Infiltration #0-6/TPB

[inflatable dalek]

Originally posted by Thefallenone
i was thinking more off Star Trek Voyagers EMH (Emergency Medical Hologram)

Who basicaly is Rimmer. But 35% more rubish.

[Jetfire426]

i picked up issue 1 today along with all the other covers as well as the foil cover 1A or something like that.. the one with the 2 people on the cover.. well anyhoo.. i though the story was pretty cool, it was a good read...

[Prowl1984]

Originally posted by Thefallenone
personally i found it a good start up for IDWs G1 series;)

i don't get why you all Flame Verity she's cool:D Hunters not bad, i really don't like Pinky whats hes name:rant: he seems likely to join the Decepticons (just a feeling:rolleyes:) oh yeah the cover i got is Bumblebee:smokin:

jesus Funking H Christ...never before have i seen such an idiotic and pointless use of smileys....

Just picked up #1, missed #0 though. Verity's extremely annoying but other than that i enjoyed it. Ratchet got some great characterisation and the holographic image was a nice touch, better than those weird inflatable drivers they had in the Marvel run...

Also, there's a "contest" at the end to guess all the TF that are on the inside cover. The first one to mail in their response (and is correct) wins. Unfortunately for me, outside of Megs and Prime, I got nothing.

i've got ironhide, sunstreaker, bumblebee, prime, megatron, astrotrain and blitzwing. i'm more certain of the autobots than the decepticons though.

[Nevermore]

Ratchet's holo driver is cool. Like the idea, it's basically an extrapolation of a) the puppet drivers from "Rock and Roll-Out" and b) Hound's short-lived holo driver from MTMTE.

Like the pacing, building up suspense and the "sense of wonder". For the entire issue you keep thinking "where are these robots, where are these robots...", and when they finally show up on the last page, it's really got this "da-DAAAAA!" feel.

Verity's mildly annoying, true. Still didn't learn a lot about that "Jimmy Pink" character other than he's good with cars, too. Hope that changes next issue.

Still somewhat undecided about the colors. Though with Josh having colored at least a few pages, I'd better not say anything bad until I found out which ones he did.

Best line: "Get inside me!"

Oh, and I got the Guido Bumblebee cover.

[Denyer]

Originally posted by Nevermore
For the entire issue you keep thinking "where are these robots, where are these robots..."

Dunno, I'm fairly familiar with the idea of them being the vehicles.

I've seen a few really odd remarks over the last few weeks, to the effect of Transformers not being Transformers if they've transformed -- the posts using 'Transformer' as a synonym for 'robot'.

Originally posted by Nevermore
found out which ones he did.

http://www.allspark.com/forums/index.ph ... =315&st=20

Verity is... well, a fairly typical female teenager, to my mind. The "sass" doesn't feel particularly caricatured. Although none of the human characters are much more than devices to guide the plot, thus far.

I think I'll wait until #2 arrives, then do a block review.

Other (coherent) reviews for the site welcomed.

[Sir Auros]

Finally got mine in the mail today from the comic shop (it's 1.5 hours away now so it's all through the mail for me), and I thought it was good except for Verity.

I have to disagree strongly with Denyer in that she does not act like a teenage girl. Unless you're imagining a teenage skater girl from the 1990s who's gone to the X-TREME! or something like that. The whole net-bum-drifter angle felt like it was trying to hard to be "with it," and was groan-inducing for me at least.

Other than really disliking her character, I thought it was pretty solid. No insanely confusing layouts, no insulting throw-back references, and we actually got to see some Transformers in both modes. All in all, they're heads above DW at this point in the game.

[Denyer]

Originally posted by Sir Auros
Unless you're imagining a teenage skater girl from the 1990s who's gone to the X-TREME! or something like that.

I was thinking secondary age kids being brattish and lippy, really. How old is the character supposed to be?

