Last Stand of the Wreckers discussion

[Gomess]

Well, there's TFVIEWS AUTOMATIC CENSOR ACTIVATED

...I guess we can't discuss reader interpretation anymore. >_>

[Dominic]

Actually, that is supported by what is on the relevant pages. Still, it took Pyro long enough to grow the hell up.


Dom
-still giggles about Rototstorm.

[Dominic]

I was rereading parts of "Last Stand of the Wreckers" this past weekend, (partly to find reference for the Xantium...which I could not find because the Xantium does not appear in that series...)

In any case, I noticed something about Prowl's and Magnus' conversation at the end. If I read it right, Aequitas (note the corrected spelling) was not done working. The culpability drive needed time to sort things out. And, the plan was "full disclosure" after the last verdict was reached. The fact that Aequitas was being kept all hush-hush implies that some of the trials had not been resolved. And, by extension, there may have been some innocent bots on Garrus-9.

That puts a new and messier gloss on Prowl's actions in the last few pages. Granted, most (if not all) of the defendants in question were likely dead at that point. But, Prowl destroying evidence and testimony that could have proven exculpatory (and possibly valuable in other matters) is much worse than burying uncomfortable documents.


Thoughts?

[Dominic]

And, the hardcover is glorious. It is wonderful.

This thing has it all. It has all of the profiles in one place. It has "Bullets". It has a new forward by Roberts and Roche. It has cut-scenes from "Bullets". It has 3 "Mosaic" strips that are now canonical. It even has a two page strip featuring Impactor and Guzzle.

And, oh, there is more. It has the annotations from the (now second rate) paper back. It has scenes that were changed or simply cut from early drafts. (Roberts and Roche even go the extra mile and point out that it is not canonical if the scene did not make it in to the book, thus sparing us all tedious newboard debate about various scenes counting or not.)

There is even another text story about Springer's recovery.

And, there are (very) short profiles for members of Squadron X.

If you can find this damn thing, buy it.


Dom
-still coming down from a high, but will post more later in the week.

[BWprowl]

And, the hardcover is glorious. It is wonderful.

This thing has it all. It has all of the profiles in one place. It has "Bullets". It has a new forward by Roberts and Roche. It has cut-scenes from "Bullets". It has 3 "Mosaic" strips that are now canonical. It even has a two page strip featuring Impactor and Guzzle.

And, oh, there is more. It has the annotations from the (now second rate) paper back. It has scenes that were changed or simply cut from early drafts. (Roberts and Roche even go the extra mile and point out that it is not canonical if the scene did not make it in to the book, thus sparing us all tedious newboard debate about various scenes counting or not.)

There is even another text story about Springer's recovery.

And, there are (very) short profiles for members of Squadron X.

If you can find this damn thing, buy it.


Dom
-still coming down from a high, but will post more later in the week.

Looks like it hits Amazon on March 6th, for a mere 18 bucks. I was definitely interested in this, mainly hinging on what content it had, and now that I know it has everything, I'm in. Thanks for posting the review.

Now I need to see about finding UK Classics vol. 2. If my local B&N doesn't get it, maybe I'll just order it off Amazon with LSotW.

[Dominic]

I do not recall having seen UK2 on Diamond shipping lists. But, I am also keeping an eye out for it.

"Zero Point", the all new text story, is really just filler. If that were the only, or even primary, addition I would say "do not bother".

The real meat of this is either the cut scenes from "Bullets" or the script cuts/drafts. (The "Bullets" scenes lack the "not in the story, not canon" disclaimer that the cut scenes from the main story had. So, until somebody who matters says otherwise, I am going to assume t hey count.) Those range from "not bad, but hardly crucial" to "this really should have been in there from the beginning".

One thing that I have been thinking on since last night....

Spoiler

One of the discarded endings for the series had Guzzle killing Kup, and subsequently being executed by other surviving members of the team.

While I do not think that the scene should have been in "Last Stand of the Wreckers", which already had more than enough going on, it should have been in a follow up story or something similar. It would have been one of several possible and worthwhile endings for Kup's story. And, it serves to underscore what an epic clusterfuck "Infestation" was.

