All Hail Megatron Discussion thread

[Sparky Prime]

Sure you can. Look at O6, he's living the dream!

As I said in my previous post, ignoring the problems isn't the same as the story making up for said problems.

[Onslaught Six]

This isn't what you said earlier though. You said the core story makes up for the problems, but as I responded, the problems go to the very core of the story in this case, making it so you can't have the story alone make up for it. Now you're saying you're ignoring the problems, which is something completely different from the core story making up for them.

I am able to ignore the problems 'because' the core story is good enough to justify the ignorance. To use a contrasting example, The Ascending does all kinds of screwy things with continuity--both American and Japanese--but the end result is also 'not good,' hence these continuity problems become a part of why I dislike it.

Now, if IDW's BW comics were, instead, a really well-done tale about modern-day Cybertron using non-show and Japanese characters--for example, a six-issue series about Big Convoy training Maximal recruits, who are then attacked by Magmatron--and if it was *really good,* then I'd be able to see past the fact that it was overwriting BWII and Neo, because it'd be 'good.'

To use yet another example, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I did not like what was done with Deadpool, *not* because he wasn't Exactly Like The Deadpool In The Comics, but rather because the Deadpool we *did* get was horrible.

I dunno.

[Dominic]

You can't get around continuity just because you thought the "core story" was good enough to make up for it. Continuity is part of the "core story". Things like Sunstreaker's Headmaster trauma in particular is a big part of the continuity and was his entire motivation for what he did in AHM. And as I've said, continuity isn't the only problem McCarthy had in writing this story.

I think what O6 is driving at here is that his over-all grade for a story is balanced out between several variables that include consistency with previous material and the merit of the material he is reading at that moment. This is a balance that anybody who reads comics has to strike at some point or another. For example, I might want to give a single issue (or tie-in of "Countdown" a good grade. But, I have to balance that against the fact that it ties in with what was arguably the worst comic of the decade.

In the case of "All Hail Megatron", O6 would argue (and I would agree) that McCarthy did a good enough job of saying something and telling a story that the good balances out the problems.

I never said "All Hail Megatron" was perfect. It is one of my favorite "Transformers" stories. It might be my favorite long-form TF story. ("Man of Iron" clings stubbornly to the top-slot.)

I am willing to blame McCarthy for a few things. "Action Hero" Spike Witwicky in issue 5 is the low point of AHM. (They could just as easily had Spike and his team make it to the city, rather than have Ratbat kill the two guys Spike was with, while Spike magically survived and proved he was a bad-ass.) I am even wiling to blame unclear writing by McCarthy for the second bridge question in issues 8-10. And, the inconsistent character models for several characters were also troublesome. (I can buy Sideswipe and Sunstreaker being rebuilt. But Hound taking a new form is more problematic, as are the Decepticon planes changing robot forms mid-story.)

But, AHM had a good enough idea, and solid execution of that idea, that I will still say it is good.

Along similar lines, continuity can be a bad thing.

I have not been able to read "Spiderman" for about 15 years, as the 90s completely ruined the character. Just when the stink of the 90s started to wear off, JMS came along and completely jacked the title. (I *hate* Spiderman now, and actively want them to just kill him off in the worst way.) Similarly, Kevin Smith's "because I like Oliver Queen" run on "Green Arrow" sullied Green Arrow far more than Dennis O'Neil ever did. And, I just have not been able to read anything with Ralph and Sue Dibny without thinking "Loser Royalty" for about 5 years.

I am able to ignore the problems 'because' the core story is good enough to justify the ignorance. To use a contrasting example, The Ascending does all kinds of screwy things with continuity--both American and Japanese--but the end result is also 'not good,' hence these continuity problems become a part of why I dislike it.

"The Ascending" was dreadful. It read like the kind of fanfic that one used to see back in the day, usually prefaced with a "in my personal continuity" note.


Dom
-hopes IDW does not take the worst elements from the Big 2 and apply it to TF.

[Sparky Prime]

I am able to ignore the problems 'because' the core story is good enough to justify the ignorance.

Again, this is not from what you said earlier. You personally ignoring the problems isn't the same thing as the story itself making up for those problems.

In the case of "All Hail Megatron", O6 would argue (and I would agree) that McCarthy did a good enough job of saying something and telling a story that the good balances out the problems.

And in that I would disagree. The problems in McCarthy's writing are overwhelming on so many levels.

But, AHM had a good enough idea, and solid execution of that idea, that I will still say it is good.

The general idea I'd agree I thought was interesting before it came out, but the execution was terrible. AHM fell flat in my view.

Along similar lines, continuity can be a bad thing.

How exactly can continuity be a bad thing? Continuity is part of how characters grow, change, evolve. The story would eventually become stagnant with nothing to build off of.

I have not been able to read "Spiderman" for about 15 years, as the 90s completely ruined the character. Just when the stink of the 90s started to wear off, JMS came along and completely jacked the title.

JMS is not to blame for the downturn in Spider-Man. The things people hated about his run on the story, were actually editorial mandates from Joe Quesada.

[Dominic]

I am going to ask we take further discussion of Spiderman and such down to
our moribund comics thread.

