Heart of Darkness discussion

[Dominic]

And speaking of Galvatron's army...


Hearts of Darkness #4:
Apparently, Galvatron has been busy. His army is friggin' huge. I will let somebody else break it down. But, I saw a guy who might have been Tap-Out and a TFU style movie Breakaway in there. This issue consists largely of a big fight mixed with cosmic gibber-wankery and a nod to "Infestation". ("Infestation" happened during this issue.) And, that is it. By all rights, "Hearts of Darkness" should have been better. It might not have been possible to this in a single regular issue, but a double sized one shot would have had the same impact....little to none. Abnett is off my "must at least flip through" list. If "Hearts of Darkness" is indicative of where IDW is going with TF, the franchise might be off my "must read" list. Oh, and there was some really bad art, bad enough for me to notice and complain.
Grade: D


Dom
-and it fails because of execution.

[Shockwave]

Yeah, the art in these last two issues has been horrible. Like noticeably horrible. Like so horrible that even I noticed that it was horrible. And that's pretty damned horrible. Anyway, I didn't really have any problems with the writing in this issue because I knew going into it that is was leading up to something else. It's like watching Empire Strikes Back and expecting Darth Vader to be defeated. At least the cosmic jibberwank isn't Unicron.

[Dominic]

Yeah, but D-Void ain't much better.

My complaint is that the series was lacking in anything of any weight.

Dom
-really unhappy about this.

[Shockwave]

True, but if we have to have jibberwank at least it's NEW jibberwank.

The on thing I really do like about this is the concept of a major Decepticon character trying to unite all Transformers together. The Autobots almost seem to be refusing him solely on the basis of him being a Decepticon.

Shockwave
-And once again, Prime takes his stupid pills.

[Dominic]

Yeah, I like IDW Galvatron and co in concept, if not execution.

[BWprowl]

If this series was totally lackluster, it at least made me warm up to IDW Galvatron a bit after how horrible a character he was during Furman's run. Y'know, for a while there I was really hoping that it would turn out that Galvatron was totally crazy, and there was no D-Void, and he'd gone around getting this huge army together all to fight some cosmic threat that he had only *imagined*. That would've been great, especially if it culminated in the concept of a guy who united the forever-warring Transformers race by being completely bonkers. How brilliant would that have been?

Alas, D-Void manifests as a Giant Evil Thing, says that it is evil and wants to do evil things because of how evil it is, shrugs off lasers then dies because Galvatron tricked it into getting hit with slightly more lasers. Then Galvatron says that the victory (and the whole issue) doesn't matter because D-Void was hiding his power level. Then he tries to show Rodimus he means him no harm by shooting at him (no seriously, his line is basically "Shoot at them in such a way that they will know we mean them no harm!" Is putting up your hands *really* so hard?). Then he and his army decide to head for Earth where they CERTAINLY won't show up during Chaos as a giant Deus Ex Machina. Whatever.

The next time one of my friends tries to tell me how awesome Dan Abnett's writing is I'm punching them in the freaking jaw.

[Tigermegatron]

I read all 4 issues,read the last issue 4 last night.

I gotta say,this series was awesome.

maybe i'm biased because I a Major Galvatron,Cyclonus & scourge fan.

I can't wait to see how awesome all these events un-fold in the on-going.

from july to december I going to be super excited when each new issue comes out.

[BWprowl]

I gotta say,this series was awesome.

maybe i'm biased because I a Major Galvatron,Cyclonus & scourge fan.

Yeah, see, I was massively annoyed/disappointed by this series. Because I'm a major Galvatron, Cyclonus, and Scourge fan.

Or course, I also hated The Gathering/The Ascending mainly because I'm a major Beast Wars fan, so maybe I've just been doing it wrong all this time.

[Onslaught Six]

Over the years, I've gotten the feeling Deathy is the kind of fan who is happy as long as characters he likes show up and make this am go boom.

[Dominic]

The thing is that IDW Galvatron is not a bad character conceptually. He is a Cybertronian, and he wants what is best for his planet. There is plenty of fodder for good writing there.

Of course, the execution is terrible. Bay did a better job with Sentinel Prime in DotM. (Yeah, I said it.)

That would've been great, especially if it culminated in the concept of a guy who united the forever-warring Transformers race by being completely bonkers. How brilliant would that have been?

Stop. Just stop. That idea would actually be good. And, it is so stupidly basic and obvious, and it would actually dovetail thematically with "Last Stand of the Wreckers" and the theme of deception that runs through TF.....

The next time one of my friends tries to tell me how awesome Dan Abnett's writing is I'm punching them in the freaking jaw.

Abnett has a huge body of work and his professional life exceeds the real lives of most of the board's membership. He has some very good work to his credit. Not unlike Mark Millar, he has done too much good work for me to dismiss him as a bad writer.

But, Abnett seems to have lost his mojo. "God Complex" (the Ironman and Thor series) was not bad. But, it was rougher than it should have been. "Prospero Burns" was terrible. It was the worst of the "Heresy" series, and a bad book over-all. His contributions to "Infestation" were the worst of a bad batch of comics. And, now, "Hearts of Darkness" has broken our hearts.

I know that Abnett has had some serious neurological problems, (not of his own making), in recent years. And, those may well have contributed to, if not caused, his recent decline. As a result, I do not have the same animosity for Abnett that I have for actual *bad* or lazy writers. But, the simple fact is that Abnett's recent output is lacking. It might be time for him to retire.


Dom
-30+ novels is more than most people can claim.