More than Meets the Eye (IDW ongoing comic)

[Shockwave]

The intent of the scene was pretty clear, unless of course we are looking for ambiguity so we can be part of the story....or a later writer is looking for something/anything to justify a back-write.

There is this but I would actually go one step further and say that we don't even have to assum he moved at all given that IDW had already firmly established that damage to the head of Transformer, even seemingly severe damage is not a life threatening injury. They had already established that with both Megatron and Sunstreaker.

At the time, Megatron and Sunstreaker were the only characters to have that kind of "serious head trauma". But, even so, there were differences. Sunstreaker's trauma was, for lack of a better way to put it, "surgical". And, the impression I got from the Megatron scenario was that Megatron was lucky to be alive at all and likely "should" have died.

Dom

That doesn't even make any sense. How exactly would that make me "part of the story"? Yeah, it would be clear he was dead from that IF HE WERE HUMAN! He's not. Transformers are different and that's where I think you're the one reading something that wasn't intended.

Maybe. I dunno, I'll read it again when I get home but I don't recall it being that clear that TC was actually dead.

[Sparky Prime]

The intent of the scene was pretty clear, unless of course we are looking for ambiguity so we can be part of the story....or a later writer is looking for something/anything to justify a back-write.

The intent left the scene completely open ended. There is no need to look for ambiguity when it's right in front of you.

Maybe. I dunno, I'll read it again when I get home but I don't recall it being that clear that TC was actually dead.

I took another look at the last issue of AHM myself. It shows Skywarp point his blaster at Thundercracker's face, as Thundercracker tries to ask him to hold on a second for him to explain. Close up on Skywarp's face as he yells "Betrayer!" and then close up of is his weapon firing. And that's it. We don't see Thundercracker take the hit, or anything. There's just nothing to suggest what Thundercracker's fate was one way or another. Completely ambiguous.

[Onslaught Six]

Let's put it this way--it's clear that Skywarp is shooting Thundercracker with intent to kill, and that's really the most important part of the scene.

If I shoot you in the gut, and walk away, my intent is probably for you to die. Now, any number of things could happen after that. Someone could help you. You could call 911. Tony Stark could rebuild your heart. None of these things change that, at that time, the intent is for you to die.

I've used this example before, but I'm going to turn it around this time. In 'Death of Captain America,' Steve Rogers gets shot by Sharon Carter (under hypnosis or whatever). Everyone assumes Steve is dead. Even if the artwork is ambiguous, Sharon Carter's intent is to kill Captain America, and at least for a little bit, we are to treat it as real. A proper synopsis of that event would be, 'Sharon Carter killed Captain America.' It doesn't matter that it's revealed later on that it was a timetravel bullet or whatever stupid backwrite it was--the important thing is that the intent is for Cap to die.

You could pull this around and use it on virtually any superhero who has "died" and then been shown to survive. Superman, for example.

[andersonh1]

Let's put it this way--it's clear that Skywarp is shooting Thundercracker with intent to kill, and that's really the most important part of the scene.

That we can agree on. Skywarp intended to kill Thundercracker.

You could pull this around and use it on virtually any superhero who has "died" and then been shown to survive. Superman, for example.

With Superman it was fairly obvious that his death would never be permanent, so the story was more about him as a character and how he would face death, and then about how the world and his peers and friends would react to his death. The writers didn't try to fool us into thinking it was going to be permanent, they just used the death as a scenario to tell some stories. And there wasn't really a cheat in that case... Superman was dead, at least originally. Pa Kent had a heart attack, found his soul hanging around in the afterlife, and the two of them decided to return to life, or something like that. It's been awhile since I read it, and they may have retconned it since for all I know. Maybe I'll have to re-read it for the retro comics thread.

[Dominic]

That doesn't even make any sense. How exactly would that make me "part of the story"?

Because it would work with that foo-foo "draw the reader in" mentality. In this case, it gives the readers a chance to "really engage with the story" and feel like it is about them and what they feel. (Not what they think, what they feel.) They are a ppart of the story because the story is a part of them you see. All of the foo-foo sciences do this to some degree or another. (In fairness, most English majors usually stay out of discussions of real issues and limit their powers of obfuscation to discussing fictional events.)