Looks too healthy to genuinely be drifting, or have been long -- more likely it's summer, Hunter's on break and she's trying to get away from family / foster family. If Furman persists in giving none of the characters more background, or being able to disappear at will for months on end, then I'll agree with anyone it's forced convenience and rather sloppy writing.

The net-acquaintances bit I thought was fairly accurate for our generation, just as Hunter's fairly typical of the later generation of web users for whom registering a domain name isn't a big deal.

[Denyer]

Issue #2 is due out on February 8th.

[Zisteau]

Well, I quite like where this series is going, and I like the writing and art, and the issue was good. 2 complaints though.

1) Not a whole lot happened.

2) Whats up with the nine-thousand variant covers? I thought they said there were done with that crap.

[Denyer]

Bearing in mind I won't have a copy for a few days...

1) The amount of text here and here (which I've only glimpsed, as I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers) suggests a fair spread of action.

2) Who said what where now?

[Zisteau]

1)I liked it, but the entire issue is basically just a car chase.

2)There are 7 covers just for this issue. I thought IDW said they weren't going to be doing this gimmicky sh*t.

[Denyer]

Since we're going to wind up having this discussion every month otherwise... from the horse's mouth in December:

Ryall:

Hey, everyone--

While I do think a little cynicsm is healthy, I have to wonder why
people always assume the worst right at the start?

If anyone thinks we're doing these covers to get rich, especially
on the 0 issue that cost only $0.99 but necessitated a printer
make-ready for every single cover, they really don't understand
the business at all. That issue was never going to be anything
but a "loss-leader" for us. We gave away the Retailer Summits
(the ones with EJ's great "OP" and "Megs" covers) for free. We
did the special BotCon cover for the faithful fans just to show
them that the property was back and that we had big things
planned and we valued their loyalty. We printed those a full
month before the rest of the #0 issues, just to get them to that
con on time, but that meant going back to press again for the
others a month later. Anyone who knows printing knows there's
a huge expense involved in that.

As for the covers, EJ's right--since we announced we were
doing these comics again, fans from all over had strong
requests for work from many of the artists that got screwed over
in the DW implosion--Don and James and Woodward and
Guido and others. We were deliberately NOT doing the cash-
grab thing and flooding the market with too many TF books at
the start, so that didn't leave much room for us to give all these
guys work, except in the form of covers.

But there's more to it than that. You've all said you wanted TF
comics to come back. Well, in a market that's dominated by
superhero books, one that's increasingly hard for independent
publishers to survive in, that's a tough prospect. Look at the
market now--80% of all comics shops are either Infinity Crisis or
House of M crossovers. How does a small publisher find shelf
space in that kind of world, especially with a comic based on a
property that let down a lot of fans and retailers when it went
away a year ago?

Simple--we have to give retailers incentives to order our books
over yet another X-title. Yet retailers KNOW the X-crap will sell.
So where's the incentive to order more risky books, like
Transfomers? it's in the form of little rewards to them, limited
covers and such. If they order X copies, they get a limited cover
they can then sell at a higher price to offset the orders. I'm
personally not into paying more for an exclusive cover, so I
don't love that part, but if fans DO want to do that, who can
begrudge them or the retailer for selling it? That's what a free
market is all about.

I make sure that the interiors of these books are the exact
same, no matter what cover is on it. So you really only need to
buy ONE copy to get the story. Some DVDs put out multiple
boxes for the same movie, yet you only need buy one to get the
movie itself. Same thing here. If you're not into variant covers,
buy the one you like.

There's another part of this. If we don't come out of the gate
strong on these first few issues, if orders don't start out big, it not
only dooms the property again, but it could have other serious
repurcussions for the company, too. We do NOT want to see
any other company ever go the route of Dreamwave. We're
putting a business plan in place to avoid that, and to keep
these TF comics going for a long time. But the only way to get
these initial orders up is through incentives to retailers. You can
hate this process--believe me, I'm not crazy about a market that
makes it this hard for anything other than a Marvel or DC book
to survive--but don't mistake it for greed on our part. it's
anything but. We even priced these books at $2.99 instead of
our normal $3.99, knowing this will lead to decreased revenue
but hopefully make the books a bit more accessible to readers
of all ages.