Given how much there is in this book, I am going to wait for other people to get ahold of copies, or to ask me specific questions about this one.


Dom
-oh yeah, the grade: A is for Awesome.

[Onslaught Six]

The

Spoiler

Kup death

was probably not used because they wanted to kill someone else off instead. I seem to remember some interviews regarding this.

[Dominic]

We know that all of the big 3, (Kup, Perceptor, and Springer), were on the kill list at least once during the drafting of the story. Hasbro vetoed one, IDW, another, and the writers chickened out on the 3rd. But, we do not know which characters were saved by which reasonl.

Spoiler

Kup

damn well better not have been the one that the writers or IDW vetoed. Because

Spoiler

having a major plot development "Infestation"

was idiotic.


Dom

[Dominic]

And, here is my response to JT's review of "Last Stand of the Wreckers", originally posted in the comics thread.

This is my first Transformers comic purchase in... decades. I read a couple Marvel issues when I was a kid, but didn't stick with them because I had a lot of interests and the Marvel stories were hard to get into.

The middle to end of Budiansky's run, more or less the middle of the US run as a whole, was punishing. For all of it virtues, (linear storytelling with real changes over time), it still lacks enough of the basics that it is hard to call great.

Hearts of Steel -- Hearts of Steel and GI Joe vs TF were both ok works that didn't fully live up to their potential and fell short in storytelling, although they did leave me wanting more of their respective tales so they weren't failures.

Both had potential, but suffered for execution. Not sure which one bothers me more. But, yeah, similar problems in both.

As for this purchase, after Dom got vocally upset about his local shop screwing up his pull for LSotW, I tried to talk him down by pointing out alternatives, but he riled himself back up so I decided to quickly learn more about the book to find out why he was willing to punish himself for someone else's misdeed, and got so frustrated at the ease of acquiring a book that sounded like an adequate self-contained jumping-in point that I just preordered it myself to prove how easy it could be done. "Gee whiz, that's so fascinating!" Really? "No."

That is what JT said.

I bought this to win an internet arguement with Dom.

What JT meant.

THE PRESENTATION: I generally do softcovers rather than hardcovers when it comes to graphic novels, I don't like fighting the spine to see all the artwork, and I don't like risking the book in general if I need to replace it later due to accident or misplacement, but $17 is Trade softcover-priced. This hardcover Wreckers book has a little spine-fight but generally is easy to hold and read, the cover actually doing more work than a floppy TPB could be expected to.

I tend to treat the spines of books wth respect anyway, just to keep them in good condition. Hardcovers tend to age a bit better than soft covers. Books, (comics or otherwise), that I plan to keep get bagged and carefully stored.

trimmings and bonus materials where a bad story wouldn't be bothering - a cynic might argue it's to pad 5 issues into a $30 book. I haven't finished the bonus materials, I read about half, the character bios, cut scenes, and some of the art.

Figure $4 for 5 issues is ~$20 to start, without the extras that were included in the earlier edition. Hardcovers are generally more expensive than soft-covers, so $30 is about right.

THE ART: As an outsider with only a passing familiarity with Transformers modern comics, this art is not bad but the flaws it has make it very frustrating. The color palette is loud and (pun not intended) frenzied; the lines over-detailed to the point of confusing the eye into running panel elements together; the characters not

I cut that down considerably.

I can definitely see how the art might grate on some people. Roche can draw. But, LSotW marked the beginning of a "phase" for him. It got markedly more offensive with "Infestation" and the current ongoing. But, it definitely starts here.

Up until now, I thought that I was the only one who was annoyed by the colours. There are a few pages that are so over-detailed that it is a bit hard to tell what is going one. I am not overly bothered by it because the important parts are clear. But, I can see how this would be irksome for people.

THE PACING: I have a real problem with the pacing of this story. The first 2 or even 3 issues/chapters do a terrible job here, between the storyline jumping all around the timeline,

Remember, this story is an intentional genre riff. The flash-backs and "then/now" divide compliments the store. The "team gets together" is a huge cliche in the genre. LSotW had to touch on it.

THE CHARACTERS:

This part is kind of dense, so I am parsing it out.

