TF Views

andersonh1 wrote:I take some offense to this mischaracterization. I haven't been sitting around hoping Prowl wasn't getting any character development. I've been reading this book month after month being unhappy that Prowl had become a fascist thug, no better than the Decepticons he supposedly hates. That wasn't character development, that was character destruction. I'm delighted that it turned out to be Bombshell the whole time, and I look forward to seeing Prowl grow and change after being put through the ringer the way he has been. That will be genuine character development.

How does the descent and fall of a character defined by his blind loyalty to his faction’s existence not count as ‘genuine’ character development? “He who fights with monsters should take care, lest he himself become a monster.” That’s friggin’ classic, and given everything we’ve been shown about Prowl in IDW up until issue 4 of this series, made perfect sense as a direction for him to go. Maybe it makes readers like you *feel bad* to see a character you categorize as ‘heroic’ go down such a path, but it’s sure as hell more interesting than “Prowl was kind of a bad guy but now he’s going to be a good guy because he feels sad that some of the other Autobots think he’s a jerk.”

I don’t see how he’s been ‘put through the wringer’, he got body-jacked in issue 4 and has been effectively absent from the story ever since. Now he’ll be back to issue 4 spec (if Barber doesn’t just kill him rendering this whole stupid story moot), and go back to being one of the faceless masses of good guy Autobots who exclusively fight against Decepticon evil just the way you like.

Watching an authoritarian figure who’s past his time descending trying to maintain his faction’s power, eventually becoming the very thing he had fought to stop (not to mention exactly the sort of Autobot who would’ve been prosecuted in an Aequitas trial, which would’ve been a fantastic bit of irony) would’ve been ‘putting him through the wringer’. All Prowl got here was a reset button to put him back to generic good guy status.

The story we've been given is vastly better than the "Prowl descends to the dark side" type of story that you wanted to read. Decepticons are acting like Decepticons, using deceit, subterfuge and infiltration to destabilize society to take over. Sounds like consistency and continuity to me, and I love that I didn't see it coming.

How is ‘Decepticons acting like Decepticons’ an interesting story? We’ve seen that a jillion times before. What we haven’t seen is Decepticons genuinely trying to turn to sincere political leadership, or Autobots going to extreme lengths to maintain the ‘victory’ they fought for and losing themselves in the process. I fail to see how that isn’t an interesting story.

andersonh1 wrote:Who ever said he was a "generic, happy go lucky good guy"? Not me. He doesn't have to be that in order to uphold some basic moral standards, surely.

Except that Prowl’s characterization in IDW has never been about ‘basic moral standards’, it’s always been about stringent loyalty to the Autobot brand itself, and his willingness to uphold its authority and appearances at the cost of any personal moral bias. Did you completely miss the AHM Coda issue where he rebuilt a beloved old man into a propaganda machine? What about LSotW where he sends a bunch of green recruits to be brutally killed so that he can destroy evidence of unsavory Autobot activities? This has always been Prowl’s characterization, until Barber decided that that just wasn’t good enough and he had to try to ‘fix’ Prowl so people reading wouldn’t feel bad about how mean he was being.

And Bumblebee blew Horri-bull's head off in issue #1. He's not much better.

First off, how does doing that make Bumblebee that bad guy? Not only was Horri-Bull assaulting a civilian at the time and needed to be stopped, but have you seriously been watching and reading Transformers since G1 and have never seen an Autobot kill a Decepticon before? You know it’s a war story, right?

And anyway, Bumblebee didn’t actually kill Horri-Bull, it was retconned out to be Skywarp the next issue, in a move that really should have made it clear to me what a pussy Barber is about these things.

BWprowl wrote:I don’t see how he’s been ‘put through the wringer’, he got body-jacked in issue 4 and has been effectively absent from the story ever since. Now he’ll be back to issue 4 spec (if Barber doesn’t just kill him rendering this whole stupid story moot), and go back to being one of the faceless masses of good guy Autobots who exclusively fight against Decepticon evil just the way you like.

He's been put through the wringer because he's been a puppet, forced to do things against his own side in service of the faction he hates. You don't think that will have affected even Prowl? You don't see that as any sort of springboard for character development? I certainly do.

All Prowl got here was a reset button to put him back to generic good guy status.

It's too soon to make that call.

