The Transformers (IDW, formerly "Robots in Disguise")

[BWprowl]

Most of that is still there. Besides the above point about Prowl making a deal with Starscream earlier, there are other characters who tried to move beyond factionalism. Skybite, Blurr, Dirge and Swindle all tried to move on.

Yeah, and they all got chased out before the big reveal in this issue. What even was the point of Arcee sending Swindle and Dirge to lead Bumblebee and co. over to the Black Room? So Megatron and the bad guys would have someone to monologue their evil plan to?

And, that was kind of the point. Prowl was well on his way to becoming something similar to Megatron.

Prowl being mind-controlled only undoes *some* of what he did. As it stands now, Prowl more than set the ground-work for Megatron to return and rise to power. Prowl had the Decepticons, all of the most likely troublemakers, relagated to a ghetto. Prowl created incentive for fraud and subterfuge among a population that he was willing to use as a make-shift security force. Prowl wanted the war over on his terms, NAILS be damned. And, that was all *before* issue 4.

About the *only* thing Prowl ‘did’ before Bombshell took over was assassinate Ratbat. All the *important* Prowl stuff, the story driving, character-elevating, shock-and-awe moments have been undone as nothing more than a shaggy dog story, a prolonged look at “look how evil and brilliant Bombshell and Megatron are! We totally got you! Aren’t we clever?!”

This *might* have been easier to swallow had Bombshell’s influence only subtly tweaked Prowl’s worldview, simply pushed him further over the deep end than he would have gone on his own, while still accounting for his own personality problems as already established, kinda like the Vehicon Generals. Instead, it’s revealed that Bombshell was basically totally remote-controlling Prowl all along, and NONE of it was his fault.

Right before Bombshell subverted Prowl, Prowl was ruminating about his dealings with Spike Witwicky and how that renewed and valideted his cynical outlook.

Exactly, meaning we would have had very good reason to watch him do the things we thought he was doing. Instead, that got cockblocked and tossed out the window to watch a stupid pointless puppet enact part of a circuitous bad-guy plot to TAKE OVER THE PLANET for ten issues.

And, most importantly, it is a damned safe bet that Roberts will be making use of this over the next few issues at least.

You mean the way we thought he was going to make use of Prowl’s motivations and the breakdown of the factions over the past 14 issues? Yeah, fuck that guy.

Barber has blurred the faction lines with his run on the book.

No no, we *thought* that’s what he was doing. But at the end of this bait-and-switch ball-kick, the Decepticons are all back together (even Starscream’s been forcefully shuffled back in) working together to destroy the puny Autobots once and for all, the Autobots are reunited in their purpose and even Prowl was never really a bad guy, and it’s been revealed that ALL of the dissention that had been sown previously doesn’t count anyway, since it was all built off of a stupid mind-control plot by Megatron and Bombshell, and that’s gone now so we don’t have to worry about moral ambiguity making us uncomfortable.

"Peace through tyranny."

The merge-tech is a literal manifestatio of that idea. Megatron is the state completely consuming the individual. It is the nightmare dark-side of Hobbes' "Leviathan". It is an illustration of every Marxist/Maoist nightmare scenario. Megatron rightly fought against the Functionists at the start of the war, and he has become something far worse.

And, it is strongly implied that Megatron is consistently excerting some degree of subtle control over the other Decepticons, making him a literal and symbolic leader. Think about how the Decepticons collapsed at the end of AHM.

And this would all be great if, you know, this had had anything to do with where the book appeared to be going for the past year and change. Except Megatron only came back in like two issues ago, gestalt technology wasn’t even mentioned until THIS ISSUE, and all the important theming elements of the book we THOUGHT we were following not only got tossed out as the faction lines were aggressively re-asserted in this one, they’ve retroactively told us that those elements never really counted in the first place!

“Socio-political unrest? Bigotry and privilege on the part of entitled Autobots? Parallels to the beginning of the war with an implied cycle of conflict amongst the race? Lol, just kidding, this was actually a story about Megatron mind-controlling everyone the whole time! Now watch the Autobots wage their battles to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons!”

Arcee will likely get more explication next issue. Starscream wanted to be in charge. But, he also wanted the war to end and likely would have grown in to leadership. Starscream is cynical. But, he consistently grew as a leader.

Nope, he had a NEFARIOUS PLOT all along! And he didn’t grow at all, he totally sucks! Didn’t you see Megatron telling him he sucks because he didn’t act like a stereotypical Decepticon that the audience would be comfortable reading about?

