Devil's Due TF vs. Joe

[onslaught86]

So I finally got around to reading these series. I recall Dom mentioning them, and had seem solicitations and a few bits and pieces, but somehow never actually read the series. Spent the last few days going through all four volumes - V1, V2, Art of War, and Black Horizon.

Now, I've read the Dreamwave efforts, along with early TF/Joe crossovers, and do consider myself a sideline Joe fan. This is in part thanks to O6, since they stopped selling Joe here, it hasn't been popular locally since the 80s. Yet for some reason I'd never taken much notice of these. I now sincerely regret not paying more attention at the time, as these stories are easily the equal of the material Dreamwave offered, and in places truly shine.

A few opening thoughts..

V1 - simple, very much the cartoon crossover, hearkening back to the early days of both. The redesigns as Cobra vehicles were interesting, and there were some surprising cameos. A solid merging of both origin stories. Mindblowing, no, but very entertaining in much the way the cartoons were. Self-contained, yet it left many a window for future stories. Nice art here.

V2 - grandly ambitious, and surprisingly almost pulled it off. This took what could've been a hideously cringeworthy time travel story and worked it, making the redesigned TFs seem more like a byproduct than the reason for the exercise. Reminiscent of Dreamwave V2. Unfortunately falls apart at the end, with the future timeline not featuring Scorponok despite him being on the covers, and the past timeline being cut out of the story completely. Nice art here too, cleverly done with the two artists. Deus Ex Dinobots irked a tad.

Art of War - Pushing it, to be sure, the wrench around on this was a touch cheesy, yet a cute way to combine the two franchises in a slightly different manner. The real stars here are the obscure characters getting the limelight, epic gestalt battles that Dreamwave only ever hinted at, rather the nice touch. Serpentor's design was more than a little Thunderwing-esque. The ending did leave a little to be desired, and this wasn't as clever as V2, but it was a better whole as it didn't fall apart towards the end.

Black Horizon - Hinted at in V2, this was the inevitable Unicron story. Plus Cobra-La and Pretenders. Somehow this seemed like it was shaping up to be terrible, but it turned out to be my favourite by far. And this was because it didn't take itself seriously, playing up the campy nature of these parts of the franchises, while playing them cool as well. Unicron being filled with Battle Beasts and the Kung-Fu Grip scene are the best kinds of pop-culture orgasms, loved it.

Overall, I think it's actually the human factor that makes the difference here. As extreme and fantastic as GI Joe is, these are established characters we 'do' already care for, rather than the throwaway humans many a TF story has haphazardly featured. They hold their own without gratuitous killing on both sides, which is always a danger in crossovers, and I feel this did a great job of appealing to both fanbases. Definitely better than it appeared from a distance.

"Come, meat-dolls. Die for Monstructor!"

[Dominic]

I have to disagree on most of this.

I agree that as a whole, DDP did a solid job of melding to the two franchises, and it avoided making the "assumed interest and knowledge mistake" most cross-overs make one way or the other. (This is exemplified in the first volume.)

Volume II was awful. Both the writing and art-work were inconsistent, with character models changing mid-story, and some chapters contradicting others. On top of that, the plot had less sophistication than many video-games, both in premise and execution.

Volume III at least had a concept beyond "lookie, it is a cross-over". There was a good leadership theme running through that, making it better than the actual "Joe" comics at the time. (There was not TF license at all when volume III came out.)

IV was just filler. It was not appreciably worse than I, and far better than II. But, I can forgive certain things in an intro story like I that become irksome in later volumes.


Dom
-none of these were as bad as the Marvel Cross-over.

[onslaught86]

I agree that as a whole, DDP did a solid job of melding to the two franchises, and it avoided making the "assumed interest and knowledge mistake" most cross-overs make one way or the other. (This is exemplified in the first volume.)

Indeed, it played on the reader's knowledge in a good way - assuming basic familiarity with the franchises while tossing in cookies for long-term fans, as well it should. The melding of the origin stories worked nicely.

Volume II was awful. Both the writing and art-work were inconsistent, with character models changing mid-story, and some chapters contradicting others. On top of that, the plot had less sophistication than many video-games, both in premise and execution.

Did you read the interviews and notes from the preview issue? That intrigued me. It certainly did lack, and the premise was contrived, but the "Shockwave has taken over Cybertron properly" angle is one I've always enjoyed, and the redesigned era-specific character models were neat. Particularly enjoyed that they went with the same time travel rules that Time Wars used, and the future timeline with Ratchet would have justified several issues in and of itself. My problem stemmed from there on out, actually. It seems they lost the plot during that segment, proceeded to omit the details of the Dinobots' origin, and leave the future story unfinished - Scorponok was clearly intended to be a part of it, and instantly killing Ratchet off was weak.
I liked elements of it, but the whole was poor.