Actually, lets take the continuity questions down there as well.


As for AHM, McCarthy wrote a more mature TF story that we had been getting. Rather than saying "well, Megatron won, now he is happy and conquering the galaxy", McCarthy gave us a Megatron who did not quite know how to handle his troops after the fight ended. Starscream calls Megatron on this in issue 5 when he asks if Megatron is stalling. While Starscream pokes at Megatron, Skywarp and Thundercracker (along with the Insecticons) provide a clear example of the problems the Decepticons are facing. So what if we did not get explosions on every page, or Furman-esque monologues?

McCarthy had something to say using Transformers, rather than looking for something to say as an excuse to write about Transformers.


Dom
-doing actual moderator stuff for once.

[Shockwave]

I am able to ignore the problems 'because' the core story is good enough to justify the ignorance.

Again, this is not from what you said earlier. You personally ignoring the problems isn't the same thing as the story itself making up for those problems.

In O6's opinion the story itself is making up for those problems which is why he is able to ignore them. You're not, but that's your opinion, not O6's.

Along similar lines, continuity can be a bad thing.

How exactly can continuity be a bad thing? Continuity is part of how characters grow, change, evolve. The story would eventually become stagnant with nothing to build off of.[/quote]

True, but if existing continuity sucks, ignoring it in favor of good writing could only be seen as a good thing. And I'm sure there's a property out there where the fandom has acknowledged that at some point.

[Sparky Prime]

As for AHM, McCarthy wrote a more mature TF story that we had been getting. Rather than saying "well, Megatron won, now he is happy and conquering the galaxy", McCarthy gave us a Megatron who did not quite know how to handle his troops after the fight ended.

Letting the Decepticons run wild on a planet with out the Autobots there to stop them is a "more mature" TF story? Rather than the strategic conquering of the universe? When you get down to the very basics of the story, this sounds more like a fanboy fantasy to me...

McCarthy had something to say using Transformers, rather than looking for something to say as an excuse to write about Transformers.

This has become more of an excuse you use for McCarthy's poor writing than anything else at this point. Whether or not he has something to say is irrelevant if he can't do a good job in telling a story in the first place.

In O6's opinion the story itself is making up for those problems which is why he is able to ignore them. You're not, but that's your opinion, not O6's.

Again, ignoring the problems is one thing, based on ones personal preferences, the story making up for it is another issue entirely.

True, but if existing continuity sucks, ignoring it in favor of good writing could only be seen as a good thing. And I'm sure there's a property out there where the fandom has acknowledged that at some point.

You assume the new continuity would be better. Just rebooting something doesn't guarantee it'll be better than what came before it.

[Onslaught Six]

Again, ignoring the problems is one thing, based on ones personal preferences, the story making up for it is another issue entirely.

I...No. I believe that the story is good enough that I can ignore the problems it has--which is primarily retcons to a continuity I didn't care that much for in the first place.

I'm not trying to pretend that AHM doesn't have flaws. It does! That art shift in Issue 9 is God-awful. And Dom is right about Action Spike over there.

Letting the Decepticons run wild on a planet with out the Autobots there to stop them is a "more mature" TF story? Rather than the strategic conquering of the universe? When you get down to the very basics of the story, this sounds more like a fanboy fantasy to me...

And it was good.

I don't care! I admit it! I enjoy Decepticons smashing the shit out of things! And if AHM is a story that allows that to happen, then I'm all for it. I would have been onboard for that alone. It's better than Jhiaxus making Arcee have a sex change.

And then I 'read it,' and saw stuff like Megatron explaining to Starscream his philosophy for war and why he's stalling. And stuff like Skywarp 'actually' acting like he's the little brother of the Seeker family, and he's getting left behind while Big Brother Starscream gets tangled up in trying to overthrow the leader and Thundercracker doubts if what they're doing is right.

And then--after 25 years--that plot thread that Bob Budiansky scrawled onto the back of a box in Marvel's offices actually *went somewhere,* and Skywarp kills Thundercracker for being a dirty traitor.

That's why AHM is awesome. It's Transformers characters *being Transformers characters.* Soundwave chucks Frenzy out and then Frenzy 'acts like Frenzy,' instead of just being a Rumble clone. Prime is nearly dead for most of the series, and then they fix him up and he gets up and He's Optimus Prime God Damn It, and he makes the awesome inspirational speech and then they go to Earth and kick Decepticon ass.

It's basic. It's formulaic. But the devil's in the details. When you get down to it, there's only been so much good Transformers media, period, and only bits and pieces of them actually fully connect. How *often* do we just get to have Prime show up and 'be awesome like Prime should always be?' We saw it happen in TFTM, and then...very rarely afterwards. The best moment in the 2007 film is when Prime shows up in the city and transforms, because he's 'Optimus Prime' and he's there and he's awesome.

How often do we see Thundercracker actually having doubts about the cause--or even 'doing something about it?' How often have we had the "Mirage is a traitor!" storyline--to the point where, early in AHM, he was the most obvious candidate, because he's Mirage and Mirage is a traitor. Except this time he wasn't! That went somewhere!

