RiD (off topic)

[BWprowl]

For example: Homestuck! Prowl, I'm sure you'll know what I'm talking about here. Homestuck is a shitty-looking webcomic about I don't know or care what the fuck that a lot of people stupidly, stupidly love for some Godawful reason. (Apparently they've never read a fucking webcomic before? My only explanation.) And everyone kept telling me OH IT'S SO GOOD so I tried to read it. I got like ten pages in and decided this thing sucked ass and wasn't for me. But I tried it. I didn't instantly go, "Homestuck sucks dick," I now have an educated opinion on how bad Homestuck sucks dick.

Of course, people tell me it gets better later, but I don't want to wade through 200+ pages of turds to get to something I only might 'maybe' like.

I guess my point is: Fuck Homestuck.

I’ve kinda meant to check it out myself, if only to see what all the hubbub is about (plus a friend of mine who’s opinion I trust absolutely loved Problem Sleuth, the MSPA comic that preceded Homestuck), but it’s like a million pages long, and I cannot get up the gumption to potentially go through the epic amounts of content Homestuck encompasses at this point. It’d be much more pertinent for me to use that time to, uh, watch random Toku shows.

(I think the main reasons it’s caught on so well is that it’s got its own wide, defined, self-perpetuating universe, and, more importantly, updates several times per day. These are things that can drive a fanbase and keep them active nigh-infinitely.)

I think the last thing I *tried* and failed at to get into was another /co/ shitfest, the Canadian Flash faux-nime My Life Me. Despite the core concept actually being reasonably clever, it just resulted in all the characters being insufferable tools to each other, with only one of them being remotely likeable. Plus the show in general was just rough and barely-decent in general; I watched through something like 13 episodes of this crud, and while the quality did improve over the course of it, it never got to the point that it would actually have been worth my time. Finding out that my arch-nemesis Svetlana Chmakova was responsible for the character designs was the nail in the coffin. (Show almost made up for its many, many shortcomings with astronomical trolling value, though).

In general though, I just like to keep an open mind. I mean, I’m the guy who likes Energon, what could I possibly be too good for? Leads to me having a lot of things that I’m intending to ‘get into’ at some point in the unspecified future. Anyone else have a long mental list like that? I think Index/Railgun and Pretty Cure are currently near the top of mine, with Doctor Who in reserve down towards the bottom.

[andersonh1]

So what does it mean that the book that isn't out yet is getting more discussion than the one that is?

[BWprowl]

So what does it mean that the book that isn't out yet is getting more discussion than the one that is?

That the book that's out was just a plotless introdump with nothing of interest to discuss?


Oooooooohhhhh!!!!!!

I kid, I kid. Like what you want to, friends.

[Onslaught Six]

This is TFViews. If we didn't derail this thread this fast we'd be somewhere else.

Anyway, like I said--I read it. I thought it was good. I can see where you guys are maybe coming from and I 'definitely' agree with the idea that way too many of these dudes got set up and they might not have any payoff later--which, actually, has been IDW's problem for a LONG time. Remember how long it took for Spotlight: Kup to pay off? Until AHM. I definitely am interested in the "stranded on some planet" story so far though, and whoever sent the mysterious message back in time, especially some of the stuff in it. Don't pick up Skids? Why?! What happens with Skids?! ARE THEY GOING TO ACTUALLY USE SKIDS?!

I just hope they don't spend the rest of this first arc trapped on this desert planet. This is a book where, I dunno, I'm expecting 'things to happen.'

[Dominic]

Define "things happen". Plenty can be happening if they are standed on a single planet.

Anyway, like I said--I read it. I thought it was good. I can see where you guys are maybe coming from and I 'definitely' agree with the idea that way too many of these dudes got set up and they might not have any payoff later--which, actually, has been IDW's problem for a LONG time. Remember how long it took for Spotlight: Kup to pay off?

That is less a problem with IDW and more a problem with some of the fans being whiny and impatient children. "Spotlight: Kup" paid off inside of the 20 or so pages that it had. The point was not to have a big reveal. The point was to show how obsessed Springer had become.


Dom
-so, "Robots in Disguise" next week?

[BWprowl]

That is less a problem with IDW and more a problem with some of the fans being whiny and impatient children. "Spotlight: Kup" paid off inside of the 20 or so pages that it had. The point was not to have a big reveal. The point was to show how obsessed Springer had become.

I was gonna say. When I first read through Spotlight Kup, not once did I think that I had been left hanging or that it was setting up for some payoff later down the line. It told a great, complete story in 22 pages about Kup losing his mind, and the (possibly unjustified) lengths Springer went to in order to save him. At the end, Kup’s left brain-dead as a result of the events, and I was fine with it there (we’ve had plenty of other characters offed inside of single Spotlight issues before, no biggie). I don’t know that Roche even knew at that point what would be done with Kup in AHM.

Wait, did people actually complain about the way Spotlight Kup ended, like they were actually expecting some ‘Part 2’ to the story soon? Do these people also complain about how ‘K-PAX’ doesn’t tell us if Kevin Spacey actually went back to his planet at the end, or that we don’t see whether the cops catch Batman at the end of ‘The Dark Knight’ or not? Do they actually need a big black ‘The End’ box for them to feel comfortable with a story? God damn, Spotlight Kup kicked ass because it was an independent, complete, single-issue story that knew what it wanted to do, didn’t depend on other issues, or even require you to be familiar with the rest of IDW’s continuity. Why do people get such a hard-on for wide-reaching continuity and universe-building at the expense of decent storytelling? (See: the constant, irrefutable buttrage over AHM not adhering to the crap Furman had come up with, the hate on Spotlight Mirage, and pretty much every single Marvel/DC Comics discussion in the history of ever.)

