TF Views

MaxDino was one of the biggest, most pleasant surprises for me this year. The day I bought the first issue, I also got the 'Best of UK: Dinobots' trade, as a way to cover for the lameness that I expected from MaxDino. I mean, come on, it's Simon Furman writing a fill-in-the-gaps story. About the Dinobots. It shouldn't have ended well. Except it did. It turned out to kick ass. The story has a very classic, Marvel UK-era Furman flavor, and that's a great thing, but Furman also plays with our expectations of his modern writing to get the story to surprise us in interesting ways. For the first time in a long time, he shows what a capable writer he really is; I think the man finally got his groove back. That his Ironhide story in AHM Coda was also quite good supports this.

andersonh1 wrote:At the end of the story, he takes responsibility for going awol with the rest of the Dynobot unit, and has seemingly begun to rethink the way he’s lived his life up to this point.

Check out Grimlock's speech at that critical moment, the one about "getting by on bad attitude alone" and so forth. It's very clearly Furman talking about how he recognizes how his writing has become lately (attitude, meaningless deaths, etc.), and how he intends to change that. A very clever bit, I thought.

BWprowl wrote:Check out Grimlock's speech at that critical moment, the one about "getting by on bad attitude alone" and so forth. It's very clearly Furman talking about how he recognizes how his writing has become lately (attitude, meaningless deaths, etc.), and how he intends to change that. A very clever bit, I thought.

What's that? A writer having something to say, and using his story to do it? That's relevant!

BWprowl wrote:

andersonh1 wrote:At the end of the story, he takes responsibility for going awol with the rest of the Dynobot unit, and has seemingly begun to rethink the way he’s lived his life up to this point.

Check out Grimlock's speech at that critical moment, the one about "getting by on bad attitude alone" and so forth. It's very clearly Furman talking about how he recognizes how his writing has become lately (attitude, meaningless deaths, etc.), and how he intends to change that. A very clever bit, I thought.

I agree. Even without taking the author into consideration, it's still a great bit of characterization for Grimlock. I hope we'll see some more growth and change from some of these generally static Transformer characters.

MaxDino was one of the biggest, most pleasant surprises for me this year. The day I bought the first issue, I also got the 'Best of UK: Dinobots' trade, as a way to cover for the lameness that I expected from MaxDino. I mean, come on, it's Simon Furman writing a fill-in-the-gaps story. About the Dinobots. It shouldn't have ended well. Except it did. It turned out to kick ass. The story has a very classic, Marvel UK-era Furman flavor, and that's a great thing, but Furman also plays with our expectations of his modern writing to get the story to surprise us in interesting ways. For the first time in a long time, he shows what a capable writer he really is; I think the man finally got his groove back. That his Ironhide story in AHM Coda was also quite good supports this.

Furman tends to be at his best when he has a strong editor. That was a common thread throughout his time at Marvel. Writing fill-in-the-blanks stories, like "Maximum Dinobots" or the "Coda" story would involve having restrictions of that sort. (Even if there is not an editor directly telling Furman what/how to write, he would still be restricted by scale and setting.)

As bad as his writing has been this past decade, (far more bad than good), Furman's biggest sin has tended to be laziness, rather than pretense or ego. Furman has always read like a watered down Starlin, (another writer who tends to recycle plots and characters, if a bit more gracefully), rather than a Waid or Busiek, whose egos seem to have gotten the better of them in recent years. (Busiek went from being on my "gonna at least look at it" to "avoid at all costs" list at some point in the last 10 years or so.)

I tend to think that in '01/'02, Furman realized how popular his writing was with a group of fans. His work in the 90s still has more staying power than many comics from both then and now. And, it kind of went to his head. His writing, and his comments about said writing got lazier, hence his casual use of comments about how proud he was of his latest work, despite it being middling at best. (His first two issues of "Armada" come to mind here. It was not a bad story, but it was nothing great or grand.)


Dom
-wonders what Alan Grant is up to these days.