And the humans thought Ravage was a dog! That was hilarious and awesome. *That's* why I love AHM.

[Sparky Prime]

It's Transformers characters *being Transformers characters.*

You mean it's Transformers characters acting like some brief back of the box toy descriptions from 25 years ago? We've seen these characters depicted in a multitude of ways over the last 25 years. What's one more slight variation?

Prime is nearly dead for most of the series, and then they fix him up and he gets up and He's Optimus Prime God Damn It, and he makes the awesome inspirational speech and then they go to Earth and kick Decepticon ass.

That has to have been the worst transitions I've ever seen. We got Ratchet saying Prime is already near death might not even survive the procedure to fix him, then a few pages later, he's walking around like nothing happened. Ratchet might be good, but he isn't that good. It didn't feel natural. There should have been something to indicate how difficult it was to get Prime back online, let alone back walking around giving inspirational speeches.

It's basic. It's formulaic. But the devil's in the details. When you get down to it, there's only been so much good Transformers media, period, and only bits and pieces of them actually fully connect.

What? Other stories don't actually fully connect so it's ok if this one doesn't either? They should be striving to do better than that. As for the details... again, it should have been much better than this.

How often do we see Thundercracker actually having doubts about the cause--or even 'doing something about it?' How often have we had the "Mirage is a traitor!" storyline--to the point where, early in AHM, he was the most obvious candidate, because he's Mirage and Mirage is a traitor. Except this time he wasn't! That went somewhere!

Not necessarily Thundercracker, but Decepticons doubting their cause and doing something about it is hardly something new. Mirage not actually being a traitor is hardly new either. Who was it that single handedly shot down a Decepticon ship in MTMTE, sacrificing his way home? And what did his comrades think of him when they figured out he was missing at the time?

And the humans thought Ravage was a dog! That was hilarious and awesome.

Again, that's hardly something new.

[Dominic]

Letting the Decepticons run wild on a planet with out the Autobots there to stop them is a "more mature" TF story? Rather than the strategic conquering of the universe? When you get down to the very basics of the story, this sounds more like a fanboy fantasy to me...

O6 covered this pretty well, but it bear repeating. It was not that the Decepticons were indulging in pointless violence. It was the reason they were shown indulging in pointless violence.

In context, yes, it was pointless. Astrotrain had no practical reason, (beyond Megatron presumably telling him to go wreck things), to kill people in subway stations. But, the Decepticons needed something to do. Reflector needs something to do more than he needs to rip apart humans. (Look at him on that page. He is like a bored kid who broke all his toys.)

In narrative terms, the Decepticons committing pointless acts of violence illustrates their aimlessness. McCarthy is not writing a Garth Ennis type story where sex and violence substitute for ideas. (Aside: Ennis is the only writer Marvel has who has managed to get on my "avoid" list.)

The Decepticons being aimless is the point of the story.

You assume the new continuity would be better. Just rebooting something doesn't guarantee it'll be better than what came before it.

Fair point. As bad as things got for "GI Joe" in recent years, the new IDW series is essentially unreadable. The *only* good thing I can say about it is that it does not impact the previous comics. (What gets me is that the last 2 times they tried a sort of "we are manly and tough" angle with "GI Joe", it failed. "Reloaded" failed inside of a year. And, "America's Elite" was retooled away from that tone.)

But, the longer between reboots, the more baggage builds up, resulting in the need for "Saga" type books that exist to give summaries of long running series. (These can be incredibly difficult to read through, which arguably hurts the titles in question further.)

That art shift in Issue 9 is God-awful.

The inconsistent character models bothered me more than a dip in art quality. Given that in some cases, the character models were the only way to tell when a sequence was a flash-back, keeping them consistent was more important here than it would normally be.

It's better than Jhiaxus making Arcee have a sex change.

Normally, I would dislike that story. But, Furman actually did a good job of showing how *wrong* Arcee was. (I loved the scene where Jetfire just said "she".) And, normally, I am not a fan of a writer, (such as Johns or Morrison), writing a comic about their thougths on a character or plot-point, but Furman did a good enough job in this case that I can forgive it. (On the other hand, they could have just not used Arcee at all.)

You mean it's Transformers characters acting like some brief back of the box toy descriptions from 25 years ago? We've seen these characters depicted in a multitude of ways over the last 25 years. What's one more slight variation?

The thing is that AHM had some of the more substantive handlings of these characters in 25 years.

Not necessarily Thundercracker, but Decepticons doubting their cause and doing something about it is hardly something new. Mirage not actually being a traitor is hardly new either. Who was it that single handedly shot down a Decepticon ship in MTMTE, sacrificing his way home? And what did his comrades think of him when they figured out he was missing at the time?

But this case, it looked like Mirage really might have been a traitor. The "Spotlight" issue could have been read as implying that Mirage was either from an alternate universe, was nutty, or simply had real doubts about what he was doing. (Truthfully, if it had turned out to be an alternature universe Mirage, I would have wound up hating that issue, and possibly AHM as well.)

And, the consequences for Mirage and the Autobots were more severe than "Cliffjumper is suspicious".


Dom
-down to the comic thread.