Infestation discussion

[Dominic]

He does so little now.....


Dom
-not nice at all.

[Onslaught Six]

There is a scene where Overlord is seeing Shockwave off. While they are talking, it is brought up that Shockwave took Grimlock with him. The real reason is pretty obvious, given what happens to every other Autobot on Garrus 9 aside from Fortress Maximus and a few of the Wreckers. In context, it is presumably because Shockwave is still kind of honked off about the events of "Spotlight", (which is kind of ironic considering....)

I don't see Grimlock going down like that. (And even if he did, you know IDW would just bring him back whenever Costa or someone else on the ongoing wanted to use him. Remember when dead meant dead in IDW?)

Typical toyhack: And. *then*, the Wreckers go ahead and do some stupid thing with the computer that nobody cares about instead of trying to save their friend Grimlock. Fuck. LSotW sucks so bad. That hack Roche only uses ONE MAIN CHARACTER and then has the other characters running away from him like douches. Oh yeah, really good writing there.

Oh man you're right.

an Earthforce homage

No. Just....no. Please, by all that is right with the hobby right now, no.

Much of the "Earthforce" run was garbage. Have you actually read those? "Oh no, Slag is in heat and there are no female Cybertronians around!" "Look, Wheeljack and the other Autobots are retarded and managed to get locked out of their house!" "Wow, polar bears are awesome!"

Yeah, there were some good points in "Earthforce". But, the run as a whole was pretty bad.

Oh, come on, those bits are hilarious. it's like a bad sitcom! And alright, it wouldn't be a strict Earthforce homage in that sense, but, you know. The idea behind it!

[Dominic]

I just do not see the point of homaging bad comics. But, I do want to see what happens with Sunstreaker and Ironhide.

Grimlock was written as being Shockwave's prisoner specifically so he would not have to have been killed on Garrus-9. I can even see Shockwave trying to cut a deal with Grimlock. ("Now, if I let you go, you have to promise that you and the Dinobots who are still out there will never ever ever, and I mean ever, try to kill me again. Deal?")

Dom
-remembers when "dead" meant "dead" in comics as a whole.

[138 Scourge]

-remembers when "dead" meant "dead" in comics as a whole.

When would that have been, exactly?

[Dominic]

It is only within the last 15 years that the important deaths stopped sticking.

[Shockwave]

I've always thought of comics books as soap operas for geeks. They tend to use a lot of the same cliches. OMG Evil twin! OMG Back from the dead!

Shockwave
-And that should be our queue for a nice long discussion on the differences between the soap opera and comic book genres

[Gomess]

Agreed. The only difference is there's SOME comics I like!

[Sydew]

I used to care about the dead staying dead on comics bit, but nowadays I really don't mind at all. It's just comics and to me part of the fun is to not take it that serious.

[andersonh1]

Alright, got Infestation #2 today. Part one is the setup, part two is the payoff... but does it? Well... yes and no.

There's a lot of exposition early on as the zombie person fills us in on just who the enemy is and what it wants. It's a standard "villains monlogue" section, but for those of us (like me) who won't be reading the other books, I suppose it's necessary to define the threat.

So the Bots, Cons and humans fight the zombies. Kup gets to show how tough he is and why he's lasted this long. And that's good, but I can't help but feel that more could have been done with the Prowl/Kup connection, set up in AHM coda #15. It's put to good use here, but I was hoping for something more somewhere down the line. More heart of darkness and dead universe story elements show up, which is good. But then Kup's final (?) fate hardly seems like something that should have been told in the pages of a two-issue crossover promotion that a lot of regular readers might not even pick up. I almost didn't. But the old guy pulls it off and saves the day. I suppose, continuity-wise, that this places this series after Wreckers ends, but before Bumblebee is shot in issue 12 of the ongoing.

In the end, Infestation is a curiousity. Entertaining, and makes good use of characters and continuity from IDW's past stories. But I wonder if it shouldn't have been more of a stand-alone project. It almost seems like essential reading to see what Galvatron is currently up to and to learn Kup's fate. It's certainly an odd little two-part story.

[Dominic]

Making "Infestation" a stand-alone story would have defeated the whole point of the series, namely forcing people to pick up books they would otherwise (and wisely) skip. And, if only in the case of "Transformers", it is also trying to draw people into reading "Heart of Darkness". I am going to pick up that series. But, I would have anyway.

Of course, if Schmidt's same-breath flip-flops regardling "GI Joe" are anything to go by, there is some editorial ambivalence about "Infestation".


Dom
-not bothering to go to the comic shop this week.