JediTricks wrote:Or how about "Ultra Magnus is akin to 'the Dread Pirate Roberts'"?
---> Thu Aug 08, 2013 1:14 am <---
Shockwave wrote:Ha! It just occurred to me: Magnus is the Dread Pirate Roberts!
---> Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:07 am <---
Great minds thinking alike, or clumsiest plagiarism of all time?
J/k.
BWP wrote:RiD is more of a straight dub than a rewrite, it changes names for what amounts to localization purposes, but the story itself stays the same, it's hardly Robotech or anything. God Magnus and RiD Ultra Magnus are the same guy, just called different things in different regions, you might as well try to argue that 'Convoy' in Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers is a separate character from 'Optimus Prime' in The Transformers.
Anyway, Six's point was that RiD God/Ultra Magnus isn't really supposed to be considered a reinvention/reinterpretation of G1 Magnus the way Shockles was insinuating. If anything it's closer to the G1 Megatron/BW Megatron situation, where you have two idiomatically-exclusive characters who happen to share a name for one reason or another.
God Magnus is like half-Godbomber anyway.
Eh, no, not accepting that. Fire Convoy is not "Convoy" Convoy in CR, yet in RID he *is* Optimus Prime. So in my book, it's the same as UM/GM, the character intention is rewritten for the US enough to consider them a fork at least.
Anderson wrote:I'm not negative towards the issue as a whole, it's mainly just the Magnus storyline that's annoying me. Though the fact that two of the adversaries, Pharma and Tyrest, are insane as an excuse for their villainy feels like laziness.
Tyrest's madness may spawn from his villainy, he sees himself as the right and true man for the job, yet his flaws eventually break him down into feelings of guilt that manifest as drilling until he drills his brain. Pharma has no friggin' excuse at all, he shouldn't be there and he shouldn't be crazy, that's lazy.
It's a bad thing here. All this time we're meant to have been reading about IDW's version of Ultra Magnus, who, like Galvatron, had been given a new interpretation and role. And that's great, I thought both characters benefited from being moved away from past versions. Galvatron in particular needed to be freed from the 1986 movie concept of being a rebuilt Megatron. That was a good plot twist at the time, but there was no need to revisit it yet again.
This is different. It doesn't matter that all the stuff we've seen still happened. It was never Magnus it was happening to. It was Albus, the guy in disguise, a brand new character who is essentially replacing Ultra Magnus. Am I supposed to care about Albus, to be absorbed in his plight? I'm too busy being annoyed that Ultra Magnus is dead in IDW continuity, and has been the whole time. We've never had a genuine Ultra Magnus storyline. It's always been Mr. No-Name-Roberts-Fan-Character in disguise.
As I said, I feel cheated. I'd rather read about the actual Ultra Magnus, not some guy playing a part.
IDW Magnus has only been Ambus though, so we've only seen his story. The previous holders of the Magnus armor were the legends told about him, that is a different ball of wax, I never take legends like that too seriously because that's the point of legends. If they hadn't drawn him as Ultra Magnus, hadn't used that name, would his story be less compelling? I'd argue no, the name lends baggage but that applies to the story as well, the legend of Ultra Magnus is a tough one to live up to, it comes with perks and pitfalls alike.
No, because when I saw stories featuring Ultra Magnus, I actually thought I was reading a story about Ultra Magnus. Silly me.
What about Galvatron? This is a different Galvatron, so you're reading about "IDW Galvatron", does that make them less compelling? When you read a story in IDW featuring Optimus Prime, you know that "Prime" is a nameplate worn by Orion Pax, true holder of the matrix, right? Why can't this interpretation for UM be in that vein, then? Are you so challenged by the alteration of perception over someone's identity that it actively affects what you have seen them do? Would a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?
He's not the same character. All this time I thought I was reading about Ultra Magnus, and I was when Furman or Costa were the authors. No doubt they meant for him to be the genuine article. Suddenly I'm not reading about Ultra Magnus, I'm reading about Minimus Ambus, a new character who has just appeared out of nowhere. And all because James Roberts thought it would be cute to write a story based on the fact that the original Ultra Magnus toy is a bunch of snap on armor pieces that fit on a white Optimus Prime.
Your baseline in this is other expressions of Ultra Magnus, it's the one from DW and G1 and whatnot, so you have a preconceived notion. Ok, that's fine, that's the same thing this story is arguing about the character, that he exists because of preconceived notions based on the name and look. However, your experiences in IDW are - aside from the ReG1 books - not actually connected directly to G1 or DW or what have you, IDW is its own take on the universe's ideas. Therefore, everything in IDW you've seen has been consistent with that one character, as long as you've read IDW you've been reading about Ambus Minimus wearing an Ultra Magnus suit based on Chief Justice Tyrest's mysterious orders. This is not different than Chromedome's "real name" or Whirl's previous identity or Senator Shockwave, the only difference is in how the story expressed it to you through the eyes of its characters.
