IDW "Combiner Wars" comic discussion and speculation

[Sparky Prime]

(When "Crisis on Infinite Earths" ended up getting down-graded to "a partial collapse of the multiverse" from "everything is gone never coming back", you know that nothing is going to stick.)

To be fair, CoIE was still a total collapse of the DC multiverse. What few universes still existed were folded into one, which allowed them to separate them in IC and thus bring back the multiverse, albeit on a much smaller scale.

I also can't really agree stuff like a sliding time scale or status quo is a recent development in the IDW TF comics. Even Furman had some of those elements when he was writing the series.

[Shockwave]

And, I'm sorry, you can't have this both ways without sounding like a hypocritical prat. If TF really is "just another comic" then you have to treat it with the same standards as you do every other comic.

For whatever reason, you consistently ignore the part where I say that time-slides and other generic comic tricks (like stasis quo) are relativley new downgrades for "Transformers".

Think of it like this, you have 3 kids, a smart kid and two idiots. One day, the smart one starts acting like his/her two idiot siblings. You are more likely to yell at the smart one for being newly stupid than at the two idiots for being consistently stupid.

I really should have cleaned up that last post a bit, apologies for the "hypocritical prat" comment.

I keep ignoring it because it's ultimately irrelevant. Going with the kids example, I would admonish all three for being idiots. But, if I have two kids who are good at math and fail everything else while the third is the opposite, I'm not going to admonish the third one for trying to copy the success of the other two in an attempt to be good at math. Marvel and DC are the two most successful companies in the comics industry. If IDW, a company in that same industry, wants to succeed then why wouldn't they mirror the habits of the big two? It is the logical thing to do. And companies within a given industry should all be judged by the same standard and so should the quality of their work.

Now, I'm not saying you should start reading IDW if you truly have problems with these practices, in fact, I would fully support having dropped it because of them. But, that same standard should apply to everyone. If Marvel and DC are going to keep perpetuating that behavior then they should get dropped too. Also, I'm kind of right there with you. As I mentioned above, I dropped everything from the big two because of their yearly etchasketch cycle of making stories irrelevant. And, if IDW starts falling into that pattern of undoing stories every year, then I'll drop it as well. So far, they haven't which still puts them higher than Marvel and DC IMO.

As for Scrapper, I see this happening one of two ways: 1) They still have Scrapper's actual body lying around and use whatever is left of him in Devastator to revive him or B) They make Scoop become Scrapper II. I highly suspect the later, for one, I can't remember what happened to Scrapper's body after his death so that might not be an option and two, I've seen a Japanese repaint of Scoop in Scrapper's colors. It's on BBTS if you want to see it.

[Onslaught Six]

Think of it like this, you have 3 kids, a smart kid and two idiots. One day, the smart one starts acting like his/her two idiot siblings. You are more likely to yell at the smart one for being newly stupid than at the two idiots for being consistently stupid.

...I'm glad Dom isn't my dad.

If IDW, a company in that same industry, wants to succeed then why wouldn't they mirror the habits of the big two? It is the logical thing to do.

That's really really shitty business practice (in a creative field) and doesn't pan out the way you'd think it does. Ideally, you want to ape the aspects that everyone agrees are a success (strong, iconic characters, both long-form and episodic storytelling, etc.) while avoiding the bad aspects of those companies. You don't just copy EVERYTHING they do because then you're literally not doing anything interesting.

WWE has had a "heel" (bad guy) authority figure as the central focus of their show on and off for nearly 20 years (97/98 to current day) and they are inarguably the largest and most successful wrestling company in the world. There is also a HUGE contingent of fans who think the heel authority figure angle is extremely overplayed, boring as fuck, and needs to go away for a long, long time...and yet, every other promotion under the sun has a heel authority figure, because WWE does it. They're aping something that is actively hurting the largest promotion in the world because "it works," even if it straight up doesn't fucking work.