Let's put it this way--it's clear that Skywarp is shooting Thundercracker with intent to kill, and that's really the most important part of the scene.

If I shoot you in the gut, and walk away, my intent is probably for you to die. Now, any number of things could happen after that. Someone could help you. You could call 911. Tony Stark could rebuild your heart. None of these things change that, at that time, the intent is for you to die.

On page, yes. And, following from that, Skywarp's gun was right up in Thundercracker's face ya see.

Off page, does anybody think that McCarthy intended for Thundercracker to survive?

I've used this example before, but I'm going to turn it around this time. In 'Death of Captain America,' Steve Rogers gets shot by Sharon Carter (under hypnosis or whatever). Everyone assumes Steve is dead. Even if the artwork is ambiguous, Sharon Carter's intent is to kill Captain America, and at least for a little bit, we are to treat it as real. A proper synopsis of that event would be, 'Sharon Carter killed Captain America.' It doesn't matter that it's revealed later on that it was a timetravel bullet or whatever stupid backwrite it was--the important thing is that the intent is for Cap to die.

This is arguably different.

Marvel most likely intended to bring back Steve Rogers. On page, Captain America's death was clearly intended by Carter. But, off page, I doubt that anybody at Marvel planned or intended for Rogers to stay dead. (And, hey, he came back.) In a situation like this, it is a stretch to assume that the writer meant to keep Rogers dead, (no matter how much we may want that to be the case).

In the case of Thundercracker, there was nothing in "All Hail Megatron" to indicate that Thundercracker was able to get back and turn away before Skywarp shot him. In on page, given the pacing and context of the scene, there is no mature reason to think anything other than "Skywarp just capped Thundercracker in the damned face". Similarly, there is no reason to think that it was McCarthy's intention to be able to get back and turn away.

On page, it is clear that Thundercracker did get back and turn away. (Costa said so, and his word carries more weight than any of ours.) But, in real terms, Thundercracker surviving was a back-write and not a terribly graceful one. Editing by back-write, or even fiat, is allowable. But, too many comics fans (and English major types) give retroactive credit for post-hoc in-story logic. (This kind of delivers on stereotypes about certain populations of fans being divorced from reality.)


Dom
-ended up liking what was done with Thundercracker, but not going to call raising him anything other than back-written bull shit.

[BWprowl]

The intent of the scene was pretty clear, unless of course we are looking for ambiguity so we can be part of the story....or a later writer is looking for something/anything to justify a back-write.

Just to weigh in on this, Dom, I'm gonna have to side with...well, everyone else. The only 'intent' in that scene that we see is 'Skywarp shoots at Thundercracker'. How long has it been since you read that particular scene? I re-read it a few months back, and was surprised by how brief and un-detailed it was. We don't even see Skywarp *hit* Thundercracker, we just see him shoot. I think it really was written to be intentionally ambiguous. Hell, remember what McCarthy said about TC right after that issue hit? "His fate is out of my hands". He never intended to kill Thundercracker off or not, he just set up a scenario where the next writer could run in whatever direction he wanted.

Honestly, to go so far as to assume Thundercracker died just because of single panel of Skywarp firing, that's on the level of "assuming a far out thing happened" when really, no clear intent was made. The big point of that scene was Skywarp confronting his Seeker 'brother' for his betrayal and attacking him for it (in a sharp contrast to the scene between the two earlier in the series), whether Thundercracker died or not was irrelevent to the scene.

[Shockwave]

Hell, remember what McCarthy said about TC right after that issue hit? "His fate is out of my hands". He never intended to kill Thundercracker off or not, he just set up a scenario where the next writer could run in whatever direction he wanted.

I remember that! Well Dom, there it is, right from the writer's mouth. It was intentionally ambiguous.

