind just going back to being a Cassetbot for Blaster? Or Cyclonus back to Galvatron's henchman?

    (2) They mixed up the characters. Ending the war was the best thing that happened to IDW. Rather than having Autobots and Decepticons just fighting all the time, we have Autobots working with Decepticons against other Autobots and Decepticons, and a whole lot that was neither. And they all have to live together. Add in the new characters and....

    (3) It found the best way ever to integrate the franchise extensions. Having Beast-era characters coming another planet (or another tribe)... having Unicron Trilogy characters, Prime, Beast Machines, and even RiD characters running around all in the same universe fixes one of the biggest problems I felt TFs were having.

    (4) It made the war enormous, and the costs too. The two factions fought across the stars for millions of years. Countless civilizations were destroyed in the war. They both developed super weapons and used them against each other. They destroyed their own planet in the process. It completely gutted Cybertronian civilization in the process. It's the most expansive version of the war.

    (5) It gave Autobots and Decepticons very interesting motivations. And clearly defined the huge number of neutrals.
     
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  12. hardlurk

    hardlurk Well-Known Member

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    the possibility of solidarity with the monstrous

    the encouraging thing is that roberts is opposed to exactly that, yet a trace of authenticity can still be found despite his best efforts

    it's miraculous that it's possible to experience the sublime even when encountering someone with such a reprehensible worldview as he

    that's over the top he's actually just some guy

    but it's real funny to me how he can write so many words repudiating megatron and have it read exactly the opposite

    "the is matter settled!" he stated authoritatively over the course of 8 years and 70 issues

    and yet...
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2017
  13. AnomusPrime

    AnomusPrime Very sane, not crazy at all

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    Your post seems intriguing to me, but I'm afraid I'm not fully understanding it? Do you mean JRo's worldview is something against what he expressed with Megatron's redemption and it's reproachable? Or the opposite?
     
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  14. Mirimus

    Mirimus Member Known Well

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    I love the concept of forged versus constructed cold, and how that engenders division among them. The fact that the allegory it creates doesn't ever come across as too heavy-handed is astounding. In a similar vein, I also love how they've finally gotten into some real specifics when it comes to the birth and development of protoforms.
     
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  15. Windsweeper II

    Windsweeper II Banned

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    All Hail Megatron
    MTMTE season 1
    Maximum Dinobots
    Chaos Theory (or the flashback in one of the Chaos titles in any case)
    The Crucible
    The Onyx ...
    Everything featuring the Scavengers
     
  16. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    Yes... and how they even play with it with Megatron being *both*, which would be a huge social bombshell in some timeframes, and even now could have some effect... they haven't said they're purposefully covering it up but I feel they kinda are even completely unstated, y'know? Just because I know the social conscience of the characters on these issues.
     
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  17. Lady Slipstream

    Lady Slipstream Hi.

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    Thunderwing's berserk mode.

    That's it.

    Oh, and how I could forgot about Nickel.
     
  18. lordcryotek

    lordcryotek M'Hael

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    Roche, Milne, Zama, Scott. Roberts kinda jumped the shark, but first season Roberts was on fire so that too.
     
  19. hardlurk

    hardlurk Well-Known Member

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    within roberts's ideology is the dumb moralistic idea that recognizing the Other in another is a bad thing and this is boring, it's what zizek calls "the decaffeinated other", the deprivation of the other of the traumatic kernel which renders them a subject rather than a mere reflection of the self, which is ironically the sort of thing that people like roberts are trying to AVOID when they declare "otherization" the original sin leading to all manner of abuses

    nevertheless the Other is there every time the characters are having fun sadistically torturing each other (which is also the closest thing in the book resembling sexual intimacy), and every time the book touches on the relationship between political love & revolutionary justice & BEING A MURDER MACHINE

    this essay is, it's just optimus and megatron and overlord and tarn all over: How to Read Lacan | SLAVOJ ZIZEK
     
  20. AnomusPrime

    AnomusPrime Very sane, not crazy at all

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    I haven't read the essay yet. About the concept of "other", that is an intriguing argument! Recognizing the difference that comes from different backgrounds is of course essential. But I still feel the concept of otherization as a source of abuses makes a lot of sense. "Other" is dependent of "self." It is essential to define "self" before one perceives "other." I can think of two important "selves": the individual "self" and the collective "self." The individual self corresponds with a "otherness" from any another person. I think that is where the psychologies come in. But in the collective sense, most of us naturally perceive ourselves as part of a group, to which we belong. This collective self corespondents to an collective "other" that we do not admit as "one of us." This otherness is more about "not belong" than the differences. So in this case the otherness leads to exclusion.

    I don't know JR personally. So I can't speak for him, but I believe generally when people talks about otherization in its political sense, it's the collective one, and since the concept can't be independent, its political meaning lies less in how mush we differ from each other than how much we are fundamentally alike, because it is the "alikeness" that enables empathy. Maybe it's disappointing we empathy like this, but is is just human nature.

    About the source of our torments, perhaps "otherness" alone can't explain it. Perhaps the apathy induced by "collective otherness" and the binary thinking of "us" against "them" in our base coding are The Problem.

    Will get back after reading the essay.
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2017