TF Views

It's always fun to revisit old fiction after a number of years, right? Well, maybe. I decided to dive back into Dreamwave's Transformers comics and re-read them... and I'm sure it's going to be an interesting ride given how different my perspective is now than it was when they were first published.

Preview Issue
The first Transformer comic in years, and there’s one panel of Soundwave frozen in the ice. What the?

Dreamwave’s preview comic is split into two halves. The first half sets up the Generation 1 mini-series that follows, while the other half sets up the ongoing Armada series. The G1 portion of the book is a conversation between two humans going for a hike in the Arctic, Lazarus and Mr. Ratzenburg. We spend half the pages listening to Ratzenburg whine about how cold he is before Lazarus gets sick of it and shuts him up, then proceeds to talk in vague terms about the Transformers and second chances.

Dull, dull, dull. What should have taken a panel or two, or at most a page is dragged out for page after page of two dull characters whining and monologuing, while what we want to see, the Transformers, aren’t seen until the last page, and even then it’s just Soundwave frozen in the ice. It’s hardly a shock reveal either, since the cover of the book has TRANSFORMERS on it and a huge picture of Optimus Prime running at the reader. The whole thing is a wasted exercise in suspense. Stick with the Armada backup, which at least lets us see Optimus and Megatron fight on Cybertron. There are actually Transformers in that particular Transformers comic, which is always a plus.
And Pat Lee’s art… needs work. Is inconsistent. Sometimes the panels look good, sometimes they don’t. I’m not a fan of his human faces, and his Transformers vary in quality, though we’ll get to that later.

Prime Directive #1
Oooh, violent! Megatron crushes a soldier in his hand and stomps another one. He kills a camp full of mercenaries. And I’m immediately looking for some instances of dull surprise to enjoy. This is Pat Lee artwork after all.

Dreamwave’s first mini-series kicks off some time after the preview, with Lazarus having already begun to rent out the mind-controlled Transformers to the highest bidder. The US military captures footage of Megatron’s attack on the South American mercenary camp, and send one General Hallo to basically arrest Spike and bring him in to help deal with the situation. I’m never a fan of the cliched “crazy general” type of character who starts wars on his own and runs military operations independent of the chain of command and who generally acts like a dictator. So I’m already having problems accepting the story on its own terms, and when the crazy janitor (who KNOWS things, man!!!) talks to Spike, trying to warn him, the whole situation is just impossible to take seriously. It’s a story written through the filter of too many bad movies and not enough real-world experience. There’s an error that crops up in a later issue about a “defense minister” (which the US doesn’t have) which makes me wonder just how much research the author actually did, and I suspect not much at all.

There are some good points to the issue. The basic plot isn’t all that bad, though the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Megatron’s absolute inability to bow down to Lazarus, even while under mind control (and the fight against the command seems to be what frees him) says a lot about Megatron’s indomitable nature. Despite Pat Lee’s artistic limitations, I have to admit I do enjoy certain aspects of his artwork. His Transformers are big and bold, particularly once they’ve been colored. Not that we see many this issue apart from Hound, Megatron and Optimus Prime. And at the time this issue first came out, I was just enjoying new Transformers comics for the first time since Generation 2. I know there were convention comics in there somewhere, but I’d never read them. And still haven’t.

Hey, at least Spike’s not too annoying here. And neither is Daniel. The plot seems to reside somewhere after the original animated season 2, and I’ve always thought that Dreamwave initially set their series in that continuity before branching off on their own. The summary page at the end of the issue which details the Ark II disaster gives us the backstory to how all the Transformers came to be frozen in the Arctic in the first place, so it’s significant.

Overall: Take the original Transformers cartoon, add some “mature” elements of blood and death (and taking a leak while your buddy is crushed), and you’ve got “Prime Directive”, an awkward Transformers comic which can’t decide if it wants to reside at the storytelling level of the old show that it so obviously draws inspiration from, or add some elements which the grown-up children of the 80s really want in their comics, right? Still, it kicked off the modern run of Transformers comics, and deserves some recognition for that if nothing else.

I actually thought Dreamwave did a better job compared to IDW with the TF comics stories,personalities,origins & art designs.

The art designs? The puffy marshmallow look with all the screwed up angles and perspectives and "dull surprise"?

Dreamwave gets an unfair rap.