[Sparky Prime]

In the case of Thundercracker, there was nothing in "All Hail Megatron" to indicate that Thundercracker was able to get back and turn away before Skywarp shot him. In on page, given the pacing and context of the scene, there is no mature reason to think anything other than "Skywarp just capped Thundercracker in the damned face". Similarly, there is no reason to think that it was McCarthy's intention to be able to get back and turn away.

There is no mature reason to think Skywarp capped Thundercracker in the face. On the page, we see Skywarp warp in to confront Thundercracker, they argue a little mid-air and then Skywarp aims his weapon at Thundercracker's face where and Thundercracker has time to say "Wait! Brother!", then a panel with Skywarp saying "Betrayer" and finally all we see is a close up of Skywarp's weapon firing. We don't see Thundercracker take the hit. Given that pacing and context, there is absolutely room for Skywarp's aim to change somewhat in the few seconds between when we see him aim and then to actually fire. Not enough time for Thundercracker to avoid getting hit altogether, obviously, but enough to avoid a head shot at least. And given we don't actually see Thundercracker take the hit, there is no reason to think McCarthy's intention was to kill off Thundercracker. The page is clearly set up to only to make it look like that might be what happened, yet is intentionally ambiguous for Thundercracker to survive it as well.

-Sparky
Not surprised to see everyone still arguing about this story years later...

[Onslaught Six]

Off page, does anybody think that McCarthy intended for Thundercracker to survive?

Back in the day, I asked him on Twitter if Thundy was going to survive (this was before Costa's ongoing even happened) and McCarthy's response was that it was "out of his hands," or something similar. This makes me wonder if McCarthy's intent was to kill Thundy but editorial (or Hasbro) gave him a No. (Maybe Costa was aware of McCarthy's plan to kill Thundy, and interjected with, "Hey, if we brought him back, we could...")

Actually, given how long it's been, I wonder if McCarthy would be receptive to questions about it now.

[JediTricks]

So, I caught up on MTMTE up to the current issue, including the Annual. I found it very annoying that the Annual, with its shitty art and out-of-number-order design, is left to do ALL the heavy lifting in this series for keeping the framework moving along. (Also, the Annual takes an odd shot at Star Trek with Captain Kirk-Picard, aka K'Gard, and Roberts is full of shit claiming it's a reference to Kierkegaard based on the behavior, that doesn't fit at all.) And the Overlord thing just felt cheap being pulled out of the situation's ass, and also like a quick rehashing of "kill 'em all" character-destruction from LSotW, it's a boss battle in the middle of a game that really just is there to be a thing to do, as well as shake things up by piling shit on our characters as a mood shift. I still like the series for the characters and the thoughts behind them, but the lack of pushing framework makes it feel so static. Worse still is that it's a counterpoint to RID, which I've only read 3 issues of so far but immediately the story is actually moving and the characters still have moments AND the art is like that first breath out of the pool after holding your breath against MTMTE's art which is like trying to breath underwater, you might get used to it but out of the water you immediately recognize the difference.

Also, I feel like it's time to move Swerve and Tailgate forward as characters a little better, they're starting to stink of Ironfist too much.

Oh, and can someone explain to me why Ultra Magnus' holomatter avatar is Verity Carlo? I only know their connection from LSotW and there wasn't that much of one.


The DJD is essentially intended to be the Decepticon Wreckers. Agree or disagree? (If this has been discussed in the past forum pages, please forgive me, I'm only up to page 11.)


No matter how much I try, I cannot hear TF: Animated or Prime's Ratchet voice in this MTMTE version and it makes me a little sad as they were both great and it's obvious that "old guard" thing is what they wanted to do here as well.

The best way to look at comics is as runs by certain authors. For example, Byrne's run on "Avengers" is not Bendis' run on "Avengers". Traditionally, one thing (sometimes the only thing) that TF comics have done well is linear story-telling. This goes back to G1 (both Marvel US/UK and the Japanese content). Dreamwave, for all of its financial mismanagement, pulled off the same thing across two sub-properties. And, thus far, IDW has been doing the same thing.

I've never done it that way and I don't plan to in the future, it's not fair to new authors or existing authors on other titles with new ideas. If it works it works, I don't care who writes it.

