The evolution of Simon Furman

Post by **Best First** » Fri May 27, 2005 10:35 pm

In his recent Newsarama interview SF states "And though my writing has evolved over the years, that’s never changed."

I'm pretty sure i've seen similar comments by him before...

So my question is - do you think he has evolved? How has SF changed in his approach...

...because i hate to say this (as i love so much of what he has done) but i don't percieve much in the way of evolution. If anything (and i acknowldge there may have been commercial pressures involved) i think Simon's newer work has a more formuliac air about it than the havoc he wreaked when he was writing Marvel's TF UK title. Certainly IMO he has not produced a better TF story since he wrote G2, so where is the evolution?

Thoughts?

Post by **Kaylee** » Fri May 27, 2005 10:39 pm

I don't think hes ever recaptured the freedom he seemed to have at the end of G1 and during G2, ever since then he seems to have been running to try and write another T2006 or another Unicron war and has lost something of the spark which created those stories to begin with.

Still be interested to see his newer work tho, I have hopes for him

veritech · Post by **veritech** » Fri May 27, 2005 10:42 pm

I don't know, War Within Vol.1 was pretty good, but not as good as T2006. I would agree that he seems to have been creatively restrained in the DW years.

Post by **Denyer** » Fri May 27, 2005 10:49 pm

Yeah... first of all you have the toy books, then there's DW-sanitised stuff such as War Within: Dark Ages...

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri May 27, 2005 11:16 pm

I haven't seen much of an evolution. But I do believe he is quite adaptable. The best parts of his War Within and Armada/Energon work show this.

Yes, there's been a progression in quality from his early UK stuff. He also had a lot of fun on the title when he was editor. Later he coped with the limitations of the 5 page black & white format very well. And for US G1 and G2 he was let off the leash and was able to hit some real artistic highs.

But writing for kids (UK Armada) or decompressed plotting (Dreamwave) in recent years didn't always exactly play to his strengths.

It'll be interesting to see how IDW utilise him. But its in pretty safe hands IMO because no-one knows TFs like he does. Look at John Ney Reiber: good comic writer, not so good TF comic writer.

KingMob · Post by **KingMob** » Sat May 28, 2005 7:31 am

I like what Spidey said...I kinda considered that as his 'evolution-of-sorts'...he's learned how to tell solid stories of pretty much every theme he could think of in several different formats and for different audiences over the years he's been dealing with the Transformers, on-the-job as it were and it's possible he's thinking more of his technical abilities rather than of thematic/stylistic approach to a project when making a statement like that.
He's a very competent, and perhaps confident, writer - and has a right to be if that is the case, IMHO - but perhaps we're sensing a bit of complacency, of playing it 'safe' in his work, as opposed to the sense of freedom given off by large parts of his earlier work?

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Sat May 28, 2005 10:02 am

Maybe he feels like his old approach was 'blow it all to hell and then see what I can salvage' and his new approach is 'work blowing it to hell into the context of a greater story.'

Or maybe not, I dunno. I think his DW stuff was a little harder to understand and weirder, but he probably put more thought into the end result. Also, McDonogh was the creative director giving SImon the orders (which irritates me a lot) so I'm sure he had some ideas shut down. At Marvel he pretty much could run rampant.