How is ‘Decepticons acting like Decepticons’ an interesting story? We’ve seen that a jillion times before.

Funny how everyone loved it when it was the six-phase infiltration protocol. No, we haven't seen it a jillion times before. We rarely see Decepticons actually practicing deception and subterfuge. They're insane soldiers, or mad scientists or guys on a massive power-grabbing ego trip who want to alter history or play god. More often than not they're grandstanding villains, not methodical plotters. I found the story consistent with the Decepticons of the early Furman IDW faction, and Bombshell to be consistent with the Bombshell of AHM. They've stuck with tried and true methods, and Prowl's ruthlessness has come back to bite him since Bombshell was able to use him so easily without anyone suspecting.

For the longest time while reading this book I was annoyed that the Decepticons were being pushed to the background in favor of the Prowl and Arcee two-bot army and Bumblebee's bumbling leadership. A few plot twists have changed all that, something I'm pleased to see. The Decepticons are very relevant to this series after all.

What we haven’t seen is Decepticons genuinely trying to turn to sincere political leadership, or Autobots going to extreme lengths to maintain the ‘victory’ they fought for and losing themselves in the process. I fail to see how that isn’t an interesting story.

Do you expect any of this to happen overnight, en masse, with the old leaders still exerting influence? We've seen individual characters going in the directions you indicated, crossing the old factional lines. I suspect we'll see more in future.

Except that Prowl’s characterization in IDW has never been about ‘basic moral standards’, it’s always been about stringent loyalty to the Autobot brand itself, and his willingness to uphold its authority and appearances at the cost of any personal moral bias. Did you completely miss the AHM Coda issue where he rebuilt a beloved old man into a propaganda machine? What about LSotW where he sends a bunch of green recruits to be brutally killed so that he can destroy evidence of unsavory Autobot activities? This has always been Prowl’s characterization,

No, it's been Prowl's characterization under certain writers, namely Roche and Roberts. Furman didn't write Prowl that way as far as I can remember, and neither did Costa or McCarthy.

until Barber decided that that just wasn’t good enough and he had to try to ‘fix’ Prowl so people reading wouldn’t feel bad about how mean he was being.

You keep assuming that Bombshell's brainwashing of Prowl is a last minute fix. Everything I've read, and in-story evidence indicates that it's been planned all along. This has been the story, whether you read it as such or not. I understand that you didn't get what you thought you were reading, but it doesn't make it some sort of last-minute save by Barber.

First off, how does doing that make Bumblebee that bad guy? Not only was Horri-Bull assaulting a civilian at the time and needed to be stopped, but have you seriously been watching and reading Transformers since G1 and have never seen an Autobot kill a Decepticon before? You know it’s a war story, right?

The war is over. Different rules apply.

Analogy: Bumblebee is the de facto head of state. Not a policeman, not a peace officer of any sort. Let's say a mayor is walking down the street in the real world, or the president. He sees a man assaulting another man. Shooting the assailant in the head and blowing his brains out is the appropriate response? He has the authority and the moral imperative to do that? Now if the assailant himself is about to use lethal force, sure, lethal force in response may be justified. Call out the swat team and take the guy down. But Bumbleebee in that situation was acting as judge, jury and executioner, and regardless if Skywarp was prepared to kill Horri-Bull himself or not, Bumblebee had every intention of doing so which leaves him morally culpable.

On a battlefield, in time of war, Bumblebee is entirely justified. On a city street, during non-wartime, he isn't.

andersonh1 wrote:He's been put through the wringer because he's been a puppet, forced to do things against his own side in service of the faction he hates. You don't think that will have affected even Prowl? You don't see that as any sort of springboard for character development? I certainly do.

Except we didn’t *see* Prowl go through any of that, it was presented as him jumping off the slippery slope of well-intentioned extremism, and a pretty damn well-written character arc of that occurring in my opinion. If the whole story had been showing Prowl locked inside his own mind, actively wondering why no one realized he was being controlled until the realization dawned on him (or something to that effect) then we’d have a case of Barber making his point known and his (okay) story illustrating itself effectively. Instead, Barber wrote a different, ‘fake’ character arc for Prowl as a façade, and, possibly by accident, wrote a story that was much more interesting than the one he was actually telling.

Prowl getting a free pass on actions he might have committed anyway and getting to go back to the Autobots and still be a ‘good guy’ may count as ‘character development’, but it’s not development that’s particularly interesting and it certainly isn’t the sort of thing I care to read about.