While the franchise may not end, even if the comics are not re-numbered, when creative teams move on or get rotated out it can be seen as the end of a run/story.

I can send you a list of solid mini-series and one-shots (TF and otherwise).

I appreciate the offer, maybe when I have more time, I'm just now catching up on RID and halfway through 2 actual books, plus there's the pile you sent me of Marvel (and I suppose it'd be rude not to read Infestation, but I expect nothing good to come of that).

As for the end of an author's run, to me if there's no defining point to that run then I care more about the content than the author.

I specifically mentioned Ironhide, and he wasn't technically resurrected so much as rebuilt and a backup copy of his mind from four million years earlier installed into it, or something like that. He's not the same Ironhide who was killed.

That sounds like a cheat of death as much as anything though.

Thundercracker is a fine example. Dom and I argued round and round about whether he was killed at the end of AHM. I maintained that he wasn't, even though he was clearly shot at point blank range. We never saw him die, never saw a body, and sure enough, ongoing #4 revealed that he hadn't been killed at all. Sunstreaker was still alive according to AHM Coda, lying in the scrap heap of dead insecticons.

Not this again! Rung only survived his incident because someone was there to fix his brain back into a head, TC had no such ability, he caught it in the dome, the intent was to execute a traitor to the cause. What's the reader supposed to take away from a story if shooting someone directly in the head at point blank range isn't expected to kill them? What's the point of shooting them then? What IS going to kill them??? You show this panel to an outsider and 100% of the time they'll assume that's Thundercracker being killed, the story context makes it clear and the imagery makes it clear, the only thing that doesn't make it clear is the cheatiness of comics.

Who's still dead? Runamuck, Runabout, Nightbeat, Outback, Ramjet, Doubledealer, Deluge, Skyquake, Scrapper... the list goes on and on.

Oh man, those guys are my favorites. Who are they again? Except for Ramjet, I don't think any of them are really an example of significant characters staying dead in IDW. Just in this series we've had Rung false-killed, we have Swerve shoot his goddamned face off and show the idea of a dead skull character and without a single mention of how he's FINE in the next issue. Tailgate and Cyclonus false-killed by Whirl, Red Alert false-killed, and obviously OVERLORD is false-killed (possibly twice now!!!)... even Ore seems to have been unkilled! If Pipes, Rewind, and Ultra Magnus stay dead, that'll make... one important character dead in the IDW universe. IF he stays dead.

Magnus and Rewind are listed as dead on the official character lists at the end of the damned book. That character list has no place in context. It is not written from a character's point of view. It is not written in character voice or presented as any sort of crew manifest. The character list is presented as a handy reference for the readers to keep track of the book's cast. And, that list classifies Pipes, Magnus and Rewind as being unambigously dead.

It could be a reflection of the notes being taken by Tailpipe during the Shadowplay bits, but it's really just the author filling a page. I don't take those big red Xs too seriously on their own, the author has used this page to have fun with the material before.

No, that's not right. It was explained that once Ironhide was killed on Earth, his spark returned to the Core on Cybertron, allowing Alpha Trion to resurrect him in a new body. However, with Vector Sigma basically erased due to all of the damage Cybertron sustained, Alpha Trion wasn't able to restore all of Ironhide's memories, leaving him with a 4 million year memory gap. For all intents and purposes though, he is a resurrected Ironhide.

*headdesk!* No, that's not cheaty and convoluted at all.

There's been a lot of characters in MTMTE who were presumed dead (by the audience, I guess) for an issue or so before they turned out to have totally survived with almost no ill effects. Rung, Red Alert, Fortress Maximus, Overlord and Swerve have all been shown to get injuries that, under any other writer/editor combo, would totally have been written off as dead, and then some of them are just walking around like nothing happened an issue later.

I'm right with you on this, but Fort Max wasn't presumed dead, was he? He was comatose.

(Was Swerve's face being fixed even done on panel?)

