Dumb fans think Furman should write G1 #81 and beyond.

[Onslaught Six]

http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-new ... rt-171816/

Yes, really.

Yes. Really.

Ugh.

This is a stupid idea for GI Joe but it's at least somewhat understandable with how manchild that fandom can be. This? Fuck no. Fuck no.

If IDW does this, I will stop buying things from them period.

[Dominic]

Oho!

Really?

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the Fan Club have this pretty well covered? (Actually, I think they have jumped to to continuing the cartoon. Anybody have any clarification on this?)

I had to do a double take on that posting and check the date. it was posted....today. Joe fans are less than thrilled with Larry Hama right now. And, Hama is not helping things.

That said, this is not wholly bad idea.

This is a stupid idea for GI Joe but it's at least somewhat understandable with how manchild that fandom can be.

And, you cannot say that about Transfans....really now? Seriously, there are still plenty of GeeWunners who want the 80s to come back. At the very least, giving them Transtagnators might actually make them shut the hell up about the main IDW book. Costa, McCarthy and company can write for people with an 8th grade literacy level...and not have to worry about people with a first grade literacy level complaining. (Roche and Roberts seem to get away with it. But, they are not the norm.)

And, hey, who knows, it might even be good. Granted, Furman's output in the previous decade was less than stellar. But, maybe he learned from the (well earned) drubbing he took post "Beast Wars". "Maximum Dinobots" was actually readable. (Granted, his movie product is nigh unreadable.)

I am really suprised, and a bit saddened, by how quickly people have discarded G2. I remember Furman pushing that series hard in the 90s. This might be the first time he came out and said something bad about his own work.


Dom
-just hopes we do not get more "Earth Force".

[Onslaught Six]

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the Fan Club have this pretty well covered? (Actually, I think they have jumped to to continuing the cartoon. Anybody have any clarification on this?)

I don't...know?

This is a stupid idea for GI Joe but it's at least somewhat understandable with how manchild that fandom can be.

And, you cannot say that about Transfans....really now? Seriously, there are still plenty of GeeWunners who want the 80s to come back. At the very least, giving them Transtagnators might actually make them shut the hell up about the main IDW book. Costa, McCarthy and company can write for people with an 8th grade literacy level...and not have to worry about people with a first grade literacy level complaining.

I like to think that most of the TF fandom has at least agreed that G1 is never wholesale coming back, and has accepted what we're getting now (which is a hell of a lot if you ask me) as what we're going to continue to get.

(Roche and Roberts seem to get away with it. But, they are not the norm.)

Unfortunately, I have never seen praise on a mainstream TF board for Wreckers that went beyond "OMFG OBSCURE EUROPEAN CHARACTERS BEING AWESOME AND THEN DYING!" Nobody seemed to see past that.

I am really suprised, and a bit saddened, by how quickly people have discarded G2. I remember Furman pushing that series hard in the 90s. This might be the first time he came out and said something bad about his own work.

Me too, I love G2. Although that may be because I love early 90s comics in general...Yaniger's art is still awesome though.

[Dominic]

I think the real difference between "GI Joe" and "Transformers" fans is the franchises they like. "Transformers" has generally aged better than "GI Joe", so the fans who insist on looking back are not as obvious. But, as this shows, there are more than a few fans who want to go back to the 80s and early 90s.

The G1 fandom was resigned to the fact that "real" G1 was over. But, they were unhappy with it. These people do not like the current ongoing because it is, to be frank, written above their maturity level. Costa and McCarthy made the mistake of trying to write mature stories and not stroking fans' egos.

Imagine that you have grown very little since you were ~14 or so. In that case, longevity and "celebrating the history of the hobby" would be signs of growth and time passing more than changes in insight or understanding. The lack of maturity would likely also carry with it a certain egocentricity, meaning fans would expect it to be all about them and what they want.

Unfortunately, I have never seen praise on a mainstream TF board for Wreckers that went beyond "OMFG OBSCURE EUROPEAN CHARACTERS BEING AWESOME AND THEN DYING!" Nobody seemed to see past that.

This is kind of what I was getting at. Roche and Roberts managed to pitch high and low at the same time. Part of me wonders if the writing process largely involved one writing up while the other wrote down, with the two of them switching off if only on editing. ("Last Stand of the Wreckers" was *very* polished, which is unusual for comic in general nowadays.)

