More than Meets the Eye (IDW ongoing comic)

[Onslaught Six]

I don't think there was any editorial edict from Hasbro that they "couldn't" kill Kup, but I may be misremembering.

Ironhide, though, I don't think anyone cared.

[andersonh1]

Ironhide, though, I don't think anyone cared.

No, they had to get Hasbro to agree to the storyline, from what I remember reading.

[andersonh1]

Ironhide, though, I don't think anyone cared.

No, they had to get Hasbro to agree to the storyline, from what I remember reading.

Point being, IDW doesn't have a solid track record of keeping dead characters "dead".

So which character's been shown to be dead, and been brought back later? I count Ironhide, and that's it. Who have I missed?

Compare that with how many characters have died and stayed dead.

[Sparky Prime]

So which character's been shown to be dead, and been brought back later? I count Ironhide, and that's it. Who have I missed?

Right, like comics are normally so cut and dry when it comes to most character's "deaths" and returns? It might be an obvious comic book cliche, but even if a character isn't actually shown to die, it's clear that's what they wanted to imply in order to have that 'surprise' when they turn up alive. To that regard, I would count characters like Thundercracker, Rodimus, Sunstreaker and so on, despite if they actually died or not.

Compare that with how many characters have died and stayed dead.

If you have even one character that dies and come back, that kind of defeats the purpose of a solid track record. It doesn't matter if there are more that are (so far) still dead.

[Onslaught Six]

Rodimus, I don't think he was ever implied to be dead--you talking about what happened to him in Maximum Dinobots? Because he was clearly shown to totally be okay at the end of that, and MaxDinos was actually published alongside AHM where Rodimus was shown to be a-okay from like, the second or third issue--in publishing order, before he had even been messed up all that bad.

There's been a lot of characters in MTMTE who were presumed dead (by the audience, I guess) for an issue or so before they turned out to have totally survived with almost no ill effects. Rung, Red Alert, Fortress Maximus, Overlord and Swerve have all been shown to get injuries that, under any other writer/editor combo, would totally have been written off as dead, and then some of them are just walking around like nothing happened an issue later. (Was Swerve's face being fixed even done on panel?) Shit, even one of the Duobots that got caught in the engine turned out to be alive in the annual! (Or, well. I think he got animated back to life by the Metrotitan's energy or whatever.)

In fact, RID has been pulling this too--just look at all the Decepticons Prowl has "killed" over the last 12 issues or so that suddenly show up, safe and sound, as if nothing happened. When the Constructicons' heads got blown up early on, I assumed that would be it for Devastator for the foreseeable future of IDW's continuity, and that we'd get someone like Menasor or Bruticus to start filling the "big-ass combiner" role down the line. Turns out, nope!

I mean, I'm not going to say that characters aren't dying, because they totally are, but these guys love "almost" killing characters as much as they love actually killing characters.

[Sparky Prime]

Rodimus, I don't think he was ever implied to be dead--you talking about what happened to him in Maximum Dinobots? Because he was clearly shown to totally be okay at the end of that, and MaxDinos was actually published alongside AHM where Rodimus was shown to be a-okay from like, the second or third issue--in publishing order, before he had even been messed up all that bad.

No, I'm talking about when Megatron shot a hole through the middle of Rodimus, right after he took the Matrix from Starscream in the Ongoing.

[andersonh1]

Right, like comics are normally so cut and dry when it comes to most character's "deaths" and returns? It might be an obvious comic book cliche, but even if a character isn't actually shown to die, it's clear that's what they wanted to imply in order to have that 'surprise' when they turn up alive. To that regard, I would count characters like Thundercracker, Rodimus, Sunstreaker and so on, despite if they actually died or not.

I wouldn't. It's a legitimate storytelling tool to leave the audience wondering if a character has survived or not.

No, I'm talking about when Megatron shot a hole through the middle of Rodimus, right after he took the Matrix from Starscream in the Ongoing.

Starscream had a hole like that blown through him at the end of the very first story arc, and he lived through it. Megatron didn't even expect him to die from the injury, he just told the others to get him repaired.

[Sparky Prime]

I wouldn't. It's a legitimate storytelling tool to leave the audience wondering if a character has survived or not.

