We've got Hall of Fame voting going on up there

[Dominic]

So, who wants to petition IDW to launch a rebooted BW series helmed by a good writer?

Dom
-not really joking.

[Gomess]

Nah, I think we should all come up with our own.

Fan power.

[Dominic]

No more fanfic!

Seriously, aside from, *maybe*, a short time in '04 (when "Energon" was over and DW was out of business), there has no need for fanfic in over a decade.


Dom
-seriously, would anyone else want to pitch this to IDW?

[Gomess]

Well, *you* don't have to read my story then... =p

[Shockwave]

I can see having a lower opinion of Furman's writing due to him puffing it up a bit. But really that's not so much a reflection of the writing than of Furman getting too full of himself. He got overconfident, NOT LAZY!! Dom, I challenge you to go into a work of fiction "blind" (meaning that you have no prior knowledge of the writer or their previous works or the editorial fiats behind it). It would be truly interesting to read a review from you that had nothing to do with the writer's history or the politics behind the work in question.

As for BW and whether or not a reboot would have been well received by fans... we'll never know unless it happens. IDW didn't even give us the chance.

Shockwave
-Wonders if Dom is up to my challenge.

[Dominic]

But really that's not so much a reflection of the writing than of Furman getting too full of himself. He got overconfident,

I think it is more a question of Furman being a huckster. "Buy this! Is so awesome that you will not know it sucks until I have skipped town!"

For the record, I am not saying Furman is lazier than the average hack. He is as lazy as he thinks he can get away with.

Dom, I challenge you....

All right! Cock punching at dawn it is!

to go into a work of fiction "blind"

Oh, wait. That is far less interesting.

The thing is that I do read things "blind" in that respect. I was more than sick of Furman after BW. But, I gave "Maximum Dinobots" high marks, despite my (understandable) shock about it not sucking completely. Along similar lines, I *really* liked Bendis' "Dark Avengers". But, I am giving neither "Avengers" nor "New Avengers" points for being written by Bendis. (In fact, I dropped "Avangers" last week because it was not worth keeping on its own.)

When I consider editorial fiats and the like, it is a question of trying to figure out who is worthy of credit/blame. If my reading and understanding of, say "Countdown", is correct, then most of the people involved are completely blameless. However, that does not change the fact of "Countdown" being a prime example of bad comics.


Dom
-almost challenged you to a cock punching match.

[Shockwave]

But really that's not so much a reflection of the writing than of Furman getting too full of himself. He got overconfident,

I think it is more a question of Furman being a huckster. "Buy this! Is so awesome that you will not know it sucks until I have skipped town!"

For the record, I am not saying Furman is lazier than the average hack. He is as lazy as he thinks he can get away with.

And see, I don't think that's it. I think when he writes he really believes in what he's writing and it doesn't wind up blowing up in his face until after.

Also, what you've described there isn't "lazy". Bad =/= lazy. I think if Furman was *really* lazy the comics would have been far worse (remember what you told me about Hama's current run on GI Joe? THAT'S lazy). Look at the original G1 cartoon. That was lazy editing and animation which is why we see Shockwave on Earth a couple times, or multiple constructicons or Thundercrackers or what have you. So yeah, you and I are using Lazy differently.

Dom, I challenge you....

All right! Cock punching at down it is!

to go into a work of fiction "blind"

Oh, wait. That is far less interesting.

The thing is that I do read things "blind" in that respect. I was more than sick of Furman after BW. But, I gave "Maximum Dinobots" high marks, despite my (understandable) shock about it not sucking completely. Along similar lines, I *really* liked Bendis' "Dark Avengers". But, I am giving neither "Avengers" nor "New Avengers" points for being written by Bendis. (In fact, I dropped "Avangers" last week because it was not worth keeping on its own.)

When I consider editorial fiats and the like, it is a question of trying to figure out who is worthy of credit/blame. If my reading and understanding of, say "Countdown", is correct, then most of the people involved are completely blameless. However, that does not change the fact of "Countdown" being a prime example of bad comics.

I guess I'm wondering why you would care about who to credit/blame? Now, I happen to know that you tend to be very political and I could see assessing such things in that kind of a setting, but, like, if I read a comic and it's good, I'm not thinking "Wow, who wrote this, this is awesome!" At most, I might think "Wow, this is awesome. I hope IDW doesn't go belly up like DW did". On the reverse side, I also don't wonder who to blame for bad comics. Besides, there are a lot of things that go on behind the scenes of comics that go into what's in the comic itself. A character showing up might be the work of editorial fiat rather than the writer telling a particular story. The problem is that we, the audience, are seldom privy to who dictated what. So trying to figure out who to blame for bad comics winds up being an exercise in futility. It could be the editor, it could be the writer and unless you were the one sitting in that meeting, you'll never know which.

Aside from that, I really don't care about the behind the scenes stuff anyway. If the details of what goes on in the offices of IDW were even remotely interesting, that would be the comic instead of the stories we get. I issued the challenge only because your reviews tend more towards the "back office" stuff than the actual content of the comic.

Dom
-almost challenged you to a cock punching match.

Shockwave
-Reach out, reach out and punch someone...

[Dominic]

Most of my reviews actually do focus on the comics. There is a whole thread of comic reviews, including many posts by me.

If a comic is good, I want to know who is responsible for that comic so I can follow them to other books they might end up working on. Similarly, if a comic is bad, I want to know who is to blame so that I can try to avoid them in the future. Just as it is possible to recognize art styles, it is possible to recognize writing or editing styles.

Granted, it is not perfect, (witness Abnett's piss poor effort with "Infestation"), but it tends to work better than "I like Spiderman because Spiderman is good so I will read Spiderman comics".


Dom
-fighting the urge to use naughty sign offs.....

[Sparky Prime]

If IDW wanted to piggyback on the show's success, then they should have focused on the show characters exclusively and created some kind of "inbetween episode" comics. That would have pleased the BW "hardcore"

As I said before, I don't think a lot of fans would have liked that actually.

The problem is that they were just catering to fans. After 6 years, nobody outside of the fandom is going to remember, or care about, BW.

Well that's simply not true. I have friends who still remember and like Beast Wars, but aren't really a part of the Transformers fandom.

Making the comic tie-in with a show that had middling (at best animation for the time) and that has not aged well was a bad idea.

How hasn't BW aged well? Even by today's standards, the CGI still looks decent. The writing was generally really good... with a few low moments admittedly but few and far between. There's good reason why Beast Wars is still largely considered the best Transformers series to date.

Fuman assumed that readers knew and cared about the old series

I'd disagree with that as well. The first 3 pages of the comic gives us an overview of the Beast Wars cartoon so that new readers would know where the comic was coming from.

[BWprowl]

Are you me? I was rather peeved with The Gathering/The Ascending back in the day (Ascending issue 2 set me off something fierce, it was that bad).

Your "tied up a guy with sharp things on his limbs using rope" rant was a bit better.

That...was Ascending Issue 2. I don't blame you for not knowing what the hell was going on in that series though, and yeah, that was the point when The Ascending fully died for me. That's the sort of thing that makes me wish there was a TF Hall of Shame, just so I could nominate Razorbeast for it. Every single year.

But, yeah, your old posts on the BW comics were generally epic. Seriously, I was glad to have read the comics just to have the same points of reference you were making.

Well thanks for that. Good to know something good came out of my decision to keep reading those things.