Retro Comics are Awesome

[Dominic]

Bringing some points from the "Generations" forums (the CW thread specifically) down to here for the sake of relevance.

Why? So it takes place years ago, that shouldn't diminish the quality of the story.

It is not when it takes place, but when it was written. Stylistically, "Armor Wars" reads like something form the 90s.

Again, this attitude of "it has to be new in order to be good and as soon as it's done, it's old and therefore crap" just baffles me. I mean, what happens if the comics industry just dies completely? Will you get rid of your comics then? Or will you actually keep what you liked and go back and enjoy them again?

I would keep some, but likely purge more (in terms of percentages) than I would keep.

There was a time when I had a similar attitude to Dom, and I didn't like comics before the mid 80s. But since I really don't like most of current DC, it was either drop everything or try out older books.

Or you could have picked up books from other companies.

I am not dropping comics because IDW "Transformers" is bad. I will read the UK stuff. But, after that, I am going to read other comics, not dig around for more TF content.

I can get back to the mid-70s before I give up. The further back a comic was published, the less likely it is to be good. Go back too far, it is almost not worth the effort of looking, as the good:bad ratio skews too heavily towards junk.

[Onslaught Six]

The funny Paris, the IDE TR ISNT "bad" by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, if you're talking about going back--read Dreamwave, read the worse parts of Budiansky's run, read most of Furman's output, and compare it to now. What's being published now literally shreds through the competition. And you think it's "bad?!"

[Dominic]

"Robots out of Disguise" degenerated in to being some of the worst elements of comics.

Back-written magic MacGuffins, nudging the status quo backwards (and restoring stasis quo), having nothing to say.

That is (at best) the level of a generic "big two" book. But, it is happening in a book that generally avoided that kind of stuff in the past. Even the worst parts of Budiansky's run generally avoided those problems.


"More than Meets the Eye" is readable in the way that a Bendis book is. It is light on ideas, but individual issues are readable enough to be worth picking up. It would probably impress me more if I had fewer books on my pull-list.

[Shockwave]

It is not when it takes place, but when it was written.

I would keep some, but likely purge more (in terms of percentages) than I would keep.

I can get back to the mid-70s before I give up. The further back a comic was published, the less likely it is to be good. Go back too far, it is almost not worth the effort of looking, as the good:bad ratio skews too heavily towards junk.

If something is good, what does it matter when it was written?

Again, if the theory is that anything after a certain time isn't worth reading because it's old, then why keep anything? That's literally a waste of space and time and money.

And this is the part that baffles me. You can't possibly know it's not worth it unless you've actually read all of it. Again, this implies that there is a shelf life on quality and that's just not true. Especially if all your looking for idea based minutia because the early days of comics was nothing but new ideas. Because nothing had been written before and so everything was new. So by that standard it should be worth reading right? There really seems to be a double and contradictory standard here.

[BWprowl]

What's being published now literally shreds through the competition.

This is true. If you take an IDW TF comic and rub it up against a competing comic, it will actually, physically, literally shred that other comic to ribbons. They are razor-sharp, I have to read them with gloves on.

Seriously though, the current IDW output isn't all that great, comparatively. The Comic Formerly Known As RID (Could we start calling it 'Adjectiveless Transformers"?) is dog shit and has retroactively been dog shit pretty much from day one (everything was leading up to those idiotic Prowl, Starscream, and Megatron reveals, and I will continue to point to that as THE worst storyline in TF in a very long time, if not ever). MTMTE, as Dom says, is readable, but not mind-blowing, and has a host of problems. Snappy, quotable dialogue and memorable quirks are not valid shortcuts for actual compelling characterization, and taking a year-and-a-half to pay off on vaguely alluded plot points doesn't make Roberts some sort of writing-setup-genius, it makes him slow and sporadic.

Some stuff IDW has put out, like AHM and LSotW, have been phenomenal, but to say that everything they're doing is immediately better than, say, Furman's UK golden age, just isn't accurate. IDW's got a pretty sizable crap-ratio themselves.

[andersonh1]

I often find something of interest in comics because they're so dated. They reflect the times they were written in, just as current comics will reflect our times and seem dated a decade from now. If nothing else, I get enjoyment out of seeing where a character began compared to where he is now.

But I've also thinned out my collection of older books from time to time, so I don't entirely disagree with Dom here. I don't get rid of books just because they're dated, but there have been times when I'll look through back issues and realized that I'm not likely to read a certain series again, or I've got some books I wanted to try out and once I read the series for awhile I didn't really have much of an attachment to it, so I take the books to the store and sell them or get store credit so I can read something else.

[Dominic]

If something is good, what does it matter when it was written?

Because standards change over time.

My "go to" example is "Iron Man: Armor Wars".

It was excellent, being a decade ahead of its time, 30 years ago. That still leaves it 2 decades out of date now.

if all your looking for idea based minutia because the early days of comics was nothing but new ideas.

By "idea based" I do not mean "guy gets spider powers is a good idea". I am talking about the sort of thing that Gillen does with "Uber" or did with "Iron Man", writing about an actual idea in comic book format and actually have something to say about it. (This is why I am not really a fan of Gillen's current run on "Angela". He barely has anything to say about a topic I really do not care much about.)

This is true. If you take an IDW TF comic and rub it up against a competing comic, it will actually, physically, literally shred that other comic to ribbons. They are razor-sharp, I have to read them with gloves on.

I have dry enough skin that I do have to be careful about this sort of thing.

The Comic Formerly Known As RID (Could we start calling it 'Adjectiveless Transformers"?) is dog shit and has retroactively been dog shit pretty much from day one (everything was leading up to those idiotic Prowl, Starscream, and Megatron reveals, and I will continue to point to that as THE worst storyline in TF in a very long time, if not ever).

