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Post by legios on Feb 7, 2010 21:13:32 GMT
I think I must have missed your post when you commented on it. All I remember reading here so far was that Ralph doesn't like it all that much while Andy does. No worries - it is a busy thread, I missed a fair amount myself in earlier readthroughs. Karl
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Post by grahamthomson on Feb 8, 2010 10:37:56 GMT
Oh yeah, I read this. Loved it.
But I will wait until issue 5 before reviewing it properly.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 14, 2010 8:36:45 GMT
Preview for issue 2, if you're interested in that sort of thing.More gratuitous violence and fluid-spattering, a bit of misjudged colouring on page 1 (blue against blue), and the reference to "grown-ups" made me wince, but we shall see...! The five-page preview of issue #1 wasn't representative of the rest of the issue, so no reason to assume this one is any more so. (Stupid thing, previews... give me a 'next issue' blurb any day. Martin
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Post by Benn on Feb 14, 2010 10:28:33 GMT
Grrrr... not...... looking.......
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Post by Bogatan on Feb 14, 2010 20:07:18 GMT
Nah!! Spoilers.
Maybe that should be shunted to an issue 2 spoiler thread unless this is going to become the spoiler thread for the whole series. I think I'll ignore the previews from the whole run. More fun that way.
Andy
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 14, 2010 20:14:35 GMT
OK. I hope you don't consider it a spoiler if I reveal that there aren't really any big things to spoil in those five pages, so it makes little difference either way. Apart from Impactor dying on page 2. And Overlord revealing on page 3 that he's really Shockwave from the future. And Scrounge kicking ass on page 4. Martin
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Post by Bogatan on Feb 14, 2010 20:48:31 GMT
;D
I'm not to worried about the previews they are generally harmless (unlike film and TV previews), but not sure I always like the fan discetion of them.
Andy
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Post by dinogrrl on Feb 14, 2010 21:55:44 GMT
I refuse to read previews as well. I caught a glimpse of the art thanks to Josh on dA - but that's what I get for having him on my watch list. I quickly deleted them before I ruined myself with it.
When's this come out? Wait, this week, right?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2010 0:35:56 GMT
Preview for issue 2, if you're interested in that sort of thing.More gratuitous violence and fluid-spattering, a bit of misjudged colouring on page 1 (blue against blue), and the reference to "grown-ups" made me wince, but we shall see...! The five-page preview of issue #1 wasn't representative of the rest of the issue, so no reason to assume this one is any more so. (Stupid thing, previews... give me a 'next issue' blurb any day. Martin Transformers are filled with grape jelly. It's good to know. Issue #2 review
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2010 11:42:22 GMT
I've just placed an order for issue 1 from Steve Bax and so I expect to be giving it a read through sometime this week.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2010 21:26:20 GMT
Another early reviewI'm calling it. There are two separate continuities. One follows Simon Furman's initial run and the other All Hail Megatron. IDW insists upon a "Continuum" but in the end the readers decide for themselves. ;D
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 17, 2010 1:39:18 GMT
And a sixth preview page!I was right not to judge by the other five pages - the writing on this page is superb. Very, very witty. Flawless, even. This page actually makes for a nice little standalone story in its own right (and could just as well take place in the Marvel continuity rather than the IDW reboot). I'm calling it. There are two separate continuities. One follows Simon Furman's initial run and the other All Hail Megatron. IDW insists upon a "Continuum" but in the end the readers decide for themselves. ;D It was all so simple in the Marvel days. We had a UK comic, a US comic, an animated movie tie-in mini-series, G.I. Joe crossovers, hardback annuals, collected comics reprints - and they were all based pretty much in a single story continuity. Now we have one company (IDW) putting out comics set in at least three different TF universes at any one time - Marvel reprints in the 'Best of UK' and 'IDW Classic' series, other comics tying in with the live-action movies, and then its own TF universe. The one big misjudgement about 'Last Stand of the Wreckers' seems to me to be to commission James and Nick to write what is basically a five-issue homage to Furman's Marvel UK stories, and have it set in the new IDW universe rather than in the Marvel universe as a companion series to 'Best of UK'. Why couldn't they have done that instead? Is there anything actually stopping them from adding new material to the 'Best of UK' timeline? As it is, it's like the purpose of one of their three parallel comic continuities is to produce homages to one of the others. James and Nick are name-dropping characters, concepts and taglines from the Marvel UK comics left, right and centre, and