Right, and then anywhere they were going with him effectively stopped hard once they got to issue 4. And direction or ideas for development they had for Prowl become irrelevant as soon as he becomes little more than Bombshell’s remote-control-car. Prowl might as well not even have been in the comic after that point, since nothing he did after that point even matters to the concepts he represents as a character.Dominic wrote: Not quite. Prowl went from being cynical, to being idealistic (during Costa's run), to having his cynicism validated by Spike. After Spike, Prowl dialed it up considerably. Prowls actions in issues 1-3 show that he at least believed conflict was inevitable. And, his actions as a result actually fostered conflict.
No, because all the stuff he showed about how Prowl *could* have gone there has been redacted as nothing more than full-on mind control. Prowl in issue 4 was no further away from Prowl at the beginning of the series, which was where he’d been left post-Police Action. We saw him carry out one political assassination, and then Barber shoved Bombshell up his ass, effectively rendering any ‘ideas’ he had concerning Prowl’s direction as a parallel to Megatron moot. Mind control and how it applied to Megatron were never components of the ideas of this series until now, because Megatron didn’t even appear until two issues ago, and the mind-control thing was just now revealed. Prowl’s supposed ‘control’ over the various parties relied on fear tactics and thuggish pragmatism. Hell, had those actions been genuine, they could have contrasted them with Megatron’s all-encompassing domination for an interesting way to show that Prowl’s methods ‘weren’t that bad’ by comparison. But those things that Prowl did don’t count anymore, both methods were offshoots of Megatron’s plan, so all we’re left with is ‘trying to control people in any way is evil, full stop’.Compare Prowl and Megatron. Both started off with the best of intentions. Megatron became an all consuming monster on more than one level. Prowl was pretty well getting there *before* Bombshell zapped him. You think Barber might have some ideas there?
So you’re forgetting how, just suddenly in this issue, Bumblebee was going on about “Prowl’s acting suspicious you guys! He’d NEVER do the things we’ve been seeing him do! Something must be up!”, because that seems like a last-second pull by Barber to try to rationalize that he was only saying Prowl had been mind-controlled to absolve him of the actions he’d written up to this point, and needed to make it seem like it had more lead-in than it did.How hard was it for us and the other characters to notice that Prowl was under Decepticon control? That might be important. (How far gone was Prowl when Bombshell tagged him?)
Mm’kay.Answer these questions. I am serious. I want a direct answers.
This is the impression I’ve told you I’ve been under since my initial review. It doesn’t get much more ‘paint-by-numbers’ than “Mind control all along!” and “Behold this week’s new Decepticon superweapon!”. The fact that Barber so aggressively reasserted the faction lines right before a big stupid fight just makes it all the more apparent to me that he wants to rush things back to an easy status quo to clear the way after his run on the book potentially ends. He does primarily work as an editor, you know, it would fit within that profile to write for editorial simplicity.Do you really think that Barber spend over a year building to a simple cliche? So you really think that he wrote over a year's worth of comics that we have been discussion for 19 pages and counting...just to deliver a point by numbers ending? Does that really make sense?
Like I said, maybe the intricate, interesting plots I thought I was seeing up until now were purely on accident, and Barber just wanted to write a kewl story about Prowl being evil. Then when he realized that some people were complaining about Prowl going ‘too far’ and that he’d effectively written a character (and all the gambits by him and the other players in the story) into a corner that couldn’t be resolved in a truly satisfying way, he decided to write it off as mind control, have Starscream reveal that he was evil all along, stick Megatron in a shiny new Geewunny body, make sure absolutely no Decepticons were around to help out the Autobots, and just generally get everything back to a comfortable status quo.Do you think that Barber just pulled the last issue out of his ass because he realized that he could not actually follow up on issue 13? How much sense that that actually make?
Considering you’ve been praising him for the ‘gotcha’ moment, opining at length about how impressive it was that you didn’t see it coming, despite the way it completely erases the themes and concepts of the aforementioned thought-provoking comics shows that maybe he and others could actually think it was a good idea. You mention the pages of discussion we had, how much of that is obliterated by the line “I’m not really Prowl”? We had tons of discussion about whether Prowl had gone too far or how the other Autobots would react to the deeds’ exposure, and who was allied with who, and if we could time travel back then and just say “It’s just Prowl being mind-controlled by Bombshell, Starscream is still evil, Megatron comes back and tries to conquer Cybertron” we’d put a stop to all of it because the aforementioned questions simply don’t matter with those revelations, because that was all noise and filler until Barber could get to “We have to defeat Megatron and save Cybertron!”.And, do you really think that he spend over a year writing thought provoking comics that we could actually discuss simply to turn around and pull a "gotcha", pissing off readers on what is likely his first big job in comics? Does that scenario make sense?
My point is that it provides an easy ‘fix’ to get rid of all those nasty socio-political elements that made readers uncomfortable.Most of Prowl's policies were in place *before* he was under Bombshell's control.
I’m not buying it, least of all because that’s a very circuitous, convoluted way of showing pretty much the same thing they could have shown about Prowl *without* the damn mind control. Again, what do we get from the inclusion of that element if the EXACT SAME POINT could have been made by having Prowl resort to thuggish Gestapo-ism and throw in with the Decepticons of his own free will, and doing it that way wouldn’t have negated nearly a year’s worth of stories? It’s nothing more than a cheap device to absolve Prowl of actions some readers couldn’t handle him doing, and to try to turn around and say it’s actually a brilliant plot point based on the fact that it was such a stupid revelation that no one could have predicted it is just desperation in trying to defend what turned out to be a conceptually bankrupt story.Showing how little changed about Prowl when he was mind controlled is hugely important to what Barber is writing.
Again, I’m complaining because the book did a complete 180- from subversive to cliché, from tightly conceived to redacted to a stock staus-quo.None of those arcs have resolved. (It honestly soundsl ike you are looking for reasons to complain about this book, or trying to be first in line for when the "inevitable" problems arise.)
Dude, Metalhawk himself says at the beginning of this issue that the elections aren’t important anymore. Then the ‘viewers’ of that go “Yup, I agree, let’s go watch this big fight between Autobots and Decepticons!” If that’s not a declaration of the story’s intent and direction, I don’t know what is.We might get elections, likely with Metalhawk winning.
And he got killed for it just as the factions rigidly reasserted themselves, can you not see what Barber is doing with that?Wheeljack is dead. But, he actively pushed against the ID chips and directly said that they had to move beyond factions.
So it didn’t strike you as conspicuous at all that Dirge and Swindle got shoved offstage just as it was time for Bumblebee and the other good guys to confront the bad guys? You didn’t find it hackneyed at all the way Starscream just blurts out, apropos of nothing, that he planned on nefariously betraying everyone?We have no idea what will happen with Dirge and Starscream or Swindle.
This issue was so goddamn retarded that it’s made me actively reconsider if the respect and credibility I gave to him for the prior issues was unwarranted, and that the ideas I thought were present and driving his writing were only visible because I wanted them to be.Barber has earned enough respect and credibiilty that it is really not fair to flip and and condemn his work before his is actually done.