Imagine if everybody decided to make movies like the Bay TF movies. Exactly like them, down to the runtimes and the bad inappropriate "comedy" and everything. Imagine if every single movie was like that, because "it works" and it's the "most successful" model. That would SUCK ASS. You don't ape everything just because someone else is doing it--you ape the good and shred the bad.

[Shockwave]

Think of it like this, you have 3 kids, a smart kid and two idiots. One day, the smart one starts acting like his/her two idiot siblings. You are more likely to yell at the smart one for being newly stupid than at the two idiots for being consistently stupid.

...I'm glad Dom isn't my dad.

If IDW, a company in that same industry, wants to succeed then why wouldn't they mirror the habits of the big two? It is the logical thing to do.

That's really really shitty business practice (in a creative field) and doesn't pan out the way you'd think it does. Ideally, you want to ape the aspects that everyone agrees are a success (strong, iconic characters, both long-form and episodic storytelling, etc.) while avoiding the bad aspects of those companies. You don't just copy EVERYTHING they do because then you're literally not doing anything interesting.

WWE has had a "heel" (bad guy) authority figure as the central focus of their show on and off for nearly 20 years (97/98 to current day) and they are inarguably the largest and most successful wrestling company in the world. There is also a HUGE contingent of fans who think the heel authority figure angle is extremely overplayed, boring as fuck, and needs to go away for a long, long time...and yet, every other promotion under the sun has a heel authority figure, because WWE does it. They're aping something that is actively hurting the largest promotion in the world because "it works," even if it straight up doesn't fucking work.

Imagine if everybody decided to make movies like the Bay TF movies. Exactly like them, down to the runtimes and the bad inappropriate "comedy" and everything. Imagine if every single movie was like that, because "it works" and it's the "most successful" model. That would SUCK ASS. You don't ape everything just because someone else is doing it--you ape the good and shred the bad.

Exactly and that's the rub. Because companies measure success monetarily. And, in an industry where the written word is the product, how does one judge what's "good" vs. "bad" without just looking at the hard numbers? Reviews are only going to go so far because, as an art form, the standard of good vs. bad is subjective to the reviewer. So that doesn't work. The only other alternative is to look at their business practices and try to emulate them. Then it's a matter of seeing what works and what doesn't. Some companies have a hard time finding that sweet spot where they emulate what's good about a successful company while avoiding what's bad. Marvel and DC haven't mastered it yet, but at the same time, there's no one else for them to be compared to. I kind of think IDW is experiencing that learning curve right now. I think the real question is whether or not the industry will survive long enough for them to reach that sweet spot.

[Dominic]

To be fair, CoIE was still a total collapse of the DC multiverse.

Not when it is mentioned on page now. Now, it is a partial collapse. (Hey, I ain't the one who back-wrote it.)

Even Furman had some of those elements when he was writing the series.

Furman had a slow burn plot. But, it moved forward. And, time seemed to pass.

I keep ignoring it because it's ultimately irrelevant.

How is a decline in quality not relevant?

If IDW, a company in that same industry, wants to succeed then why wouldn't they mirror the habits of the big two? It is the logical thing to do. And companies within a given industry should all be judged by the same standard and so should the quality of their work.

Generally, I agree. But, if a comic does something very well or does something unique, I am more likely to forgive other problems. ("Re-Generation One" had some problems. But, the concept was unique enough, and the execution generally good enough, to mitigate those problems.)

I can't remember what happened to Scrapper's body after his death so that might not be an option and two, I've seen a Japanese repaint of Scoop in Scrapper's colors. It's on BBTS if you want to see it.

Scrapper's body was on Cybertron during "Chaos".

I dropped everything from the big two because of their yearly etchasketch cycle of making stories irrelevant. And, if IDW starts falling into that pattern of undoing stories every year, then I'll drop it as well. So far, they haven't which still puts them higher than Marvel and DC IMO.

IDW is going more in that direction now.

