TF Views

Clogging Furman's toilet.


Dom
-will post "Ironhide" thoughts later....

"Ironhide" issues #1 thru 4:
Over the end of last spring and this summer, events conspired to make me fall way behind in my comic reading. All told, I was about 3 months behind as recently as a few weeks ago. Hence, I am reviewing the entirety of the "Ironhide" series in one shot because I more or less read it all at once. The basic story is that Ironhide wakes up on modern Cybertron with holes in his memory after his death in the ongoing series. The series reveals that through a mixture of magic and faux-science that may as well be magic, Ironhide is raised from the dead as he was many years before even arriving on Earth.

There is some mystical jibberish that allows for this to be the same character IDW has been using since '05 or so, but sans any of the baggage picked up since then (especially during the controversial "All Hail Megatron" series). Sunstreaker is brought back in a more conventional manner, which means the ongoing is one "reunion" story away from being back to a sort of "issue 1" setting. (Who smells a "jumping on point" coming up?) The plot itself is fairly tight, tying in with the Metroplex issue of "Spotlight" and introducing IDW's iteration of Alpha Trion.

The story itself establishes certain things about the metaphysics of the IDW "Transformers" setting. Most fo the questions this raises could be easily dismissed by virtue of the fact that few characters would consider the principle, let alone the tactical options it would open up. As little as I like mysticism, Costa does a good job of present it here as both unique, (meaning it is unlikely to become a recurring element), and using it as an arguably more sophisticated iteration of concepts from the original Marvel run of the comic.


Grade: B Worth reading, but with a few rough spots.

One thing I really liked was the 'reason' it had be Ironhide that Alpha Trion brought back: Basically, Ironhide was the only one Alpha Trion could be sure was going to get himself killed. It was a funny way of explaining what made Ironhide so 'special'.

I'm kinda surprised you liked this one so much, Dom, considering how much it has in common with Kevin Smith's run on 'Green Arrow', and I know how much you hated that.

Dominic wrote:The series reveals that through a mixture of magic and faux-science that may as well be magic, Ironhide is raised from the dead as he was many years before even arriving on Earth.

There is some mystical jibberish that allows for this to be the same character IDW has been using since '05 or so, but sans any of the baggage picked up since then (especially during the controversial "All Hail Megatron" series).

Spark aside, it's no more mystical than ghosting your hard drive and then putting that image on a new computer a few years down the road. Old data and operating system, new machine.

The explicit mention of a spark, (specifically Ironhide's original spark), is what pushes it too far into pixie-land for my liking. I would have liked it better if Trion had just built a new Ironhide body and used the old memories. Of course, that would not have been perfect either. Even assuming the artificial generation of a apark, (and why not), there would still be the problem of contrivancy. (Trion just happening to build a duplicate of the guy who got his arse capped about a year ago....)

I'm kinda surprised you liked this one so much, Dom, considering how much it has in common with Kevin Smith's run on 'Green Arrow', and I know how much you hated that.

Part of it is that this one does not feel at all near as self-indulgent as we *know* Smith's "Green Arrow" was. (He simply had to write Oliver Queen....in continuity....and not in a flash-back story. Smith *had* to you see, because his story was so brilliant and impoertant.) Provided that this method of raising the dead remains rare and is not used again....*ever*, I can live with this one. The fact that Costa is leaving Sunstreaker's AHM baggage in place, despite brining him back, also makes this easier to bear. (Mind you, I am still really annoyed that Sunstreaker is back.)


Dom
-well, it beats magical thinking in real life.

I wonder if this series was planned from the start? Going by certain things Costa has said since day one, I tend to think so. That being said, what do we gain from having an essentially younger version of Ironhide who hasn't experienced the last few million years of warfare? What do we gain that we didn't have with the older version? This isn't a complaint, I'm just wondering what the long-term effect on the storylines will be and how they'll be different and/or better with a new version of Ironhide.

Of course, it could be that Costa just had this basic housecleaning story in mind and needed a character to headline it, and Ironhide was the best fit. The series certainly cleans up some loose ends from before. Jetfire believed that Cybertron was slowly healing itself over hundreds of years, and then a year or two later it was mostly habitable. In retrospect it turns out to have been Alpha Trion all along, tying Furman's work with McCarthy's. And the Swarm has been cut down considerably now. So is this why Metroplex couldn't help the other Autobots? Is his work guarding Alpha Trion and helping him so important that he can't take time away from that to fight in the war?

I dunno how much this was planned for 'Metroplex's' end of it, but Ironhide it feels pretty likely. As for what we gain...Ironhide's perspective may have changed a lot. The guy we saw in AHM was broken down from years of fighting. He was desperate and more than a little crazy sometimes. (Then again, that's always Ironhide's MO.) Now, we kinda already know Ironhide was like this ages ago but that's in that cruddy Furman coda story that already fucks with the continuity so I'm just hoping everyone ignores that.

What cruddy Furman story in Coda? Furman wrote the cruddy Galvatron story. I do not recall Ironhide being in that.

That being said, what do we gain from having an essentially younger version of Ironhide who hasn't experienced the last few million years of warfare? What do we gain that we didn't have with the older version? This isn't a complaint, I'm just wondering what the long-term effect on the storylines will be and how they'll be different and/or better with a new version of Ironhide.

This story kind of sanitizes Ironhide post AHM. Sunstreaker was a dingus, yes, But, as has been pointed out before, he was really not acting out of character. Ironhide beat the hell out of another Autobot. This story lets people have their precious ironhide back in contact, (and he is the same guy owing to the spark transfer), but no awkward baggage.

And, as O6 pointed out, this story can nicely fit into the whole change theme of Costa's run. It make sense that this would be planned from the beginning. Look how *little* Ironhide has apparently changed in the millions of years between the back-up being made and his death on Earth. Remember, Costa is arguably taking the idea of TFs being canonically stupid and making it into "Transformers" are canonically sub-moronic.

The Metroplex story was likely setting up for this.


Dom
-comics are not pulled out of the writer's arse every few weeks.

Dominic wrote:What cruddy Furman story in Coda? Furman wrote the cruddy Galvatron story. I do not recall Ironhide being in that.

No, Furman wrote the cruddy Prime/Ironhide story. Schmidt wrote the cruddy Galvatron story. (I know it's hard to believe, but yeah.)

The Metroplex story was likely setting up for this.

Mmmmaybe. But Costa wasn't on the book at the time, so...I dunno?

Ah, but Andy Schmidt was the editor at the time, meaning that there was some continuity between creative teams.

The Ironhide/Prime story was not really cruddy so much as it just was....there.

Dom
-really, that was Furman?