TF Ongoing #9 Review (SPOILERS)

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Wed Jul 14, 2010 11:32 pm

Read it. In six minutes.

The first ten pages are scenes of the Combaticons trashing humans. The average number of panels in these pages is 3.6 (not even four) and the average number of word balloons per page is 1.2. Yeah, almost one speech balloon per page, and three of those speech balloons are "halt", "okay, boss", and "excellent".

Now, I'm actually a big fan of telling a story through the art alone ala that entire G.I.Joe issue from Marvel back in the day that was wordless altogether. But devoting ten pages to Combaticon mayhem? Too much. Why not keep those very same panels, but shrink them down to span three pages, leaving seven extra pages of storytelling?

The Combaticons are set up as a credible threat through these sequences and some of Prime's dialogue. I don't have a problem showing why the Combaticons should be feared. Given they are the focal threat of this arc, it's expected. But ten pages, almost half a comic, devoted to having them destroy human installations is just inexcusable.

The idea that the humans were kind enough to supply the totally inept Autobots with a ship for Springer's crew is awful. Just awful. Since when were humans more capable that Transformers at intergalactic space travel?

Guido's art is appropriate here. It very much resembles the cartoon, which this comic seems to be on par with intellectually.

Give it a "C-", which is generous and likely due to it being in succession to the last issue. The plot for this arc is laid out, but this could have been done in half the space.

I'm feeling very much cheated by this experience. One or two competent issues in the first nine does not warrant my $3.99 a month. Put me in the camp for putting Roche, or even bringing back Simon if you can't manage that, back on the ongoing. I think Andy is a stand up guy, but we need a new editor if this kind of approach is going to be allowed to stand.

I just can't justify buying this anymore, and I've bought every TF comic since Marvel #1. I will continue to read this series, but it will be either by my reading my brother's copy or waiting for the trade, not by buying my own.

Professor Smooth · Post by **Professor Smooth** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 9:48 am

"It took 20 minutes to write, so I thought it'd take 20 minutes read."

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 3:45 pm

PAGE ONE:

PANEL 1: A CNN (or equivalent comic-exclusive knockoff news network) screen, set to the upper left of the page, showing a blocky outline of Korea. Relatively small panel--takes up maybe 1/5th of the page.

CAPTION: "Rumors continue to fly about the volatile substance Energon, a form of fuel used by the Decepticons. While the refining process is officially a mystery, the military's statement of 10 October 2008 confirms that the Decepticons obtained the raw material to make "Energon" on Earth.

CAPTION: [Stretching into Panel 2] A set of news pictures from North Korea surfaced on the Internet last week, showing a new refining plant near the [LOCATION IN KOREA] that has drawn the attention of the free world, though United Nations representatives say there is no concern at this time and there are no plans for military action.

PANEL 2: The other four-fifths of the page. Camouflaged UN troops are running down a fiery hill in a forest. Beyond the crest of the hill, we can just make out the silhouette of a mysterious processing plant. Something is launching fire and napalm from the top of the hill. Men are falling and dying, half on fire. It's a rout.

PAGE 2:

PANEL 1: We pull out a little farther to the first group of soldiers getting away, dragging several wounded buddies with them. They are scuttling down a creek in an overgrown ravine, obviously seeking deep cover.

PANEL 2: A soldier whips around at a surprising noise.

SFX: Crack! Whirrr...

PANEL 3: Our poor soldier is now looking straight up at ONSLAUGHT's vehicle form, pointing two cannons down at him. The other soldiers around him are reaching for their rifles.

PANEL 4: Same panel, only now Onslaught is transforming. The soldiers are running.

PANEL 5: A fully transformed Onslaught gleefully sprays napalm over the fleeing soldiers.

ONSLAUGHT: Die, fleshy fleshling fleshtards! It's over! Finished! I aim to maim and I seek to leak! Wait, that's not right...

Look, I can do the whole fracas in two pages. With better dialogue.

saysadie · Post by **saysadie** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 5:22 pm

You know what, after all the lurkreading I've done in the topics here I think I'd rather read your version.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 6:52 pm

Thank you, fleshtard!

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 9:15 pm

Better than Furman's dialogue, I'll say that.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:04 pm

Went back and looked at my ratings for Shane and Mike through the first nine issues thus far:

All Hail Megatron #9 D+
All Hail Megatron #8 A
All Hail Megatron #7 B
All Hail Megatron #6 C-
All Hail Megatron #5 A-
All Hail Megatron #4 A
All Hail Megatron #3 B-
All Hail Megatron #2 B-
All Hail Megatron #1 C+

Transformers #9 C-
Transformers #8 F
Transformers #7 D
Transformers #6 B-
Transformers #5 C+
Transformers #4 A+
Transformers #3 B
Transformers #2 B+
Transformers #1 B

So yeah. By my own estimates, Shane McCarthy is a better writer than Mike Costa thus far.

Ouch.

And just for comparision, the first nine issues of Simon's and Nick's run:

Stormbringer #3 A
Stormbringer #2 A
Stormbringer #1 A
Infiltration #6 C-
Infiltration #5 C
Infiltration #4 B+
Infiltration #3 B
Infiltration #2 B
Infiltration #1 B-

All Hail Megatron #15 A+ (Prowl)
Last Stand of the Wreckers #5 A+
Last Stand of the Wreckers #4 A
Last Stand of the Wreckers #3 B+
Last Stand of the Wreckers #2 A
Last Stand of the Wreckers #1 B+

It would appear the saying is true. "The enemy of good is better." In our efforts to have a better comic, we have in fact created a worse one.

Of course, IDW went for this saying: " Ask not what IDW can do for you. Ask what you can do for IDW!"