It was not. When I saw him in #13 like no problem at all after that "pirate compatriot is turned and shown to be dead" gag in issue 12, I thought I had missed a goddamned issue or something. I went back, no panel even shows anybody WORKING on him.

In fact, RID has been pulling this too--just look at all the Decepticons Prowl has "killed" over the last 12 issues or so that suddenly show up, safe and sound, as if nothing happened. When the Constructicons' heads got blown up early on, I assumed that would be it for Devastator for the foreseeable future of IDW's continuity, and that we'd get someone like Menasor or Bruticus to start filling the "big-ass combiner" role down the line. Turns out, nope!

LA LA LA LA LA I'M NOT CAUGHT UP ON RID YET AND WON'T BE FOR A WHILE BECAUSE THE LAST 3 SHOPS I WENT TO DIDN'T HAVE ISSUE 12 AND VOLUME 3 WHICH ONLY GOES TO ISSUE 11 ISN'T OUT YET!

I wouldn't. It's a legitimate storytelling tool to leave the audience wondering if a character has survived or not.

I'd agree were these more believably survivable injuries, but at this point it's as if you really can't do anything to these characters that is too over-the-top to not be survivable. If Pipes stays dead, which I assume he will, it's because we saw his spark LEAVE HIS BODY AND EXTINGUISH! I don't want to have to make that the benchmark for proving a character is dead, Ore shouldn't have been able to be reanimated, Rung shouldn't have had his decapitation be survivable, Swerve's non-death-scene is actually using a "DEAD BUDDY" trope from other visual literature. It's not reasonable to go that far out on a limb just to dick with the audience. Rewind's near-death in issue 12 should be as close as it gets, and yet this series has taken it WAY further than the hospital table "will he or won't he make it doc?!?" type thing far too much.

and being a big deal in MTMTE does not make Rewind important.

How can you say that? Just because everybody is important because nobody is important because everybody gets screentime because NOTHING IS HAPPENING? Oh yeah, right, that's why. Rodimus is essentially a secondary character in his own series.

How is there "only one sensible way to read that sequence" when that sequence was purposefully ambiguous in the first place? They don't show what actually happened, so there is a number of sensible ways someone could read that. Especially for a comic book.

This is not "purposefully ambiguous", except in the way that comic book publishers have created a Pavlovian response in you to not accept a clear chain of events as meaning what they are showing. If you read a book or saw a movie where this happened and the next scene in that chain of events wasn't clearly expressing that Skywarp turned his weapon a different direction at the last minute and saved TC, you'd be ripped off, cheated, lied to - yet comics have turned fans against their own intellects for how many times they've cheated death and broken the storytelling commandment of "thou shall tell a story honestly".

This isn't supposed to be the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, nobody hits the Infinite Improbability Drive to save the day, the audience is going to use Occam's razor every time because the most probable outcome based on prior events is how life works and how literature works unless it intently states otherwise.

Hell, remember what McCarthy said about TC right after that issue hit? "His fate is out of my hands". He never intended to kill Thundercracker off or not, he just set up a scenario where the next writer could run in whatever direction he wanted.

I remember that! Well Dom, there it is, right from the writer's mouth. It was intentionally ambiguous.

Uh, no, you're interpreting what McCarthy said with a major inference. "It's out of my hands" could mean ANYTHING there, it doesn't directly speak to intent at all.

On another note, I just realized something: Shockwave was Jhiaxus' student before being rebuilt as the one-eyed monster we all know and love. Part of me wonders if the emotionally charged and morally righteous Senator could have eventually become more of a monster than the Decepticon he ended up being rebuilt as. If nothing else, he showed admiration for Nove Prime and the rest of the Ark's crew, many of whom became monsters despite having intentions. (I am also not expecting anything to come of this in MTMTE. it is just a radnom thought.)

Nova Prime is a douche nozzle, this series has made it abundantly clear that the "good guys" back then were all destined to be horrible monsters until Robot Jesus (aka Orion Pax) came along. I don't think it was the series' intention to suggest pre-empurata Senatorwave was destined to be a monster, but your argument makes a very good case that that would have been the outcome.