Percy, however, is fantastic.

Volume III at least had a concept beyond "lookie, it is a cross-over". There was a good leadership theme running through that, making it better than the actual "Joe" comics at the time. (There was not TF license at all when volume III came out.)

It was the attention to detail with obscure and lesser-used characters I liked, some grand large-scale battle scenes and quite the few fun cameos in there. I do take issue with the, hmm, fannish bias, as I doubt Predaking would be able to trump Piranacon with anywhere near that much ease, Piranacon outstats him heftily. As mentioned, Serpentor's resembling Thunderwing was neat, and Duke's opening the Matrix hearkens back to the early days of Marvel G1..and also the upcoming movie sequel.

I may have reason to believe Bay and friends have been referring to these series for inspiration.

IV was just filler. It was not appreciably worse than I, and far better than II. But, I can forgive certain things in an intro story like I that become irksome in later volumes.

While it did seem to be there simply 'because' they'd laid the foundation for it, and I particularly appreciate that they didn't use this for the third volume's story, I felt it to be my favourite of the series. It didn't take itself seriously, had some great moments, and nice use of characters like Eject and Cosmos. Plus, Joe Colton, Kung-Fu Grip, and Unicron being filled with Battle Beasts. That alone justifies two big issues.

[Onslaught Six]

Scorponok was clearly intended to be a part of it, and instantly killing Ratchet off was weak.[/quote

Actually, I read that Ratchet shows up again in the third one somewhere, and still has his Mad Max getup on, so.

Plus, Joe Colton, Kung-Fu Grip, and Unicron being filled with Battle Beasts. That alone justifies two big issues.

I cannot get enough of the phrase 'Unicron filled with Battle Beasts.'

[onslaught86]

I now want a Unicron pinata filled with Battle Beast-shaped candy.

[Dominic]

Interviews and liner notes do not make a comic good. "Countdown: Arena", the low point of a *very* bad year for DC, had notes. The writer really seemed to think that he was writing especially clever fight scenes. (Say what I will about guys like Jones, but when they get smarmy, they at least have some intellectual basis beyond, "wow, bet you never thought I would write *that* huh guys?" "Countdown: Arena" was just trash.) Most stories have some kind of notes. But, that does not make the stories worth telling.

TF/GI Joe II was terrible. When I was talking about inconsistent character models, Percy was one of the guys I was talking about. Look at the Cobra trooper in issue 1, then look at him in issue 2. There are a few other examples of this. The TFs taking different forms is one thing. But, human characters randomly changing is just a sign of sloppy editing, post hoc "time ripple" explanations be damned.

Point of information: It was Hawk who opened the Matrix volume III, not Duke. And, in any case, that was part of the whole leadership angle the third story had. There was a Decepticon civil war. Serpentor is a character who only seems to show up in stories about leadershipl. DDP, for all their blunders, made better use of Serpentor than any license holder before or since.

I do not see any real proof that Bay was using these comics for inspiration. (I honestly doubt Bay and co actually read much of the source material beyond what Hasbro would have given them.) The idea of Sam having any affinity with the Matrix is consistent with the standard trash-populism of the genre. It is not quite as blatant as a movie like "Under Siege", but it is still common enough. (Note: "Under Siege" features a Navy cook....who is also a Navy SeAL....oh, fuck it, watch the damned movie yourself.) Any similarities between these and the Bay movie are more an indictment of these comics than any real sign of Bay drawing inspiration from print.



"Kung-Fu grip" was possible the stupidest line in any comic from either franchise.

IDW has competent writers, such Mowry, Roche, or Dixon. I would not mind seeing one of them take on volume 5, if it was going to be more than a shelf-clogger.


Dom

[onslaught86]

"Kung-Fu grip" was possible the stupidest line in any comic from either franchise.

Oh, come on. That was brilliantly cheesy. For someone who complains that Joe fans take their franchise too seriously, Dom, you're awfully picky about what is and isn't appropriate. "Me Grimlock Badass" was far worse, as it spat on characterisation in favour of character wank. The Kung-Fu Grip line and Joe Colton's presence at all were cheese (To the max!), but in a very endearing way.

Interviews and liner notes do not make a comic good.

Good, no. But they can offer a fresh perspective. It wasn't great, yet it had merit. They did time travel better than most. It didn't lose the plot quite to the extent, say, Dreamwave Armada or the Energon cartoon did.

