AHM isn't all that bad, is it?

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Cliffjumper
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AHM isn't all that bad, is it?

Post by Cliffjumper »

I mean, with a bit of distance and taking it for what it is. It's not clever and it's not groundbreaking, but it is kinda fun. I'm re-reading IDW, and it held the interest more than most of Furman's vague, self-important shit. The only big wobble is Omega Supreme - devoid of the promotional barrage Drift isn't actually that bad (in fact he's barely in it). The thing rips off G1 for all it's worth, without being quite so mindlessly chirpy.

It's only really done up the bum by IDW's ludicrous decision to keep it in continuity with the whole Furman car-crash (seriously, how terrible is "Infiltration" when you re-read it in the knowledge that none of it is actually going to any of the interesting places it occasionally hints at?) instead of just saying "They're big ****ing robots, we're dropping all this pretentious wank in favour of making the concept fun and so it appeals to more people than a Preston North End match".
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Halfshell
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Post by Halfshell »

I'll get the straightjacket.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Aww, c'mon. It's a comic about the Decepticons invading Earth and the Autobots trying to stop them. Sure, there's no fancy-dan concepts like Siege Mode or Infiltration Protocols, but at least they actually bother instead of wandering off into space. And are the humans really that much more irritating than Avril, Mini-Mulder and Zoidberg?

The Dead Furmanverse is like Full Metal Jacket - someone who used to know what they were doing confusing epic with overly long. It's full of praiseworthy moments and themes and stuff, but is as boring as **** (and, coincidentally, wastes half the time driving depth into characters who have nothing to do later on). AHM is Independance Day - big, stupid, cheesy, full of explosions, hardware, characters with no depth. It's a miserable Sunday afternoon and you want a fun way to kill two hours - which is it to be?
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Halfshell
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Post by Halfshell »

Stop making comparisons. AHM is shoddy. You know as well as I do that "it's preferable to X" doesn't change its own level of quality.

And I don't like Independence Day either.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Halfshell wrote:Stop making comparisons. AHM is shoddy. You know as well as I do that "it's preferable to X" doesn't change its own level of quality.
I'm going native. If I think like a Transformers fan, I can know the enemy.
And I don't like Independence Day either.
Con Air? It's an action movie. It's giant robots knocking the crap out of each other. Transformers could have done with a straightforward 'base' story like this at the start of IDW's run. Compact it to 6/8 issues, strip out Omega Supreme and some of the sillier moments, and the past continuity references (Sunstreaker's motivation could have been handled another way - personally I like the idea of someone just looking for a way to stop the war Chamberlain-style [and Chamberlain-style being completely out of his depth in doing so]; I don't agree with it, but it was actually not a bad story idea), and you're left with a workable, fun slice of Ultimates-with-Transformers.

It could've been the clean slate IDW needed, but as ever their complete inability to keep their house in order and think things through before they did it meant it ended up half-hearted.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I was perfectly prepared to treat it on its own merits as a dumb action comic (if nothing else because McCarthy and Guido didn't deserve to be judged beforehand for decisions made by other people). But even on that it's terrible on just about every level.

The art is frequently terrible and misjudged even on the issues with just one artist, there's frequent long stretches where nothing really happens (the death knell for an action comic), characters get introduced as main leads and go onto be reduced to bit part players, you can see the plot get chucked out and replaced with something else after the complaints came in (I refuse to believe the original plan was to start out with a comic unrelated on previous stories only to suddenly depend on prior knowledge of Huntstreaker halfway through), the cigar, the Autobots spend issue after issue doing nothing except sitting around on Cybertron (except when the briefly drive about in order to go somewhere else and do nothing), the Swarm, three issues having the same "The evil Europeans are going to nuke New York!" cliffhanger ect ect ect. The most damning thing remains that the hastily chucked together heavily edited three-issues-in-one conclusion to the British comic's reprints made exactly the same amount of sense.

The tone's also all wrong for a Independence Day (which is of course brilliant) style movie, you're supposed to be going "That's cool" at the landmark destruction porn, not being shocked at the death's of thousands of innocent people.

The best I can say about it is that the first two or three issues do each have one genuinely great moment (Scrapper's "We come in peace" joke, Frenzy and Megatron's first lengthy chat with Starscream).