And, as you pointed out, much of the praise focuses on the use of obscure characters, not the writing.

The advantage that Roche and Roberts had is that they were working on a miniseries, not an ongoing. They would have time to prepare and write in advance while working on a mere 5 issues. But, that is simply not practical for an ongoing book, especially with Costa's workload. He has to make a choice about pitching up or down. In terms of the caliber of his work, he makes the right choice. In terms of pandering to fans, he is making the wrong one.

At this point, Roche and Roberts could phone in their work and get away with it. Much like Furman, they now have a brand in the fandom. It took a string of bad comics to even begin eroding Furman's brand. And, it was not until Furman comprehensively blew "Beast Wars" that his credibility finally evaporated. (Most people who liked the first BW series will concede that the second was worse and that the sourcebook was terrible.)

Unless Furman completely blows it, a series continuing the original Marvel run would give the regressive fans something to focus on and enjoy. The series might even be good. Furman could also paint by numbers and call it a day.


Dom
-at least it is a better alternative to the unreadably bad convention/club comics.

[Shockwave]

As a Furman fanboy I just wanna go on record as saying that even I think this is a bad idea. And it would have to be issue 92+ because the G2 comic was the continuation. In fact, fans that argue against including it simply wind up proving why it shouldn't happen. Geewunners want original G1 to continue. That happened with the G2 comic and they weren't happy so why should IDW take that risk? Of course that's assuming that most Geewunners didn't like G2, but, as I don't really have a pulse on the fandom, I'll leave Dom to comment on that one.

Having said that, I would still get this if they do it. For two main reasons both of which suck. 1: I'm a Furman fanboy. 2: It's Transformers. I've supported the brand through it's lowest of low points and I'm not gonna stop now. Hell, I have all of BW and the sourcebooks. AND I KEPT THEM!

Shockwave
-Geewunners will never stop complaining.

[138 Scourge]

I don't know if you've saw the article on TFW that O6 linked to, but Furman said "I'd rather write G1 issue #81 than G2 issue #13.", and then described G2 as being "very 90's". Which may be true, but it was kind of a rarity, an actual good Marvel 90's comic. But from the sound of things, this would be starting off at the end of G1 and overwriting G2. Which, I don't think I'd care for that at all. Now, maybe if it led up to G2, and then went on from there, I could maybe get behind it.

In fact, I could almost make a case for this not being a horrible idea just to see if Furman dragged in some of the more obscure late-G1 toys. Or if he went anywhere with the Action Master plotline. And if somehow, IDW could get Rob Tokar on board to edit this thing, then you might have something here.

I dunno, I'd check it out as a curiosity, but it doesn't seem real likely that I'd go nuts for it.

[Shockwave]

I didn't read the article. I think that sucks that Furman wants to overwrite G2. It was certainly one of the better Transformers stories. And the end of it opens the door for some really interesting story telling.

On the upside, if he was to continue from 81 at least Unicron is already dead in that universe.

[Dominic]

G2 was presented as a new start in '92, and there were plenty of politely ignored discrepencies with the original series.

Tokar editing is all but a must.

It might be interesting to see this series turn into a take on what might have happened if the comics ran concurrently with the franchise since '91. Of course, that would mean it was not purely G1, which would trigger much whining. GeeWunners need their hobby to be bland repetitive, not unlike how small children like their food.


Dom
-gotta wait and see.

[Mirage]

My biggest complaint: Is anyone else feeling continuity overload? I know that Transformers will NEVER have one comprehensive universe, it just isn't built that way. But damn it all, how many G1 continuities, and branch-continuities, do we really need? This will be the THIRD official attempt at continuing the Marvel G1 continuity (The first, of course, being G2 and second, yes, the FunPub "Classicsverse", take it or leave it). I'm just sick to my ass of reboots and semi-reboots. It's reached the point for me where official fiction is mattering less and less, because it all feels so damn temporary. How are we supposed to become invested in a storyline knowing full-well that it will be re-written, rebooted, or ignored sooner or later? Of course, this applies to much more than just Transformers, but still.

[Dominic]

I am not so much against reboots as I am against half-assed call-backs. A reboot every 5 or 10 years is a healthy thing. And, as DC's "Elseworlds" books have shown, continuity is not at all necessary for a story to be good. (I would rather read "REd Son" than any number of Superman books that count.)

I do see what you are saying though. The more IDW spoils the fandom by making it "just for them", the worse things will get.