Point of information: It was Hawk who opened the Matrix volume III, not Duke. And, in any case, that was part of the whole leadership angle the third story had. There was a Decepticon civil war. Serpentor is a character who only seems to show up in stories about leadershipl. DDP, for all their blunders, made better use of Serpentor than any license holder before or since.

Ah, always get those two confused. Damned blond soldier-types. Serpentor's a character I have a sort of guilty appreciation for, just for his deliciously B-grade concept.

IDW has competent writers, such Mowry, Roche, or Dixon. I would not mind seeing one of them take on volume 5, if it was going to be more than a shelf-clogger.

Roche or Mowry would be interesting. Come to think, what has Roche written other than the Kup spotlight?

Any similarities between these and the Bay movie are more an indictment of these comics than any real sign of Bay drawing inspiration from print.

Heh. Distinctly possible, true, and it could just be the combination of military perspective and the treatment of TF in a new continuity that do it, but I am getting a specific vibe from the both of them.

[Dominic]

My main complaint about "Joe" fans is that they tend to adhere to ridiculous standards of "realism". Even if one agrees with their definition of realism, (a stretch), there is still the question of how much of an inherent good realism is.

I am not saying every story has to be completely serious, but there is a difference a story being so serious that it veers on self-parody and having characters spout off inane and/or utterly retarded lines like "Kung-Fu grip!" for the sake of being "clever and whimsical". The same goes for deliberately bad writing to "make a point" to/about fans, such as DC tends to do with Superman Prime. ("I will kill you to death!" Yeah, right after you retard us to stupid.)

Every writer slips. Sometimes, the slip can be by a guy who is normally very even, such as Chuck Dixon. Other times, the writer will be like Grant Morrison, who seems to have no middle ground. I can forgive a slip in a book like "All Star Superman", because there is just too much right about that book to write it off completely. I can even deal with stuff like "Final Crisis", if the writers also produce something like "All Star Superman" on occasion. I can forgive slips by a Chuck Dixon, as they are nothing more than statistically expected errors from a man whose sheer productive volume demands respect, and they are not the result of trying to seem clever when the story requires basic skills that the writers are not showing, (as was the case with TF/Joe IV).


Dreamwave's "Armada" was not that bad. The first arc was a solid (re)launch (for the franchise) that, after some stumbles, settled into its role of being an entry point for new readers. The second arc, while not wholly consistent with the first, was thematically consistent, and expanded on the basic premise. "World's Collide" was an event story, but it was straight-forward and delivered on what is was supposed to. (The G1 cameos are a minor detail that are focused on, for good or ill, by long time readers looking for something obvious to jump on.)

TF/Joe IV was just a meandering excuse to mash up two franchises. Volume I had that problem, but it was also functioning as an introduction to what was functionally a new franchise. Volume III at least had the ability to stand on its own. It was not the best use of Serpentor, but it was a good one. ("The Return of Serpentor" , "In Sheep's Clothing" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" are excellent uses of the character. "The Emperor's New Clothes" manages to spin a good story out of some hasty ret-conning by DDP.)

Dom

[Dominic]

This thread inspired me to post the following in my blog.

Dom
-off to the stupid ideas thread!



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A thread over at tfviews.com inspired me to re-read the GI Joe/TF cross-overs from about 5 years back.

At the time, "GI Joe" and "Transformers" were licensed to different publishers, with DDP holding "GI Joe" and DW holding "Transformers". Each company published a self-contained cross-over between the two franchises.

Dreamwave: Early buzz for the Dreamwave cross-over, (it has not full name beyond "GI Joe/Transformers"), was very promising. Characters from two franchise would be re-written in the context of WWII. World War II has cultural resonance, and is probably the best example of real events having the flow and structure of fiction, especially in terms of there being good-guys and bad-guys. "GI Joe" and "Transformers" are both franchises that relied heavily on the idea of straight-forward good v/s evil". Dan Norton and Don Figueroa did a spectacular job of redesigning characters from both franchises.

The basic concept should have been enough to carry this series. The writers and artists needed only show up and put something down on paper. At the very least, it would have been a fun time-waster. But, in execution, this series proved that even the best, easiest, idea can be reduced to hash by the right parties.

John Ney Reiber is one of my least favorite comic book writers. The only thing worse than a pretentious twit like Alan Moore or a jumped up faux-populist like Garth Ennis is an unholy combination of the two. And, when that writer is writing a combination of two franchises that do do not need it, nothing good can come of it. Reiber's run on "Captain America" was controversial, but arguably forgivable when one considers that it was written in late '01. (It read like a grotesque parody of the country's state of mind at the time, but I am not sure if parody was Reiber's intent.) His run on "GI Joe: Reloaded" pretty well managed to sink the book. The introduction to this story, found in both the first single issue as well as the compilation, is basically Reiber pontificating about nostalgia, and comparing the characters from both franchises to retarded children. He claims the story is his attempt to "bring them along" to adult-hood. The result is a story that is.....bad.