It's too soon to make that call.

We’re certainly never going to get to see him jump off the extremism slope again anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Funny how everyone loved it when it was the six-phase infiltration protocol. No, we haven't seen it a jillion times before. We rarely see Decepticons actually practicing deception and subterfuge. They're insane soldiers, or mad scientists or guys on a massive power-grabbing ego trip who want to alter history or play god. More often than not they're grandstanding villains, not methodical plotters.

So did you miss how half the issue was a villainous monologue by Megatron about his eeeevil plan and his macguffin mind control and his new superweapon? Making Megatron (and Bombshell) the cause of everything the whole time cheats all concepts that were put forth about Transformers as a race and their socio-politics and so forth to make just another evil bad guy plan, and I *do not give a shit* about that sort of story.

I found the story consistent with the Decepticons of the early Furman IDW faction, and Bombshell to be consistent with the Bombshell of AHM. They've stuck with tried and true methods, and Prowl's ruthlessness has come back to bite him since Bombshell was able to use him so easily without anyone suspecting.

Exactly, seeing the Decepticons stick with the ‘tried and true’ methods, doing the exact same sort of stuff we’ve seen them do before, only for the Goodguybots to rally and chase them off at the last minute is not even remotely an interesting story, especially in comparison to what we thought we were getting.

For the longest time while reading this book I was annoyed that the Decepticons were being pushed to the background in favor of the Prowl and Arcee two-bot army and Bumblebee's bumbling leadership. A few plot twists have changed all that, something I'm pleased to see. The Decepticons are very relevant to this series after all.

The Decepticons were a situation in the story that affected its progression, and they weren’t being entirely shoved into the background. Starscream’s political campaigning (which turned out to be a boring crock of shit) was a major element of the story, as were Shockwave’s group and their dealings behind the scenes. Not to mention Swindle and Dirge and their being stuck in the middle of the power struggle, that was great. Unfortunately, they were just one of many elements that Barber chased of panel because he thought we’d rather see Bumblebee and the Autobots fight Super-Devastator instead.

Do you expect any of this to happen overnight, en masse, with the old leaders still exerting influence? We've seen individual characters going in the directions you indicated, crossing the old factional lines. I suspect we'll see more in future.

All the individuals who had crossed faction lines, namely Starscream, Swindle, and Dirge, have either had their development retconned as having an evil scheme all along and been shuffled back into the Decepticon side (Starscream) or been conspicuously removed from the story before the big factional confrontation that would have expanded on such things (some reason Swindle and Dirge don’t get to be around for the big throwdown with Megatron and Devastator?)

No, it's been Prowl's characterization under certain writers, namely Roche and Roberts. Furman didn't write Prowl that way as far as I can remember, and neither did Costa or McCarthy.

Yeah, and those were the guys who made Prowl *interesting* as opposed to the bland, by-the-book jerk he’s been since vanilla G1. I barely remember a damn thing Furman had Prowl do in his POS series, but I sure as hell remember all the stuff Roche and Roberts dropped about how he really operates and what his drive really is. Even Costa initially brought up a more optimistic Prowl only to have him lose his faith in humanity at the end of ‘Polic Action’ to set up for the cynical turn he took, but didn’t get to follow through on (because some people couldn’t handle it, apparently) in RID.

You keep assuming that Bombshell's brainwashing of Prowl is a last minute fix. Everything I've read, and in-story evidence indicates that it's been planned all along. This has been the story, whether you read it as such or not. I understand that you didn't get what you thought you were reading, but it doesn't make it some sort of last-minute save by Barber.

If Barber wanted to tell this story, then fine, whatever, that’s his right as a writer. But he shouldn’t have written a way better story and gotten my hopes up only to kick me in the balls with this boring generic bullshit because he thought the ‘surprise’ was worth it.

The war is over. Different rules apply.

Analogy: Bumblebee is the de facto head of state. Not a policeman, not a peace officer of any sort. Let's say a mayor is walking down the street in the real world, or the president. He sees a man assaulting another man. Shooting the assailant in the head and blowing his brains out is the appropriate response? He has the authority and the moral imperative to do that? Now if the assailant himself is about to use lethal force, sure, lethal force in response may be justified. Call out the swat team and take the guy down.