There, I said it. I will concede that some of the praise the received derived from the fact that Dreamwave was producing the first new content TF comics for general release in nearly a decade. The fandom was hungry.

But, Dreamwave's staff generally brought their a-game. And, they fucked up (or changed their minds on something), they generally owned it. Dreamwave came out and said that they changed their mind about Wheeljack dying (and hand-waved it on the page with a throw-away line about Wheeljack having a close-call) and a few other characters being on Earth in volume 1.

Dreamwave was always clear about their series not following directly from either the old Marvel comics or the cartoon. Dreamwave, by most accounts, had a plan for the property at least through 2005. And, aside from a few tweaks and some refining, their work product supports this.

Were their comics perfect? No. Lee was another Liefeld. There was no excuse for referring to the US Secretary of Defense as a uniformed "Defense Minister", especially considering that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was more well-known than many world leaders in mid-'02. (The sloppiness of that error was put in to Stark relief when DDP accurately depicted House Speaker Hastert, despite him arguably being one of the most reclusive Speakers in US history.)

But, Dreamwave brought more to the table than they get credit for.

Dull, dull, dull. What should have taken a panel or two, or at most a page is dragged out for page after page of two dull characters whining and monologuing, while what we want to see, the Transformers, aren’t seen until the last page, and even then it’s just Soundwave frozen in the ice. It’s hardly a shock reveal either, since the cover of the book has TRANSFORMERS on it and a huge picture of Optimus Prime running at the reader. The whole thing is a wasted exercise in suspense. Stick with the Armada backup, which at least lets us see Optimus and Megatron fight on Cybertron. There are actually Transformers in that particular Transformers comic, which is always a plus.

It was a zero issue. It was meant to re-introduce "Transformers" to the market. Not everybody stayed with the franchise after 1986, let alone after '91. Dreamwave was trying to reach more than the core-fairthful. (Remember, they were a darling of the comics industry for most of 2002 and 2003. They did not get there by catering to Transfans.) And, conversation at the beginning was actually....good. It sounded like something from a movie, not form a comic book....because nobody wants to read a comic that sounds like a comic. Lazarus going on about the TFs was establishing a sense of wonder and nostalgia, (again, this was for *new* readers). And, if sales figures were anything to go buy, it worked. (This ties in to Costa's comments when he was shooting on the fandom. They do not want comics, they apparently just want comics with Transformers.)


A big part of selling a zero issue is to make people want to read the damned series. The last page (showcaseing Soundwave, one of the most iconic '84 characters) did this. What would somebody expect in the space of less than 10 pages? What kind of pacing would it take to re-introduce G1 "Transformers" to a market that had largely forgotten them and get big robots on the page in a way that did not seem like....a bad 80s comic (that nobody aside from Transfans would buy)? And, (this is a sticking point), most professionally made comics are not written to be single-issue stories.


A decade later, Dreamwave's sourcebook (even with Lee's contributions) is arguably still the best "Transformers" sourcebook ever produced. (I would argue that Hidalgo's "Transformers: Vault" is better. But, that was more about the property as a whole rather than being a sourcebook for the comics.)



Dom
-but, "Pat Lee....hurhurhur..."

Prime Directive #2

The story feels like it's starting to move more quickly, and I have to say that I found this issue much more enjoyable than the first. One of the things I do still enjoy about Dreamwave's comics is that they used the 1984 cast as a group, and it's good to go back and see them all treated that way, even if half of them are mind-controlled at this point. IDW has done a nice job of breaking up all the old combiner groups and characters that were grouped together in the old cartoon and going in its own direciton, but Dreamwave keeps them as a unit, the same one that crashed on Earth millions of years ago. It's good to see Optimus Prime with Wheeljack, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Jazz, Huffer, Mirage and Trailbreaker. I'm can't really hear Prime calling them "boys" though. I never have thought that bit of dialogue rang true.

Spike's possession of a core piece of the Matrix is both a plot device to allow Optimus to be revived, and something that rings true. I can easily see Optimus Prime giving it to Spike and promising to bring his father back alive as a sentimental gesture.

And it's admittedly very satifsying to see Megatron turn the tables on Lazarus. Yeah, they're both equally bad, but the smackdown is still fun. And the silent attack on the oil refinery (what? are there refineries in the Arctic) is well done.