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:29 pm

Part of me wants to find Costa's address and save us all by sending him a good heavy load of anthrax.

And yet the Ironhide series shows he has SOME capability to write an okay story.

Gah.
I shouldn't have wasted the time to pick this one up. My money would have been better spent on something by a more talented individual, like, say, L Ron Hubbard.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 5:45 pm

As I stated on the IDW boards, this whole thing wreaks of Hasbro mandate. Making Spike the focal point. Putting Bumblebee in the spotlight whilst characters like Jazz are nowhere to be seen. Keeping the bots on Earth.

Where else does this all hold true except Bayformers?

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 11:56 pm

Not to mention Bumblebee's apparent switch to his bayformers altmode, from the look of his chassis.

Post by **Best First** » Tue Jul 20, 2010 8:19 am

Yaya wrote:As I stated on the IDW boards, this whole thing wreaks of Hasbro mandate. Making Spike the focal point. Putting Bumblebee in the spotlight whilst characters like Jazz are nowhere to be seen. Keeping the bots on Earth.

Where else does this all hold true except Bayformers?

i think this is a bit paranoid.

Spike is hardly analogous with Movie Sam is he? If they had called the comic character Lennox then maybe yuou would have a point.

Bumblebee being a focal point just strikes me as good sense, he is the second most recognisable/popular guy after the bug 2 these days thanks to the movies - the fact that his move to the centre has been at the expense of other characters and established hierachy is the fault of the writer/editor not the mandate itself which could just as easily have come from IDW in an attempt to drive sales which is just as, if not more, important to IDW than Hasbro.

And where else does this all hold true - the original cartoon, which i am seeing far more of than the Bayverse, Movieface aside.

Professor Smooth · Post by **Professor Smooth** » Tue Jul 20, 2010 12:42 pm

Sunyavadin wrote:Not to mention Bumblebee's apparent switch to his bayformers altmode, from the look of his chassis.

That happened in the Bumblebee mini.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Tue Jul 20, 2010 1:12 pm

Best First wrote:
Yaya wrote:As I stated on the IDW boards, this whole thing wreaks of Hasbro mandate. Making Spike the focal point. Putting Bumblebee in the spotlight whilst characters like Jazz are nowhere to be seen. Keeping the bots on Earth.

Where else does this all hold true except Bayformers?
i think this is a bit paranoid.

Perhaps. I just can't fathom how ignorant a writer and editor can be to go this route without some outside influence pressuring them to do so.

In the end, that may be all it is, just awful decision making.

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:55 am

Professor Smooth wrote:
Sunyavadin wrote:Not to mention Bumblebee's apparent switch to his bayformers altmode, from the look of his chassis.
That happened in the Bumblebee mini.

I read one issue of that and decided it was so pitiful as to be almost as good as the Transformers in 3D comics, and only barely better than the UK G2 annual. So never read any more.

I thought I'd seen at least one recent issue of the ongoing that referred back to those events and where he still had his bug shape though...

*Edit*
Figured what threw me. The cover of #6 he still clearly has his beetle form. Even though if you look VERY closely at the panels inside which show more than just a head shot, you can sort of make out his new one.

Either way. Glad I'm not paying these guys' wages any more.

Jack Cade · Post by **Jack Cade** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 3:00 pm

I don't think anything of late is down to either (a) fan pressure or (b) Hasbro mandates. I think it's all editorial angling for the right audience, without sufficient insight or data to really know who that audience is and what they want. Bumblebee's like he is because it makes him more recognisable to the average moo, Spike is a character Costa obviously thinks highly of, and the change of artists is simply down to how much time it takes Don to draw the books. They're switching them for arcs, or for individual one-shots, almost so as to signal: "This would be a spotlight or the start of a new mini-series if we weren't trying to cover up that the overall approach hasn't really changed at all."

That last point is also, I think, part of why Costa is reluctant to lay seeds for future stories in current arcs. IDW, as ever, are trying to have their cake and eat it - they're aiming for the benefits of both a long-running series and a series of minis. 'Epic' stories, but with constant supposed 'jumping on' points, which are actually nothing of the sort. The result is embarrassingly far from either.

It's absurd really. The -ations as a sequence of minis was an attempt to cover up the fact that Furman, to all intents and purposes, was writing an ongoing story. Now it seems to be entirely the other way round. Almost nothing, thematically, links Costa's first arc to this business with the Combaticons. Issue 8 and issue 9 clash terribly because we're now getting the idea of Transformers being nigh-on invulnerable driven home right after being told that you can kill them with kitchen cleaner and a hole in the ground.

The problem, then, as I see it, is that instead of expending editorial energy on making everything match up, too much is being spent on an overall strategy that is blindly grasping for handholds in the dark.

Post by **Best First** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 9:43 pm

Jack Cade wrote:Issue 8 and issue 9 clash terribly because we're now getting the idea of Transformers being nigh-on invulnerable driven home right after being told that you can kill them with kitchen cleaner and a hole in the ground.

don't forget some horizontally suspended I-beams that somehow in the space of about 10 feet gain enough momentum to vertically impale a Transformer.

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 4:00 am

I agree. This is way too evidential of bad editorial decisions piling up.

Post by **Best First** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 6:42 pm

Characteristically late review;

http://duggerton.blogspot.com/2010/08/t ... ak-to.html

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 8:00 pm

I was happy to hear, at least, that Don will be returning on art duties in the future.

Sure, the faces. But Don instills a sense of seriousness to the story that Guido simply doesn't produce. This issue, as you point out, is a good case in point, though I don't think it was the best of Guido, for sure.