I assume no one's even going to pretend anything not written by Nick Roche in the last four issues was any good?

EDIT: I'm guessing cliffy has decided to become a reverse Shockwav, initially hating the issues before declaring them brilliant six months later whilst hating the current issues?
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Jaynz
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Post by Jaynz »

Vogons do not feel that AHM would be a worthy addition to their poetry.
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Warcry
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Post by Warcry »

AHM is bad, but what really gets me about it is that it could have been really, really good. The core idea is very good, but McCarthy crammed in so many unnecessary ideas and so much meandering shit that never goes anywhere that the whole thing just falls apart. Actually, I think the problems with AHM are the exact same problems that Furman's run suffered from, only more so. And like Furman's run, it would have been a lot better if the editors had forced McCarthy to avoid detours and just tell his story.

There are just too many characters in it. Why are Tracks, Trailbreaker, Cliffjumper et al with the Earth team when they don't accomplish anything? What purpose do Kup and the Wreckers have, other than giving Jazz a couple scenes to wave his cock around? Aside from Mirage, no one who mattered would have been missing if the Autobot cast had been restricted to Prowl and Hound's units (and Mirage's spotlight put him on Earth, so there would be precedent for him to be called back).

The Decepticons actually do a lot better, since most of the newly-introduced 'Cons are there for a reason. The Insecticons are a big part of the plot, Deluge made the Insecticons, and Dropshot provided the best moment in the entire series. The Constructicons are only there to provide big flashy gestalt splash pages, but you can't win 'em all.

McCarthy also introduced a lot of ideas that he had no idea what to do with. The Matrix turned out to be a red herring with no bearing on the plot. The whole 'galaxy-wide defeat' angle wasn't shown at all and introduced one of the book's biggest plot holes. If it had just been Prime's unit that was betrayed it would be easy to believe that Sunstreaker was responsible for that without tacking on some arbitrary nonsense about Bombshell using Hunter to do...something, somehow to the Autobots' network. Likewise, the Swarm are cool but are obviously only there so the Autobots can kill time until the rest of the plot is ready for them on Earth.

If all this superfluous crap had been stripped out, there would have been time for us to get into Sunstreaker's head some more, time to get to know Thundercracker before his random betrayal of the Decepticons, and time to actually see the Decepticons' dissatisfaction play out a bit more thoroughly.
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Post by Blackjack »

I actually enjoyed the first few issues of AHM, for what it's worth. It's not as dreary and mock-serious like the ongoing.

The big problem, like Furman, is that McCarthy tries to include so many characters. Tracks, Cliffjumper, Drift, Trailbreaker, the neo-Wreckers are all just dead weight, similar to how Skram, Road Rocket and Warpath were in the Revelations run.

The basic idea is rather decent. Decepticons have conquered Earth, the Autobots lay defeated, et cetera. It's just the execution that's handled badly. The talky scenes become boring, and after all the characterization given to him in the first six issues Jazz becomes nothing more than a wallpaper flower. And the Autobots talk so much in the middle issues and do nothing. Which is annoying.

Oh, and McCarthy rewrote guys like Perceptor, which is very, very badly handled. But that's actually not so bad since Roche and that other guy who wrote AHM #15 worked on that sadist angle. It's not as jarring as what Costa did with Optimus Prime or Prowl or Hot Rodimus.

I do think that McCarthy actually wanted to go his own direction, but when some of the editors insisted that he adhere to meh-tastic Maximum Dinobots, I think the whole continuity referencing causes the plot to be adjusted rather badly.

Issues ten through twelve falls rather short, what with the 'evil British guys are going to drop a bomb oh my god oh my god' being dragged on and on, while too much attention is given to the humans. (We had all in all half an issue spent on that pilot guy who eventually does nothing but get squashed off-screen by Astrotrain). Starscream suddenly acts all awry in issue twelve, and Thundercracker betraying the Decepticons is very sudden. The art falters halfway due to Guido's illness, which doesn't do anything to help.

With a little editing, AHM could've been performed more nicely, and could gel better with the Dead Furmanverse. For example, letting TC and Sunstreaker have more scenes which would lead into their roles later on. And giving Sunstreaker reasons to betray the Autobots in Maximum Dinobots. And the Swarm, while a nice idea, is executed badly and are only there so the Autobots can do something other than sit around.

