More than Meets the Eye (IDW ongoing comic)

[Dominic]

JT's point, and it is one that I mostly agree with, is that this type of story (he attributes it to comics as a medium) is the only place where readers will consistely allow for that kind of back-written bull-shittery. In most other cases, with most other audiences, that kind of thing would be called out for even seeming to cheat that much.

Dom
-but, comics suck and that is apparently okay....

[andersonh1]

JT's point, and it is one that I mostly agree with, is that this type of story (he attributes it to comics as a medium) is the only place where readers will consistely allow for that kind of back-written bull-shittery. In most other cases, with most other audiences, that kind of thing would be called out for even seeming to cheat that much.

Dom
-but, comics suck and that is apparently okay....

I generally agree that comics engage in far too much cheating when it comes to the life and death of characters. No problems there. I just don't agree that it happened in this case.

We have a sequence of events that could have ended in several ways. You and JT have decided that it ended a certain way, and therefore you've decided that the official printed explanation of how the sequence of events ended must be a retcon. In the absence of actual visual evidence to support your view, and without even a statement of authorial intent to fall back on, I'm saying there's very little basis for your certainty.

[Sparky Prime]

I generally agree that comics engage in far too much cheating when it comes to the life and death of characters. No problems there. I just don't agree that it happened in this case.

We have a sequence of events that could have ended in several ways. You and JT have decided that it ended a certain way, and therefore you've decided that the official printed explanation of how the sequence of events ended must be a retcon. In the absence of actual visual evidence to support your view, and without even a statement of authorial intent to fall back on, I'm saying there's very little basis for your certainty.

I completely agree. There is no way to be certain how the scene ends when we don't actually see how the scene ends, and it's not really back-writing when another writer fills in what happens.

[Shockwave]

We're all hypocrites: http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=700 Apparently I was the only one to put fourth the idea that he'd come back or that he'd survived the shot to the face. But, even that was after several pages of us arguing why Skywarp KILLED Thundercracker. None of us at the time were debating his survival. Just thought this is interesting. The fact that we debated the issue at the time, gives us a unique opportunity to go back in time and see if any of us thought anything other than "Skywarp killed Thundercracker". And no, none of us did.

[Sparky Prime]

We're all hypocrites: http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=700 Apparently I was the only one to put fourth the idea that he'd come back or that he'd survived the shot to the face. But, even that was after several pages of us arguing why Skywarp KILLED Thundercracker. None of us at the time were debating his survival. Just thought this is interesting. The fact that we debated the issue at the time, gives us a unique opportunity to go back in time and see if any of us thought anything other than "Skywarp killed Thundercracker". And no, none of us did.

We seem to be arguing over Skywarp not giving Thundercracker a chance to explain his side at that point of the discussion. I recall the arguement about Thundercracker surviving or not has come up once or twice before though... At least once buried somewhere in that topic.

[Shockwave]

We're all hypocrites: http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=700 Apparently I was the only one to put fourth the idea that he'd come back or that he'd survived the shot to the face. But, even that was after several pages of us arguing why Skywarp KILLED Thundercracker. None of us at the time were debating his survival. Just thought this is interesting. The fact that we debated the issue at the time, gives us a unique opportunity to go back in time and see if any of us thought anything other than "Skywarp killed Thundercracker". And no, none of us did.

We seem to be arguing over Skywarp not giving Thundercracker a chance to explain his side at that point of the discussion. I recall the arguement about Thundercracker surviving or not has come up once or twice before though... At least once buried somewhere in that topic.

Yeah, that's what the discussion was at the time but I just thought it was interesting that we were all arguing that from the standpoint that "Skywarp killed Thundercracker". Further down the page is when I surmised that he would potentially be brought back in the ongoing (in fact, I was also the one at the time who had pointed out other TFs surviving serious injuries before). I haven't really chimed in on this current discussion largely because I couldn't remember whether or not I'd thought that at the time but I also wanted to go back and re read the issue again. And actually, the panel that shows Skwarp pointing his gun and Thundercracker looks a little off, like he's aiming just above his head or at the top of it.