Wow. Seriously? Reread this issue.

Getting through it once was painful enough.

-When did Buzzsaw have a chance to "upgrade" to his "Fall of Cybertron" body? In issue 13, he was still using his old body. (Laserbeak would have needed to be rebuilt. Did something happen to Buzzsaw?)

Most of the other Decepticons in the Black Room look like they were rebuilt/upgraded since we last saw them. Buzzsaw is no exception.

-I recall many complaints at the AllSpark about Sunstreaker not being under mind-control in AHM. ("Bawwww, an Autobot would not turn!") Now, I am seeing complaints about the fact that Prowl's turn was partially influenced by Bombshell (despite the face that much of it was in fact Prowl).

No, it wasn’t. After issue 4, it completely ceases to be Prowl and is actually Bombshell in the driver seat this entire time. That’s what mainly kills me about this, what we got wasn’t even poor character development, it was fake character development, retroactively making everything we watched Prowl go through in the past ten issues a complete waste of time.

Dom
-notes that Barber has done something great here...

He *could* have done something great. He had the opportunity to write something brilliant, and subversive, and interesting, that used the characters and the setting as he’s redefined it for over a year to really change the way we look at these characters and their factions. Instead, he wrote a stupid 80’s cartoon plot where the bad guys use mind control and have an evil superweapon they pull out of nowhere at the end so all the good guys can rush in and fight it together.

Look, maybe I misinterpreted this turd of a story all along, and only I thought I was reading something deeper than I was. Or maybe Barber chickened out at the last second and decided that he just couldn’t take subverting the status quo in the unique, interesting ways he was doing, so he panicked and violently reasserted everything back to the stock spec. It certainly couldn’t be a case of an editor meddling with his concepts since Barber IS the editor!

This issue didn’t even read like it was by the same guy who’d been writing the comic the whole time! It read like some other hack coming in and trying to ‘fix’ all the scary new and different changes Barber had brought in via the quickest, stupidest methods possible!

[Dominic]

Quick comment:
Buzzsaw is shown in the crowd, as one of the rioters. He was not in group with Megatron. He could have been rebuilt since last issue. But, why? I am putting it down to "artist screwed up or was told to drawn Buzzsaw to look like the new toy".


Longer, more important, comment:

This *might* have been easier to swallow had Bombshell’s influence only subtly tweaked Prowl’s worldview, simply pushed him further over the deep end than he would have gone on his own, while still accounting for his own personality problems as already established, kinda like the Vehicon Generals.

But, that is not too different from what Bombshell did. The only really bad thing that Prowl did after issue 4 were the false-flag attacks. He did plenty of dodgy things before issue 4.

Yes, Barber kayfabed us. He worked us epically. He made us expect one thing when he had actually been planning something else the whole time. Why should we be privy to all kinds of stuff in advance. I like spoilers as much as anyone else. But, if I am reading a story about the warfare and statecraft of a species that has evolved to be sneaky, then maybe I should expect to be taken for a ride every so often.


True story:
Last fall, I was at a wrestling show and happened to be sitting next to a promoter (from another company). A wrestler that I had known for about a year and a half, and who had known the promoter for at least a decade, suffered an apparent legit injury. One of the other performers gave a hand signal that I had never seen before and two members of the ring crew (who often play the role of "security guards" at the shows) ran over and helped the clearly distressed wrestler away and in to the back. The wrestler who gave the hand signal (and other guys in the ring) were apparently distracted.

Both the promoter and I, being "smarks" (smart marks), were still a bit suspicous....right up until we looked at the wrestler's girl friend. (We knew who she was.) She looked upset and concerned. Later in the match, the wrestler made a triumphant suprise return.

(In handsight, we should have known it was a worked injury. The wrestler in question is known for working around injuries, and has in fact finished matches after much more severe injuries. Him leaving a match for a screwed up ankle should have been a "tell".)

