Transformers - ongoing series

[Shockwave]

Actually I think this is a perfect example of how a concept driven story doesn't work as well as a character driven one. Furman's later works are mostly concept. Not good ones necessarily, but... I mean look at all the Unicron rehashes. Those were basically the concept of "let's analyze TF religion". The ation books were the concept of a more subdued invasion approach and seeing what happens when that approach breaks down. Both of these were the underlying concept for those various stories and it really just didn't work. That's why I think you get better concepts out of character driven stories. Costa's writing is certainly more character driven and look at the awesome concepts that have come out of it.

[Onslaught Six]

It works if you have a concept, but you know how that goes.

[Dominic]

I have no source on this, but I would be willing to bet that Costa started from the high concept, (one that is more advanced than "this is a TF god"), and then applied the characters to it.

And, like you said, the concepts need to be good.

Those were basically the concept of "let's analyze TF religion".

Not really. What analysis was there? It was literally, "Cybertronians believe in gods based on the evidence of them regularly appearing."


Dom

[Shockwave]

I may have overestimated the concept. What I should have said was that it amounted to "look! TFs have religion too!"

[Gomess]

I think when your gods physically appear and communicate with you as much as the TF ones do, it ceases to be religion and becomes governance.

[Dominic]

And badly written faux-epics.


Dom
-well, it is true.

[Gomess]

Yes, I like my faux-epics well written.

[Shockwave]

Ok, so I've started reading the IDWverse beginning to end and will post reviews in this thread.

Infiltration #0-3: It's all set up. And a lot of this is partially world building (we see the Machination for the first time) but most of this is all about "the big reveal". That's really the irritating thing about the pacing of this book is that everything right down to character introductions is all about the reveal. I mean there's actually one panel where Starscream gives an order but all we see is his mouth. Like we're supposed to guess who it is! We know it's Starscream so just show Starscream! Then later when we only see Ironhide's forearm or so and so's foot or... Yeah, the whole first story arc is like that. I can tolerate such antics for about 1 issue and after that I'm like where is the chase and how can I cut to it? The other thing that annoyed is something that's pretty generically annoying across all TF series and that's too much human stuff. Verity reminds me of Miko from Prime (I knew I'd seen that archetype somewhere!) and I just keep wishing a Decepticon would step on her. Hunter... well we know what happens to him later which makes him more tolerable and Jimmy is so throwaway that he's only there for a few issues and then we never see him again. The concept is good enough, seeing a more stubtle approach to the Decepticon invasion and seeing what happens when rogue elements disrupt that process but the pacing... the ation books really could have been condensed into one 6 issue arc.

[Gomess]

Is it always *three* humans since Armada...? >_> Seems suddenly very common.

[BWprowl]

Is it always *three* humans since Armada...? >_> Seems suddenly very common.

Makes sense from a marketing standpoint. Three kids won't overcrowd too much, but you can hit a lot of variety. You've got your normal, "cool" boy, your more reserved "smart" boy, and your girl, with a few more stock personality traits mixed-n-matched between them. Make each one a different ethnicity, and *boom*- instant wide appeal.

Not that many have had three kids though. Armada started with three and moved up to five partway through, and then Cybertron and Infiltration both had three, plus Prime now. But Energon and the movies both had rather wide human casts, while Animated just had the one kid who wasn't even actually a human, plus a smattering of adults, including supervillains. The current Ongoing comic makes good, broad use of humans too, with a whole squad palling around with the Autobots (though we'll see how long that lasts after the most recent events).