Infestation discussion

[Shockwave]

I do not know about how "Infestation" fits in with any kind of legacy numbering system, (where volume 2 issue 4 would be legacy 10). But, it is not numbered as part of the on-going. And, as far as I know, (and unless Diamond is lying to me), the on-going is coming out on schedule.

Oh. Ok. Well then yeah, you're right, that is annoying. I was under the impression that it would work the way the event books of the big 2 work where there's the "event" and then the titles somehow tie into it. I could foresee dropping IDW altogether if they wind up making a habit of this to the point of forcing readers to pick up all of their titles just to get the "full story" on one of them.

Dom
-Did they really need to make it part of continuity for each license?

If they didn't it would have even less credibility amounting to nothing more than a self indulgent "what if?" book.

[Onslaught Six]

See, Valiant did things right with their shitty crossovers.

So I'm reading through Shadowman and it's like the fourth or fifth issue. Everything's dandy. But wait! At this particular moment in the Valiant universe, there's a crossover happening! So Shadowman gets sucked down into a hole underneath a tree in some swamp in New Orleans (for real) and gets transported to the Future. This happens at the end of the issue.

The next two issues focus solely on Shadowman Doing Stuff in the future, during this crossover. It's here that a major plot point happens, actually. Because this is the Future of 2117 or what the fuck ever, Shadowman finds out that he Dies Forever in 1999. This is what, effectively, finally gives Shadowman his "superpower"--the fact that he cannot die, until 1999. So he's effectively immortal. This is one of the 'best' ways to handle a superpower ever. At the end of the last crossover issue, it's all, "Okay, now you have to read the rest of the books to find out what happens!"

So at first, I'm all gutted, right? So I open the next issue. Shadowman pops up out of that tree. "Holy crap! I was in the future! I can't die until 1999! We killed the bad guy, or whatever!" Crossover solved, and everything you needed to know about Shadowman's presence in it--right there. Done. Remarkably well made, there.

[Dominic]

If they didn't it would have even less credibility amounting to nothing more than a self indulgent "what if?" book.

That sort of story can sell. The thing is that is has to be well made in order to go over with people.

Look at DC's "Elseworlds" in the 90s. Those did very well both commercially and critically because most of them were good. It was not until DC started going an "Elseworlds" for every stupid idea that was pitched that the brand lost its weight. Much the same can be said of Marvel's "What If,.,?" series. After several iterations, the pattern became "strong start and solid high-concept....and weak ideas and shabby execution".

"Transformers" had 5 cross-overs in the previous decade. And, none of the (largely valid) complaints about any of them were rooted in "but this is not in continuity". The Reiber/Lee cross-over was roundly and rightly panned for being a comprehensive botching of a an idea that could have been a slam-dunk had either the writer *or* the artist did an even mediocre job. If they both did a passable job, people would still talk well of the series now.

The DDP books were plagued with terrible art and inconsistent writing.


Of course, neither the high concept nor execution of "Infestation" is strong enough to carry the book on its own. If IDW wants to present it as being in context with the properties it crosses over with, then I am going to count it as part of those properties. In this case, I will count it as diluting "Transformers" and being one more bad comic that I read. (The more bad comics a property has, the less likely I am over time to keep it.)


Dom
-might as well list the other cross-over issues here as well.

[Shockwave]

What if? books can sell well, but that's not what IDW is doing here. I'm thoroughly convinced at this point that the point of the crossover is to get the readers of the licences to read RvZ. If the events of the crossover aren't going to be part of that universe's continuity why should I as a TF reader care? I could legitimately ignore the events and just go on with my merry way. But by making the events part of the continuity, I suddenly have to get the crossover to get the "full story".

You forget I don't really pay attention to who writes these things, which one was the Reiber/Lee thing? Was that the Avengers cross over?

I liked the DDP books. Both the art and the writing. I liked the story, the different/new directions they went with some of the characters and what they did with them.

[Shockwave]

Look at DC's "Elseworlds" in the 90s.

No. And you can't make me!

[138 Scourge]

See, Valiant did things right with their shitty crossovers.

Yeah, the "Unity" thing was really well-built. I think it had two issues of a main "Unity" book, and then the story went down in each of the regular books. And somehow, they made it so each book's part was pretty much self-contained. As you've just proven by only seeing it from the "Shadowman" angle. That construction impressed the hell outta me, enough so that I wound up getting the whole damn thing. One thing about getting all of "Unity", though. You not only get the entire story, which...I think was sort of cool, as those things go. Don't remember a lot of it, but it was pretty much standard superhero crossover stuff, but a really neat-looking, and again, well built example thereof. But the second month's worth of books all had cover art by Walt Simonson, and they all connected to form one amazing image. No lie, if I could find a poster of that, I'd buy the hell outta it.