The promoter and I did not gripe about how we were "lied to". We did not gripe about how we were led to believe that one of the wrestlers (who happened to be a guy we both have considerable regard for) gave us the impression that he was injured. Why? Because wrestling is performance art. Even if you know it is "all fake", they want you to think that it is real. Kayfabe broke a long time ago. Enough of the people there knew that the promoter and the wrestler had know each other for a significant amount of time. Some might even know that I knew him from the Bell Time Club (he trained at the same place I went to wrestling school). If we did not look convincingly worried, who would believe that the "injury" was real? The injury was part of the match, and the match was enhanced by the audience believing it was real. (Along the same lines, we would not have believed it if the wrestler's girlfriend did not look convincingly worried.) The promoter and I both appreciated that we had been worked, because when we sit in the audience at a show, that is what we are signing on for. (Though, from what I hear, the wrestler in question was in some hot water with the girlfriend after the show....)


The same applies to "Robots in Disguise", (because disguises are about subterfuge). Barber set us up to expect one thing, and delivered something else. He delivered an event driven story....with ideas. Things went badly for Dirge and wheeljack. And, why wouldn't they go badly in that scenario?

It sounds like you are complaing that Barber did not deliver what you expected, when he is still clearly delivering on other things.



Dom
-yeah, he got me too.

[BWprowl]

But, that is not too different from what Bombshell did. The only really bad thing that Prowl did after issue 4 were the false-flag attacks. He did plenty of dodgy things before issue 4.

Except for the ‘murders’ of Bombshell and the Constructicons, and the false flag attack on Omega Supreme, and the destruction of the Decepticon bunker in a bid to incite the other Decepticons to riot so he could swoop in and take them all out under the pretense that they were always a dangerous presence…yeah, Prowl didn’t really do anything. Especially since all of that is now, effectively, bullshit, and exists not to show us an Autobot compromising his methods to further his goals and principles despite the future of his race and planet running away from him, but simply to illustrate what a kewl evil mad scientist Bombshell is. Yeah, I’m so glad I forked over $3.99 an issue for ten issues to read about THAT.

Yes, Barber kayfabed us. He worked us epically. He made us expect one thing when he had actually been planning something else the whole time. Why should we be privy to all kinds of stuff in advance. I like spoilers as much as anyone else. But, if I am reading a story about the warfare and statecraft of a species that has evolved to be sneaky, then maybe I should expect to be taken for a ride every so often.

The same applies to "Robots in Disguise", (because disguises are about subterfuge). Barber set us up to expect one thing, and delivered something else. He delivered an event driven story....with ideas. Things went badly for Dirge and wheeljack. And, why wouldn't they go badly in that scenario?

It sounds like you are complaing that Barber did not deliver what you expected, when he is still clearly delivering on other things.

That’s precisely what I’m complaining about, given that the story I expected was a subversive look at the ‘fall’ of a previously more-or-less ‘heroic’ character and the way the socio-political climate changing around him and those connected to him affected everything leading up to that, and the story Barber ‘delivered’ instead was Cartoon Evil Bad Guy Plot #12. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not impressed by the ‘reveal’ that this whole thing was about new gestalt gimmicks and Megatron being the Big Bad Evil Guy, since NONE OF THOSE THINGS HAD BEEN HINTED AT BEFORE.

There were no ‘ideas’ in this story, Barber dissolved the whole thing back into ‘goodguybots vs badguycons’ in a single issue in the cheapest, easiest, most self-defeating way possible. It would have been one thing to just have the Decepticons kill Prowl after he thought he was getting a deal by throwing in with them, or even reveal that they never planned to actually ally with him and then tape him to Devastator that way, because then at least his arc would have been legitimate, an actual contribution to the narrative. The mind-control reveal (and to a lesser extent, the reveal about Megatron being the source of the conflicts outside the city’s walls) was just a cheap, stupid, hackneyed way to handwave all the individual character-maneuvering that had been done up to that point, and undo any unsavory ‘changes’ we might have seen in the characters up until now. All the stuff we saw Prowl do, as well as the way characters around him and affected by his actions reacted, has effectively been rendered pointless in this new context. The point we’re at now could have easily been reached ten issues earlier by having Megatron wander in from the wilderness, throw Devastator out there apropos of nothing, and having all the Goodguybots band together to fight him. And at least that wouldn’t have led to me thinking Barber was a better writer than he actually was.

I'm not mad just because there was an unexpected plot twist, I can normally appreciate something like that. I'm mad because the plot we twisted to is a generic, cliche, shitty one, which completely invalidated all the actually *interesting* stuff that had come before.

You’re right about one thing though, the title of this series was more indicative than we’d thought it was. Transformers: Stupid Stories in Disguise…

[Dominic]

It is not the arc you thought it would be. Barber did something *else*. What he did ain't bad.