With proper communication between Furman and McCarthy, it could've been done much better. Or at least not complete jack shit. As a six-issue mini, with the human scenes, the Swarm scenes and several other distractions culled it could've flown better.

Still don't get why Drift and Dropshot are in the thing at all, though.
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Post by Warcry »

Blackjack wrote:Still don't get why Drift and Dropshot are in the thing at all, though.
Dropshot was awesome. And he was foreshadowed and everything.

Drift? Who the hell knows? Along with the series itself, Drift pisses me off because he has a lot of potential but he went absolutely nowhere. We've seen defectors before, but always for self-serving reasons (Carnivac for revenge, Dinobot because he had nowhere else to turn, etc...). Drift could well be the first Decepticon we've seen who's changed sides because he actually realized that what he was doing was wrong. There's so much ground you could cover with that...but we don't see any of it because McCarthy is more interested in him being BADASS SAMURAI NINJA JAPAN IS AWESOME LOL.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Despie one or two stupid moments I actually thought Drift in AHM itself was handled well enough. He wasn't made the Mary Sue centre of attention and was basically just there to remind us there are more Transformers than the hundred or so toys. It's the way he was promoted ("THE FIRST EVA TOY BASED ON A COMICXXXXXXX! VITAL CHARACTER!!!! NOT A PATHETIC NINJA!!!!!!") and his dreary Spotlight that did my head in more than anything.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
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kupimus aka(clocker)
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Post by kupimus aka(clocker) »

I really tried to like it, I did. I bought the tpb and it was really bad. alot of the time the story just leaves you assuming that something has happened rather than showing you, like primes return, which they didnt explain at all, he just appears as good as new.
There's so much ground you could cover with that...but we don't see any of it because McCarthy is more interested in him being BADASS SAMURAI NINJA JAPAN IS AWESOME LOL.
but this IS realistic Characterization. Have you ever met a species called human? They are not interested in right or wrong, just in being cool and kickass. thats the one thing that gets me about story critics, they say its unrealistic when a character does something at random or is one-dimenisional, but I am sorry to say that through out life that is all you really see in most people.
Let this be thy final lesson monster, no man is e'er defeated till his last breath is drawn! And e'en THEN, 'tis most unwise for the victor to assume the battle is ended, for with god and man, a war is ne'er over till the ultimate wrong is set aright and the final villain is DONE!
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Post by Knightdramon »

I liked AHM. I really did.

There's a couple of things handled wrong, of course. DJ the pilot, for instance, as mentioned before, had no real meaning to the story. Issue 9's art was almost childlike compared to the previous issues. The colouring on later issues was not as fine as the first few.

Aside from that, I think quite a few people [not here, talking generally about the fandom] can't come up with better excuses to bitch like infants.

Thundercracker was handled the way he was from issue 1. Take a look at Starscream's and Skywarp's expressions whilst demolishing the city, and look at Thundercracker. He clearly stopped believing in Megatron as early [chronologically] as when the Insecticons were created. His flashback scenes have him protesting vividly against Megatron.

Sunstreaker was also portrayed very nicely, giving insight to his actions, something which Furman's run ignored or bypassed. The guy hates humans from the get-go, was a unit commander sometime [as evidenced by the Coda issue], and he's demoted\transferred to Earth where he's subject to torture and experimentation, not to mention having a human control him most of the time [like in the last few issues of MD, where Hunter goes solo]. I seriously don't see this as a stretch. He's not supposed to be happy about the team-up he was forced into.

Are people really that hard up on why Tracks etc were on Earth? The earth group probably needed reinforcements. A lot of what used to be their bulk force ended up dead or leaving Earth at the end of Revelations [Hardhead, Nightbeat, Hot Rod for instance].

About all the mystery and foreshadowing people claim the first issues are all about...dudes, most of us have been waiting for SIX years for Lost to explain some of the mysteries of the island, you couldn't wait a year, max?

I'm not even going to attempt to try and understand what the hate for Drift is all about. The dude doesn't have that many lines, doesn't really do much...why all the hate? Furman introduced many "nobodies" during his IDW run, nobody complained.

