Mike Costa on Writing Transformers

[bumblemusprime]

He's pompous. Or maybe it's all for show and he's just insecure.

An insecure writer? Never...

The comic reviews I did at the time for Transformers Archive are basically a man watching his favourite puppy repeatedly getting run over by a car. And Costa's arrival was the driver coming out and stomping on the poor thing's mangled face. IDW took a title I'd previously have been prepared to give every chance too, and buggered it over a barrel so thoroughly it reached complete rock bottom and became unsalvagable. And that's the biggest shame of all.

I might have to find some way to parley this into a blog or something. I suspect, more and more, that there's some kind of cultural pressure here that Costa is parroting. You know the old, dreaded phrase: "it's a toy book." It's reflected by the way that the Seattle Times began its review of the first Bay movie with the words "we all knew it would be dumb." I honestly think that when Costa started work on the TFs, his enthusiasm ran out pretty quick (unlike a certain gushing fanfic tome-writer). He had people talking about how he "wrote about toys." There was something in his brain saying that these just weren't worth "real writing."

This is the flipside of comics becoming "respectable." Simon Furman wasn't about to win any Pulitzers for writing ANYTHING in the 80s. Oh sure, 2000 AD carried a veneer of cool and respectable in the comics community, but that wouldn't get you far outside such.

Now every comics writer is on the edge of cool. Hell, I did a graphic novel as my thesis in graduate school. So these young, hip McCostaDonoughs come in with ideas about how to spice up Transformers like unto Civil War or The Ultimates or other Cool New Take On Old Tropes.

What they discover: writing is hard. What they blame it on: fans, the nature of the work, etc. What we discover: these guys are no Grant Morrison, Mark Millar or J. Michael Straczynski, and until someone of that caliber who is that big of a fan (remember how freakishly deep Morrison's knowledge of the JLA was?) takes on the work, it will not be "new and hip and edgy."

Therefore we all realize that Furman's fun, action-packed, slightly cheeseball writing was far more enjoyable. The guy's a solid writer. He gets plot, he gets character, and he works well with artists. And I will not be surprised when he outsells even Barber and Roberts' titles.

[DJ_Convoy]

I'll happily take Furman's cheeseball "Claremont-lite" solid workmanship over Costa's over-wrought "Bendis-lite plus hey, here's some cool stories I've read, so I'm appropriating and recontextualizing things- oh look, a shiny thing, hey I won awards for Cobra, why do you hate me" angsty musings any day of the week.

Furman didn't roll into Transformers a huge fan or anything. He was a professional and decided to do his best. He decided that, just because Transformers was a toy property, it didn't mean that it was inherently flawed... and that he could have a good time telling stories. His best ended up being pretty darn swell... he did well by Transformers, and I daresay that it's done well by him over the years.

Costa's association with the property (regardless of his assertions that he now holds some kind of spot as third-most prolific Transformers comic writer... hopefully this "record" will be split asunder) will be nothing more than a footnote. He struggled with the property. He tried hammering it into shape... and was surprised that the results weren't to his liking (nor to the liking of many readers). Much like McCarthy before him, one could argue.

And I think that ultimately, that's why he's annoyed. He had SO MANY ideas about mating Transformers to other concepts (not necessarily good ones)... and he simply wasn't skilled enough to make them work.

[bumblemusprime]

Brad MckDonoPatyk wrote ten ongoing, six limited series plus four wretched Micromasters issues, so at twenty full comics plus various one-shot thingies, he's not far from Costa, you know.

[DJ_Convoy]

Does MTMTE push the Mick collective over the top? Hmmmm.