IDW Transformers Ongoing #1 Info Thread | UPDATE: 8 pg preview

Halfshell · Post by **Halfshell** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:32 pm

I have difficulty regarding any review that uses multiple exclamation marks as "legit."

Especially when it's gushing praise from a distributor with an exclusive variant to push.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:37 pm

I don't know, the fact the review seems to have completely forgotten the death's of proper characters in AHM can only make them legit in my eyes.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:17 pm

Hennessy wrote:They do have other reviews; they did one for Doctor Who #1 where they gaved it 6 out of 10. So the TF review is a legit review.

Got to love that leap of logic there. So anyone who does push biased reviews is going to do it across the board, right? Because that'd really be subtle...

Heinrad · Post by **Heinrad** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:52 pm

Actually, I think most of all that interior monologue was supposed to be Hot Rod. From the way it looks, the beginning, up to "You do what you do" was probably Ironhide. Everything past that was Hot Rod until Prime's speech bubble. That's my impression, anyway.

Which leads to the next question: Yes, they blew a large hole through Ironhide's torso(we'll ignore the fact that his name implies that should be extremely hard), and he was a realtively fast moving target. We then get a wonderfully posed shot of Hot Rod in "I'm standing here holding a tank over my head! Go ahead and shoot me!!!" mode. Why didn't they shoot him, too?

Ironhide: "'Cause he didn't cawl th' editors an' wrahtin' guys a bunch'a slag-suckin' paper-pushers?"

That might have something to do with it. I don't think you won any points with that Archer guy, either.

Ironhide: "Now that was an accident."

Yes, that what most of us thought. But that was a new car, you know......

What worries me most is the fact that we may be back to the "kill a popular character because it's dramatic" mindset. Although, for all we know, all of the first issue may well take place in the Allspark/Matrix/wherever, with Ironhide looking back over his life, and ends with him coming back to life. A touch metaphysical for a blockbuster first issue, but most of the readers will have been reading for a while, or jumped on board with Continum.

Or, it's going to be like the "You're Dead, Jim" issue of Star Trek from DC's original run, and Ironhide will spend most of the issue as a ghost, flitting through a combination of the Autobot base and his own memories until he wakes up at the end wanting Bearclaw's head on a pike.

Polar Claw: "Er......"

Ironhide: "Naw, it ain't you. Ya got too much hair. 'Sides, we ain't inta Beast Wars yet."

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:16 pm

Cliffjumper wrote:Got to love that leap of logic there. So anyone who does push biased reviews is going to do it across the board, right? Because that'd really be subtle...

Did they not have a cover for the Who comic by any chance?

Plus, six out of ten isn't that horrendous is it? Any reviews with less than 5?

Red Dave Prime · Post by **Red Dave Prime** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:04 pm

Need to see it in context but the art not so much grows on you, but the faces dont seem toooo bad after a few more looks. I'm confused though as to why IDW would go for such a drastic change with their main book but not get their other artists to follow suit - Hell the Hot rod cover (for issue 3 I think) of the ongoing is done in the more regular style. I worry that when side by side with Last stand of the wreckers and the bumblebee series the main is going to look so out of place.

The premis of the ongoing is interesting enough But I agree with the use of a main character dying to provoke interest. This is 3 years ahead of what we were reading before. Theres bound to be enough in just catching up to keep the first 2 issues going at least.

Have to point out that Ironhide was written as a tool in AHM so I cant say I'm disappointed he got taken out. Altough at present I dont really have a favourite character as written by IDW.

Hennessy · Post by **Hennessy** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 6:43 am

http://www.previewsworld.com/public/def ... 88936&ssd=

Post by **Blackjack** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 10:04 am

Humans in suits that are ripoffs from GI Joe Crossovers. Prowl actually giving a shit about the Decepticons when manipulating his fellow Autobots wasn't beneath him previously. The faces... not as bad as the Ironhide/Rodimus scene, but still...