While Marvel may not be any better about having stuff stick, they have been doing some amazing comics the last few years. I do not care if Gillen's "Iron Man" run sticks or not. It is a solid run of comics either way. (In fact, it might be better if Marvel lets it go after the reboot. Better to see it forgotten than terdified like "Spotlight: Mirage".)

[Shockwave]

Even Furman had some of those elements when he was writing the series.

Furman had a slow burn plot. But, it moved forward. And, time seemed to pass.

And time is still passing in TF. Ok, so they skipped forward a bit, it's not like that's anything new for... well any media come to think of it. I mean really, all they did was just skip ahead a few years.

I keep ignoring it because it's ultimately irrelevant.

How is a decline in quality not relevant?

Because dropping a book for declining quality isn't the part I don't understand. Dropping a book that has declined in quality but is still better than the lower quality that is still getting purchased is what vexxes me.

If IDW, a company in that same industry, wants to succeed then why wouldn't they mirror the habits of the big two? It is the logical thing to do. And companies within a given industry should all be judged by the same standard and so should the quality of their work.

Generally, I agree. But, if a comic does something very well or does something unique, I am more likely to forgive other problems. ("Re-Generation One" had some problems. But, the concept was unique enough, and the execution generally good enough, to mitigate those problems.)

And there are still new and different things being explored here. We're still in the post war landscape, Megatron is still an Autobot, Starscream is still ruler of Cybertron and we're starting to really see this landscape explored. Honestly, even I didn't think they'd be exploring this as deeply as they are. I mean, right now, we're still seeing ramifications of the end of the war. Look at the latest issue with the DJD. You had to know that just because Megatron said "No more Decepticons." that not all of them would lay down their badges. And now we're seeing how that's going to work out. Not to mention the other Decepticons on Earth that want to continue the Decepticon ideology. It'll be interesting to see what happens if those two come together. Plus, we're also still seeing how Starscream handles being a leader and now we're seeing how he handles the diplomatic side of things. A lot of this is stuff we've never seen in TF before. Yeah, ok, Prime fought Decepticons on Earth. Big deal. I mean, it stands to reason that just because the war is over that tensions would automatically cease or that there wouldn't still be skirmishes here and there. Anyway, there's a lot of concepts getting explored that I think maybe you're missing or just not giving credit for.

I can't remember what happened to Scrapper's body after his death so that might not be an option and two, I've seen a Japanese repaint of Scoop in Scrapper's colors. It's on BBTS if you want to see it.

Scrapper's body was on Cybertron during "Chaos".

Oh ok. Well... I dunno. I'm actually hoping that he's not back at all, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I dropped everything from the big two because of their yearly etchasketch cycle of making stories irrelevant. And, if IDW starts falling into that pattern of undoing stories every year, then I'll drop it as well. So far, they haven't which still puts them higher than Marvel and DC IMO.

IDW is going more in that direction now.

While Marvel may not be any better about having stuff stick, they have been doing some amazing comics the last few years. I do not care if Gillen's "Iron Man" run sticks or not. It is a solid run of comics either way. (In fact, it might be better if Marvel lets it go after the reboot. Better to see it forgotten than terdified like "Spotlight: Mirage".)

And to me, stuff sticking is what's important. I don't want to read a story, even a good one if it's just going to get etcha-sketched a year later. That cheapens the story more than anything else. Because even if the story was good, I just wind up thinking "Why the fuck did I read that?". I tend to think of comic companies as story tellers and I expect them to keep the story straight and consistent. IDW is doing that. The big two are like a couple of junkies trying to tell a story but are so out of it that they are continuously arguing about what actually happened. If IDW starts the reboot cycle that Marvel and DC currently are on, I will drop them. But, since that hasn't happened yet, I'm still in. And I'm still getting some intriguing concepts explored as well.

[Dominic]

And time is still passing in TF. Ok, so they skipped forward a bit, it's not like that's anything new for... well any media come to think of it. I mean really, all they did was just skip ahead a few years.