Also, X-O's thing within Unity was pretty neat, too. He sort of got involved in the fight, then decided, "Y'know, screw this, I see other barbarian sorts here in the Lost Land, I'm gonna take charge of their whole thing and sit the fight out." Which is a douche move if he were a superhero, but since he was a barbarian with space armor, it's totally in character for him. And it goes great up until he's bitten in half by a dinosaur.

Then at the end of the thing, when everyone's sent home to their own times, X-O gets kicked back to ancient Roman era, where he was originally kidnapped from. Which led to neat stuff there.

Back on subject, I don't see the problem, really. Sure, extradimensional space zombies is weird, but it does throw in a little something different to break up the usual "Autobots vs. Decepticons" action of the TF books. Which, yeah, it's pretty much expected, but something different every once in a while, why not, right? And it's not like you've gotta read the whole "Infestation" thing to make sense of the TF part, right? If you're just reading the TF books, then it's just a couple issues wherein the Autobots fight space zombies. And Nick Roche draws it. I fail to see the downside.

As far as Kup goes, well, like I say, it's effectively just a Transformers special. This is something that's basically happening in the Transformers book. And how silly would it be if being attacked by space zombies didn't remind Kup of the events of his Spotlight?

That said, I haven't picked any of this stuff up yet, this is just my initial impression.

[Dominic]

The Reiber/Lee series was that WWII focused atrocity with the terrible art and worse writing.

The DDP cross-overs had *terrible* art that failed at the basics of illstration. They managed to screw up things like scale, perspective and depth. (All of those woudl be covered in any Illustration 101 class.) Throw in character models that were sometimes inconsistent from page to page, and you have laughably bad art.

I liked the story, the different/new directions they went with some of the characters and what they did with them.

But, the story was out of context with both of the main properties that the characters were from. You just said that kind of "what if" was bad. If anything, this supports my earlier point about how it is better to do a cros-over that is not in context, and thus less intrusive. (For the record, I liked the high concept of the DDP series, if not the execution.)


Dom
-unsure what the problem with DC's "Elseworlds" was. "Red Son" is friggin' amazing.

[Shockwave]

Ah yes, the Dreamwave one. I get what they were going for there, trying to make it feel like one of the old movie style news reels, but the end result was just terrible. The terrible writing in that one came from the one issue of the sequel directly contradicting the previous series.

As for "what if?"s, what I said was that a What if type story would be bad for what IDW is trying to accomplish with it's crossover. Now the what if that was created with DDP joe/TF crossover was fine and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, I have a tendancy to judge comic book artwork against the Marvel G1 comic (and art from that era) so pretty much anything produced today just blows that out of the water. The art back then was just so terrible that it's amazing anyone was able to tell what was going on or who was even on the pages. Probably not a fair comparison, but there you have it. And you'd be hard pressed to find any TF fiction that doesn't have some inconsistency in scale.

[Dominic]

The oringal Marvel seris had some *terrible* art. But, that is an exceptionally low bar to set. Go look at the first series. Look at the scene were teh HISS tanks are rolling through the crowd, and try to figure out depth. How tall is that woman in front of the lead tank? (She has to be at least 15 feet tall.) Look at Soundwave and the tapes in their big introductory splash page. They look like cardboard cut-outs.

The art was what I would expect from a small child.


A "What If?" could still traffic in brand recognition, much like regular "What If?" and "Elseworlds" books do. "Red Son" is a damned good comic. But, I am not going to pretend that being a damned good *Superman* comic did not punch its sales numbers up considerably. The same principle could have applied here.

And, I will say it again, the more intrusive cross-overs IDW forces on us, the more likely I am to drop books.

The terrible writing in that one came from the one issue of the sequel directly contradicting the previous series.

The writing sucked before that sequel came out. Reiber is like Ennis minus the dialogue and Dixon minus the gravitas. (Yeah, that was a cheap shot. But, I stand by it.)

When the first issue had an introduction comparing the cast to retards, I knew it was going to be a hell of a ride.


Dom
-already avoiding adding new IDW books to the pull-list.

[Shockwave]

I just assumed it was done anime style and lack of scale is almost required for that style. As such, I suppose I didn't think much of it. I will agree with a couple things though, 1, the DW WWII style crossover was just epic fail on every level. I liked some of the designs, but the art style just killed it and yeah, the writing sucked. Also, I will not be adding any other IDW titles to my pull list either.