Well for one thing, Horri-Bull (and the other Decepticons) were supposed to be acting as a deputized security force, so it’s more like the mayor of a city coming upon an instance of extreme police brutality. Also, Bumblebee warned Horri-Bull to stand down, or he would activate the I/D chip, he gave Horri-Bull a chance. The chips were specifically installed as a deterrent against the Decepticons abusing their authority, Horri-Bull should have known what the result would be if he continued his transgressions. Bumblebee’s priority at the time was to protect the life of the Neutral, he didn’t have time to call anyone else who could to the job for him when he had a perfectly viable, known method that he had warned all of the Decepticons about before.

But Bumbleebee in that situation was acting as judge, jury and executioner, and regardless if Skywarp was prepared to kill Horri-Bull himself or not, Bumblebee had every intention of doing so which leaves him morally culpable.

Which makes me wonder why the hell they had to do it that way, why not just have Bumblebee be the one who did the deed? It seems to me that Barber just wanted to let Bumblebee off the hook, because, as with Prowl, he can’t actually handle taking characters into these places, or is wussing out because he doesn’t want to make some readers squeamish.

I'm delighted that it turned out to be Bombshell the whole time, and I look forward to seeing Prowl grow and change after being put through the ringer the way he has been. That will be genuine character development.

Uh, why is "character development" being conflated with "character becomes better in context"? "Character development" is a measure used by external readers. It can apply to characters who have become morally questionable or even corrupt in context.

Hal Jordan was significantly developed during "Emeral Twilight". Does devolopment always need to involve corruption? No. But, showing a character being corrupted (internally or externally) can qualify as development.

Fascism: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control. Severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. Megatron is a fascist, and a would-be dictator. The fact that Prowl had apparently started heading towards the same goal (his protestations to Bumblebee that he would win an election notwithstanding, many dictators hold "elections") made him look similarly fascist to me. He may not have overtly been seeking to gain power, but he was acting as a law unto himself. "Thug" is the term I applied to him since he was apparently going around summarily executing Decepticons at-will, as well as engineering a situation where they would riot, allowing him to mop things up. "Decepticons, I invite you to resist" and all that.

I agree with the fascism. But, not so much in terms of thuggery. "Thug" sort of implies unnecessary violence/brutality. All of Prowl's actions (including those taken while under Bombshell's control), have been pretty utilitarian.

Watching an authoritarian figure who’s past his time descending trying to maintain his faction’s power, eventually becoming the very thing he had fought to stop (not to mention exactly the sort of Autobot who would’ve been prosecuted in an Aequitas trial, which would’ve been a fantastic bit of irony) would’ve been ‘putting him through the wringer’. All Prowl got here was a reset button to put him back to generic good guy status.

It's too soon to make that call.

Agreed.

For the umpteenth time, Prowl did plenty of bad shit before getting nailed by Bombshell. Prowl's false flag attacks in issue 10 or so (blowing up Decepticon HQ) were totally consistent with how Prowl was depicted before issue 4 (when Bombshell took control).

Why are you so hell-bent on accusing Roberts of back-writing his own work, the lowest kind of hackery? Why are you assuming that Barber it using this to undo everything with Prowl going back to 2005 when IDW got the license? (I am 99% sure that he is using this to build off of all that, even if he did throw us a curveball.)

You keep assuming that Bombshell's brainwashing of Prowl is a last minute fix. Everything I've read, and in-story evidence indicates that it's been planned all along. This has been the story, whether you read it as such or not. I understand that you didn't get what you thought you were reading, but it doesn't make it some sort of last-minute save by Barber.

This.

And anyway, Bumblebee didn’t actually kill Horri-Bull, it was retconned out to be Skywarp the next issue, in a move that really should have made it clear to me what a pussy Barber is about these things.

Half the point of that scene is that it showed how far BB was willing to go. (In context, BB thought that he was killing Horribull.) The other half was to show that the Decepticons had developed a work-around for the Autobot's control over them.

C'mon, why are you intentionally misreading this scene?

We’re certainly never going to get to see him jump off the extremism slope again anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Like Anderson said, too soon to make that call.

All the individuals who had crossed faction lines, namely Starscream, Swindle, and Dirge, have either had their development retconned as having an evil scheme all along and been shuffled back into the Decepticon side (Starscream) or been conspicuously removed from the story before the big factional confrontation that would have expanded on such things (some reason Swindle and Dirge don’t get to be around for the big throwdown with Megatron and Devastator?)