Red Dave Prime · Post by **Red Dave Prime** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 12:11 pm

I must be the only one hear to say this but I like the idea that the humans have evolved proper defences. It gives the transformers a genuine reason to transform. Also looks like earth is THE place to go for energon which explains why its so central to both the decpticons and autobots.

Blackjacks gripe about Prowl is one that I can see penetrating this whole ongoing however. There seems to be little to no effort on IDWs part to make characters consistent between series. Just as Hot Rod in Furmans world was vastly different to the Hot Rod in AHM, Prowl looks like he is going to be written very differently from Roches version. Its not that I feel that any one way is better but its very sloppy. It means the characters always reset (unless they are done in the tried and trusted cartoon flavours)

Bad or Good though, maybe IDW would have been better starting this as a whole new continuity. I like some of the ideas but it jars with what we've seen before.

Post by **Blackjack** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 1:09 pm

Yeah, poor ol' Prowl never got a consistent characterization in IDW. With Furman he's either an all-business prick or an all-serious leader of his team. With Shane he's all cheery of a sudden. Roche plays more on the manipulative and prick side, as well as the 'logic' stuff from his toy bio. Now this.

Does anyone find it odd that it's Prowl, instead of 'life is precious' Ratchet, who saves the Decepticon? Come on.

Yeah, the humans must've a way to protect themselves from the transformers, okay, but battlesuits? The Machination did it just fine with assault buggies, some smoke grenades and big guns provided by Scorponok. Spike Witwicky took down Megatron with a tiny slim-sized gun. Don't see the point in making massive battlesuits.

Scratch the art. I suppose I might get used to it. At least there's some redeeming quality in the Ongoing series.

Nevermore · Post by **Nevermore** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 1:23 pm

This soooo comes across as a knee-jerk "The movies did the Autobot/military stuff WRONG, the humans are supposed to ATTACK the Autobots!" approach.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 1:57 pm

Blackjack wrote:Don't see the point in making massive battlesuits.

Battlesuits basically have no practical use, especially for land-based combat - mcha are cool, but beyond that you're reaching. The massive cost and level of tech needed would be better spent on making better tanks, which at least couldn't be crippled by having their limbs blown off (this goes for lots of Gundam as well, as much as I like it).

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 2:10 pm

They work in the GI Joe film as the whole thing is so insanely (brilliantly) daft they seem perfectly normal in comparison with everything else going on. I'm not sure that's going to work here.

Post by **Denyer** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 2:32 pm

Unless there's a "I got myself captured deliberately" plot strand coming up, Prowl is massively out of character. And since the humans are packing lethal force, it's not a sane strategy anyway.

Post by **Blackjack** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 3:18 pm

Battlesuits basically have no practical use, especially for land-based combat - mcha are cool, but beyond that you're reaching. The massive cost and level of tech needed would be better spent on making better tanks, which at least couldn't be crippled by having their limbs blown off (this goes for lots of Gundam as well, as much as I like it).

Yup. The same amount of resources could've been used in equipping tanks and helicopters with the deus-ex-machina gun that Spike uses in AHM. At least those would've made more sense... Meh, screw it all.

They should've hired those Micromasters from Gorlam Prime... what happened to them, I wonder?

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 3:20 pm

inflatable dalek wrote:They work in the GI Joe film as the whole thing is so insanely (brilliantly) daft they seem perfectly normal in comparison with everything else going on. I'm not sure that's going to work here.

That's because GI Joe is based on a cartoon about soldiers who use laser rifles that don't hurt anyone... This dross is probably kidding itself that it's a comic for grown-ups. They can't play the cartoon card after X years of bludgeoning us to death with some of the most pompous, middlebrow comics ever licensed from a toy company.

Post by **Warcry** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 4:52 pm

That preview has done more to kill my interest in the IDW line than 16 whole months of All Hail Megatron could manage. Didn't think that was possible.

Prowl's characterization is so far off from what we've seen before in IDW (or anything else ever) that it's just silly. Hasn't he spent his entire career fighting a war against the Decepticons? Surely he would see Decepticons dying as a good thing, no matter the circumstances?

