WTF Book Club - 03 - July 27 2010

Discussion in 'WTF @ TFW Transformers Podcast' started by Vangelus, Aug 1, 2010.

  1. Vangelus

    Vangelus Long Live the New Flesh Moderator Content Contributor

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    WTF Book Club - 03 - July 27 2010

    [​IMG]

    The WTF Book Club assembles to discuss Ironhide #3, Transformers Ongoing #9, the 2010 SDCC, the Multiverse, and iPhone apps!

    THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. That should be obvious, but it's only episode 3, so it's worth one last little reminder. ;) 

    00:00:00 - WTF Book Club - 03 - July 27 2010
    00:01:35 - Ironhide #3
    00:48:54 - Ongoing #9
    01:32:15 - IDW's Panel at the 2010 SDCC
    01:56:03 - The Concept of the Multiverse and The 13
    02:17:47 - Listener Question from Wolfwood390
    02:23:50 - Ending and Outro

    iTunes users - You can subscribe to and review the podcast here:
    iTunes Store

    Zune users - You can subscribe here:

    zune://subscribe/?WTF@TFW=http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/external.php?type=rss2&forumids=404

    The RSS feed which includes a media link for the m4a file is:

    WTF @ TFW Transformers Podcast - TFW2005.com

    And if you want an MP3 version, it's linked below:
    http://www.tfw2005.net/podcast/WTF_Book_Club_-_03_-_July_27_2010.mp3
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 29, 2016
  2. Opticron Primal

    Opticron Primal Comin' up OOOs!

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    Woot! Glad you guys are still gonna be going through with the Book Club. And so soon after the whole Botcon/TFcon power-trip too.
     
  3. The_Cube

    The_Cube Active Member

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    I'm mostly a lurker, but i'd just like to say that I was a fan of the TF Book Club ever since you guys started busting those out.

    Vangelus = Transformers Oprah.
     
  4. Vangelus

    Vangelus Long Live the New Flesh Moderator Content Contributor

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    I dunno if being an Oprah is a good thing. :lol 

    This one did fall off my plate a few times due to the convention season, but we're going to continue to try and do Book Clubs when we can.
     
  5. Gammatron 64

    Gammatron 64 Well-Known Member

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    Oh, snap! What if we kidnapped Vangelus?

    Control of Vangelus is control over transformer nerds! Vangelus taps directly into the emotions, beliefs, minds habits and reading patterns of billions of nerds all over the world! Vangelus has the power to lay waste to lay waste to an entire industry with a mere utterance! He is an invincible, unstoppable force of nature, and with him under our control, nobody would be able to stop us!

    *goes to BotCon with a ski mask, AK-47s and some thugs, kidnapped Vangelus and sticks a bag over his head and drives off in a van*

    Wait a second? You're telling me that isn't Vangelus? Then who the hell is it? What? Sean Long? *dumps him out of the van and drives off*
     
  6. Reigner

    Reigner Well-Known Member

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    You guys keep making me buy comics I had no intent on buying.

    Stoppit!
     
  7. Aaron

    Aaron Master of Crystalocution Moderator Content Contributor

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    No.
     
  8. Opticron Primal

    Opticron Primal Comin' up OOOs!

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    I do hope the Nefarious-centric meeting happens soon after the mini's end.

    While I don't out-right hate it, things like Breakaway's 2-panel "Oh hai gais! *BOOM*" appearance and Magno's way of making every non-screen transformer look like a mangled insectoid mess of panels are very...VERY...annoying. There are some good spots though. I'd say the new cassettecons are the best things to come out of it...
     
  9. Beastbot X

    Beastbot X Old skool. In a lot of ways.

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    Vangelus-- why Nefarious is awesome:

    -Soundwave is a Brainmaster
    -Soundwave's new cassettes
    -.....

    Okay, I guess that just makes Soundwave awesome, then. I fail.
     
  10. Fit For natalie

    Fit For natalie tfwiki nerd

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    Re: The Chzo Mythos

    Wasn't 7 Days a Skeptic considered to be (even by Yahtzee I believe) to be the bad one? There is a thread over a something awful where a guy did an LP of the series, with Yahtzee popping in to respond to questions and give his thoughts.

