Mars Attacks/Transformers crossover info.

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Grayfox
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Mars Attacks/Transformers crossover info.

Post by Grayfox »

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page ... e&id=41605
Earlier this week in advance of New York Comic Con, IDW teased that the outrageous "Mars Attacks" property the publisher licenses from Topps Cards would be ray gunning its way on to some of their other comics, starting with E.C. Segar's classic sailor Popeye. Today, the publisher released the full info on the event, and it may be even wilder than fans have expected.

For five weeks across January, "Mars Attacks" one-shots featuring an eclectic array of characters. "Mars Attacks Popeye" comes from Martin Powell, Terry Beatty, and Tom Ziuko followed by "KISS" by Chris Ryall, Alan Robinson, and Tom Ziuko. The month continues with "Mars Attacks The Real Ghostbusters" by Erik Burnham and Jose Holder and "Transformers" by Shane McCarthy and Matt Frank. Finally, an original IDW property gets into the mix as "Mars Attacks Zombies Vs. Robots" by Chris Ryall, Andy Kuhn, and John Rauch.
Then we jump into the future with Transformers. We thought that one would be fun because we've got Shane McCarthy who did the epic 'All Hail Megatron' story for us coming back to do a big 32-page battle with Martians."
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Cyberstrike nTo
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

I'll pass on this crossover for the following reasons:

1. I don't like Mars Attacks in general.

2. This crossover doesn't interest me. Just like IDW's Infestation crossovers didn't interest me.
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Post by Red Dave Prime »

Cyberstrike nTo wrote:I'll pass on this crossover for the following reasons:

1. I don't like Mars Attacks in general.

2. This crossover doesn't interest me. Just like IDW's Infestation crossovers didn't interest me.
I still think the first 2-part Infestation is a fun bit of IDWs run. The second was about as rotten as can be to be honest. I wouldnt expect much from this and if it likes infestation 2 it wont have any impact on the main run (nor should it) so I'm quite happy to sit it out.
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Post by Blackjack »

Shane McCarthy lives!

I knew we can't be getting good comics for this long and not get some repercussion.
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Post by relak »

Mars Attacks is absurd enough as it is.
Zombies with TFs, fine
Chuthulu with TFs, ok
Big headed midget martians with TF? Thats where i draw the line.

With McCartney on board, its going to be a Story-lite, action focused mess like AHM.
Who knows, maybe we'll see the debut of Drift's brother or some other Shaneful fan character.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

relak wrote:With McCartney on board, its going to be a Story-lite, action focused mess like AHM.
Yeh, I mean "Give My Regards to Broad Street" was bloody shocking. At least Harrison gave a lot of promising British projects a start.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Red Dave Prime wrote:I still think the first 2-part Infestation is a fun bit of IDWs run. The second was about as rotten as can be to be honest. I wouldnt expect much from this and if it likes infestation 2 it wont have any impact on the main run (nor should it) so I'm quite happy to sit it out.


Strike One: I hate zombies.
Strike Two: I'm not a fan of Chuthulu.
Strike Three: I don't like Mars Attacks.

IDW is OUT. They have failed to make me want to read any of their major crossovers.
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Post by zigzagger »

**shrugs**

The Infestation series has never been brilliant, and no, I don't intend to pick this up, but it still sounds kind of fun to me.

...Even if McCarthy is writing it.
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Post by Terome »

Nicely weird. Can't see the joke stretching to 32 pages unless they don't use any words.
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Post by Thunderwave »

Terome wrote:Nicely weird. Can't see the joke stretching to 32 pages unless they don't use any words.
I'm vaguely curious how this is going to play out. The thing about Mars Attacks is that they are, in essence, out to troll the world and seem invinicible but have a pretty straight forward and obvious weakness. How long can they go until it's figured out Blaster turns out to be a bigger badass then Prime for this invasion?
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I like the Mars Attacks film (bar the painful "I saw you fight once. In Cardiff. Wales" line. Which might be aiming for a Delta and the Bannermen style joke but Tom Jones delivers it with the utter conviction of a man who has no idea where Cardiff, Wales is) but know zilch about the comic version and- like a few of the above- can't see the gag filling an issue.

Still, with only one issue to work wit McCarthy might give us as much as half an issue's worth of plot.
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Post by relak »

As far as I know, mars attacks was a comedy.

How does a comedic feel gel with idw transformers comics so far?
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Post by Halfshell »

Quite well. IDW are hilarious.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Yeh, well, they're still much better than Dreamwave.

I forget why exactly, but they totally are.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

When Dreamwave screwed up their international distribution, it was with physical copies. IDW have managed it with comics that don't technically exist in the real world. That's an achievement.
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Post by Warcry »

Cliffjumper wrote:Yeh, well, they're still much better than Dreamwave.

I forget why exactly, but they totally are.
Pat Lee.

If not for people's residual dislike of the man (and, yes, he's scum) colouring their perception of Dreamwave's work I think we'd have seen a mini-boom of DW nostalgia by now. And while I'm not a huge fan of their style, at least their bad stories weren't bad and pretentious -- they knew exactly what kind of comics they were making.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Uh-huh... Actually had a DW read-through recently and it wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. Like you say there's a certain Bruckheimer feel to it all. The in-jokeyness does mean they tend to feel like something the Collector's Club would be doing but at the same time there's a sort of glee to them, especially by the ongoing when the references and the "Hey, I liked [character], let's throw them into the plot for no real reason!" calms down to about the right level. There's a certain simplicity and lack of middlebrow grand planning that's quite appealing compared to the IDW behemoth.

