Lost Light #1

[Professor Smooth]

Aaaaaaand we're back!

Still decompressing the book, but it's very much more of the same MTMTE that we've loved for the last 4+ years. Yay!

[Hound]

I thought it was a little too heavy on the humour, and I like the humour generally.

The new artist is good...but not a patch on Milne

[Professor Smooth]

The new artist is good...but not a patch on Milne

Maybe not. But remember how far Alex Milne advanced from when he started? Some of his early work was pretty dire (although inking, coloring, and having to be a believable ghost for the SUPERSTAR likely contributed to this) and now he's rightly regarded as one of the all-time greats.

[snarl]

Milne imo had some "quirks" (sharp teeth, over detail) that were quite easy to chop out.

He is much, MUCH better than this new chap imo.

If Milne hadn't been on MTMTE, my opinion of the lines in LL would be "I don't like em"

That Milne has been punted for the new guy is a joke.

I can only assume it's a cost / deadlines thing

[bumblemusprime]

The word is, although IDW hasn't said anything official, that Lawrence is the new Sakamoto or Cahill--he's alternating arcs with Milne.

[Hound]

Milne has already tweeted that he's got no IDW work lined up besides a few covers (and he didn't get to do one for issue 1, despite there being 7+ variants). He speculates that he was dropped because a new artist on a new Issue 1 will help drive sales.

I think something that annoyed me about this issue was that it opened up with 2 more Roberts-created characters (I'm not sure if Lug is meant to be Hosehead's Lug?). This on top of the DJD, Rung, Necrobot, Pharma, Tyrest, Nautica, Velocity, Riptide etc. I know it makes the universe feel bigger but I can't help but feel that some of these roles could have been assigned to actual Transformers who haven't had much characterisation in the past.

[Yaya]

Man, just not the same without Milne. The art is too kiddy, with characters looking like those super deformed Japanese renditions which I'm not really fond of.

Story was just okay.

And reading the "story thus far" at the end makes me realize how complex it is for everyone except MV to keep up. If there's one criticism I have of Roberts, it's that he adds too many storylines without first wrapping up others, leaving them dangling long enough that readers forget what even happened. So I hope we get more succinct consecutive storylines that get resolved instead of multiple incomplete substories.

[snarl]

I've decided to park LL, for the moment at least.

The delays, that string of ***** over issues 41-43 (wtf was that all about - felt like it was written purely for the fawning ***** that follow him on Twitter) and the drawn out cop-out that was the end to "season 2" left me feeling pretty indifferent to the book. The art now being wank has tipped me.

It reminds me of something else I liked but now think has gone / is going up it's own ass, that being Sherlock - it started off being plot lead and were clever and inventive.

They both now seem to be driven primarily (only) by character relationships. Trouble is (imo) the dynamic for both has been ****** up by creating / focusing on new (& boring, pointless, *****) characters that I give very little of a [composite word including 'f*ck'] about (I.E Mary, ******* Tailgate, Nautica to name a few).

I'm more a fan of gender free, war weary transformers - Megatron's arc has been by and large great tbf - I give pretty much zero ****s about Conjunx Endura.

[Yaya]

I'm more a fan of gender free, war weary transformers - Megatron's arc has been by and large great tbf - I give pretty much zero ****s about Conjunx Endura.

I'm right there with you snarlz. Seemed like it would just be sort of a side story. But now seems like everyone now has a lovey, dovey Conjunx Endura.

Not what I meant when I asked for some bot on bot action.

[Metal Vendetta]

They both now seem to be driven primarily (only) by character relationships. Trouble is (imo) the dynamic for both has been ****** up by creating / focusing on new (& boring, pointless, *****) characters that I give very little of a **** about (I.E Mary, ******* Tailgate, Nautica to name a few).

Oh god I thought Sherlock would improve after Watson conveniently forgot that he was a battlefield medic in Afghanistan and let his frankly awful wife bleed out from a gunshot wound without even attempting to stem the flow or treat her, but then they brought her back as a "ghost" in his head for the whole of the next episode as well. Just terrible.

Tailgate has been getting on my tits pretty much since the start of season 2; giving him superpowers and making him smugger hasn't really improved his character much in my opinion.

Nautica's character arc has pretty much bored the pants off me but hey, now Roberts has a new snarky, female, non-toy character in the book perhaps we'll see more of her and this season's plot arc can be all about whether Anode is going to pick a boyfriend from among the Lost Light crew only to culminate in a five-way "I like you all in a purely platonic way" spark-flashing ceremony, because that's evidently the stuff great drama is made from.

[bumblemusprime]

Oh god I thought Sherlock would improve after Watson conveniently forgot that he was a battlefield medic in Afghanistan and let his frankly awful wife bleed out from a gunshot wound without even attempting to stem the flow or treat her, but then they brought her back as a "ghost" in his head for the whole of the next episode as well. Just terrible.

So it's good that I gave it up, then?

I rather liked the first issue of LL, although I ditto Snarlos that I'm more invested in Megatron, Rung & Rodimus than Nautica & Tailgate. Season 1 was great partially because Roberts really cared about the character and was thus unafraid to hurt them; Season 2 got a bit twee as it seemed like he was more afraid to hurt them and undid a lot of the wrenching moments--Rewind coming back, Cylconus getting poked full of holes but then being fine, etc.

All that said it's my favorite read every month, and Lawrence's art is fine as an alternate. It's Milne's book as much as Roberts', though. I'm worried that without Barber editing, we'll see more of the pointless malarkey we saw when Schmidt was editor. Barber's not much as a writer, but there's no denying the books have been better edited for the last few years than they ever were before.