showing their love and respect for 'Target: 2006' and the like in everything they draw and write, while we can't get away from the fact that for the purposes of the series, none of those Marvel UK stories ever took place, and all these characters are different people, shared names/appearances/concepts notwithstanding. Which is a real shame. On the other hand, lots of readers seem to be able to get excited and find joy in the name-checking and references to the old days, regardless of it being a different continuity. People on the IDW board are crying out for Nick to take over the ongoing TF series, because (apparently, I haven't seen it) the guys writing and drawing it aren't doing such a good job. I think this would be a waste of his talents. I think they should put him on to doing a 'Tales of the Wreckers' series set in the Marvel TF universe in the years prior to 'Target: 2006'! If, though, as is more likely, the guys do end up doing more work in IDW's own universe, they'll have to get the Marvel homage thing out of their system at some point, and start doing something new and original that justifies the new continuity and uses it for greater things than simply homages to the old comics and toylines. Nick and James! If as you deserve you do get more IDW work coming your way than you can keep up with on the art front, there's a budding new talent HERE coming up behind you who deserves to get a professional gig at some point! Martin
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Post by dinogrrl on Feb 17, 2010 4:39:58 GMT
And a sixth preview page!James and Nick are name-dropping characters, concepts and taglines from the Marvel UK comics left, right and centre, and showing their love and respect for 'Target: 2006' and the like in everything they draw and write, while we can't get away from the fact that for the purposes of the series, none of those Marvel UK stories ever took place, and all these characters are different people, shared names/appearances/concepts notwithstanding. Which is a real shame. Martin Yeah, the references to the old school UK comic are a lot of fun, but a disconnect arises when you remember this is all supposed to be following on from the morass that was AHM, even when you're strenuously trying to ignore the rest of IDW's current output. Some of the characters are so different as to be merely name-sharing with their originals at this point, (like Perceptor, for example), but it applies to all the characters to some degree. It can throw a bit of a dent in things. In any case, I can't wait to grab my copies of #2 tomorrow after work.
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Post by jamesr on Feb 17, 2010 7:38:32 GMT
And a sixth preview page!If, though, as is more likely, the guys do end up doing more work in IDW's own universe, they'll have to get the Marvel homage thing out of their system at some point, and start doing something new and original that justifies the new continuity and uses it for greater things than simply homages to the old comics and toylines. Martin Ouch. I could spend a lot of time responding to this but I've got to get to work, so... If Wreckers looks and feels and sounds like TFUK, that's because Nick and I - like most of us here - grew up with it and consider that style to best suit TF stories. The IDW continuity isn't so restrictive that it prohibits the use of characters that were originally in the Marvel run, and we've been pretty selective in who we use and how. It's strange that pretty much every other TF comic IDW has put out has recycled TF toys without anyone batting an eye, but when non-toy characters are used it prompts calls of unoriginality. And take the Xaaron ref on Page 6 (one of my favourite scenes in the issue): to many, many people - newer fans of Beast Wars and beyond - those six letters are meaningless. And that's fine. In the context of that scene, it doesn't matter who Xaaron is - he's just An Important Person. To old school fans like you and me, the name has a resonance. It becomes a wink to the old days, a shared reference, an in-joke. I'd say that we've tried to be more original than most by using 'characters' that previously existed only as toys and given them personalities, rather than use more established TFs that have more than 25 words on their tech specs. And Wreckers IS very much set in the IDW continuity: Garrus-9, the reference in issue one to Sunstreaker (unnamed) betraying them, the talk in issue 2 of Phase Sixers, infiltration and the like, the design that Nick's used for Kup recalling his Spotlight issue -- and that's just in the pages that have been released thus far. You'll see future issue delve deeper into the IDW-verse. And actually, future issues will contain more homages to Marvel UK. But these are not the be all and end all of this series; they are - for the most part (Impactor being a big exception) asides, throwaway comments, cameos and the like. Sorry if this sounds defensive (reading it back, it does); I don't want to sound over-sensitive. Maybe it's because of all the different 'audiences', Nick and I are particularly conscious of the reaction from friends and the TransMasters massive. Thanks, though, for the thrust of your post, which is that you like what's happening with the series so far. And yes, as I say, Page 6 in issue 2 is a favourite.