There is no other way to describe it. It is a bad story. No. Strike that. This story is fucking awful. The idea is good. How you can go wrong with a cross-over between two beloved franchises is beyond me. Hell, "Marvel Megamorphs" is a terrible concept, but Sean McKeever never tried to dress it up as anything else than the trash it was. At various point, even the characters themselves indicate that they think it is a stupid idea. ("Megamorphs" features Marvel Heroes riding around in giant battle-suits. If you want me to say more about it, let me know.)

Reiber tries so hard to be sophisticated, (and to be fair, he manages to do this well with 2 or 3 characters-out of 20+!), that he botches the basics. For this story to work, Cobra has to discover the Transformers buried in the Pacific, gather up and repair *only* the Decepticons (because Cobra can tell them apart by case assortment or something?), leaving the Autobots and Matrix behind, then go back to Europe, trash the place, and then (for some reason) go back for the Matrix. I am not even sure how Cobra managed to subdue the Decepticons, or even *if* they manged to do this.

Just reread the above paragraph, and try to make sense of the logic behind it.

As a general rule, any sort of inter-franchise cross-over should be written as "day 1", on the assumption the readers are not familiar with *either* property. (This ensures that people who are only familiar with one will not require pre-existing familiarity with the other.) Reiber make liberal use of the history between Stormshadow and Snakeeyes-despite the fact that said history is pretty well bound to the context of the original series. I am familiar enough with it to be able to fill in the blanks, but I can see no reason to include it beyond having it be a call-back to the original series that really does not add anything to the story. (Wow, required backstory for a self-contained cross-over!) There is plenty of other off-panel fun to be had with this book. Characters just seem to die between pages, even if they never actually showed up before. (In the case of the Combaticons, they seem to show up later, unless the merged form of Bruticus is actually not the Combaticons in this story. But, who can tell?) And, for some inexplicable reason, Reiber decided to write Wild Weasel as a serial killer. (This just irks me, as it is so.....aspirationally *kewl*.)

Of course, with a book like this, the art can salvage, if not carry, the day. But, "can" and "will" are two very different things. The art need not even be great. It needs only to be passable. Mediocrity would be fine.....if only mediocrity had been delivered.

Instead, we get incomprehensibly stylized art that makes it damned near impossible to tell characters apart from each-other, and in some cases from the background. Incongruent lines and heavy shading make every page a puzzle. Panels have odd angles. There are few establishing shots, so it is near impossible to get a sense of where things are happening, assuming you can even figure out what is happening. Parts of the back-ground look traced, and the characters are just drawn over the traced images, thought not at consistent angles. There is a difference between giving readers a panel they can endlessly look at and slopping down a panel that readers are *required* to look at. There are some panels that I still cannot make sense of, after 5 years. The art is also notable for the fact that it is possibly the only "Transformers" story to feature (and name) both Rumble and Frenzy while adding nothing to the debate about their colors-because they are so heavily shaded it simply does not matter. (And, Rumble is running around in a trench-coat for some reason.)

Grade: F This series can best be summarized by paraphrasing Churchill: Never before has a comic promised, and failed to deliver, so much to so many. (To be fair, it is not as bad as "Countdown", for whatever that is worth.)


Devil's Due Productions: Again, this one has no specific title that I know of.
The story is pretty basic. It is a "day 1" style introduction to both properties. "GI Joe" gets a bit more prominence, owing to the fact that they are the point-of-view characters. There is a fair amount of bad RPG game style writing to be found, but the series does well enough at its basic function of melding the bare elements of two franchises. The basic plot involves Cobra finding and re-activating the Transformers. Rather than the "just like toy case-assortment" faction breakdowns of the DW cross-over, this story assumes Cobra finds most of the TFs, regardless of faction. The involved back-stories of come characters are re-written or just plain ignored for the sake of making the plot flow. (Snake-eyes, and as a result, Cobra Commander, Storm Shadow, Zartan and Firefly are all heavily re-written in this story.) By the end, there is ample sequel fodder. (For all of its later blunders, DDP's early handling of "GI Joe" was sound, and it shows with this book.)

The art is the mediocrity that could have saved the Dreamwave series. There are a few truly dreadful panels, where scale and perspective seem fluid, but a few that are truly great, with a great many that are adequate.

Grade: C I have less to say about this simply because there is less to say about it. It is a solid, if work-man like offering.