Kup's cygar? Of all the things you could nitpick about? Animated gave us three seasons of visually influenced by character autobots and decepticons, and you drown on a spoonful of water for the cygar?

The thing that bugs me, story-wise, is that it's implied all other Autobots are dead besides the ones we see, yet by issue 1 of the ongoing we have a huge roster.

:wave:
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Knightdramon wrote: Thundercracker was handled the way he was from issue 1. Take a look at Starscream's and Skywarp's expressions whilst demolishing the city, and look at Thundercracker. He clearly stopped believing in Megatron as early [chronologically] as when the Insecticons were created. His flashback scenes have him protesting vividly against Megatron.
The problem with Thundercracker is the climax of the series is based around the actions of a character who'd barely had half a dozen lines all series (and the facial expression thing during issue one is subjective, certainly no one picked up on it at the time), hell abrely half a dozen lines across all IDW comics. That's just pure bad story structure. Not to mention the shameless rehash of the end of Devastation going on around him.
The guy hates humans from the get-go, was a unit commander sometime [as evidenced by the Coda issue]
I still don't think that's supposed to be "True", it's Sunstreaker's highly biased bullshit memories we're seeing in that story (and that is one unfair criticism of the series, all the "The flashbacks are different from Maximum Dinobots!" complaints were missing the less than subtle pull out from his dying eyes at the end there).
I seriously don't see this as a stretch. He's not supposed to be happy about the team-up he was forced into.
But again, Sunstreaker hasn't done anything but stand in the background of the preceding six issues. For a comic that's supposed to be a fresh new start readers suddenly need to have read previous storylines to make any sense of it. And no effort is made developing his character from the working-well-with-Hunter stuff to the All-Humans-Must-Die attitude until after he's already dead. Just within All Hail Megatron itself him turning out to be the traitor is like one of those Scooby Doo episodes where the guy in the mask is someone who had two lines at the start of the show and wasn't seen again until the rubber came off.
Are people really that hard up on why Tracks etc were on Earth? The earth group probably needed reinforcements. A lot of what used to be their bulk force ended up dead or leaving Earth at the end of Revelations [Hardhead, Nightbeat, Hot Rod for instance].
I think people wouldn't have much of a problem if the bulk of them had done anything other than stand about in the background, in some cases not even getting to say anything.
About all the mystery and foreshadowing people claim the first issues are all about...dudes, most of us have been waiting for SIX years for Lost to explain some of the mysteries of the island, you couldn't wait a year, max?
18 months in total for the whole series, don't forget they wound up having to do four extra issues to try and explain the things the oriignal 12 didn't bother with (including the Sunstreaker thing). And sitting from the perspective of the series being finished it is fair to say most of the mysteries were either crap, craply resolved, blatant padding or all three (take a bow the Swarm).
I'm not even going to attempt to try and understand what the hate for Drift is all about. The dude doesn't have that many lines, doesn't really do much...why all the hate? Furman introduced many "nobodies" during his IDW run, nobody complained.
I complained about the generics in Spotlight: Hot Rod (because it made the end so obvious), but none of them had press releases telling us how awesome they were. If IDW hadn't done that with Drift I don't think most readers would have even noticed him.
Kup's cygar? Of all the things you could nitpick about? Animated gave us three seasons of visually influenced by character autobots and decepticons, and you drown on a spoonful of water for the cygar?
No idea about Animated as I've not seen more than the opening few episodes, but one of the things that repeatedly annoyed me about the AHM lovers (all three of them) is they'd repeatedly defend the title, not by arguing what was good about it but going on about how there's been other crap stuff in Transformers before. Which doesn't actually stop AHM being crap, nor excuses it. The highlight being that bloke who seriously claimed we shouldn't be complaining because just being able to read is a privileged.
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Halfshell
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Post by Halfshell »

Well obviously I'd rather watch Con Air than read Infiltration. But Con Air is basically the ultimate Big Stupid Action Movie... genetically designed to be big, dumb and stupid.

All Hail Megatron is... well, it's Wolverine.

AHM is twice as long as the plot can sustain, goes for the big clichés but fails, throws in characters in lieu of characterisation, and can't seem to make up its mind what the plot is (beyond the basic concept of the Decepticons invading Earth), instead opting for a scattergun array of notions/characters who are picked up as if they're hugely important and then thrown away to focus on something else that was never mentioned before.