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Post by legios on Feb 17, 2010 13:14:45 GMT
I have to say that I am actually quite liking the fact that LSoTW is very much moving forward with IDW's continuity and making use of previously established elements within it. The nods to previous versions of Transformers are certainly a nice little extra for those of us who have been around the block a wee bit (*clicks rusting robot vertebrae back into place. Makes note to WD-40 ageing joints) but I think the thing I most enjoyed about #1 (I don't have #2 yet so I can't comment on that) was the fleshing out of relatively obscure toys like Ironfist into genuinely interesting characters.
Sure little references are fun, but I think I appreciate them more for the fact that they are fairly off-hand things - you don't need to know that they are references for the story to function. Like the appearance of Impactor - if you don't know the UK comics (like a sizeable chunk of the audience) the issue has already established that he is important to Springer, you just don't know exactly how as yet. If you do get the reference it has an extra resonance, if you don't then there is no harm done and the story proceeds just fine.
I have seen plenty of Transformers media that spends too much time harking back to and echoing other TF media - and it is something I have seen in other properties as well - and I think it can be easily overdone.
I think that LSoTW has got the balance about right (I suspect that there is no such thing as a perfectly balanced comic, but I think that they are close enough). We have a few nods to the Marvel comic, a character inspired by it, but at the same time we are revisiting parts of IDW's TF Universe that were introduced in Furman's mini-series and seeing how the new status-quo has impacted on them.
As to the idea of a series specifically set in the timeline of the Marvel comic I do wonder wether that would be economically viable to do in all honesty. The reprint books sell ok, considering that they don't have to worry about paying for 26 pages of new material a month. But I don't know whether those sorts of sales figures would support an, inevitably more costly, original title. Given that the comic doesn't seem to have that strong a nostalgia draw in the US market it would seem that it would only appeal to a niche of what is already a fairly niche market. I'm not sure that it would attract enough readers to be viable.
In many ways I think that the place for new fiction in the Marvel comic, and for that matter Sunbow cartoon timelines is in Fan Fiction these days. I feel that for the good of its health the official media has to move on and not lean too strongly on the past.
But that's just the opinion of this old dinosaur. I'll go back to concentrating my limited brain power on chewing these here plants now....
Karl
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Post by Kingoji on Feb 17, 2010 16:59:45 GMT
AAAAAAARGH-damnIIIIT! I was avoiding hitting those preview page links for issue 2 (this is the spoiler thread for issue 1 still, right?), but now I know that someone that would have had me giggling like a ninny is getting a mention! Bugger it. Okay, it's just a name check, right? Then I'm past it. Moving on. If as you deserve you do get more IDW work coming your way than you can keep up with on the art front, there's a budding new talent where? coming up behind you who deserves to get a professional gig at some point! You humble me with your confidence. *deep bow*
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 17, 2010 19:35:01 GMT
It's strange that pretty much every other TF comic IDW has put out has recycled TF toys without anyone batting an eye, but when non-toy characters are used it prompts calls of unoriginality. Hey there, James. Do remember that I haven't bought any IDW comics except the ones that Nick has drawn, specifically for this reason - that I think it's an unoriginal way to produce comics, rebooting a saga and then introducing all the characters again, the same but different. I'm not accusing you and Nick of doing it any more than everyone else in Dreamwave and IDW - except you have more of a Marvel bias, which just shows you have better taste than some of the others. I batted a big eyelid at all the other IDW comics and gave them a miss. Much as I loved it, I even accused 'Spotlight: Shockwave' at the time of just being a variation on the Shockwave/Dinobots background story from Marvel - which it blatantly is. And while I had a small Dreamwave collection for a time, it didn't stay in my collection for long. Maybe I'm wrong to say you need to 'get over' the homage thing, since Dreamwave and IDW have pretty much been solid homages to past characters and toy lines for several years running and people are still buying them. Maybe if another company picks up the licence and re-boots it all again and introduces all the old toy ranges as characters again it'll still pick up the audiences. Maybe if instead of a variation of Impactor you'd given the IDW Wreckers a completely original creation to be their former leader, a different and exciting form of sentient machine with numerous points of interest to explore, the readership would have been hostile to your originality and deviation from precedent. But I know (from Transtext and Eugenesis) that you are capable of producing storylines that push the boundaries and go in directions Transformers has not gone before - and which people had not thought to take it before - enriching with new concepts the existing universe rather than doing repeat variations on it. I would buy the TF comic again on a regular basis - regardless of whether or not I knew the writers personally - if I could expect from it what I used to be able to expect, namely the unexpected. One issue Decepticons doing grafitti on the Statue of Liberty, the next issue Megatron ending up in the power of a small-time crook, the next issue TFs fighting it out in a computer game, the next issue Optimus Prime on the run from the Wreckers with Outback, the next issue a Cosmic Carnival in space, the next issue Buster Witwicky plagued by dreams of a new type of Transformer from the Matrix, the next issue Scraplets or a Smelting Pool... all things I'd never seen before. Or perhaps, one issue discovering a wormhole on future Cybertron that goes back to the Ark lying buried in the volcano, and then three Decepticons stuck in an endless time loop with no creation or destruction, and then a Quintesson explaining to Ultra Magnus the truth behind the Primus/Unicron myth, and Cybertron being invaded and occupied by an alien race that enslaves the Transformers and paints them all red, and Jetfire becoming an addict to virtual reality and fleeing there to escape a metal corrosive disease... But the Dreamwave and IDW comics that I've seen to date are mostly far less densely packed, and don't have the same original thought hopping around in them. And when I read positive comments about them on the Internet, it's basically just people saying whether characters they liked in the olden days appeared and were written in a way that was worthy of them. No-one (that I've noticed) seems to be talking about original ideas any more - they're just moving the same old pieces around on a chess board according to the same old rules. You're just copping my frustration because you're the only one whose comics I'm reading right now, and I don't want to see you trapped in the same endless re-boot/homage treadmill because it's a waste of your fertile imagination. I'm not saying I want end-of-the-world epics. Simon killed off my interest in them when 'Reaching the Omega Point' and 'Alignment' both concluded in pretty much the same way as 'Time Wars', 'On the Edge of Extinction' and the Marvel G2 comic. I'd just like to see some things that are as different from everything we've seen in Transformers before as was TFs inside a computer game, or Scraplets, or the Smelting Pool, or Headmasters, or Transformers from the future, or Quintessons occupying Cybertron, or a Mind-Krell on Cybertron's lost third moon, were the first time I saw them. I am getting it to a certain extent from brand new characters that you are writing such as Ironfist, who is unlike any TF character I've met before (though he is somewhat homage-obsessed himself) and a delight to read. And I got it to a certain extent from 'Spotlight: Kup' and Nick's Prowl story in AHM. I didn't really get it from 'Maximum Dinobots'. I might get it later in the Wreckers series from Overlord or Impactor if one of them turns out to have up his sleeve a huge Xenon-type revelation speech turning everything we know on its head... But the longer Transformers continues, the harder it gets to be original. It's easy for me to sit on the sidelines as I do now and say "Be as quirky and unpredictable as Budianksy was!" But I have no idea if he would be capable of it when it's been going on for 25+ years. Martin
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 17, 2010 20:10:46 GMT
As to the idea of a series specifically set in the timeline of the Marvel comic I do wonder wether that would be economically viable to do in all honesty. The reprint books sell ok, considering that they don't have to worry about paying for 26 pages of new material a month. But I don't know whether those sorts of sales figures would support an, inevitably more costly, original title. Given that the comic doesn't seem to have that strong a nostalgia draw in the US market it would seem that it would only appeal to a niche of what is already a fairly niche market. I'm not sure that it would attract enough readers to be viable. In many ways I think that the place for new fiction in the Marvel comic, and for that matter Sunbow cartoon timelines is in Fan Fiction these days. I feel that for the good of its health the official media has to move on and not lean too strongly on the past. But the way I see it, re-booted continuities by their nature lean _more_ strongly on the past than continuations of an existing run, because they end up introducing the same stuff all over again and doing variations on previous concepts. If you continue from an existing run, you have to come up with original stories, or people will complain that you're repeating old stories within the same timeline. You are forced by everything that has been laid down already to be original. A writer can't get away with inventing Headmasters or combiners or Pretenders or Micromasters twice in the same timeline. The only reason I can think of why someone would re-boot a story franchise is because they _don't_ have anything original to add, nor do they have a completely new unrelated saga up their sleeve that can stand on its own (and be called something other than Transformers). They want to reuse old ideas in different packaging instead of presenting new ones. But even if the new version is an improvement, it can never be as original as it was the first time. No-one can ever reintroduce the concepts that were introduced in the 1980s and have the stories as fresh as they were the first time. The only way to be as original today as they were in the 1980s is to come up with characters, concepts and plots that _weren't_ used in the 1980s. Martin
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Post by Bogatan on Feb 17, 2010 23:01:33 GMT
So is issue 2 out tomorrow or next week or even later? Me and time are lost.