Dominic wrote: his casual use of comments about how proud he was of his latest work, despite it being middling at best. (His first two issues of "Armada" come to mind here. It was not a bad story, but it was nothing great or grand.)

I remember that, and I remember thinking much the same thing.

I think his writing only improved from that point. He followed that up with the Moonbase storyline, which was very strong, and probably my favorite of the Armada run. In fact, most of his Armada run was stronger than his initial Star Saber story.

His Armada run wasn't bad. I tend to think that things really went to hell with vol. 2 of War Within. And then we got stuff like the '-ion' series with IDW G1, and the Beast Wars comics, ugh... I really hope he continues the way he's been going recently. I'm quite happy to have good Furman Transformers comics again.

i rather liked "War Within 2". In some ways, I like it better than the first volume. It is not as pretty, but there is more actual writing in volume 2.

"Fortress" was great. I almost had to root for Dualor. But, I do think that Saracinni's run is under-appreciated.


Dom
-tempted to keep picking up the UK movie comics now.

BWprowl wrote:His Armada run wasn't bad. I tend to think that things really went to hell with vol. 2 of War Within. And then we got stuff like the '-ion' series with IDW G1, and the Beast Wars comics, ugh... I really hope he continues the way he's been going recently. I'm quite happy to have good Furman Transformers comics again.

I don't think they ever left, at least not side the IDW comics began. Having finally caught up on my reading and wrapped up the -ion comics, minus a few Spotlights, I really like what Furman was going for. I'd agree that the series suffered from some slow pacing at first and rushed conclusions at the end, but to me all the plot and mysteries were worth exploring, and all the various plot threads did indeed lead to something quite interesting in the end. Probably more interesting than All Hail Megatron turned out to be, even though I did enjoy that storyline as well. And Furman finally got beyond the G1 cartoon and its characterizations, giving us a fairly epic storyline that doesn't feel like its confined to Earth and Cybertron and nothing else.

Given the direction the G1 series has taken with AHM and the new ongoing, I'm aware that I'm in the minority, but I really appreciate the stories Furman has written over the past few years. Not every little detail, but the broad overall approach and ideas are really strong.

Some of this is also going to touch on ideas in the "Spotlight" thread.


The problem with Furman at IDW is that by the time IDW got the license, Furman had expended most of the credibility he built up in the 90s. (Remember, the TF creative team is one of the few from 90s Marvel that is remembered fondly. Granted, some of those other guys are still around. But, how many Marvel books from the 90s are remembered as anything other than awful?)

His work at the convention comics in the early part of this decade left much to be desired. "Universe" read like an example of how not to write fanfic. (In all seriousness, I recall "never do this in your story" lists from then that now read like outlines for "Universe".) "Energon" lost direction and became a "and then this happens" book. (In that sense, DW collapsing was not the worst thing. Of course, too many people lost their jobs to consider truncated comics to be the most important problem.) On top of all that, Furman's remarks about how great various comics and products were rang hollow even with fans.

Simply put, Furman did not have the credibility to ask readers to follow him and his story-line over several years. I often found myself wondering how much time he was killing while waiting to be able to use Unicron again and again and again and again..... "Stormbringer" did little to inspire this confidence. The "Beast Wars" comics were just awful. (They actually made me nostalgic for the 3H BotCon comics from '02 and later.)


Maybe Furman did have something in mind when he started working at IDW. But, he asked far more of the fans than he reasonably could have. Maybe it would have been great. Maybe, it would have justified my past faith in the man.

Or, maybe not. Maybe IDW will release old scripts and story notes at some point.

At this point, I will be happy if Furman produces readable, (or even good), comics.


Dom
-has been consistently impressed with JVR on "Mosaic " and other projects.

Furman's story had a lot of really interesting threads going on, but most of the time the execution was nerfed, and several times it seemed like it was trying too hard to be different for the sake of being different. Galvatron is, incidentally, an exception to this, I think--he was different and it was Good. I also really didn't like the whole Dead Universe plotline, it just felt cruddy and wasn't exciting.