BWprowl wrote:That was part of the problem though. At first he was written to be showing signs of a (really interesting) turn to legitimacy, but then he abruptly switched to telling everyone he had a Nefarious Plot to betray everyone. Of course, that whole ending of that arc was just Barber progressively taking a colossal dump on my expectations, so.
He has turned to legitimacy though, he isn't sitting on a throne demanding tribute, he's having to do work and learn as he goes how politics really work. So I think it's holding up as a whole, but individual moments are all over the map. It would be unrealistic for him to automatically become a good guy just because he thinks he's doing the right thing, the question now is whether he thinks he's doing the right thing for the people or he's just feeding his ego - Windblade has kept it towards the former for me. Betraying Metalhawk wasn't so far out of character, he's like Frank Underwood on House of Cards in that way, he is an awful person who thinks he's making compromises for the common good, and he's deluded himself into believing that his ego isn't in the way of the common good which allows him to do dastardly things like murders and cover-ups in the name of the people.
There will always be specifics that are different from writer to writer, but I'm not familiar with Costa's version of Megatron enough to agree or disagree, so you may have to explain.
Megatron’s big *thing* in that arc was his inability to change, aside from amassing power for himself and causing progressively more destruction as a way to cover for how ineffectual his efforts on Earth had wound up in spite of everything. Nothing bad that happened was his fault, he laid blame on Starscream, on the Humans, and sought to take ‘revenge’ as a way to cover for that; he was an in-denial failure throwing a global, murderous tantrum to vicariously make up for his failings. This more humbled, amicable Megatron in MTMTE, who doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge that he’s wronged others and let his philosophy get away from him, is rather the opposite of that. As you already mentioned, it is quite in-line with the also-Roberts-written ‘Chaos Theory’, and there’s nothing *wrong* with that, part of what makes western comics work is different writers getting to exercise their different styles and ideas on the available characters and settings, but it’s still worth noting that Megatron in Roberts’s hands will definitively be a ‘different character’ from him in Costa’s, and some leeway should be allowed for that, rather than complaining that Megatron and how others react to him is being mischaracterized or inconsistent from what the previous guys wrote.
Thanks for explaining. I'm a little surprised though, Megatron's thing under Costa was just that he can't change, he can't recognize bad choices and has no insight? That's not a very good character, it's believable for a character and even one that's essentially the head of a terrorist organization like the Decepticons, but it seems very Sunbow-appropriate but in a deeper medium very downward-spiral into significant failure. I just don't see someone who succeeded in this role for 4 million years be so myopic.
Man, you really think about "what could have been" a lot! Between this and the Generations figures, there's a lot of teeth-gnashing over the infinite possibilities of choices you think they could have done better. I haven't seen Roberts do this for no reason so far, there generally is justification one way or another - a character he can't use a certain way or is already in use in other ways.
Isn’t that the point of an opinion? “This sucks, here’s how it could have been done so it doesn’t suck”. I will admit right now that Roberts blew me the fuck away with Fulcrum, introducing him and setting him up and using the fact that we *didn’t* know him or what he turned into to great effect. And while I will admit that he might have a similar plan in mind for Riptide, it still comes off as very frustrating as-is, to just drop this guy in front of us, with an interesting design and enticingly unique altmode, and then do nothing with him. If he plans to use Riptide for something later that only Riptide can be used for, that’s fine, but bring him in in THAT story arc, rather than wasting page-space in a completely different story arc telling me he exists and is cool and then showing none of that.
I dunno, not every opinion is automatically equal. I didn't like TF:Animated at all when I watched the first few episodes, but when I gave the series another chance down the road it became one of my favorite animated shows. "I think this sucks, here's how I would have done it" is a limited-use and even more limited-appeal tool in the drawer, when you get angry because that shapes your opinion simply because it seems like they're going a different way, it only is getting in the way of using it for constructive criticism. There are hundreds of characters on this ship we haven't met yet, Roberts is a professional writer, he has shown competence even in your own eyes with similar situation, considering that you aren't offering to create your own competing material, why get so obsessed with every little thing to the point where it actively causes you to get upset with it later? It seems like you are fighting the reality of what you get against the fantasy of anything and everything you could want, rather than tempering one with the other.
BTW, Roberts had Riptide in the first issue of this season, he wasn't dropped in here, he was part of Swerve's prank on the new Cybertronians joining the crew, Groove recognized him as part of the Hydrobots which were mentioned when the Lost Light fought the Ammonites underwater in Dark Cybertron, and in this issue here he is taking part of Swerve's circle again. This is the definition of worldbuilding, they built him up as being part of Swerve's universe slowly, he's a tertiary character there to support Swerve's story at this point, and there's no reason they shouldn't have used him.
Part of it is, even though we did disprove this a while back, me being hung up on the concept that these are supposed to be ‘G1 comics’, so Roberts should be pulling from the established pool of Transformers Who Already Exist to fill out his cast. But even with that rendered irrelevant, going in the other direction, it’s INCREDIBLY frustrating for Roberts to go ahead and introduce this guy, who is a new character, who looks different, who has a unique alt-mode, which is indeed, something I really like to see, then do absolutely nothing with him and go back to writing Swerve and Rodimus. I’m not going to be impressed by Roberts simply scribbling down new names and altmodes on a cast list, he’s been doing that since day one with stuff like the Duobots. He has to actually have them DO something new and cool before I can acknowledge that they are, in fact, cool and new. Show, don’t tell.
Also, in terms of the story itself, I am a BIG believer in conservation of detail: If something isn’t relevant to the story at hand, then don’t waste my time telling me about it. I actually abhor most ‘world-building’ for this reason.
You are all over the map. Don't do the same G1 stuff, make sure to use G1 stuff. I want new stories, don't worldbuild. I want good comics, I want to make sure the new character gets a big spotlight event like every dumbass comics character intro.
Riptide is shown doing exactly what he should be doing right now, bolstering Swerve's story and being part of the crew. NOTHING ELSE IS HAPPENING THAT WARRANTS HIS USE. Either the character can totally disappear from the book until he is needed, which will feel like a ripoff, or he can inhabit the world in little ways and slowly build without interfering.
O6 wrote:It's called setup! If Riptide does nothing in the future, then fine, but give it an issue or two.
With Roberts, more like "or eight"
Indeed, it actually has been 2-3 issues since Riptide popped up and told us what a boat he turned into. He either needs to get around to bein’ a boat, or get chucked out an airlock.
I'm pretty sure he never said he was a boat, I just went through all 3 of the issues where the Hydrobots and/or Riptide are mentioned and found nothing of the sort - he is a submarine/boat thing, since Milne released a sketch of what his alt mode would be via Twitter, but I couldn't find anywhere where he said anything about himself at all. The closest was that Ultra Magnus and Groove each mentioned that the Hydrobots are underwater bots, but that's all that was said. So you are fighting your expectations, you are excited and filling in the gaps, then mad that the book isn't meeting those expectations.
