Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

[Mako Crab]

LOL

I heard a commercial for a casino on the radio years ago and they were making fun of the fact that they couldn't say "craps" on the radio. Amusing poke at censorship while shilling their product.

[Onslaught Six]

And this is why I hardly listen to the radio these days. Well, that and the senseless cutting-up and censorship of songs now. I heard "What it's like" on the radio at work the other day, and among other things, they censored the words 'smoked' and 'Colt-45'. What? They cut out smoking and guns...this must've been the 4kids radio station!

I remember some Saliva song that I liked years ago (that, in retrospect, was kinda shitty--I had shitty taste in music then) that got lots of radio airplay. I remember the middle breakdown mentioning a pistol--and then I saw the video on MTV at one point, and it censored that! They said it on the 'radio!' That makes no sense!

[138 Scourge]

Gah, this is driving me nuts that I can't remember what "What it's Like" is.

Anyway, you want some fun, find the video for the Butthole Surfer's "Pepper" on MTV sometime. They cut out the words "rapist", "shot" "killed" "knife" and all sorts of things. It's amazing that the band's name could even be on the channel.

And then there's a rock song Moby had out at the time, called "That's when I Reach for My Revolver", which got edited into "That's When I Realize It's All Over". Criminy, MTV.

Anyway, I found the BW Omnibus at Border's recently between jobs (got a two, three hour window between 'em, see) and read some of it because I was bored. Wow. Well, really didnt' care for "The Ascending" at all. Trying to cram in every single character just results in all of 'em being slighted. Plus, it's extremely weak not explaining why some of the characters are identical (though, I did like comment by some robot or other involving Injector and one of the Blendtrons), I mean, why does generic villain of the piece look just like Rampage, a fairly important character from BW? (I know generic villain has a name, I just can't recall it, and frankly, he doesn't deserve one).

Anyway, comic, there's reasons that he show decided not to have every single damn character from the toys in there. Because they couldn't afford it. But still, it worked out so that the characters were a lot stronger, or at least seemed like it because we saw a lot more of 'em.

[Onslaught Six]

Generic villain is Shokaract, a Botcon toy from years past. He looks just like Rampage because, uh...well, he just does.

And to be fair, Shokaract was drawn in Omega Point is a much looser, more traditional TF style, so he didn't quite look like Rampage. Just take a look.

And to be fair, Shokaract's nemesis during Omega Point was Apelinq--a guy who coincidentally looked like TM Optimus Primal.

[138 Scourge]

Right right right. I knew that guy had a name, I just couldn't recall it. Shockaract, well, that just rolls of the tounge. As, of course, does Apelinq. So anyway, generic villain looks pretty good in that one illustration, actually.

I'm not so much asking why he looks like Rampage, because I know why, really. BotCon toy repaint, sure, same reason that Sandstorm strongly resembles Scorponok only in better colors*. Seems like using BotCon repaints would maybe be something to not do in your mass-audience comic, or if one was going to, why not give a lil' explanation..? Ah, y'know, I honestly don't care. I don't think that this particular story could have been made more like something I'd like anyway, so I'ma just drop it.

...So, did they ever show Cohrada's pre-Beast mode?






"Better" is a completely subjective term and not to be taken as a statement of objective fact kthnx.

[Onslaught Six]

Who the hell says The Ascending is a "mass-audience" comic? Seriously, everything about this comic says "niche audience." People who enjoyed BW for what it was will hate it because the reason they enjoyed BW (the characters) are only there in a very limited capacity. People who enjoy toy-only characters will hate it because the toy-only characters are wasted, because there's so many of them. (The exception to this is probably Razorbeast--and nobody likes Razorbeast.) People who enjoyed BWII and Neo will hate it because it bastardizes everything we loved about those serieses. So, really, who the hell was this comic trying to sell itself to?

[138 Scourge]

Hah, good point. Lemme try that again, more like "Would-be Mass-audience comic". Really, TF comics are kinda a niche anyway, but you'd think you'd want to make a book that appeals to...someone, somewhere.

[Dominic]

...So, did they ever show Cohrada's pre-Beast mode?

I think he is shown to be a gun emplacement. I could be wrong though.


The only plan with the "Beast Wars" comics was to show a bunch of characters. Furman had nothing to say, nor any plan to set up anything beyond yet another faux-epic.

Furman could have gotten away with using BotCon characters.....if he had something worthwhile to write using them.

Scourge nailed it when he pointed out the strengths of "Beast Wars". Yes, the limited cast was a budgetary issue. But, it resulted in disciplined writing. In the case of the comics, there was no top-down pressure to include more toys....because Hasbro did not care. Furman and Yee just through everything they could think of into two comic arcs and what was possibly the worst sourcebook ever made. (I have never seen worse, but Image comic may have set a pretty low bar for quality in the 90s on this front.)

Furman and Yee managed to simultaneously acknowlege factoids about "Beast Wars", (as well as II and Neo), and completely fail to understand any of the virtues of those series. The went out of their way to include every stupid toy, (including McDonald's premiums), even when that meant writing some unintentionally hilarious text that was worse than fanfics from the old UseNet days. And, they did not even manage to include every toy.

I really liked "Beast Wars"....right up until 2006. It is now my least favorite era of "Transformers" in terms of content, and many of the toys have not aged well enough to justify my interest.


Dom
-trukk never ever munky, ever again. Never again.

[andersonh1]

To be fair, there was a story reason for including as many characters as possible in The Gathering. Magmatron was going to Earth to capture Megatron after Ravage failed, but he was also planning to build an army on the side by converting the Axalon crew in the stasis pods. And logically the larger his army was, the better. Had Furman only included a few characters, the illusion of army-building would be hard to sustain.

[Onslaught Six]

Weren't the Destrons in Neo an army, arguably? They could have simply used those characters and inserted them as a third faction during mid-to-late BW (while simultaneously ensuring that this is a splinter continuity, still my biggest gripe with the series) and we could have had a decent series.