problem with the comics

[BWprowl]

Dom
-seriously, who is making this comic, SunBow?

Aw, now you're just being mean.

I dunno, like I said, I haven't been paying attention enough to keep track of which guys are where. Part of it's that a lot of these G1 season 1&2 characters I just don't care about, so I'm not worried about whether the third toy I got as a kid is with Magnus or Prime. The *important* characters in the story are where they're supposed to be, and that's what matters, in my mind. The other part of it is, and this may just be me, that a *lot* of these team-filling guys have the same basic color scheme. Seriously, I'm looking at page 5 (the title page) of issue 17, and aside from Broadside, *every single guy* on Prime's team is red and/or white. This does NOT help them just blurring together when I'm reading through the book.

[Onslaught Six]

That's the thing, though! At least one of those guys should really be Bluestreak, another Hound, etc.

[Shockwave]

And Bluestreak is... *sigh* red and silver/grey. Even Broadside being mostly red and grey himself could arguably be red and white if you count grey as a darker shade of white. Either way, Prowl's right they do tend to blend together. And it's not much better on the 'cons side either as most of them are mostly purple/dark blue with some variatioun of white. I thoroughly believe that it was a consious decision on Hasbro's part to make the good guys red and the bad guys purple so that they more easily identifyable with their factions.

[Gomess]

Oh, surely. Same reason the original Autobots were mostly commercial and industrial vehicles, while the Decepticons were mostly military vehicles or espionage equipment. Basically TF's version of racial profiling. =p

[Shockwave]

Basically TF's version of racial profiling. =p

*police siren*

*Transformer noise*
*2nd Transformer noise*

Prowl: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
Motormaster: "Driving while purple?"
Prowl: "And do you know how purple you were driving?"
Motormaster: "Somewhere between Skywarp and Shockwave?"
Prowl: "That's right. Now this is just a warning but you get the paint job fixed alright?"
Motormaster: "Yes sir!"

[Dominic]

And, all that kind of undermines the disguise element.

I dunno, like I said, I haven't been paying attention enough to keep track of which guys are where. Part of it's that a lot of these G1 season 1&2 characters I just don't care about,

Keeping track of characters is a very basic part of writing/illustrating a comic with a mid-sized cast. I do not look for it to be done well because I simply *expect* it to be done. There are indy books that manage this. There are creator owned books, (which are indy books with better infrastructure), that manage this.

Even if the splash page of issue 17 described the Autobots as "Prime and the others", the artist could have taken a whole 10 minutes to double check which character was where. (He could look at old scripts or previous pages.) Granted, the rotating art teams complicate this a bit. But, in theory, that is what editors are supposed to be for.


It is there job, and it ain't hard. (Kind of like, ya know, Morrison's inability to get things to press on time, despite that fact that his *real* job is to write comics.)


Dom
-I mean, really, competence people. Competence.

[Gomess]

*police siren*

*Transformer noise*
*2nd Transformer noise*

Prowl: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
Motormaster: "Driving while purple?"
Prowl: "And do you know how purple you were driving?"
Motormaster: "Somewhere between Skywarp and Shockwave?"
Prowl: "That's right. Now this is just a warning but you get the paint job fixed alright?"
Motormaster: "Yes sir!"

This is actually the kind of TF story I'd write were I in charge. Just a warning.

"I don't get why WE can't call them Decepticreeps! They call EACH OTHER Decepticreeps!! That's prejudice!!"

[Sydew]

I don't put much though on those hiccups mainly because I feel it's part of the TF's charm. I mean a good part Transformers fiction has them (it almost seems like a tradition) so i don't really mind. I almost think that -on IDW- it's been done on purpose.

[Dominic]

Given how annoyed the fan base is getting, that would be a really bad plan on IDW's part. And, most non-fan readers would likely (and not unreasonably) see that sort of thing as a sign of ineptitude in a book not marketed as a genre parody.

And, tradition or not, it is the kind of sloppiness that holds a franchise back.

[Shockwave]

And, tradition or not, it is the kind of sloppiness that holds a franchise back.

It also makes it hard to take the franchise seriously.