Overall: a vast improvement on the earlier issues, with better action than we saw previously.

Dominic wrote:But, Dreamwave's staff generally brought their a-game. And, they fucked up (or changed their minds on something), they generally owned it. Dreamwave came out and said that they changed their mind about Wheeljack dying (and hand-waved it on the page with a throw-away line about Wheeljack having a close-call) and a few other characters being on Earth in volume 1.

But, Dreamwave brought more to the table than they get credit for.

I agree. The first mini-series had some issues, and Armada started a little slow, but once the writers got into it, the quality of the various series Dreamwave produced was very good. I'm looking forward to re-visiting the War Within and the ongoing.

A decade later, Dreamwave's sourcebook (even with Lee's contributions) is arguably still the best "Transformers" sourcebook ever produced.

Again, I have to agree. The Armada sourcebook goes a little overboard in deciding that every other Mini con was female, but was otherwise pretty strong too.

Internet TF fans greatly over-Exaggerate on the puffy-marshmallow robots art designs in the DW TF Comics issues.

I'd take the DW TF COMICS robots designs over the weirdly drawn,mis-proportioned,mangled messes That IDW has been doing for the robots from 2011 thru 2013,that seems like it drew inspiration from the movie-verse CGI designs coupled with new age Japanese robots designs not called TF.

What I really hate about IDW TF art design from 2011 thru 2013,Is that the new age robots designs don't even look like it's possible for the robots to transform into the alt modes their being drawn with.

AT the very least Don Figuerroa's DW TF art designs looked decent & looked like it was possible for the robots to transform into the alt modes that were drawn in the comics issues.

Fair enough.

Tigermegatron wrote:I'd take the DW TF COMICS robots designs over the weirdly drawn,mis-proportioned,mangled messes That IDW has been doing

Dreamwave had their share of weirdly drawn, mis-proportioned, mangled messes as well.

Prime Directive #3

Despite the fact that yeah, Pat Lee has some serious issues with his artwork, I’ve always thought that his renderings of Optimus Prime in the first few pages of this issue were really strong. However, I’m not quite sure about the attempt at depicting Prime’s character here. He’s supposed to be the old-fashioned noble, pure, justice-loving Optimus Prime we all remember, but he comes across as more than a little naïve. Can he really have spent so many years fighting Megatron and not understand individuals like Hallo, who isn’t all that different? I do love the loyalty of all the Autobots who are with him, and how quickly they jump at the call. For every moment of uneven characterization, there’s one that just puts a smile on my face.

Also rather fun to read is Megatron’s mockery of Lazarus and of humanity in general. As immoral and murderous a villain as Megatron is, there’s something just not right about seeing him controlled by someone like Lazarus. And so it’s tremendously satisfying when he breaks free and captures the guy and goes about freeing all his troops.

However, I have to say that if feels a little strange to end the “controlled Transformers for rent” plotline so quickly and abruptly. The preview was all about it, and a lot of page time was given to that storyline in issues one and two, and halfway through issue three, it’s over. Done. Lazarus, who remains a total cypher, is dead and gone and the new peril is this metallic “virus” that’s slowly turning Earth into Cybertron. How did Soundwave create this thing? We don’t know. Where did he get the materials? We don’t know. But the main plot has shifted gears in a way that feels very strange since we’re only halfway through the six issues of this mini-series. Not that I mind, since Optimus versus Megatron is a lot more interesting than six issues of mind-controlled Transformers killing humans.

And Starscream’s line has to be the worst one in the entire series. “Whatever Megatron is planning, you know it’s evil. And evil is always fun.” Twirl that moustache while you’re at it, Screamer. And Grimlock, is it really all that hard to distinguish between the type of humans who would use use Transformers to murder other humans, and the decent types who would never even dream of doing such a thing? Megatron keeps ranting about the same thing, though in his case he’s motivated by a healthy mix of disdain for humans in general and a desire to attack Optimus Prime’s faith in humanity.

And of course, crazy general Hallo drops a nuke on the Transformers. He doesn’t need presidential authority to do that, oh no, he just flies a helicopter up to where the Transformers are fighting and nukes ‘em all. Have I mentioned how much I hate the crazy general cliché? This won’t be the last time I say that.

Overall: A decent issue, with an odd shift in the main plot and uneven characterization.