It did help give us the basic set-up for Last Stand of the Wreckers, but that could have been seeded anywhere. AHM I'd probably be more tolerant of if it were cut down to six issues.
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Post by Warcry »

kupimus aka(clocker) wrote:but this IS realistic Characterization. Have you ever met a species called human? They are not interested in right or wrong, just in being cool and kickass. thats the one thing that gets me about story critics, they say its unrealistic when a character does something at random or is one-dimenisional, but I am sorry to say that through out life that is all you really see in most people.
And if anyone was complaining that Drift was unrealistic, you would have a point. But since no one other than you has used the word "realistic" in this thread so far, you're trying to rebut an argument that no one has made.

Fiction isn't supposed to be realistic. It's supposed to be entertaining. When your readers hate a character who's meant to be one of your protagonists, it doesn't matter if your character is realistic. That character is still a failure.

People don't complain that Drift is unrealistic. People complain that Drift is a boring stereotype that they don't want to read about.
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Post by Jaynz »

They are not interested in right or wrong, just in being cool and kickass.
I dislike Drift for being a poorly-executed cliche. But if you think realistic portrayals of people have to be 'cool and kickass' because that's all people are ever interested in, then I really I have to ask, "Do you actually know anyone?"

Because in my personal experience, anyone who acts like that are either teenaged boys desperately trying to prove how 'mature' they are or ... actually, no, that's pretty much the limit of it.
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Post by Commander Shockwav »

The pacing of AHM cannot be forgiven.

Sure, we can read it all in one sitting and say "that was okay", because I'm sure that's how I'd feel if I read the trade. There were three issues somewhere in there I thought were actually very good.

But we waited a year for this to unfold. An entire ****ing year for a repeat of DW's Prime Directive.

Inexcusable.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Commander Shockwav wrote:The pacing of AHM cannot be forgiven.

Though you were extremely forgiving of it during the initial 12 issue run.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Firstly, I never said it was actually good - it's just nowhere near as bad as its' reputation. I think it gave a lot of people an out, and ended up carrying the can for all of IDW's ****ups.

See, the pacing and lulls don't mean shit when you're reading a block of scans, you zip right through that stuff in seconds. So that's irrelvant - you've got to move beyond publishing format here, there's no reason to read it like it took a year the second time round.

The Wreckers were pointless? Nah, they added some shorthand muscle, a quick way of saying "the Autobots have reinforcements who can handle themselves". A lot of the best TF comics have background characters who don't really do anything - e.g. where do all the non-leader Transformers go for much of the conclusion of Time Wars? What to the Dinobots really add to Legacy of Unicron (how many of you had to think for a second about where they are in it?) What did Mirage have to do in Target 2006 beyond forgetting his invisibility and that it's not a good idea to drive into your deadly enemy's base in your car mode that has ground effects? 90+% of the cast of G2 are there to pad out battle scenes and/or die. Most of the AHM cast do get something, even if it's just a one-on-one fight (I love Cliffjumper watching the tiny LED). Transformers had always been this way - in any story a few guys hog the limelight, the rest are there to back them up.

Drift... is barely in it. If it was someone's first ever contact with Transformers, Jazz, Mirage, Kup, Omega Supreme, Perceptor ("another clown with a gun..." - neat), several Decepticons and probably others get equal show-off scenes, and by the end of it Thundercracker all but calls him an idiot. He kills a few Swarm guys in a fancypants way, and that really is about it - he's shuffled down the order by the time they get to Earth. IDW's publicity barrage made him seem a lot more obnoxious than he actually was.

Overlong? Undeniably. At six issues it could have been much better - while quick reads, the early issues are more focused; it's from the middle and towards the end we get padding arse-pulls like Omega.

The Sunstreaker thing could have been brilliant, if they hadn't stapled it to Furman's dead horse. Why wouldn't someone, anyone just have had enough of it all? He wouldn't need any more motivation than being fed up with so much pointless war, it was a shame they felt the need to tie it into Hunter at all.

The cigar is fine too. We got an explanation for it in the end, so what's the problem? If Roche had done it first...
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