Especially since all of that is now, effectively, bullshit, and exists not to show us an Autobot compromising his methods to further his goals and principles despite the future of his race and planet running away from him, but simply to illustrate what a kewl evil mad scientist Bombshell is. Yeah, I’m so glad I forked over $3.99 an issue for ten issues to read about THAT.

Prowl had been compromising his methods and Autobot principles *before* issue 4, which is why it was easy for Barber to kayfabe us as well as he did.

The arc is not even resolved yet.

If I dropped a comic every time that I did not immediately get the writers point, or when I misread it, I would have missed out on more than a few good comics over my quarter century of being in the hobby.

If Dirge survives, he is going to have a hard time going back to the Decepticons. Ditto for Starscream. We are likely to get a good "Shockwave's point of view" story after this. Prowl is out of the dock for the attack on Omega Supreme. But, he still has to answer for employing Arcee as an extra-legal executioner. Ratbat's death, the Lost Light, Kup, the ID chips, destroying the Garrus 9 documents.... Prowl will still have plenty to answer for when this is over.

Why should this play out predictably?


Dom
-was kayfabed as much as anyone, and is okay with that.

[BWprowl]

It is not the arc you thought it would be. Barber did something *else*. What he did ain't bad.

If you think the G1 cartoon is the epitome of high writing, then yeah, I guess the story we’ve got now does look pretty impressive.

Prowl had been compromising his methods and Autobot principles *before* issue 4, which is why it was easy for Barber to kayfabe us as well as he did.

Kayfabe us into *what*? The dramatic revelation that Autobots are heroic and Decepticons are evil schemers? Whoop de fucking doo.

If Dirge survives, he is going to have a hard time going back to the Decepticons. Ditto for Starscream. We are likely to get a good "Shockwave's point of view" story after this.

And I’d be far more excited for potential stories like that if Barber hadn’t just proven himself completely incapable of writing anything that could resolve itself in a remotely interesting way. Dirge might survive, but in the end he’ll either go back to the Decepticons anyway or wind up dead. Ditto for Starscream, especially given that he just told the leaders of both the Autobots and the Neutrals that he always planned to betray them (herp derp, because that’s what Starscream always does!).

Prowl is out of the dock for the attack on Omega Supreme. But, he still has to answer for employing Arcee as an extra-legal executioner. Ratbat's death, the Lost Light, Kup, the ID chips, destroying the Garrus 9 documents.... Prowl will still have plenty to answer for when this is over.

And that’s a very large part of the problem with this. We were led to believe that all the story up to this point was leading to Prowl having to answer for that, that him going over the edge would expose his other failings and finally reveal his methods to the Autobots as a whole. You really expect they’ll try to go down that road again? Any other attempt at a story of Prowl’s ‘fall’ would be redundant and repetitive with what Barber just showed us, and his “lol but not really” at the very end of this would only make another such pass impossible to take seriously, would completely rob it of its impact. Barber has undermined all the characterization we’ve been given for Prowl up til this point, and pretty much ensured that those elements that made this interpretation stand out so spectacularly cannot be followed up on effectively anytime soon.

Why should this play out predictably?

I don’t think it should be, which is why I’m upset that our unpredictable, interesting, political subterfuge plot has been so swiftly replaced with a cliché, predictable one with mind control and evil macguffin supergizmos.

[Dominic]

Kayfabe us into *what*? The dramatic revelation that Autobots are heroic and Decepticons are evil schemers? Whoop de fucking doo.

Barber kayfabed us in to expecting one thing when he delivered another thing entirely.

If you think the G1 cartoon is the epitome of high writing, then yeah, I guess the story we’ve got now does look pretty impressive.

And how is this like the cartoon?

In the cartoon, we would see Bombshell tagging Prowl with the shell before the first commercial. We would get some obligatory shots of Prowl walking about under Bombshell's control between the first and second commercial with a few Autobots being appropriately suspicious. Right before the second commericial, something bad would happen to our heroes. Then, after the commercial, Prowl would be saved and everybody would be happy.

Barber did not do this. Prowl has been under Bombshell's control since issue 4. None of the Autobots were suspicious because Prowl, even acting under the influence of Bombshell, was still acting more or less they way that Prowl would be expected (by both characters and the readers) to act.

I’d be far more excited for potential stories like that if Barber hadn’t just proven himself completely incapable of writing anything that could resolve itself in a remotely interesting way.