Starscream's plan was likely to steal the election. Remember what he said to Megatron in the prison? He was planning to win and rule legitimately. There are difference degrees of devious plans. You are the one going to the kind of binary thinking ("Starscream is bad bad bad bad bad") that you are accusing Barber of. Swindle and Dirge will be back in a few issues. Patience.

No, it's been Prowl's characterization under certain writers, namely Roche and Roberts. Furman didn't write Prowl that way as far as I can remember, and neither did Costa or McCarthy.

Furman wrote Prowl as one of the more ruthless Autobots. (Prowl was shown accepting that they were probably going to lose Earth, and not being too upset by that.) Prowl did not get much page time though.

McCarthy: Did not write Prowl much at all. (Prowl could have been replaced in any of his scenes in AHM with no important changes.)

Costa: Costa acknowledged that Prowl was cynical. (Remember, the story shown in the "Spotlight" issue was intended to be shown as flashbacks in the main book. But, the fandom complained and whined enough to make IDW produce a special issue explaining the changes.) The whole point of the Costa run (articulated from the first issue) was "change is difficult by necessary". Optimus, Thundercracker, Rodimus, Prowl and others struggled to adjust to the changes after the war effectively ended. Prowl changed after Optimus forced him on to a long term patrol. Prowl returned to cynicism *after* his flirtation with idealism failed.


Dom
-will be the first one to drop the book if it actually does go backwards like Prowl is arguing. (But, that has not happened yet.)

Dominic wrote:Uh, why is "character development" being conflated with "character becomes better in context"? "Character development" is a measure used by external readers. It can apply to characters who have become morally questionable or even corrupt in context.

That isn't what I was saying, though I get why you read my comments that way. To be plain, what I mean is that Prowl has been mind-controlled and forced to service the Decepticon cause. That's a traumatic event. Prowl can't just shrug that trauma off as if it never happened. He will have to react in some way, and his character will hopefully develop and change as a result. He could become a worse person for all I know, and genuinely become as ruthless as he's appeared to be over the past 10 issues. Or he could go in another direction entirely.

I expect a few issues of the other characters trying to sort out what Prowl was actualy responsible for, and likely finding out more about his plans and schemes than they realized. It will probably involved a "how different from the Decepticons are you?" moment or two.


Dom
-at least, that is my best guess....

Funny how everyone loved it when it was the six-phase infiltration protocol.

Nah, it was fucking boring, then, too, and is the exact reason why I didn't bother reading anything out of IDW until All Hail Megatron. And even that, it took Prowl and 86 and Dom reading the first 6 or so issues and repeatedly saying, "No, dude, YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK," that made me do it. And that WAS an interesting story--we never see the fucking Decepticons win, and in AHM, they had already effectively done so.

No, it's been Prowl's characterization under certain writers, namely Roche and Roberts. Furman didn't write Prowl that way as far as I can remember, and neither did Costa or McCarthy.

McCarthy barely wrote Prowl doing anything, because he was more focused on Megatron, Starscream, Kup, Jazz, Sunstreaker and Prime. Writers have preferred characters--Sunstreaker has very much faded into the background since his "resurrection," which makes me question why it was even necessary in the first place. For being the Big Bad Traitor Autobot from just two or three years ago, everybody seems to be really cool with him being on the Lost Light.

You keep assuming that Bombshell's brainwashing of Prowl is a last minute fix. Everything I've read, and in-story evidence indicates that it's been planned all along. This has been the story, whether you read it as such or not. I understand that you didn't get what you thought you were reading, but it doesn't make it some sort of last-minute save by Barber.

It's far enough now into the book that Barber could very well have changed his original intention--there's a lot of assumptions about AHM that issue 7 was written with editorial edict about making things "fit" with Furman's books more, and given the timetable it makes sense.

The war is over. Different rules apply.

Analogy: Bumblebee is the de facto head of state. Not a policeman, not a peace officer of any sort. Let's say a mayor is walking down the street in the real world, or the president. He sees a man assaulting another man. Shooting the assailant in the head and blowing his brains out is the appropriate response? He has the authority and the moral imperative to do that? Now if the assailant himself is about to use lethal force, sure, lethal force in response may be justified. Call out the swat team and take the guy down. But Bumbleebee in that situation was acting as judge, jury and executioner, and regardless if Skywarp was prepared to kill Horri-Bull himself or not, Bumblebee had every intention of doing so which leaves him morally culpable.