Actually, given how many dogs engage in copraphagy, dog shit might have greater merit than you seem to think.

Current IDW is better than the lowest points of Budiansky's Marvel run. That run was unreadable in places, being encumbered with blocks of tedious explicatory text. And, IDW's art is much cleaner.

Similarly, you are over-selling how bad the current TF book has gotten. (And, I am saying this as the guy who dropped the book after the last issue.) It is bad, but far from the "worst ever". IDW's "Beast Wars" was far worse.

MTMTE, as Dom says, is readable, but not mind-blowing, and has a host of problems. Snappy, quotable dialogue and memorable quirks are not valid shortcuts for actual compelling characterization, and taking a year-and-a-half to pay off on vaguely alluded plot points doesn't make Roberts some sort of writing-setup-genius, it makes him slow and sporadic.

The slow burn is not a problem. Comics are not about instant gratification. They have not been for at least 30 years now.

Roberts is very much like Bendis. He does not have much to say and is light on ideas. But, he says little with grace. "All-New Spider-Man" was like that. Bendis cranked out something that was consistently readable, but not much else. That is a big part of why I ended up dropping that book.

Some stuff IDW has put out, like AHM and LSotW, have been phenomenal, but to say that everything they're doing is immediately better than, say, Furman's UK golden age, just isn't accurate. IDW's got a pretty sizable crap-ratio themselves.

Been flipping through the old UK stuff. Some of it is painful, even by the lower standards of the 80s.

[andersonh1]

There was a time when I had a similar attitude to Dom, and I didn't like comics before the mid 80s. But since I really don't like most of current DC, it was either drop everything or try out older books.

Or you could have picked up books from other companies.

I meant to reply to this comment earlier. I did actually try out some Marvel when I found out DC was rebooting, and I really enjoyed Mark Waid's Daredevil run. Stuck with Captain America for awhile (Steve McNiven's art is outstanding!), and read and enjoyed Superior Spider Man. But I'm just not a big fan of Marvel's characters or universe, so I couldn't get into most of their books. I tried some X-men, Avengers and Iron Man and only made it a couple of issues for each. I haven't really looked into independent publishers. I'm just generally a fan of DC's characters, so that's where I tend to gravitate.

I like Marvel's movies. I still think the first Iron Man is one of the best superhero movies ever. But despite that, I just don't care enough for the comics to read them regularly. You enjoyed this last Iron Man run and I kept browsing it for a few months to see if it appealed to me, but I just never got into it.

[BWprowl]

Similarly, you are over-selling how bad the current TF book has gotten. (And, I am saying this as the guy who dropped the book after the last issue.) It is bad, but far from the "worst ever". IDW's "Beast Wars" was far worse.

IDWBW was bad, no doubt, but it was merely tepid, idiotic, and lazy. It was horrible comics, to be sure, but it was horrible comics we could all have a good laugh about and move on; it was harmless. RID, by comparison, was an absolute crime committed against ideas and storytelling. It was a one-two-THREE punch of HORRIBLE resolutions that not only retroactively turned nearly a year's worth of *apparent* good comics into disgusting, disposable fodder, but the shockwaves from its mind-blowingly idiotic choices are still being felt in the continually-nosediving story we have today. It fucked up EVERYTHING, and much of it likely will never be fixed satisfactorily. You say I'm overstating, but I really don't think I CAN overstate how horrific what that comic did was. It's the first, and thus far only, time I've felt personally betrayed by a story. Barber should be banned from telling stories.

"All-New Spider-Man" was like that. Bendis cranked out something that was consistently readable, but not much else.

Bendis probably also didn't devote large swaths of the book to talking about how shitty Spider-powers were, how horrible anyone who liked Miles's powers was, or engage towards an apparent endgame agenda of just removing Spider-powers from Spider-Man as a concept going forward forever.

[Onslaught Six]

Similarly, you are over-selling how bad the current TF book has gotten. (And, I am saying this as the guy who dropped the book after the last issue.) It is bad, but far from the "worst ever". IDW's "Beast Wars" was far worse.

IDWBW was bad, no doubt, but it was merely tepid, idiotic, and lazy. It was horrible comics, to be sure, but it was horrible comics we could all have a good laugh about and move on; it was harmless. RID, by comparison, was an absolute crime committed against ideas and storytelling. It was a one-two-THREE punch of HORRIBLE resolutions that not only retroactively turned nearly a year's worth of *apparent* good comics into disgusting, disposable fodder, but the shockwaves from its mind-blowingly idiotic choices are still being felt in the continually-nosediving story we have today. It fucked up EVERYTHING, and much of it likely will never be fixed satisfactorily. You say I'm overstating, but I really don't think I CAN overstate how horrific what that comic did was. It's the first, and thus far only, time I've felt personally betrayed by a story. Barber should be banned from telling stories.

Or Hasbro should let him do what he wants. You still haven't entertained this possibility? Or that he had to cut it short because Hasbro showed up with Dark Cybertron? I mean, if you read the current book (and I know you aren't) Prowl is right back around to trying to do the heel turn again...which is going to get fucked up as soon as Combiner Wars starts.

Seriously, as soon as Barber is off the team (which will happen eventually, I'm sure) I'm going to track him down and beat out of him if Hasbro made him fuck it all up. (It is realistically possible for Hasbro to look at what Barber was doing and go, "No, Prowl isn't allowed to be a bad guy, it has to be mind control or something." Comparatively, they wouldn't care so much about a non-flagship character like, say, Brainstorm.)