Transformers - ongoing series

[Shockwave]

But, the English acted iike it was the blitz all over again. To here England tell it, you would have thought that Russians were killing random people and eating little British babies. (Seriously, you there were people on ATT back in the day who argued "TRUKK NOT MUNKY" who looked more grown up next to England in 06.)

As someone who was- believe it or not- living in England in 2006, I'd like to request that you learn the difference between "the English" and "the English media". No working class person- and probably no middle class person, for that matter- gave a shit about Russia taking out a defector on "our soil". You must realise you're grouping me in with all these insults. Semantics *are* important.

It's the same way here. It's why I generally avoid the news because they always try to put some sort of slant on it that I don't agree with. The only media I've even got the slightest respect for would the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And that's mostly because they tend to give news the MST3K treatment.

[Dominic]

Sorry G. But, for the record, I know working/middle class Americans who thought it was "teh worst thing evar".

(Not that I am saying you were one of the whiners or nothing.)

Dom

[andersonh1]

Dom likes to read a little too much into things sometimes.

Anyway! Get this, James Roberts is writing two issues of the series now.

Yep, I frontpaged the news a couple of days ago.

[Gomess]

Sorry G. But, for the record, I know working/middle class Americans who thought it was "teh worst thing evar".

(Not that I am saying you were one of the whiners or nothing.)

Ok, cool. And I'm sure there's plenty out there, but it's no good to say "the UK did this" or "the UK thought that". 'Specially since you know me.

Anyway, back to the comics. =3

(Who is James Roberts?? YES I HAVE AN ENGLISH DEGREE SHADDUP)

[Shockwave]

Seriously, I have no idea who he is either but you all know my attitude towards writers. Furman was the only one who's name I cared to learn.

[138 Scourge]

Unless my Alzheimer's is flaring up, Roberts is the fella that co-wrote "Last Stand of the Wreckers" with Roche. So he's probably pretty decent.

[Sydew]

And wrote the very cool short story "Bullets" for the Wreckers trade.

[Shockwave]

Escalation 3-6: The pacing has really picked up. The Autobots continue to try to follow the Machination and Ironhide gets scrapped in the process. And apparently they're not the only humans looking for Transformers. We see Skywatch for the first time taking over an archeological dig where they found Shockwave and the Dinobots. And they've apparently already got Ravage and Laserbeak. Megatron realizes that their presence on Earth is already known and decideds to call in Sixshot. Astrotrain and the others decide that Megatron's lost it and decide to revive Starscream.

Devastation: I read the whole thing in one shot and it didn't take long. It's that fast of a pace. Sixshot shows up and asks Megatron if he's sure he wants him there since the planet seems to be only at stage 2, Megatron tells him that the time for stages is long past and orders him to find the Autobots and kill them. The Reapers also show up to destroy the planet and Galvatron also makes an appearance. Sideswipe gets pissy that he can't help look for Sunstreaker and Hot Rod and Wheeljack continue the hunt by searching for Ironhide. It turns out Ironhide is scheduled to be put into a nmuematic press, leaving them roughly 3 hours to find him. During that time the Machination strikes and reveals that they've made Sunstreaker Headmaster clones. This is also when we see Hunter become bonded with Sunstreaker and we see Sunstreaker's plea for death. We also see Dante function as the head of Scorponok and head of the Machination. Skywatch tries to get control the events between the Autobots and the Decepticons but they wind up losing control of Ravage and Laserbeak when Soundwave intervenes. Galvatron destroys the Reapers, Starscream deactivates Sixshot, Hot Rod and Wheeljack continue searching for Ironhide and Hunter escapes with Sunstreaker (at least in the sense that the bulk of his consciousness went with him, the head was still with the Machination).

Overall, I think I'm going to have to revise my opinion of the -ation books. Infiltration was a slow start, but it was world building and set up for the other two parts. And given the amount of stuff that happens in those other volumes the pay off is well worth it. This was easily on the same level as AHM and Ongoing and set up events of those two books well. It also establishes that humanity's reaction to the TF presence on Earth is vastly different from what we've seen before and we also got stories with humans in them that weren't boring or filled with "kid identify character". It also makes sense that there would be more than one organization looking for TFs. The government obviously wants them for military reasons as well as maintaining national security and the Machination wants them for the technological edge for profit. Overall, I would highly recommend the -ation books with the warning that Infiltration is a very slow start.

Shockwave
-Now that I think about it there was actually a lot more that happened that I forgot to cover.

[Dominic]

I really did not think that "Infiltration" was all that slow. I am more confused by why some fans seemed to feel the need to have transformers showing up and doing stuff immediately in a rebooted book.


Dom
-pacing works two ways ya know.

[Shockwave]

Because we already know what's coming. The big reveal is pointless. It's been done too many times in Transformers and at this point it's boring and padantic. It's a bit like Superman. In a Superman reboot you don't need more than maybe one page of origin because everyone already knows it.