So I'd ask that you all look beyond the easy, and wrong, excuse
that we're doing these covers out of greed. Hardly. We're doing
this to ensure as best we can that the books survive so we can
keep doing them. Comics is a business of attrition. Every issue
sells worse than the previous one; so if we start off with the
sales DW had at the end, the books are doomed. We're trying
to be smart and forestall that. We're not out buying Porsches or
fancy high-rise apartments. And we're certainly not out to screw
the fanbase. I've been doing everything I can to offer even more
value in these books, too, letters pages and other things that
consume a lot of time for no benefit other than offering the best
possible book we can for the fans. So to see everyone just
assume the worst about us does hurt, whether it's only a
message board post or an e-mail.

I'm still a comics fan as much as a Publisher--I still buy comics
every Wednesday. I love George Perez, so it's only his covers I
want on those Infinite Crisis books. Others want the Jim Lee
covers. Some people want both. Seems to me that there's
something for everyone, no matter your buying tastes. Also
seems to me that the bigger publishers, who are backed by
multi-billion dollar corporations and sell 250K copies of some
comics, don't need to do variant covers as much as some of us
little guys. But whatever--I don't begrudge them, I just buy what I
want.

In other news, I know we put EJ at a bit of a disadvantage with
the 0 issue, since he didn't get much of a chance to show you
how he draws actual Transformers yet. But man, after seeing
his stunning pages on issues 1-3, I just know that he will take
his place at the very top of the best TF artists of all time. Just
you wait and see...

http://www.thetf.net/forum_posts.asp?TI ... PN=0&TPN=2

A bit of extra work for artists, a choice for those who want one, a couple of levels of collecting for those who want it.

Personally I like being able to get a set of covers by a particular artist. It makes me a bit happier with my purchases, and satisfied customers tend to be better for business than unsatisfied ones -- or so I've heard.

[Zisteau]

Well then where's my Don Fig cover, damnit?!?

[inflatable dalek]

Well I definately liked it- As Zisty says there isn't a huge amount of plot advancement but that's not really what it's about. The issues about building up the power and strength of these alien machines and emphasising that we should all be very, very scared (Ratchet pointing out he's only a medic was actually a neat way of saying "There's more heavily armed ones out there than even this guy...).

The only real suprise was how eager Ratchet was to lead the two Runsey's on a mad chase through a busy motorway that must have killed a few dozen people at least. Considering that in previous continuities most Autobots would probably have surrendered rather than place inocents at risk (no matter the importance of their mission) this might suggest the Autobots aren't going to be quite as heroicly nobel this time round.

Oh, and the cliffhanger left me a bit confused, but a reread may sort that out.

[Denyer]

I think there's a decent amount of plot without it being made bludgeoningly obvious -- we now know that Starscream is constructing something using discovered raw materials, it's significant in this continuity that the Decepticons are breaking with deception, we're told that the Decepticons have laid waste to entire worlds, etc. There are some major breaks with previous canon, insofar as it's looking unlikely that either faction are on Earth by accident.

More focus is definitely being places on characterisation in these issues.

And I'm loving it...

I wonder whether that 'M' on the wall stands for 'Marvels Corp Inc.' or something similar. Would be a nice little in-joke.

Now we've got a decent amount of material, I'll do reviews. Anyone else want to contribute alternate ones?

Dalek, I don't think Ratchet was expecting the Decepticons to break cover and just kill everything in sight, else he wouldn't have taken a major highway.

[inflatable dalek]

Originally posted by Denyer
Dalek, I don't think Ratchet was expecting the Decepticons to break cover and just kill everything in sight, else he wouldn't have taken a major highway.

But he didn't seem especialy bothered about all the death... Previously we'd have had great big speech bubles about the cost and futility of war... It's not a bad change mind...