Andy
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Post by jamesr on Feb 18, 2010 0:21:28 GMT
Thanks, Martin, for that lengthy response. And you even mentioned the Mind-Krell - god, that takes me back. 'Children of a Lesser God', wasn't it? Not that I was into misappropriating pretentious book names or anything. Actually, I remember confiding in you that I hadn't thought of a satisfactory way to save Cybertron from that black hole, and was going to do something horrifically unscientific and plug it with Cybertron's third moon. (Sorry to all of you who are in the middle of reading CoaLG.) I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that Wreckers does not end with Cybertron's third moon plugging a black hole. It DOES have some high concept stuff coming up, though, including something that hasn't been seen in Transformers comics before (and hopefully not in science fiction before, either).
And if - if if if - I'm involved in any more TF comics, I'd love to take things as far as it's possible to go.
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Post by Jaymz on Feb 18, 2010 0:21:56 GMT
So is issue 2 out tomorrow or next week or even later? This Thursday [today]. I read it on the train home!
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Post by dinogrrl on Feb 18, 2010 2:16:45 GMT
There was a loss of significant stock due to a delivery truck accident here in the states, so I won't see my books till next week, maybe two.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 18, 2010 6:52:54 GMT
I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that Wreckers does not end with Cybertron's third moon plugging a black hole. It DOES have some high concept stuff coming up, though, including something that hasn't been seen in Transformers comics before (and hopefully not in science fiction before, either). This makes me very, very happy indeed. That's what I miss about Transformers comics - the boundaries-pushing science-fiction! But, dammit, it was 'Children of a Lesser Matrix', not 'Children of a Lesser God'. In the grand tradition of 'Raiders of the Last Ark', 'The Carwash of Doom', 'King Con' and 'The Living Nightlights' you did have the decency to make a one-word alteration... Martin
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Post by Kingoji on Feb 18, 2010 7:27:25 GMT
You know, I've been thinking about your viewpoint of the comics in general, Martin. It's not really something that I can get behind. Y'know, this idea that the Marvel comics should be the only ones you care about, because it was the first and everything else is retreading old ground. I can't agree. These books are for entertainment above anything else and we should enjoy them for their own merits rather than belittling them in comparison to stories from long ago. Especially since some of the stories you mentioned up there the writer himself has described as 'terrible' and 'scraping the barrel', because he didn't want to do the book anymore. I get that you want to keep things fresh, and I agree. But I can't agree that many of the stories we've had in recent years have not been fresh. Try and look at it from this viewpoint. Marvel comics TransFormers, hypothetically, did not end. But the very ending is slightly different. Ratchet crashes the Ark again as usual, only this time Galvatron escapes, realising later that this Universes Megatron is not him, and as such if he ever needs to face him in combat need not hold back. The rest of the Ark inhabitants are found deactivated and turned into remote-controlled automotons to be sold to the highest bidder. That never happened before. When Prime returns his troops from Klo to the freshly rejuvenated Cybertron, he finds it in a utopian state brought on by shockwave, and many of his own men are willing to rather stand against Prime in the name of peace than to question Shockwave. Never happened in Marvel. Perhaps because of this, Prime's loyalists stike out from Cybertron permamnently and begin an underground war with the Decepticons which is strangely similar to the phases of IDW, and events escalate on Earth until the Decepticons actually achieve victory and conquor the planet. Marvel never did that. Along the way, Grimlock is forced to strike out on his own and face the rest of his Dinobots in combat. Perhaps in this timeline it's because they are embittered by the whole Nucleon fiasco. It ends when they finally get to settle their ancient score with Shockwave. As well as this, Scorponok, already in full possession of headmaster tech, decides he needs to bolster his ranks. How better than with an army of headmasters? As an accidental side effect, he makes an Autobot who was never a head master as a toy (which is all this boils down to) into one. Now I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I suspect that if all of this had happened under the marvel run, you'd have no complaints. I'm just trying to offer up a new perspective here, because you might be mising out on some good times. Not always, obviously, but Wreckers here is a high point that, if it had been made by people with different names, you'd simply dismiss. You've said before that you can't care about this Prowl because he isn't the Prowl you know. He hasn't had the same experiences to make him the bot he was. Maybe this is true. He's had a whole set of new experiences. But they shaped him into the same bot. This isn't Dreamwave's Prowl, Dreamwave's isn't Sunbow's, and Sunbow's isn't Marvel's. But they are all Prowl, and multiple versions of him have always existed, sometimes at the same time. But right here and now, we only have one Gen 1 continuity; one Prowl to follow. If anything, it should be simpler now, because this is the only one that exists, and it's the only one that is moving forward and doing new things. Just offering a perspective you might not have considered here, not trying to change your mind.