    THAT BLOODY TOWEL RACK.


    Regarding the rather padded out panels in issue 9 - I think the problem is just with Mike Costa's scripting. Both Ironhide and the earlier Don Figueroa ongoing issues suffered from thre being way too many panels where either nothing is happening, or stuff COULD have been condensed down. Remember that awful page in ongoing issue 6 where it's five panels of close ups of Prime and Spike? Yeah. Considering how few pages IDW books have, Costa-penned books feel like there's too much art padding in them.
     
  11. Vangelus

    Vangelus Long Live the New Flesh Moderator Content Contributor

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    For some reason that's always the one I think of first by name. It was catchy!
     
  12. Fit For natalie

    Fit For natalie tfwiki nerd

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    I think it was pointed out too that the name has absolutely no bearing on the events of the game, too. At no point is anybody a skeptic, as I recall.


    *FFN puts on his Canon Monger Hat and asks people to check out how much of a dorky nerd he is for knowing all this crap*

    Regarding Megatronus Prime - I think you guys got yourselves into a knot there. From what I recall Hasbro saying, it seems as though it was only the TF Prime/WFC Megatron got his name from Megatronus Prime, but I don't think that necessarily applies to all the other Megatrons. As you said, the multiversial singularity characters travel from universe to universe, and there are undoubtedly universes in which they have never appeared in. So, Megatron (Animated) was always known as Megatron and he didn't get his name from The Fallen.

    I do agree that Hasbro's decision to make Alpha Trion into one of the 13 is problematic and unnecessary, because he's appeared in capacities in other series which wouldn't fit his role as one of Primus' multiversial children/guardians of whatever. Hell, Hasbro's own Forest Lee wrote the convention club comics where BotCon 2007 Alpha Trion turned out to be the evil, crazy Shattered Glass Alpha Trion. How will they explain that away? That he wasn't THE Alpha Trion?

    Regarding reboots: The constant reboots and the many, many continuities is a major weakness of the Transformers franchise as a fictional entity. I think the main reason why Hasbro canned Animated and did this new series was because of the new studio. Animated was a co-production with the Cartoon Network and presumably is part-owned by them (much like the movies are owned by Dreamworks and Michael Bay). Hasbro wants to maintain total control over its properties now and air them when they want (and not beholden to the fickleness of the Cartoon Network or Michael Bay's tastes in filmmaking). On a side note, assuming if the live-action movies are rebooted after Transformers 3, you can bet Hasbro will be more involved with the production and probably the financing, so they don't lose control of the franchise again. But yes, we will see if Hasbro sticks to their claim that this will be the main canon franchise for years to come.

    As for the Fallen, before the writers of the movie and Michael Bay decided to use the Fallen as the main villain for the second live-action movie, Hasbro had already established the thirteen as being multiversial characters, so this wasn't just a new thing Hasbro came up with in 2009 and expanded upon in 2010. Considering the critical panning of the movie, the general dissatisfaction from the fanbase and the film makers' own admission that the story was very, very rushed, I think part of the problems with the Fallen is not due to Hasbro putting a square peg in a round hole, but more the movie people taking a character who has continuity baggage and placing him in a medium for an audience where you can't have much if any baggage or backstory, and not doing a very good job with him. Essentially, it was just a bad idea to even use The Fallen at all in a live action movie universe that can't go into (audience alienating) depth, and Hasbro was just sticking to what they had previously established before the movie people came along.

    I'm not saying it fits or it's a good idea for Hasbro to stubbornly soldier on with it even when it's all messed up, but there you go.

    Primus being everywhere is kind of the same deal. Heh. He's like God - you don't have to see him in the fiction to know he's there :p  ;) 
     
  13. Aaron

    Aaron Master of Crystalocution Moderator Content Contributor

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    My take on the thirteen was that those 13 exist in every universe as a creation of that universes Primus. So there would be a Megatronus in each universe that due to his role or whatever was likely to "fall" or become a baddie so that in the future a young buckethead would take his name.

    Similar idea with Alpha Trion. He has had some staying power in regards to surviving or staying active in day to day Cybertron. As to why Ironhide didn't know who Alpha Trion was that's either because Trion came in later to help out or the author needed a way to explain him.
     