On a battlefield, in time of war, Bumblebee is entirely justified. On a city street, during non-wartime, he isn't.

The entire theme of RID could be summed up in a few words, really.

Old habits die hard.

Dom wrote:Costa: Costa acknowledged that Prowl was cynical. (Remember, the story shown in the "Spotlight" issue was intended to be shown as flashbacks in the main book. But, the fandom complained and whined enough to make IDW produce a special issue explaining the changes.)

I remember there was actually some fan outcry that Prowl's new human-friendly, let's-all-be-buddies attitude was out of character for him, and that was four years ago.



Anyway, for my part, jury is still out until #16 or so. Barber has pretty much explicitly said, "No, seriously, wait for those." (I am tempted to email him, or ask him on Twitter, about our Prowl's opinion.)

RID #15

Dirge and Sideswipe agreeing to work together? Fixit prioritizing the injured whether they're Decepticon or not? Bumblebee agreeing with Metalhawk that they need to go rescue Starscream? Sounds like faction-blurring is happening before our eyes, a bit at a time.

Prowl is trapped inside Devastator, forced to watch as his friends are attacked, but unable to control anything. He ruminates on his life as the battle goes on all around the city. Without just retyping the whole plot, more plot revelations occur, even if I'm not quite buying one character's sudden sanity. I suppose it's credible on a certain level. In any case, the Autobots have a fighting chance and manage to hold their own, though Superion needs to learn to watch his back, judging by the last page of the issue.

Next issue will wrap things up. I'm curious to see how things turn out. Even with the events of this issue, things could go in several directions.

Writers have preferred characters--Sunstreaker has very much faded into the background since his "resurrection," which makes me question why it was even necessary in the first place.

My gut feeling is that Costa had plans for Sunstreaker and Ironhide that were truncated by having the book change direction so quickly before he was taken off of it. Think about it. Costa's big damn idea was *change*. Sunstreaker and Ironhide would have fit that bill to begin with. And, there was the potential for significant contrast between the two characters.

It's far enough now into the book that Barber could very well have changed his original intention--there's a lot of assumptions about AHM that issue 7 was written with editorial edict about making things "fit" with Furman's books more, and given the timetable it makes sense.

I agree about AHM. But, Barber is as much, if not more, an editor as he is a writer. I get the feeling that his plan since day one was to have Prowl under Bombshell's control.

(I am tempted to email him, or ask him on Twitter, about our Prowl's opinion.)

I am similarly tempted to email Ryall.....


Issue #15:

And, just like last time, I have been beaten to the review punch. So, get ready for another round of review by reply.....

Dirge and Sideswipe agreeing to work together? Fixit prioritizing the injured whether they're Decepticon or not? Bumblebee agreeing with Metalhawk that they need to go rescue Starscream? Sounds like faction-blurring is happening before our eyes, a bit at a time.

Yup.

(Never mind that, hey, look, Dirge is back....just like I said he would.

Prowl is trapped inside Devastator, forced to watch as his friends are attacked, but unable to control anything. He ruminates on his life as the battle goes on all around the city.

Yup. And, his monologue looks to be setting up for.....the kind of thing I have been predicting these past few weeks. Prowl acknowledges things that he did *before* falling under Bombshell's control. Prowl considers how he has been seeing the world.

Next issue will wrap things up. I'm curious to see how things turn out. Even with the events of this issue, things could go in several directions.

The proof will be in issue 17 actually. The solicits promise that nothing will stay the same after this. And, (if I am counting right), issue 17 will be the the one that sets the status quo for the upcoming run of the book.

Grade: A/B


Dom
-wow, this book *is* still good.

Oh, and on a wholly personal and self-indulgent note:

Mirage joins Jetfire and Warpath on the list of "characters with good modern toys who die in IDW and whose only other significant context is in bad comics by Fun Publications".

They are not the only characters with good/new toys to die in IDW, in or out of bodies that look like said toys. But, for some reason, when they die in IDW and are also in Fun Publications books, it bugs me.


Dom
-not taking points off, but considers Mirage to be a personal favourite.