Time did not skip forward, it came undone. Skipping ahead is simply a way to account for time passing off-page. It can take a comic several months of real time to cover a day's worth time on page. Hickman's first year of "New Avengers" is set over the course of a few months. The first 18 months of Gillen's "Iron Man" run are set entirely within the few (page) months of the first (real) year of Hickman's run on "New Avengers".

Barber, on the other hand, introduced a straight up time-slide, where events on page happen "when we say they did". To make matter worse, Barber decided to referenct a real world event (Occupy), which defeats the purpose of a time-slide (by giving a fixed date reference) more or less in the same breath as introducing the damned time-slide. And, the official explanation is that we have to assume Occupy happened in 2008 (requiring a reader to discard what they know about that real event).

In other words, Barber used a stupid comicbook device in the most lazy and clumsy possible way.

Dropping a book that has declined in quality but is still better than the lower quality that is still getting purchased is what vexxes me.

Because TF ain't better.

Marvel has been doing idea based comics (and doing them damned well) for the last 2 or 3 years now. Gillen, Slott, Hickman. Frankly, I am more surprised at the impact Hickman's run on "Avengers" and "New Avengers" has than I am at how fast Marvel has moved on from Slott's "Superior Spider-Man". But, even after those arcs are no longer relevant (maybe 2 months from now), they will still be good because the writer started from an idea.

Current TF has less ideas than it used to. Barber's work in particular is just....there. It has the robots doing stuff with McGuffins and few enough ideas.

I just wind up thinking "Why the fuck did I read that?". I tend to think of comic companies as story tellers and I expect them to keep the story straight and consistent.

You read it because it was good.

Just look at different runs as different stories.

"Avengers Dis-Assembled" was very readable. It also featured the kinds of mishaps that nobody (even a team of superhumans) should be able to recover from. But, when I am reading Hickman's current run, I really do not care how well it fits with Bendis' early run from 10+ years ago. Marvel tacitly embraced this logic for much of Quesada's run at EiC.

DC has been explicitly doing this for abourt 30 years. Pre-Crisis DC is not post-Crisis DC. (Pick which "Crisis" that refers to.) Similarly, pre-"Flash Point" is not current DC. Mark Waid's "the Return of Barry Allen" (a story that bordered on trolling 15 years before trolling became cool) is slightly diminished by Johns bringing Barry back. But, it still holds up because Waid had....an idea beyond "the Flash does some stuff and it is awesome".

[Shockwave]

I guess it's a difference in priorities. I just see you putting up with shit that I have no tolerance for, but I guess I am putting up with shit that you have no tolerance for, so I guess we're just on different ends of the spectrum.

Still, the continuity issue is bad. For me, it's bad enough that it renders good stories into crap. I would much rather read a story that I know is going to stick rather than read a story that I know I'm just going to be told didn't actually happen within a year or less. It just completely takes me out of the narrative and I just can't enjoy it on any level. At least TF, regardless of how bad it gets still has the entertainment value of giving me my giant fighting robots fix.

[Sparky Prime]

Not when it is mentioned on page now. Now, it is a partial collapse. (Hey, I ain't the one who back-wrote it.)

When has it ever been mentioned on page as a "partial collapse"? They destroyed the DC multiverse and then remade it.

Furman had a slow burn plot. But, it moved forward. And, time seemed to pass.

So what if it was a slow plot? That doesn't make IDW's Transformers any less guilty of pulling that sort of stuff early on, rather than just recently.

[Dominic]

Not sure that Furman used time-slides and back-writes though (which was the specific thing I thought you were asking about). The time-slide is new to post-"Dark Cybertron" Barber TF. But, back-writes go back to Costa's run. (I will concede that.) And, McCarthy's run was based on a significant enough change in premise (necessary at the time) that some might qualify it as a back-write.

But, it seems to have gotten worse after "Dark Cybertron".

When has it ever been mentioned on page as a "partial collapse"? They destroyed the DC multiverse and then remade it.

I want to say it was either "Final Crisis" or "Multiversity" (the only two DC books I have read recently). There was some explication describing CoIE as a "partial collapse of the multiverse".