But, stuff like this is why I often describe comic books as soap operas for geeks. Because those are two genres that tend to have a lot of similar writing elements. Characters coming back from the dead, evil twins, etc... I'm actually going to give the issue to my Mom and see what she thinks. Although she has watched a lot of soap operas in her time.

[JediTricks]

We're all hypocrites: http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=700 Apparently I was the only one to put fourth the idea that he'd come back or that he'd survived the shot to the face. But, even that was after several pages of us arguing why Skywarp KILLED Thundercracker. None of us at the time were debating his survival. Just thought this is interesting. The fact that we debated the issue at the time, gives us a unique opportunity to go back in time and see if any of us thought anything other than "Skywarp killed Thundercracker". And no, none of us did.

Now now, we're not all hypocrites, and you're not the first to put the idea forth. Sparky from the very first, back on page 20, makes the "who says he had to die" argument a mere 2 weeks after the issue hit shelves:
http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=190
Worse still, from that point on we have this EXACT SAME ARGUMENT nearly 4 years ago, we make the "this is just how comics are" arguments, we make the "cheating or not" arugments, the "there has to be some way for the reader to recognize danger to TF characters on the page" argument, I even made the "if anything can happen" argument almost identically to the one I make here and posted a link to the panels.

.... BUUUUUUT, on the other hand, in that argument 4 years ago, Sparky and Anderson don't make this argument of "the intent could be anything" and "Skywarp could have shot somewhere else" thing, they both clearly say:

http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=200

Obviously it was Skywarp's intent to kill the 'traitor' [...] It implies Skywarp shot Thundercracker, but [...]

http://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php ... &start=620

Thundercracker strays from prevailing dogma and gets shot in the head by Skywarp.

We can, AND HAVE, argued whether a headshot should be a kill from point blank range and gotten nowhere in the past 4 years, and that's fine. Our positions haven't changed much, Anderson argued that cheating like this is common to comic books and part of their flaw, then and now. Sparky argued that a headshot doesn't necessarily mean death for a Transformer, then and now. That's not hypocritical.

What IS hypocritical though is to make this bogus argument that the implications of the comic's panels have changed and are even more fluid, that A > B > C > D = E
A: Skywarp is exceptionally angry at Thundercracker and calls him a betrayer to the cause. Thundercracker attempts to explain his decision.
B: Skywarp puts his gun right into Thundercracker's eye, and Thundercracker begs him to hold on a moment, to listen to reason.
C: Skywarp gets enraged and angry to the point of no longer shouting, states in a non-yelling manner that Thundercracker is a betrayer.
D: Skywarp fires his cannon.
E: all equaling Thundercracker getting shot in the head, thus implying his reward for doing the right thing within his view of the Decepticon code of behavior is execution by a brother in arms who will not listen, who will not see the shades of gray in the matter, whether or not you believe that execution was successful.

now is being argued as meaning A > B > L > C >M > D > N = ??? profit!
A: Skywarp is exceptionally angry at Thundercracker and calls him a betrayer to the cause. Thundercracker attempts to explain his decision.
B: Skywarp puts his gun right into Thundercracker's eye, and Thundercracker begs him to hold on a moment, to listen to reason.
L: Skywarp and/or Thundercracker back away from each other by a significant distance.
C: Skywarp gets enraged and angry to the point of no longer shouting, states in a non-yelling manner that Thundercracker is a betrayer.
M: Skywarp turns his weapon to another direction.
D: Skywarp fires his cannon.
N: Skywarp, having fired a shot for no reason, then leaves. Thundercracker leaves.
and finally
??? profit!: all resulting in nothing, nothing comes of this turn of events and nobody talks about it ever again. The book ends with this statement being the final say between these characters, the moment being shown for no reason at all. Thundercracker, having done the moral thing, feeling justified by a code of behavior he views as consistent with his faction's is rewarded by his angry brother in arms who won't listen to reason by merely being yelled at - no irony is stated in this moment and it is just a thing that happens with no repercussions at all.