In the end, the story gets its job done, you care more about the nobodies than the somebodies - hell, somehow Perceptor survives and it's not even mentioned - but the art and the pacing led me to problems getting into the characters at first, it was easier to use the shortcuts on Springer and Kup (plus what I knew about IDW's Perceptor)

I am still wondering which of the named characters were saved by what. We know that Springer, Kup and Perceptor were all on the killing block at various points during the drafting. One was saved by Hasbro, one by IDW editorial, the other by the writers getting squeemish.

Kup was clearly not saved by Hasbro, given that IDW trashed him in "Infestation". But, there is no way to know if him being killed there was editorial mandate or editorial consent. (Either way, it was a waste of a good plot line to kill him in a cheap stunt cross-over.)

I think Overlord was an inte
resting villain but ultimately was let down by being too flip-floppy on his nature, was he aloof or bloodthirsty, was he bored or hungry, was he being true to his desire to drag Megatron to him or not?

He wanted to get Megatron's attention. That was clear throughout. He could not figure out how to hurt, or even get a rise, out of Megatron. And, that just ate away at him like a brain bullet would inch towards your frontal lobes.

Another problem about characterization, the setting didn't affect characters in a way I felt was true and it also didn't really feel like a prison visually

How so? Rotorstorm got his before he would have had a chance to see how bad G9 really was. (I still love that scene and occassionally read it for comfort.)

Pyro and Ironfist got whiny when they realized that sacrifice can be painful and that "adventures" are not all fun and games. Overlord's Garrus 9 would be the sort of place where one would learn those lessons the hard way.

And having Verity there was borderline unacceptable for a little while, though she ends up not being either overly useful or distracting.

Verity is a two edged sword. On the one hand, she is a token human, and is kind of annoying. Even the in-story justification for her being there is thin. But, she fills a couple of cliche roles, which is necessary for the story.

And, her name is, if only by coincidence, thematically consistent with the plot focusing on the incriminating trial documents.

Speaking of this, what are your thoughts on Prowl crushing the data slug at the end? He may have denied somebody an aquittal, albeit post-humously.

And holy crap, the way they handled Overlord's alt modes was a disaster! Everybody else I think gets a working pass for alt modes but him, yikes that is unclear.

That is a common problem in the modern comics, and made a bit worse by the above mentioned art you mention.

THE STORY: While the elements end up working by the second half of the book to make it ultimately an engaging experience, there are far too many cliches and cheap-outs to get a full pass from me, and it's not good at being open to a new reader.

Disagree here. The story was very open to new readers. The characters and readers find out what is going on and what needs to be done at the same rate. The concepts and ideas in this store are not unique to TF. The writers explain who is doing what and where.

The last panel with Verity though, I think it's hard to write a way to button up a story and they went with a cheap way to get the message of the Wreckers across using her humanity to get that word out. If the Wreckers are to have meaning in their actions and even their futility, then it shouldn't be a bumper sticker.

I think that was part of the "cliche" theme that ran through the story. Verity is not the most sophisticated, so it would not make sense for Roche and Roberts to make her intelligent on the last page.

OVERALL: Ultimately, it's not a bad experience, but it's not higher than a 7/10 in my scorecard either, and from an outsider perspective it's a tough nut to crack. It doesn't make me want to read more Transformers comics if they are this ugly - both in art and in behavior/violence -

The violence was purposeful though. It served a point. Give me purposeful violence over benign meandering any day.

I am on the fence about the maturity question. On the one hand, Roche and Roberts are handing high-end concepts that are worth considering outside of TF. On the other, I have to wonder how far beyond conventional wisdom they would go with their insights. (For example, I get the feeling they would really get their knickers in a twist over the idea of just quietly killing Squadron X, when it really might not have been such a bad idea.)


Dom
-figures "Last Stand of the Wreckers" still has some life to it.

[Onslaught Six]

Dom, your quote is messed up. You can see what you were trying to do but it takes slightly more effort than usual.

Speaking of this, what are your thoughts on Prowl crushing the data slug at the end? He may have denied somebody an aquittal, albeit post-humously.

He didn't do that? At least, I don't think? In fact, can't you see it on Prowl's desk in later stories?