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Post by blueshift on Feb 18, 2010 10:38:56 GMT
The problem with writing new material for old comics, for example the Marvel run, is the age-old problem of continuity. Where do any new books fit? Do you put new stuff on the end and continue on from the G2 setup? Or end of G1, and force people to need to read the rest to understand the basic setup? Or do you set it in the middle of one of the runs (say, between issues 68 and 69) and so lose a lot of the tension over what is going to happen - we know who lives and who dies, and what will happen in the future. That's why reboots are good in that they untie you from the weight of continuity. One of the things that I hate about comics is the /expectation/ that you HAVE to read previous books to understand what is coming up. Almost every time I see a new big DC or Marvel miniseries announced, the first thing people say is 'So what do I need to read to understand it?'. Personally I believe everything SHOULD be self-contained, but there is this need from fans to place everything inside some frame of continuity (from my own experiences, does it matter, for example, where Blackest Night fits? Some people thought so!) That's why I think Nick and James are doing the right thing. You can read Wreckers without having read any of the other IDW stuff. It makes sense on its own, and references are vague enough to apply anywhere.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 18, 2010 16:37:03 GMT
Just offering a perspective you might not have considered here, not trying to change your mind. None of what follows is aimed at James and Nick: Well, you could be right, and I'm not qualified to disagree without reading all those comics... It's a Catch-22 - I can't know for sure that something isn't worth reading without reading it. All I can judge from is the odd bits I do happen to read, and the impression I get from people's comments... and I don't hear people going on about fascinating new concepts every month. Rather I hear people going on about whether characters are portrayed properly or not. And that stories that used to be crammed into a 22-page comic are now drawn out protractedly over a series. This morning I read all the on-line previews for the current IDW ongoing series to check that I wasn't dismissing it out of hand. (It seems I wasn't. It's pages and pages of nothing happening.) On the other hand, I don't agree with people who write off the late Budiansky stuff, except with regard to the endless character turnover that was imposed on him by Hasbro, and which obviously made him sick of the whole thing. He kept coming up with original ideas but having to work them in with shallow ever-changing casts of toys. Looking back, I like the Mecannibals! Because they were different! More interesting than the toys Hasbro was trying to use the comic to sell at the time. And regardless of whether there are original plot ideas in the re-boot continuities, it still always seems a rip-off marketing ploy to me re-using the names and looks of characters that had been used before. I just can't respect a re-booted franchise like an original franchise, because part of its success comes not from its own output but from its similarities to an earlier work. Maybe I'm the sort of person who, just to be contrary, would be more willing to give my money to a comic publisher that was brave enough to do a new robot-based comic series not called Transformers, that relied wholly on how good and original it was in itself, and built up all its own characters. Yes, being disciplined enough to enrich an existing continuity can be difficult. If it's too difficult, I say create a new universe that is _completely_ new. Be brave enough to say "The End! That was the story of Transformers. Now let's do the story of something else! You've only got so many years of life to read stuff in, and the Transformers story is there on your shelf if you want to re-read it. But why not try something completely different." There's nothing to stop someone having second thoughts and going back to it and adding a few extra chapters if inspiration strikes, but don't wallow endlessly in endless variations of the same cast as if there aren't any other stories out there worth reading, that's my philosophy. Re-booting Transformers every few years seems as ridiculous to me as re-writing great novels and plays or crap soap operas and sit-coms every few years, always with the same character names and hairstyles, but with different lives each time. I think the Daniel Craig James Bond re-boot and the new Star Trek re-boot are equally silly. If you don't want to build on the existing characters, call it something else and call the characters something else. Oh, I could rant about this hobby-horse of mine all night. But I have a Wreckers comic to read! Martin
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Post by Bogatan on Feb 18, 2010 17:04:27 GMT
But even back in the first 5 years of TF's we got 2 marvel comic series and a cartoon series. All closely based on hte same basic setting and characters. Japan then added a second take of the cartoon when it went a different route with Headmasters.
