TF/Joe cross-over book announced

Ancillary, non-main-line stuff. Star Wars TF, Speed Stars, Titanium Series, Robot Heroes, that sort of thing. They're kinda neat, but we all know they're not really that important. Admit it, you know it's true.
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JediTricks
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

Post by JediTricks »

Onslaught Six wrote:If it's going to be an ongoing, and it lasts long enough, it'd be cool to see someone with actual talent give it a go.
This is Tom Scioli's baby, apparently, and I doubt we'll see anybody be allowed to handle it.


So i read the letter and the page-by-page commentary, and I feel conflicted. Part of me feels like they simply don't see how overboard they got with this and have their hearts in the right place, and part of me feels like they're circle-jerking each other as they devolve into homages and intentions that overshadow the project itself. It still feels like a Mad Magazine parody, but now it also feels sad, like they have their heads too far turned around when it comes to comics and it blinds them to actually making this work on its own. Also, harkening back to Kirby's Super Powers pages misses that Kirby knew when to reel it in, and he was busting out with newer ideas, and his art didn't look intentionally like something children could draw - you can't "out-Kirby" Jack Kirby, you can only embarrass yourselves trying.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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Issue #1 - If you can get past the ridiculous art and the phony pulp effect printed on every glossy-paper page, and the woefully forced pseudo-Kirby aspect, there is something oddly compelling about this book -- it may be the effect of watching a train wreck in slow motion, but it may also be that this book has story on every page and every panel is trying to get at something. That said, the book is chocked full of references, it cannot help but look backwards in every conceivable manner and that does get distracting at times.

The story picks up some time after issue 0, with General Flagg trying to recruit Snake Eyes who is living masked in the woods with Timber. Cut to a battle to capture the remnants of Cobra in the little town of Springfield while a secret element of Cobra led by Destro and a shadowy figure plots to outfox the Joes. Meanwhile, Duke and Scarlett return from downtime after the events of ish 0 and are heading back to Joe hq (something that Scioli botches, but reading the commentary it's clear the guy still is further out of his element than he'd like to admit, he was into the Joe cartoon and the toys and that was basically it) while news of a rogue planet (Cybertron) entering the solar system hits the public with little effect. The Joes plan to meet with the first emissaries of this planet, and it turns out to be Starscream, Soundwave, and Shockwave as vehicles of Rumble (blue :roll: ), Laserbeak, and Ravage speaking for the Decepticons. The Joes offer peace, Ravage accepts but thinks they are surrendering, when he says as much it starts a fracas that escalates setting off a plan to strike at these Decepticon emissaries with a space-based mega-laser. Snake Eyes slinks in to take revenge on Starscream while some captured Joes (Hawk, Flash, and Lady Jaye) escape from the clutches of Soundwave. Afterwards, the final reveal of the issue is that we see this is only part of the plan, the other part is a significant Joe invasion force in the Defiant space vehicle preparing to land on Cybertron; meanwhile the secret Cobra element turns out to be "Serpentress" (a bandaged woman in Serpentor's outfit that is likely going to be Baroness) and rescues the wounded Decepticons cassettes.

The art is the same insane stylized throwback, there's a lot of color and a lot of ideas just coming out of the woodwork, but this art does feel a tiny bit clearer as a storytelling medium than it did in ish 0. The storytelling doesn't decompress much, it goes balls to the wall and feels like something a kid would do, throwing pacing to the wind -- in some ways, it feels like a fresh-air approach to recent comics, while in other ways it's just a mishmash.

Grade: C+, it's sort of fascinating, almost readable yet almost terrible.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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Damn, I really had a hard time finding this thread. Anyway... Got the first two issues of this on Wednesday.

I'm gonna preface this by saying that I have stuck with Transformers comics through some of it's lowest points. Even through the worst of Furman's epic cosmic gibberwank phase and era of Dreamwave's TF/Joe crossovers and Devil's Due's GI Joe TF crossovers. But, IDW has really been pushing that dedication with their TF books. The Prime comic was the first title that I dropped due to simply not reading. Now, with the TF/Joe crossover, this will be the first time that I actually feel compelled to return a comic back to the shop. It's that bad.

I couldn't even get through the first ten pages of this. I mean, I went back and trudged through it, so I have at least read the entire first issue, but this thing fails at so many basic technical levels that I'm done. First is the art. I could draw this shit better and I'm not even a good artist. Scioli does not draw backgrounds. Seriously. 90% of the panels have no backgrounds. He also doesn't draw shading or much in the way of perspective. The end result is it looking like a page out "Where's Waldo?" rather than a comic. Second, and this was the ultimate killer for me: Dialogue is unreadable because of stuff being placed over existing word balloons. This happened twice. TWICE!!! It shouldn't happen at all! The first was in Soundwave's chest where Hawk, Lady Jaye and... some other guy where trapped and laser guy was saying something but Scioli only knows what because the fucking gunfire effects blocked out his word balloon. Then a few pages later, Shipwreck was saying something but again, who the fuck knows because General Flagg's word balloon was pointlessly blocking it out. Oh and, said word balloon was way too big for what he was saying anyway, which means Shipwreck's dialogue was cut for no God Damned reason! Now, I could have forgave that as a one time oops, but as soon as I saw that something that should never happen in any comic book anywhere ever was going to be an ongoing repeated thing, I stopped reading.