The story ain't even over yet. It has not been resolved.

And that’s a very large part of the problem with this. We were led to believe that all the story up to this point was leading to Prowl having to answer for that, that him going over the edge would expose his other failings and finally reveal his methods to the Autobots as a whole. You really expect they’ll try to go down that road again? Any other attempt at a story of Prowl’s ‘fall’ would be redundant and repetitive with what Barber just showed us, and his “lol but not really” at the very end of this would only make another such pass impossible to take seriously, would completely rob it of its impact. Barber has undermined all the characterization we’ve been given for Prowl up til this point, and pretty much ensured that those elements that made this interpretation stand out so spectacularly cannot be followed up on effectively anytime soon.

Well, those threads cannot be picked up if readers decide to flip-out and give up on a story before it is even close to over. No, in that case, they cannot be followed up on.

I expect a conversation between Prowl, BB (and maybe Metal Hawk and Starscream) about why nobody realized that Prowl was under Bombshell's conrol. If nothing else, Starscream is likely to say something like "when I made my sneaky deal with Prowl, I really had no idea, in fact, it was long before, Prowl was under Bombshell's control". You are acting like this was the last part of the story. Or, maybe Barber is going to use the mind-control angle as a way for Prowl to weasel out of responsibility for what he did before Bombshell took control of him. Would that be so terrible? (Prowl has been keeping secrets for year. This story could end with all of them being revealed or it could end with Prowl keeping his cover for another day. Either way, it is not over yet.)

Get. Past. The. McGuffin.

Barber is giving us more than that.

I don’t think it should be, which is why I’m upset that our unpredictable, interesting, political subterfuge plot has been so swiftly replaced with a cliché, predictable one with mind control and evil macguffin supergizmos.

None of us saw this coming. Sounds like it was pretty hard to predict.

And, if they had gone with "Prowl is a bad guy", we easily could have gotten Prowl outlining his scheme and its justifications and "mwahahahahahahahahaha", and then we would be complaining "bawwwwww, this is all so predictable, we saw it coming a mile away".



Dom
-not sure where all the ire is coming from .

[Gomess]

I think some guys might just hate "mind control" as a story concept. I'm certainly not a fan.

Also, "predictable" doesn't necessarily mean "literally saw it coming and said so". Some clichés are so predictable you don't even think about them until they happen. They're like.. subconsciously predictable

[Dominic]

Except that the mind-control is not the only, or even most important, plot point. Similarly, it does not undermine any of Barber's ideas the way Prowl is saying it does. (This is explained in greater detail in my last few posts.)

Barber threw a curve-ball. He fooled us. And, he did a damned good job of it.


Dom

[BWprowl]

Barber kayfabed us in to expecting one thing when he delivered another thing entirely.

Which would be fine if the other thing was, y’know, good, and didn’t completely wipe/invalidate the good thing that came before it. If it had actually built off of the fake story it was telling for ten issues and shown that there would be lasting elements from that worked into the resolution, instead of just handwaving it all away in an instant of evil Megatron manipulation under the pretense of wanting us to be *surprised* by the big twist at the end that we didn’t see comin’.

And how is this like the cartoon?

Aside from the faction lines being reset to stock spec at the end of the story, and clear-cut good guy Autobots and bad guy Decepticons, and evil macguffin mind control and villainous monologues about “This was all to give me the power I needed to make my new SUPER-DEVASTATOR, far more powerful than ever before!” yeah, it’s nothing like a bad 80’s cartoon.

In the cartoon, we would see Bombshell tagging Prowl with the shell before the first commercial. We would get some obligatory shots of Prowl walking about under Bombshell's control between the first and second commercial with a few Autobots being appropriately suspicious. Right before the second commericial, something bad would happen to our heroes. Then, after the commercial, Prowl would be saved and everybody would be happy.

And at least that story would be consistent all the way through and honest about what it was doing, rather than faking us out with ten issues of actually-interesting political intrigue before pissing it all away as a ‘gotcha’ moment.

Barber did not do this. Prowl has been under Bombshell's control since issue 4. None of the Autobots were suspicious because Prowl, even acting under the influence of Bombshell, was still acting more or less they way that Prowl would be expected (by both characters and the readers) to act.

And if Barber was doing that, he should at least had the decency to not appear to give Prowl all that character development if it was going to just be rendered moot, time-wasting bullshit when he finally got around to ‘surprising’ us with the reveal that Megatron had a Master Plan.