All under the guise of "anything can happen between panels because that's how comic books are, the implications aren't remotely clear enough to even say Skywarp is shooting at Thundercracker, it's way too open to say that there are any implications at all" type bunk that didn't pass muster 4 years ago when you read the book. That is what comes off hypocritical to me.

[andersonh1]

Thundercracker strays from prevailing dogma and gets shot in the head by Skywarp.

I'm just interested to see that I've changed my mind about the scene. I didn't remember having written that at all! Clearly my views have changed over the past few years.

[JediTricks]

The idea that you need to be hand-held, led to a dead body and graphically shown it to be dead and INCAPABLE OF EVER GETTING BETTER is a symptom of the problem that comic books have created, it is precisely because you are familiar with their cheap ripoff tricks that you must require proof beyond proof that a character is permanently dead in that medium, where any other media is allowed to show a chain of events that clearly leads to a character's death without graphically showing the murder and after-effects of the murder.

Very true. Which is one reason that you shouldn't assume that Thundercracker died in that sequence. You should know better than that.

Hence comic books have conditioned readers to expect cheating, and that's a failing of the medium, which was my argument to begin with.

Here's a question: suppose Ongoing #4 was written by McCarthy rather than Costa, and was actually AHM #20, assuming the numbering continued from the Coda issues. And we get the exact same story of how Thundercracker was shot down but survived. Would you consider it a retcon, or a cheat? Wouldn't it be a case of leaving a character's fate hanging, only to reveal it later on down the line? I've seen television episodes and movies that pull that same trick, some of which were written by different writers in the case of tv series. It's a dramatic device.

If he had preplanned it? That would be a cheat and shitty writing on the part of AHM 12 by putting too fine a point on the moment, making too clear an implication of execution through character motivations and actions. If he didn't preplan it, that's a retcon and a cheat and shitty writing on the part of Ongoing 4/AHM 20 for being a cheat and a retcon.

maybe the Starship Enterprise came back in time and beamed Thundercracker up to the TARDIS, aboard the Death Star where Harry Potter and Twilight Sparkle magically repaired him.

And then the Blue Fairy turned Thundercracker into a real boy.

Let me illustrate another example... I was watching "I, Robot" the other day that happens to have a somewhat similar scene. There is this scene were Sonny (the robot) is ordered to be destroyed for killing someone. Calvin (a scientist who works at the company that makes the robots) sets up the procedure, while the scene shifts back and forth between her and Spooner investigating an old robot storage facility. Finally Calvin applies the nanites that destroys the robots positronic brain. Little later however, we find out Calvin had actually switched Sonny with another NS-5 robot off screen, in order to fake Sonny's destruction. We're meant to think he's dead, just as everyone in the narrative does, but SURPRISE! he's not and returns to help save the day.
Or haven't you ever seen shows where a character will get a gun pointed at their face, you think they're about to get shot in the face then go to commercial? And once they come back from the commercial somehow the person who has the gun pointed at them is able to wrestle the gun away. Pretty sure practically every crime drama does something like that at some point.

Once again, this is a common narrative trick intended to make the audience think one event happened while something else actually happens within reason of those same events. It's not something conditioned by the comics industry at all.

This is a bad example Sparky. Not only are you citing horrible writing, but you forgot to FIRE the gun in the character's face right before it went to commercial, and your argument says that AHM 12 should have "come back from commercial" showing the character alive. But it didn't, the AHM story and its coda never had Thundercracker show up after those events. You may as well be arguing that the end of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid is vague, or Thelma & Louise. If Casino had ended without showing Sam Rothstein surviving that carbomb, that'd be pretty damned shoddy storytelling. Did Cyclops survive X-Men 3 by your logic? What about Isla in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade? We only see her fall, not die, and then we don't see her again.

I'm not actively convoluting anything here. We don't see Thundercracker when Skywarp fires his weapon, and as such we don't see what actually happens to Thundercracker in that scene. And then we find out Thundercracker did in fact survive just 4 issues into the Ongoing. The simplest explanation for Occam's Razor, given that evidence from the comic itself, is that they moved somewhat between panels. If anything, that's less convoluted than your trying to brush it off as "artist interpretation", or that Thundercracker's head was taken clean off, to which we have no evidence in the comic itself to support those claims.