Turning AHM's macho buffoon Spike into the villain of the piece was a damned weird choice, too. Wasn't he someone we were supposed to sympathize with and cheer for up until now? Considering that he saw the Autobots show up and save Earth and now he's deliberately attacking them (not the faction in general, but the exact same easily-recognizable characters), either he's an idiot or he rivals Circuit Breaker in terms of deliberate blindness to what's going on around him. Some hero.

Heinrad · Post by **Heinrad** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 5:45 pm

I figured the other preview pages were the lead-in.

This..... eh. To an extent, I can see Skywatch's knee-jerk reaction: Giant robots = Bad thing, whether or not they're trying to protect us. Omega Supreme landing on the White House or Parliment might be an accident, but still terribly destructive all the same.

As for the battlesuits....... The only time the development of a giant mecha has made sense in anime was in Macross, and the Valkyrie's have 3 modes altogether, Battroid, Gerwalk, and Fighter. If the Zentraedi had never shown up, it probably would have been seen as foolish and abandoned after a couple of generations of fighters. It's not the best reason, but it's a reason.

But even with the advanced tech gleanned from the SDF-1, it still took the UN Spacy almost a decade to develop something capable. Presumably the Destroids were developed faster, but still......

And it only takes these goobers roughly two years to develop, test, work the bugs out of, and successfully deploy these things? Not only that, but these first pages make the other preview pages take place either at the middle or the end of the book, and if the humans have the tech to do that at the beginning, again one has to wonder why Hot Rod doesn't get ventilated when he's holding the tank over his head, or at least clobbered hard enough so he winds up dropping it on himself.

I do have to say, I still like this Breakdown redesign. Be nice if he showed them why his name is Breakdown, though......

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 6:32 pm

Plus Transformers would tear SDF-1s (and most, if not all, Gundam mechas) apart - it'd just be a hugely expensive way of losing a unit; it's got to be basically impossible for a piloted robot to match the reflexes of a sentient robot for a start... plus they're just mounting avaliable weapons on a diffrent platform - one that gets a little extra mobility in return for making the things pathetically easy to either destroy or disable (even the Autobots can take them down guilt-free by slicing limbs off).

Super Robots would **** most Transformers up, but Real Robots wouldn't stand a chance.

For defending Earth in atmosphere you don't need 'em (most mecha series make the things multi-purpose and get away with it to some extent) - tanks and planes can do the same in this context, in bigger numbers and with less 'green' hardware.

Related-wise it annoyed me in Reign of Starscream (was it?) where Sector 7 get the drop on Starscream with their Landmine bootleg, which turns out to be basically useless. Because you've got to have a robot to fight a robot, right, rather than just Saboting the ****er like they did everyone else...

Heinrad · Post by **Heinrad** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:04 am

For that matter, a Cybertronian would probably beat the almighty hell out of a Zentraedi, one on one.

The Robotech novels, at least, made the attempt to explain how the pilots could move the mecha at least fast enough in Battloid mode to keep up with the flesh and blood Zentraedi foot soldiers, and I think it's because Daley and Luceno borrowed it from Battletech. The helmets use your inner ear and sense of balance. The extension of that, logically, would be that the flightsuits are rigged with sensors so you can move around easily.

And the less said about Nekki Basara and his "Guitar Hero" designed VF-17, the better....... Although that being said, by the point I'm at in Macross 7, he actually hasn't engaged in hand to hand combat. He just keeps singing at the enemy. It doesn't have quite the same effect on the ProtoDevlin as it did on the Zentraedi, but he won't stop trying.

But if you're going for realism, which is presumably what the current writer is going for, mounting something like a Valkyrie's GU-11 gunpod on an Abrams tank as a main gun(gives a Vulcan cannon's rate of fire and uses depleted uranium rounds) would be a lot cheaper, and make a lot more sense, than building a battlesuit.