The story ain't even over yet. It has not been resolved.

It is for me. I have no desire to reward Barber’s creative bankruptcy by forking over four dollars next month to watch Ironhide and the cavalry ride in to save the good guys and chase Megatron’s goons off until next week’s episode.

Well, those threads cannot be picked up if readers decide to flip-out and give up on a story before it is even close to over. No, in that case, they cannot be followed up on.

They can’t be followed up on because doing ANOTHER “Prowl goes off the deep end” storyline only ‘this time, we mean it, really’ would be goddamn redundant. It’d be like if they had another storyline about Superman dying right after ‘The Death and Return of Superman’ only he stayed dead this time. Okay, good for you, you actually did it, but what was the point of going through the whole thing twice?

I expect a conversation between Prowl, BB (and maybe Metal Hawk and Starscream) about why nobody realized that Prowl was under Bombshell's conrol. If nothing else, Starscream is likely to say something like "when I made my sneaky deal with Prowl, I really had no idea, in fact, it was long before, Prowl was under Bombshell's control". You are acting like this was the last part of the story. Or, maybe Barber is going to use the mind-control angle as a way for Prowl to weasel out of responsibility for what he did before Bombshell took control of him. Would that be so terrible?

I’d be more inclined to believe we could get stuff along these lines if Barber had shown even an inkling of creativity or subversive writing ability with this issue. This story will just as likely end with all the Autobots united again by their need to defeat the Decepticons, Metalhawk will probably join the team after seeing just how bad the mean ol’ Decepticons are, Starscream will be forced to crawl back with the Decepticons after he stupidly showed his hand to the Autobots and Neutrals (and the fact that he even had a hand to show still pisses me off. Who were his monologues about how he was actually sincere even supposed to be talking to, in that case?), and the Decepticons will retreat back to Kaon or something, set up base, and prepare to build a Super-Trypticon to destroy those meddlesome Autobots once and for all, or something. Because this is the sort of story Barber wanted to tell, apparently.

(Prowl has been keeping secrets for year. This story could end with all of them being revealed or it could end with Prowl keeping his cover for another day. Either way, it is not over yet.)

Yeah, let Prowl keep his cover and most of the bad things he did here don’t count! Stick to the status quo, that’s the way!

Get. Past. The. McGuffin.

It’s not the macguffin so much as how it was used, what it represents, and all the story elements and ideas we ‘lost’ due to its usage. None of the blurred faction lines or concepts of Cybertronian democracy or shared authority matter anymore, it was all a big bad Decepticon plan from start to finish. It’ll be amazing if Bumblebee doesn’t use this event as a reason to ‘prove’ to the Neutrals that the Decepticons are a major threat and the Autobots have to stay in charge as the united ‘heroes’ of the story from now on. In fact, I wholly expect that to be what happens, so Barber doesn’t have to deal with those meddlesome interesting plot elements he had to introduce just to keep us tricked for a year.

Barber is giving us more than that.

A sudden plot about Megatron wanting to control everyone? And you really think that was worth the sacrifice of all the plots surrounding Prowl and his intrigue?

None of us saw this coming. Sounds like it was pretty hard to predict.

We didn’t see this coming because Barber tricked us into thinking he was *better than that*.

And, if they had gone with "Prowl is a bad guy", we easily could have gotten Prowl outlining his scheme and its justifications and "mwahahahahahahahahaha", and then we would be complaining "bawwwwww, this is all so predictable, we saw it coming a mile away".

The *resolution* of Prowl’s arc, his potential ‘fall’, this was the stuff I was looking forward too. I had no idea how it would turn out, and Barber’s skill up to this point had given me faith that he could deliver the goods. Instead it turned out to be a moot point since Prowl effectively had no arc in the first place, he’s in pretty much the same spot he was when the series started. So why were we even following him around all this time? So we would be ‘surprised’ by the dramatic revelation that the guys with the purple insignias were bad? That meager plot twist is not worth ten issues of aggravatingly well-written fake character development.

Dom
-not sure where all the ire is coming from .

I’d been built up to expect a really really good story, and then that got torched and we were given a shitty story instead. I don’t see what’s hard to understand about that.

[Gomess]

I really hope a potential new member chooses this one as the first one they read, and gets confused as to whether the "Prowl" mentioned in all these posts is the character or the poster.