New 5 part comic: Sins of the Wreckers

[Dominic]

Just added "Sins of the Wreckers" to my pull-file. Or, as I am calling it, "Transformers: Last Chance to Impress".

Planning to catch up on "More than Meets the Eye" in the next week or so.

[Dominic]

Anybody know anything about the ashcan of "Sins of the Wreckers" released at NYCC?

[JediTricks]

I know that you can read it here, and zoom in pretty deep on it.

https://www.idwpublishing.com/transform ... -1-ashcan/

Not sure how I feel about that set-up or art, but it's not terrible. Those rivets looked like mushrooms to me.

[Dominic]

Thanks for the link. I wonder if this will be based on the idea I wanted to see after "Last Stand of the Wreckers", (Prowl and/or a hit squad trying to shut Verity up). Definitely has potential.

But, if the ash can turns out to be something other than a preview of the first issue, I will just wait for the compilation. (I am beyond sick of companies releasing limited run "zero" or "half" issues for series that are supposed to be mass release. "Armor Wars" was the last time I jumped through a hoop to get my comics, and I still feel dirty about it.)

[Dominic]

Anyone picked this series up yet? Anyone read it?

(My copy is sitting in my pull-file. Marvel keeps dropping compilations, and I want to focus on clearing those out before I start new stuff.)

On flip-through, it looks like the ash-can is in the first issue, so I am in for the duration of the series.

[Onslaught Six]

Waiting on the trade. Roche has a good enough track record with me and I loved Last Stand enough go buy this sight unseen.

[Dominic]

Read the first issue.

It is mostly set-up. But, it is promising enough.

Roche actually runs with a similar idea to what I was thinking when the original series ended. The big difference is that he makes Verity far stupider than I would have.


Does anybody know why Roche and Roberts feel the need to rewrite every 1986 minicar? I am not complaining about his handling of Hubcap. (The 1986 character profile had potential. But, it was only ever used by Fun Publications. And, I like the idea of an Autobot bureaucrat who just happens to be assigned to the Wreckers base.) But, it is a pattern I have noticed.

[Onslaught Six]

I'm thinking it might be a two-part thing. For one, when you're a child, you get toys given to you or bought for you, or you're buying them/picking them out with sometimes limited information. So sometimes you get a toy of a nothing character--like Hubcap, or Pipes, or Swerve. But because you own that toy, and you only own 12 Transformers in total, that character becomes so important to you, and you invent traits or a personality for him; especially if that character is a cipher or a blank slate. How often did we do our own versions of this throughout the ArmEnerTron lines? 86 and I were very well known for taking nothing side characters like T-Wrecks and projecting entire backstories and shit onto them. We invented an entire post-Universe, uh, universe. Iguanus became possibly-transgender and involved with Torca, who chose his altmode based on the local lifeform--elephaorcas, on a jungle planet. You see what I mean?

The Autobot minicars were the cheapest and most plentiful TFs of the era. It's not unreasonable to think Roche had Hubcap as a kid, or Barber had Swerve, and projected some personality similar to what they write now onto those toys. I'm aware that Polar Claw is probably not the John McClane esque snow badass I imagined him to be, but that's how he was to me, and I'll always love the toy because of it.

The other thing is that writers inventing personalities for under-utilized nothing characters is not a new thing, even within TF. Roadbuster, for example, was a nothing character, and Furman invented a whole personality for that guy. Guys like Blaster and Ratchet in the comics were wholly different dudes than they were in the cartoons or even their techspecs (which were also written by Budiansky). Roche and Barber may or may not be paying tribute to that aspect.

(Speaking of Blaster, it's possible that the way I imagine Polar Claw is just Marvel Comics Blaster. Hm.)

[Dominic]

True, official re-writes go back to the Marvel/Sunbow era.

However, I got used to a higher level of consistency from the late Beast-era and "Unicron Trilogy".

As a kid, I generally went with official context. There were actually times that I would stop and think about if I was "playing the cartoon" or "playing the comic". (I never had Blaster. But, Blaster is a good example of a character that was not the same across types of media.) So, "my Hubcap" (never had Hubcap as a kid, but work with me) would have been a sleazy comms officer, because the tech specs were all that I would have had to go from.

(My biggest deviation was having Soundwave and the tapes defect to the Autobots....which I promptly ignored once the Autobot tapes were released in 1986. And, even then, I did not do that if I was playing the cartoon or comic.)

Roche's Hubcap has potential though though, inverting the cliche of "guy who wants to join the bad-ass team" with "guy who just happened to be in the room". And, it is not like there are many of those in TF (nor are there many compelling reasons to keep Hubcap at 1986 spec).


-late edit:

Read issue 2 last night.

Some BW era characters how up, arguably marking the first time that BW has been handled well in IDW.

Is Roche shipping

Spoiler

Verity Carlo and Stakeout?

I might not be so suspicious of this if not for the general tone and direction of the main series. (If this is shipping, I am done.)

I might have misread Hubcap. The reluctance I thought I saw might actually be ineptitude and laziness.


In any case, I generally like where Roche seems to be going with this. If the first Wreckers series was about burying the truth (and related difficulties), this one is about revealing it (and similarly related difficulties).

[andersonh1]

Found issue 2 this past week, so I'll post some thoughts once I've read it. Considering that I'm down on IDW Transformers at the moment, it'll have to be good to get me past that. But Roche has done well in the past, so I'm optimistic.