[Denyer]

Ratchet himself is driving wildly (but mostly safely, only one front end collision is due to him) -- the Decepticons just bouncing other cars off themselves is prompt for his "This is very bad! [...] This is not the way it happens. [...] they just don't care anymore." speech.

[Commander Shockwav]

Got it. Bought Guido's Thundercracker pursuing Ratchet cover.

In short, issue #2 was slightly better than issue #1, which is always a good sign because you want to see things improve issue to issue. The pace and action picked up some, and we got more robot on robot action (Ratchet is turning up to be a badass mutha), which is want TF fans really want to see when you get down to it. Artwise, another strong issue, but its time to sup up the background coloring to something other than crap-brown as we move away from the desert scene.

The negative of this issue is that again, the story didn't seem to progress much, and one could say that #0, #1, and #2 could be looked at as a single giant-sized issue of Ratchet vs. The Battlechargers/Thundercracker and an introduction to the human cast. This is not a major gripe with me as I can live with the pacing as long as it helps steer us to a grandslam finale. (Its interesting to note, however, that those who had a problem with DW's slow pacing have not complained about the pacing here much.)

Overall, I give this issue a "B". I have a feeling things are going to get a lot better from here as we start to understand what the Decepticons are really after and what the Autobots intend to do about it. You just know the story in the next issue is going to unfold in a big way.

If ever there was a chance for new fans to get on board with the Transformers, this was their chance. Let's hope they added it to their comic list.

[Denyer]

Originally posted by Commander Shockwav
Its interesting to note, however, that those who had a problem with DW's slow pacing have not complained about the pacing here much.

Dreamwave was slow pace with large amounts of rehash and large amounts of characterisation drawn from referencing episodes and profiles. IDW is offering more new stuff (even if you aren't a huge fan, human characters that don't induce violence are a step forward) and heavier-hitting revelation than character re-introductions.

Like I say, the plot is building without the pieces being joined together for the reader -- leading to stuff to speculate about, without plot points being picked up, toyed with and not developed. Everything we see so far is proving fairly relevant.

It's something I'd like to develop more in a proper review, but whereas DW Vol. 1 attempted a cinematic style (but the art and particularly the ludicrous exaggeration of sizes just couldn't carry some of the scenes) we're getting an effective rendering of that here -- as in effective cinema, things are only being emphasised where they'll have most impact, such as with the first unveil of the new Autobots. That's partly Su, but I think it's mostly because the writer is in the hotseat, and the writer has a fair amount of experience -- it's not a situation where Chris turns in an overview, Pat makes up the story and Chris tries to write words around the pencils, in the old Stan Lee style.

We could have had that with Dark Ages had DW not wanted as many full-page splashes, or Simon actually had more idea of where the story could go, rather than suddenly discovering bits of War Within were being referenced by the G1 ongoing. Writing a bunch of stuff set in the past of a continuity can become very directionless when the present of a continuity isn't established either.

[inflatable dalek]

Originally posted by Denyer
Ratchet himself is driving wildly (but mostly safely, only one front end collision is due to him) -- the Decepticons just bouncing other cars off themselves is prompt for his "This is very bad! [...] This is not the way it happens. [...] they just don't care anymore." speech.

He should have expected that really though, considering that the two Con's had just done a large Robot Mode attack in broad daylight at the garage. Not to mention that Runabout and Runamuck (who, based on their bit of dialouge are roughly similar charecters to their Marvel counterparts) are hardly the sorts of people you'd send on a covert subtle mission. Both of those things should have told him the goal posts had moved before a bunch of people died. It's easily explainable mind- Ratchet is a medic after all so adaptive millitary stratergy proberly isn't his strong point.

I also have to agree that the pacing is much better than most of DW's stuff- Tellingly the cliffhangers to both issues to date have felt like natural end points rather than "Here's a ready made graphic novel we've split into six even parts" feeling you got from a low of the old firms stuff.

Mind, I love that as soon as they've decided to stop being all secretive and hidden the Decepticons decide to whack a huge 'Con symbol up outside their secret headquaters...