Add in G2, BW/BM and movie in various combinations and you end up with a mess of different continuities. No one is more true than the rest so even if someone opted to continue the original G1 which one would they go for?
Fun Publications chose to do a continuation but stripped the UK, G2 and movie material. It was horrendous. As I remember it Dreamwave started the G1 comic by kinda making it almost sort of a sequel to the original, it wan't very good either.
IDW up till AHM did a pretty good job of creating a 40 issue run that told a preplanned story. Thats what made it different for me from the marvel run.
I also thought its take on concepts like pretenders was original too.
Andy
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Post by blueshift on Feb 18, 2010 17:08:30 GMT
Re-booting Transformers every few years seems as ridiculous to me as re-writing great novels and plays or crap soap operas and sit-coms every few years, always with the same character names and hairstyles, but with different lives each time. I think the Daniel Craig James Bond re-boot and the new Star Trek re-boot are equally silly. If you don't want to build on the existing characters, call it something else and call the characters something else. Sometimes I like reboots, sometimes I don't. But for example, the Daniel Craig James Bond doesn't HAVE to be a reboot, there's nothing about it that won't fit in somewhere. Just if something isn't a reboot, there is this expectation of the weight of continuity. I think it is more a marketing thing than anything. And a rights issue, of course! Though for the record, rewriting the same stories again and again has been an age old tradition, from the Arthurian legends, to the works of Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, for example, was a story Shakespeare rewrote from an older source). I like to think of TF works in the vein of Arthurian legends. Similar stories and tales, built around archetypes, but always different somehow.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Feb 18, 2010 17:15:31 GMT
But even back in the first 5 years of TF's we got 2 marvel comic series and a cartoon series. All closely based on hte same basic setting and characters. Japan then added a second take of the cartoon when it went a different route with Headmasters. Yeah, of course. And all that frustrated the hell out of me and still does. Though I can convince myself that different media sometimes need different approaches to storytelling, so I can enjoy the live-action movies simply as movies. And I guess very young children may need their own version of a story. And as for Masterforce, it's sufficiently different from every other TF story that it isn't really a re-boot or variation so much as something brand new. It could sell itself without the TF franchise label on it. But the rest, I haven't got time for. Because it's variations on the same theme, and I want either complete variety or depth of a single universe. This thread has sadly gone well off the Wreckers topic, but at least we're not posting spoilers or anything, so hopefully we'll be forgiven. I like to think of TF works in the vein of Arthurian legends. Similar stories and tales, built around archetypes, but always different somehow. Yeah, I have admitted in other threads debating this topic that I make an exception for Arthurian legends, but I think that has something to do with the fact that they are vague tales whose origins are lost in the mists of time, and no-one really knows what historical facts may lurk in the fiction. That's their charm. Doesn't really work with Transformers. They aren't written as archetypes. They are written as living characters who build up individual lives and histories and then have them erased and re-written all over again a bit different. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any real Transformers, about whom real facts lie hidden in all these various fictional continuities. Martin
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Post by blueshift on Feb 18, 2010 17:20:57 GMT
Fun Publications chose to do a continuation but stripped the UK, G2 and movie material. It was horrendous. As I remember it Dreamwave started the G1 comic by kinda making it almost sort of a sequel to the original, it wan't very good either. Haha oh god don't remind me! I know where you're coming from though Martin. I used to REALLY hate reboots and divergent continuities. I'd want there to be only one 'real' continuity. Of course, I used to be a HUGE Doctor Who fan, and eagerly devoured huge books that were published to try to pull all the disparate fictions together (like Lance Parkin's A History of the Universe, still a good book, if a bit mental!) At some point, I just chilled out on it. I think it was after RiD actually.
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