You know, if we'd seen the genuine Ultra Magnus small white robot underneath, and the story was that he was some weakling who needed the armor to do his job, or something like that, I'd have been fine with it. We'd still have the genuine article. But making him another bot entirely is just disrespectful of the readership of the book. It prevents us from seeing the genuine Magnus for some ersatz version.
I disagree, it's disrespectful to the actual Ultra Magnus because they took his dead-ass body and turned it into a Batman costume, but the reader is along for the ride either way so only those who are so actively invested in the G1 character that they cannot separate that G1 from this IDW universe should see serious complaint, and that's about the reader over the writer.
What if it had been Optimus Prime who turned out to be someone else named Ambus? For that matter, transplant this idea to any other character. "The genuine Optimus Prime died out centuries ago, but I've been using his name and reputation ever since." "The genuine Starscream died a long time ago, but I've been using his name and reputation to climb the ranks." "The original Wheelie died off centuries ago, but I love rhymes so I've stolen his name and adopted his appearance." Come on, this whole thing is a cheat. We've all been cheated out of seeing the genuine Ultra Magnus develop and grow, because it's never been him. How hard is that to understand?
Seems like that's what Optimus is doing going as Orion Pax now, he's not Optimus Prime in his own eyes. "Prime" is a tainted name he's wiped clean through his acts, but by using the matrix up the way he did, he's not a Prime anymore as far as he's concerned. Why WOULDN'T the genuine Starscream die long ago? He's not terribly good at what he does, I could totally buy someone usurping his identity for gain. But that's the thing, it has to be a plausible gain, it has to be a reasonable figurehead to hide behind, nobody would want to replace Wheelie because he's meaningless, so that'd be a cheap move; but Prime, Ultra Magnus, Megatron, etc., these characters stand for something.
I'm starting to get your annoyance with Prowl over in RID. There it was Bombshell pretending to be Prowl, which at least had the virtue of being based in the character's pre-existing modus operandi of mental control over others. Here it's fan fiction character Ambus pretending to be Magnus. It's just like inserting Rung into the series and then having him be a "historical constant" who has been around for every major event. Why are these fan characters being promoted over genuine Transformers characters, to the point that one of them now IS a major character?
Because the world of Transformers isn't so sacrosanct that they cannot add new ideas and characters, and that the authors and editors can be fans, thus those fan creations are the impetus of imagination?
BWP wrote:On a slightly different topic, I just realized that Magnus's status as an enforcer within his own faction who's actually an assumed identity/legacy effectively makes him the Autobot counterpart to the Decepticon Justice Division, whom we've been told work pretty much the same way. Inneresting.
The difference I suppose is that Magnus' job was supposed to be for Cybertronian justice, although I guess the Aquetas trials were only Autobots and that was Tyrest, so I dunno. The DJD is entirely focused on Decepticon "justice" though, an inward-gazing sense of justice based on the specific orders of a single leader.
Anderson wrote:And the changes made to him were long overdue and very refreshing. But here's the key thing: he's still Galvatron. Ultra Magnus in IDW continuity isn't Ultra Magnus, he's some guy named Minimus Ambus. You still see him as the same character and don't care what he's called, while in reality he's a new character who's a pretender, not the real thing. All of those things that happened in Spotlight Ultra Magnus or the ongoing series or Last Stand of the Wreckers didn't happen to Ultra Magnus, they happened to Minimus Ambus wearing an Ultra Magnus costume. He was cosplaying. He's an actor, playing a role assigned him by Tyrest.
Names matter. Spotlight: Minimus Ambus. Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
Your interpretation is a curious interpretation, Ultra Magnus WAS a person, now he's a legend whose identity has been usurped and passed down to keep that legend alive. It's not a "new character" in that we just met this interpretation though, it's not like Ultra Magnus died back in issue 5 and nobody noticed and Ambus put on his clothes, Ambus has been Ultra Magnus as long as most of these characters have known Ultra Magnus, millennia.
It's all part of the same package. It's not an either/or proposition here. Characters don't generally exist without names and faces any more than they exist without action. All of it matters.
The big blue bot still exists, just in the past, as lore.
This isn't about simply revealing some previously unknown (or uncreated) part of a character's past. This is about taking a character and revealing that he's someone else entirely. It would be like taking Superman after 75 years of comics and suddenly revealing that he's never been Clark Kent. Kent died on his first assignment, and it's been a clone all along, or General Zod taking Kent's name and powers and carrying the torch. Or maybe there was a succession of Superman. Do you see how disrespectful that kind of stunt is to the readership, or past creators? We haven't had elaboration and building onto the character of Ultra Magnus here, we've had the old switcheroo. "Surprise, it's not really Ultra Magnus, because he's been dead for years! It's me, moustache man!"
It's not building and adding to a character that's happened here, it's replacement.
DC has done that before, there have been Elseworlds and there have been other earths and all sorts of things. The passing along the torch thing has been done in Superman going back to the silver age and into Legion of Superheroes and beyond.
Anyway, I've got to run, I've been sitting on this draft for 9 days so I'm posting incomplete, but I'll be back.