What really surprised me is how well the first mini reads in TPB form until about two-thirds of the way through (the concluding section is still obviously thrown together in an eleventh-hour panic and the fundamental misunderstanding of the Prime/Megatron dynamic is still unforgivable). It's not great by any means but it has a nice flow even if it is about a 15-minute read.

And I still love Micromasters very, very much. Putting aside Ruffolo's art it's so close to something Roberts and/or Roche would write it's unreal - forefronting 40-odd characters who've barely been used and putting them in an unusual different situation on Cybertron? Nice. And their Joe crossover was so completely alien to both franchises that I have a lot of time for it even with another very weak conclusion.

I certainly think the Pat Lee/unpaid creators thing means a lot of personal vitriol gets attached to the comics themselves - like some sections think complimenting the work (by that stage largely of others) is somehow an endorsement of Pat's business dealings and/or a betrayal of the unpaids. Nowadays I'm more annoyed at McDonough and Patyk refusing to release details of unpublished stories unless someone pays them several thousand dollars for it, which just seems childish as that's never, ever going to happen and they probably didn't have many solid ideas anyway.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Yeah, pretty much agree with the above (although I find Micromasters a difficult read because of Ruffalo's truly sh*t doodlings that make it difficult to tell what's going on - this also affects the G.I. Joe X-over which is just too dark in places , but I do like the Transformers looking like looming scrap heaps).

Dreamwave knew Transformers wasn't some hard and fast sci-fi concept and just ran with it. It's a little too indebted to the Cartoon in places, but in some way that assured success - more people have likely seen the cartoon than read the comics.

I liked that Mad Brick and Patyk were gearing up for a comics take on the movie (which I didn't mind) and it looks like they had some fresh ideas going on in regards the Quintessons and so on. Too much time has probably gone by now, but I could see Brick/ Patyk's work being wrapped by FunPub, but i don't suppose they or IDW have the 'thousands of dollars' they seem to think their work is worth.

Absolutely hated the enforced 'house style' to make Pat Lee's work look less sh*t though. Why do people think Pat Lee is a great artist? He's not! He's rubbish! That first reveal of Optimus is embarrassing.
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Post by Red Dave Prime »

Quite liked the first arc in dreamwaves ongoing (the sunstorm stuff) and war and peace is ok in pieces. It kinda lost me by issue 4 if I remember right.

Really liked the idea of the war within stuff but it just didnt live up to its potential. Both series had terrible finishes. Much like IDWs look backs, you really need someone with a more subtle stuff for that or else it starts to mess up and conflict with the main ongoing.

Still I have most of Dreamwaves original issues and its nice enough to stroll back over now and then.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Yeh, I found the ongoing was the better stuff going back... Vol. 1 was kinda alright, partly because I used to really REALLY hate it and now with a bit of distance and a lot more perspective than I had ten years ago I can see it's just a not very good comic rather than the end of humanity. Vol. 2 does have a few good bits but the excessive amount of references compared to the amount of original thought was a real distraction - I'd say in its' way it's weaker than the first one because it thinks it's really, really smart. Vol. 3 seemed to find more of a balance - yes, references galore but at least they went along with the plot rather than randomly diverting it.

War Within I have about the same feelings on - of the two completed ones both have a cracking first half then a directionless patchy second half. The third one didn't even have that. Armada's a bit the same - each plot arc starts off really well and makes you think "Hey, maybe they're getting it right finally" before devolving into a mess of useful coincidences and random plot devices.

The weird thing is both should have served as a big cautionary example for IDW before giving Furman complete control of the universe... Part of the problem with most people thinking Pat Lee is worse than Hitler is that everything wrong with the output was blamed on him - if Furman's scripting was rubbish it must have been something to do with Pat, right, so there's obviously no problem with his writing, let's get him onboard.

Only problem is I'm not entirely sure who IDW could have (realistically) got onboard instead - Sarracini and McDonough/Patyk weren't really much better and shouts like Roberts are great with hindsight but would have been insane back in 2005/6. Maybe John Ney Rieber? Or Joe Casey, who did some very good work on G.I. Joe around that period.

Going back to Brad 'n' Adam, I do find their attitude quite amusing and silly. I'm not sure if they're after the money they should have been paid for published work, for solicited and finished unpublished work or both but surely the person who 'owes' them is Pat Lee and no-one else. And he's never going to pay them unless he wins the lottery and has a strange karmic panic attack. Even then I wouldn't bet on it. So there's no real gain to them holding out on the ideas. My pet theory is that back in 2005 or whatever they were hoping to basically pressure IDW into picking them up as writers and expecting the comic-buying public to back them by refusing to pick up a TF book until they and their story were picked up. But you'd think by now they'd have realised this wasn't going to happen and at least do what Furman's doing with WW/Energon and trying to get a few quid for printed out scripts at conventions.

EDIT: I've never really brought into the 'house style' thing TBH as work by Figueroa, Ruiz, Guidi and Milne all turned out pretty good; to me it looks more a case of a few bad inkers and crap work from Ruffolo, Wildman and Ng (both of whom did superb fan art - but then Pat himself turned out some gorgeous cover and poster work). Those raw pencils Wildman sells at conventions don't look particularly impressive to me - different from the inks, yes, but not classic work that was butchered.
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