And the story didn't really grab me either. Snake Eyes left the Joes and is now a traitor but maybe not. The Joes were tracking an asteroid but it's not an asteroid, it's actually Cybertron and they draw Autobot and Decepticon logos in a field to "welcome" them and the Decepticons show up but then they nuke 'em from orbit and... after that I just didn't give a shit. The technical problems with this book were so bad that it distracted me from a story that I wasn't that psyched about to begin with. Oh and as for story telling, Scioli can't even get the characters names right. Remember up top where I refer to "Laser guy"? I took that word for word from the comic because that's what other characters called him on page, IN CONTEXT!!! Seriously, I didn't make that up!

My grade: Negative eleventy billion Fs. This piece of shit shouldn't be in your collection for fear that it may poison and/or infect the rest of your comics. The paper would not be comfortable usable as toilet paper although you may be able to start a campfire with it. Which may be it's best use. If you get this, you should do exactly that: Kill it. Kill it with fire! In fact, I might suggest taking a page from the book's story and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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Shockwave wrote:My grade: Negative eleventy billion Fs. This piece of shit shouldn't be in your collection for fear that it may poison and/or infect the rest of your comics. The paper would not be comfortable usable as toilet paper although you may be able to start a campfire with it. Which may be it's best use. If you get this, you should do exactly that: Kill it. Kill it with fire! In fact, I might suggest taking a page from the book's story and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
This was an awesome review. It really made me laugh. :lol:
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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I love it when a damning review telling you not to read it has the opposite effect. I pretty much have to check this thing out now!
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

Post by Shockwave »

I hereby propose that from now on, bad art and writing in comics should be known as... Scioliosis!
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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I hereby propose that from now on, bad art and writing in comics should be known as... Scioliosis!
Seconded.

I love it when a damning review telling you not to read it has the opposite effect. I pretty much have to check this thing out now!
This series is terrible. I have read better from Fun Publications.

It is arguably worse than DC's "Countdown". (I am not being sarcastic.

I couldn't even get through the first ten pages of this. I mean, I went back and trudged through it, so I have at least read the entire first issue, but this thing fails at so many basic technical levels that I'm done.
All of the technical failures are intentional stylistic choices. In that respect, the worse the book is, the more highly we should be praising it. (Author intent is to be terrible. Mission accomplished.)

Scioli is going for Cambridge/indie appeal. The problem is that the joke is shallow and has no real staying power. (The FCBD issue covers that ground more than well enough.)


The real problem is that there is no evidence that Scioli can do better. None of his indie work shows an talent. He does not seem to be able to write or draw. He has no demonstrable talent for laying out a page. He does not seem to have any ideas. But, he makes money.
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

Post by Shockwave »

I get that the art "style" is on purpose, but having said art actually cover up dialogue? I have a hard time believing that's intentional. Especially since It didn't seem to happen in the second issue (yes, I forced myself to trudge through it).
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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There's really no way it's not intentional. Given that Scioli's writing and drawing the thing, it wouldn't make sense for him to 'accidentally' draw over his own dialogue. On top of that, this thing has to pass through an editor, who would certainly catch it were it a mistake and make sure it was fixed.

I'll have to steal/read this thing at some point to see exactly what the effect is that you're talking about, but it could be Scioli's attempt at approximating action covering up or muffling dialogue, or perhaps some brilliantly clever commentary on dialogue in these sorts of comics not being that important compared to the actual action happening, IE: "Don't worry about those words! The action in the foreground is what's important!". Just from what I've glanced over in regards to this book, Scioli seems to be going for a theme of "The toy tie-in comics from my childhood were better because they were simpler and easier. Who needs all that nice art and actual plot and well-written dialogue for smarty-pants smart people?"

From what I've seen, you could remove the text and colors from the pages of this thing and it would look indistinguishable from a coloring book.
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Re: TF/Joe cross-over book announced

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So far, it's only happened twice. Once, it was "Laser guy's" dialogue getting largely covered up by gunfire effects. The second one... I don't know what the fuck happened. General Flagg's word balloon was twice the size of the actual text, causing the additional size to cover up half of Shipwreck's dialogue. If it had been to proper size it wouldn't have covered up anything. I seriously can't believe that was intentional. I'm sorry, but I just can't. Yeah, it should have been caught by editing but sometimes shit doesn't. Look at Transformers: Armada cartoon. There was one episode in the first season where Optimus Prime refers to his mini-con as Leader-1 and the very next word of dialogue was Megatron referring to his mini-con as Leader-1. How many levels of editing should have caught that? Like 12. Or something. But, case in point, it happens and if it happens on TV I'm guessing it can happen in comics too.
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