Of course it's a legitimate storytelling tool, but that's also the comic book cliche, to seemingly (or sometimes actually) kill off a character only to bring them back later one way or another. Take Scott Lang as a recent example I can think of. Killed off in an explosion of Jack of Hearts during Avengers Disassembled. But wait! He didn't actually die at all! Turns out the Young Avengers saved him thanks to time travel and brought him to their present at the moment we all thought he died. The effect storytelling wise is still the same, he "dies" and then somehow he returns. Hence why I'd still count it, because for all accounts they might as well be dead until they make a return that explains how they came back.

Starscream had a hole like that blown through him at the end of the very first story arc, and he lived through it. Megatron didn't even expect him to die from the injury, he just told the others to get him repaired.

Difference being Starscream got immediate medical (mechanical?) attention. Rodimus was left to float in space for who knows how long, and then survived falling to a planet as well. If it hadn't been for the Matrix that got welded to his chest, he would be dead...

[andersonh1]

I wouldn't. It's a legitimate storytelling tool to leave the audience wondering if a character has survived or not.

Of course it's a legitimate storytelling tool, but that's also the comic book cliche, to seemingly (or sometimes actually) kill off a character only to bring them back later one way or another. Take Scott Lang as a recent example I can think of. Killed off in an explosion of Jack of Hearts during Avengers Disassembled. But wait! He didn't actually die at all! Turns out the Young Avengers saved him thanks to time travel and brought him to their present at the moment we all thought he died.

I completely agree with that example. That's a rather typical comic book trick, to seemingly kill someone off as the most artificial way imaginable to wring drama from a storyline, only to magically undo it later on. You could just about count Ironhide's death/revival as that type of storytelling.

On the other hand, go back to Thundercracker being shot by Skywarp. We don't see what happens to Thundercracker at all. We're left to assume he's been killed, or not, based on context and our own reading of the sequence. But we don't know, and that's the distinction between the two storytelling methods. One is full-bore kill the guy off, show the body, and then find the way to cheat and undo things. The other method involves suspense and supposition without a final, definitive depiction of the death, leaving things open to other possibilities. To me, as I said, the first way seems to me to be a cheat and really a cheap trick while the second is not.

Starscream had a hole like that blown through him at the end of the very first story arc, and he lived through it. Megatron didn't even expect him to die from the injury, he just told the others to get him repaired.

Difference being Starscream got immediate medical (mechanical?) attention. Rodimus was left to float in space for who knows how long, and then survived falling to a planet as well. If it hadn't been for the Matrix that got welded to his chest, he would be dead...

I think that's a fair point. Starscream got medical treatment, the Matrix repaired Hot Rod. Without that, and given the injury he got from Megatron, I could see his recovery from that as a cheat. The injury should have killed him, and under any other circumstances, would have.

[Shockwave]

Thundercracker not being dead is pure bullshit. He was dead. The art strongly implies, (and leaves nary any space for any alternative), that Skywarp shot Thundercracker in the face at point blank range. Even if we assume that getting shot in the face might not that bad (which for a Cybertronian it probably would not be), IDW clearly back-wrote (no pun intended) Thundercracker's survival to the point that he somehow or another ended up getting shot in the back.

We all know what McCarthy intended with Thundercracker's death. (He was supposed to fucking die.) But, Costa, with the blessing of IDW's (admittedly weak) editorial board, back wrote it so that Thundercracker could survive.

I do not give them a pass on Thundercracker because the back-write was so obvious. But, I can forgive them bringing back Thundercracker because it was thematically consistent with the "change is necessary/good/painful" theme that Costa was running with. (Ironically, I was planning on using issue 4 as my "justified dropping the book" point, and it ended up hooking me.)

Rewind is a secondary character at most. Magnus is arguably a top tier character.

So other characters that get shot in the head get a -pass, but not Thundercracker? I mean, what about Megatron who got shot in the face just a few panels or one issue before? Then there's Rung who survived having his whole head blown off. Optimus survived being nearly destroyed in the -ation books... I mean IDW has pretty consistently shown that most Transformers as a race can survive taking a lot of damage so a character surviving "shot to the face" shouldn't really be all that unusual.

And really? Rewind is a secondary character? Maybe in the franchise as a whole, but certainly not in MTMTE. He's had way more face time than Magnus. If anything, it's the other way around.