Dom
-so, "Robots in Disguise" next week?

I dunno, I’d been thinking it came out this week, but I was wrong, apparently. Though according to TFwiki, some digital thing called ‘Autocracy’ drops from IDW today, don’t know what that’s about.

Spoiler

You know what would be awesome? Dates on comic book solicits. Like, when I see those big ads for MTMTE and RID in the backs of whatever other TF book I’m reading, they have an actual date for when those issues come out. Not like a ‘Coming in January!’ or ‘Coming in Spring!’ type BS, an actual fucking date. And at the end of every issue of something, you print the date when the NEXT issue is coming out. Boom, I just fixed the ‘knowing when things come out’ problem that O6 and I pointed out as a comic book industry issue a couple months ago.

[Dominic]

Do they actually need a big black ‘The End’ box for them to feel comfortable with a story?

Some people do, and not just transfans.

some digital thing called ‘Autocracy’ drops from IDW today,

"Autocracy" is a digital exclusive that I am hoping will be reprinted in a compilation. I am going to avoid online comics, (which read like shit), for as long as possible. Unless it is something *really* good, I am not going to go looking for it.


Dom

buttrage

-finds that word disturbing after this week's round of food poisoning.

[Shockwave]

Do these people also complain about how ‘K-PAX’ doesn’t tell us if Kevin Spacey actually went back to his planet at the end,

K-Pax is a terrible example. That movie sucked specifically because the movie up until then was everyone speculating if he was really an alien or jus crazy. The fact that the writers pussed out and didn't show the ending and pulled that "leave it to the audience" crap is what sucks. Sorry, but if I'm going to watch a sci-fi movie, I want to see aliens and technology and what have you. This is also why Contact sucked. She finally beams up or whatever and the alien is her fuckin' dad!? What the Hell? And then she maybe did or did not actually go anywhere? Fuck me, make up your mind and god damned stick to it. Seriously, K-Pax and Contact are the Blair Witch of sci-fi. Fuck 'em both. Hard. And fuck Blair Witch too.

Shockwave
-Fuck.

[BWprowl]

K-Pax is a terrible example. That movie sucked specifically because the movie up until then was everyone speculating if he was really an alien or jus crazy. The fact that the writers pussed out and didn't show the ending and pulled that "leave it to the audience" crap is what sucks. Sorry, but if I'm going to watch a sci-fi movie, I want to see aliens and technology and what have you. This is also why Contact sucked. She finally beams up or whatever and the alien is her fuckin' dad!? What the Hell? And then she maybe did or did not actually go anywhere? Fuck me, make up your mind and god damned stick to it. Seriously, K-Pax and Contact are the Blair Witch of sci-fi. Fuck 'em both. Hard. And fuck Blair Witch too.

Shockwave
-Fuck.

K-PAX was sci-fi? I thought it was a psychological drama about how people deal with trauma in their lives, and how the unknown is preferable to the truth in many scenarios. The ending was ambiguous because it was ambiguous for the characters involved, and the way they reacted would have less impact if they and us had a clear idea of what happened. I never really considered it 'sci-fi'.

[Onslaught Six]

I was gonna say. When I first read through Spotlight Kup, not once did I think that I had been left hanging or that it was setting up for some payoff later down the line. It told a great, complete story in 22 pages about Kup losing his mind, and the (possibly unjustified) lengths Springer went to in order to save him. At the end, Kup’s left brain-dead as a result of the events, and I was fine with it there (we’ve had plenty of other characters offed inside of single Spotlight issues before, no biggie). I don’t know that Roche even knew at that point what would be done with Kup in AHM.

Wait, did people actually complain about the way Spotlight Kup ended, like they were actually expecting some ‘Part 2’ to the story soon?

That wasn't what I was implying. After Spotlight: Kup, he's actually mentioned as still being comatose in various other issues. If it only came up once, or never again, then that'd be fine, but they kept bringing it up, making you wonder, "Okay, obviously he's going to come back--when?"

Spoiler

You know what would be awesome? Dates on comic book solicits. Like, when I see those big ads for MTMTE and RID in the backs of whatever other TF book I’m reading, they have an actual date for when those issues come out. Not like a ‘Coming in January!’ or ‘Coming in Spring!’ type BS, an actual fucking date. And at the end of every issue of something, you print the date when the NEXT issue is coming out. Boom, I just fixed the ‘knowing when things come out’ problem that O6 and I pointed out as a comic book industry issue a couple months ago.

Yes! The only issue I can forsee with that is if an issue is late, but AFAIK IDW has never had a late issue.

They do this shit with TMNT too. There's a four-issue microseries with each Turtle getting an issue (just like the old comics, hurr) and the end of it just says "COMING NEXT: DONATELLO" or whatever. No acknowledgement of...when that's coming. At all. I didn't even know Michelangelo's was coming out until my comic shop dude emailed me to let me know.