  14. GogDog

    GogDog Logic's wayward son Veteran

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    Or, because it was funny. :D 

    The problem with that is, that's already what Optimus, Megatron, and others already are. There are different versions of them in each universe. What makes the 13 different is, there is only one of them.

    Supposedly (from reading the wiki article on multiversal singularities), Primus exists simultaneously in each dimension, whereas the others (if not all), including Unicron and The Fallen must travel from one reality to the next.

    Personally, I think the whole concept is a bad idea because it's an incredibly complex and layered hard-science-fiction concept that is layered on top of children's fiction that can't bear the weight of it due to the nature of its story telling. This type of story telling is much better suited to just give its own take on those characters, such as Alpha Trion. Oh wait, that's what actually happened! But it got retconned!

    I also think it's quite silly to have characters that are near omnipotent, can be defeated rather easily by the good guys, but have the power to just move on to a new dimension after they die. If they had such grand power, regular bots like Prime wouldn't stand a chance against such abilities. If death holds no sway over them, they could keep coming back until they won.

    This is from Hasbro's Q&A session last year:

    One of my biggest gripes with this explanation is trying to explain the concept with hard science fiction, yet explaining that they look different because of "our expectations" of them. It proves my take on it that these hard science concepts don't mesh with the level of story telling that Transformers shows have offered so far. Going forward, they could integrate those ideas better, but again, it proves our opinion that this should have been a concept carried forward, not retconned to include previous fiction.

    In the end, it's all just a matter of personal taste I guess. Personally, I would rather have a different take on Alpha Trion if the universe gets rebooted much like we have gotten different takes on Prime. I think the concept of a dimension-hopper could be awesome, perhaps with a character that has gotten little fiction like Vector Prime, and that would even meld perfectly with how he was portrayed in Cybertron. But to apply this to so many characters, I just don't personally like it and I don't think it adds anything to the stories we have gotten so far.
     
  15. Aaron

    Aaron Master of Crystalocution Moderator Content Contributor

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    I guess I was thinking the thirteen were more Primusish in being everywhere than beind dimension hoppers.

    Yeah that method blows unless you are keeping an iron fist on the fiction.
     
  16. Opticron Primal

    Opticron Primal Comin' up OOOs!

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    I think there may be a pun in there somewhere......
     
  17. Gammatron 64

    Gammatron 64 Well-Known Member

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    You know, it's funny you mention "Is this the same Costa who does the ongoing?" Because I generally think the same thing. I'm not sure how many of you are G.I. Joe fans, but he did G.I. Joe: Cobra and it was amazing. When he has announced to do the ongoing I was pumped.

    The ongoing being mediocre totally stinks of editorial. Or maybe it is just not the series Costa wants to do.
     
  18. Fit For natalie

    Fit For natalie tfwiki nerd

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    Either way, in the case of The Fallen, I think if writers are working in a fictional property that they didn't create, then the onus is on them to try and fit what was previously established there, IF they chose to use a character with such franchise-owner continuity baggage.

    On Costa, I agree - he does good work on the Ironhide miniseries, but the ongoing is not up to the same standard. Personally, I think it has to do with Hasbro moving the franchise towards a more live-action movie "feel", and thus pushing IDW to do this to the ongoing. Or (considering IDW said Hasbro allows them freedom to do what they want) IDW decided to do this themselves.
     
  19. GogDog

    GogDog Logic's wayward son Veteran

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    In this case I disagree. Hasbro gave them full permission to write whatever they wanted, and in the end, they signed off on what they did. From the writers' perspective, it didn't matter what happened to a character in another continuity because they were creating their own from scratch, as they were told to do with the full blessing of Hasbro. This wasn't G1 the Fallen, it was their Fallen loosely based on the previous one. It was Hasbro (or maybe specifically only Forest Lee) that tried to shoehorn that in after the fact.

    So for all the faults of the movie-verse, this isn't one of them IMO.
     
  20. Ezilla82

    Ezilla82 Total Randomness Personified

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    Great stuff guys. I like the info about the latest issues and so forth.

    Now about how Hasbro is doing the 13 original Transformers and add them to all Transformers continuities is kinda cool and how you use it is kinda optional to those who want to do that or not. But still I'm cool with it.