That's not the simplest explanation of anything. "He moved and we just weren't shown it", how does that even sound simple to you? Because you've predetermined the outcome, I guess. But for the actual on-the-page content, nothing leads you to believe that or leads you down that path, the 4th panel shows a giant blast and no Thundercracker but that in itself doesn't say anything, the context still implies he was shot, Skywarp was executing him. If you choose to accept ambiguity as to whether Thundercracker was disintegrated by the blast or had been knocked backward, that would be consistent with the context and thus the simplest explanation. That he survived is a stretch, and that he wasn't hit at all is a stretch, so you have to back-write this "he moved" thing to justify it, and that becomes NOT the simplest explanation.

But, readers reward bad behavior. I personally know readers who will actually say something to the effect of "it was aweseom when they killed off __________, and I cannot wait for them to bring _________ back." The cliche is what they want.

It is hard to blame publishers for playing to that.

I'm still going to argue that the publishers started this by making comic book death such a joke, they started the expectations that the fanboys eventually ran with.

It is actually a problem with Costa's run with the ongoing, not with McCarthy's "All Hail Megatron". (Just a clarification)

Yes, I agree that you're right. Unless you believe as Sparky and Anderson do, then that's wrong.

It is only a cheat if the author is back-writing to undo something that was never meant to be undone. In this case, Costa killed off Ironhide specifically to allow himself to bring back Ironhide. The "Ironhide" mini series was being advertised immediately after, if not simultaneously to, Ironhide's death in the comics. Costa did not have to back-write over his own stuff to make that work.

I don't know the content at all, but from what it sounds like, bringing back a dead character is akin to a miracle and miracles in fiction are cheats in my book. Because TFs have a "spark" that is more than just a hard drive copy, it's sticking to the "miracle cheat" thing for me.

It is similar to "Final Crisis". Anybody who says that Batman died in "Final Crisis" did not read the book. Morrison wrote Batman's apparent death knowing full well how he was going to reveal it as a hoax. He even went so far as to plant a few clues in story *and* to show Bruce Wayne alive and well towards the end of "Final Crisis".

I didn't read Final Crisis, COIE ruined DC in that way for me, I know better and don't partake anymore in big events. But I have read the wiki plot stuff and even there they mentioned those clues. Still a cheat, although in this case using faux-sci-fi as the cheat.

And here's a new slant on that question, if that level of violence won't kill a Transformer, why the fuck do they bother with lesser weapons in wartime? Why have they built proportionally large arms that still aren't enough to have a reasonable chance of stopping their enemies? Is the real reason the Autobot/Decepticon war lasted millions of years because they were too stupid to build more effective arms?

"Transformers are morons" was a theme in Costa's run actually.

That is fucking lame, there really should be more thought put into these things if they're going to start down those paths.


Anyway, fun's over, I'm off to visit my mom and step-dad in the hospital.

[JediTricks]

Thundercracker strays from prevailing dogma and gets shot in the head by Skywarp.

I'm just interested to see that I've changed my mind about the scene. I didn't remember having written that at all! Clearly my views have changed over the past few years.

Perhaps it's the brainwashing these comic books do by retconning characters back to life a few years later. You likely originally thought that because that's what the context told you, and reasonably so, it's a clear chain of events whether or not you see the resulting wound. It's only the trope of the comic book retcon which causes one to second-guess these things down the road. If this was a theatrical play where that scene was played out, the stage went black, a gun was fired, and then no other scenes showed the victim in that scene, there'd be no question in your mind what happened; but comic books are dishonest in that way, I think.

This is probably one of the reason I prefer mini-series outside of ongoing continuities, you can kill characters and have it feeling meaningful without having those events contradicted later on. Jason Todd was literally the only example of in-continuity death in DC that was meaningful... and look how even that eventually turned out.