[IDW] Rage of the Dinobots #1 preview
The TV show isn't, at all, but you wouldn't know it from the assorted tie-in games, books and comics. Sorta like the movie stuff, licensees have tried to Geewunify it as much as they could get away with to attract nostalgia buyers.
[EDIT]The comic looks like something Simon Furman might have written back before he started phoning it in. It makes me twitch every time I see new stuff refer to Slag as "Slug", though...
[EDIT]The comic looks like something Simon Furman might have written back before he started phoning it in. It makes me twitch every time I see new stuff refer to Slag as "Slug", though...
- Skyquake87
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- Auntie Slag
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Eesh, how to make the Dinobots boring! This feels like the same Dinobot story we've been reading for the last 27 years. It gets dull when every little pack of Autobots turn out to be the Wreckers in all but name. How much to bet it'll be the same thing again, where it'll all come down to Grimlock?
The only thing this is missing are the stock phrases:
- "Hey, we're Dinobots... and we do what needs to be done".
- "We're Dinobots, we make our own rules".
- "We're Dinobots, and we never back out on a fight".
- "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" (usually said by, in this case Slug, as he immolates a genericon).
Yawn.
Nice that Snarl's an engineer. Seeing that in one of the first panels I thought, okay cool. But then its just the same old moves. This is why Scrounge is twice as interesting.
How hard is it to inject some new character into these... characters? How about Grimlock. He's a writer. In search of the best and grubbiest fights so he can write ecstatically about them afterward, and the others actually like him and they all get on. And they fight like nutters because they like him and want to be headline stars in his stories.
Or how about because he's got pots of money? He surrounds himself with a small cadre of the best guns because he's loaded and a little bit eccentric?
The only thing this is missing are the stock phrases:
- "Hey, we're Dinobots... and we do what needs to be done".
- "We're Dinobots, we make our own rules".
- "We're Dinobots, and we never back out on a fight".
- "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" (usually said by, in this case Slug, as he immolates a genericon).
Yawn.
Nice that Snarl's an engineer. Seeing that in one of the first panels I thought, okay cool. But then its just the same old moves. This is why Scrounge is twice as interesting.
How hard is it to inject some new character into these... characters? How about Grimlock. He's a writer. In search of the best and grubbiest fights so he can write ecstatically about them afterward, and the others actually like him and they all get on. And they fight like nutters because they like him and want to be headline stars in his stories.
Or how about because he's got pots of money? He surrounds himself with a small cadre of the best guns because he's loaded and a little bit eccentric?
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I think this is where the whole Aligned thing comes into play - i.e. the FOC stuff is basically Ye Olde G1 so the fanboys will put down £40 but they can still claim it's Prime so kids might buy it, and at the same time there's no chance of anyone confusing it with shite like the War Within. It also gives them something to put in Generations that's less horrifying than those crazy Asian exclusives.Summerhayes wrote:That doesn't look remotely like Prime. Or good.
But yeh, this does reek of the whole "a different continuity? **** that, let's make it as much like every other Transformers comic of the past decade as possible" attitude that IDW have to everything.
The problem is there are a bunch of wankers somewhere, probably on the Big Boards, going "WTF? Since when woz Snarl an engineer? Apart from that it woz great, LOL!". If you know any people like this it is your duty as a fully-functioning human being to hold them down and cut their face with a Stanley knife until they promise to have some taste.
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Everyone knows that sort of violence acheives nothing. I just kill them and solve the problem there and then.Cliffjumper wrote:If you know any people like this it is your duty as a fully-functioning human being to hold them down and cut their face with a Stanley knife until they promise to have some taste.
The thing that makes it so bad is that the Prime TV series, and the actual IDW G1 comics, are all doing exciting new thingsd. But when they put Prime into comic form, they somehow forgot they had good writers they could hire.
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I have to admit, the "engineer/medic" thing left me scratching my head a little. If he does engineer stuff later in the book, fair enough, but did stand out as a bit odd when he's actually acting 100% like G1 Snarl so far (which is to say, he's acting like "generic violent Dinobot who's not Grimlock or Swoop"). I'd assumed that it was just a "sly" reference to his character class in Fall of Cybertron, but a quick Google search tells me that Swoop's the one who got slapped with the scientist class and the healing ray there, so I dunno. Though expecting continuity between the different "Aligned" stories is obviously a fool's game, and that's hardly the biggest difference between the comic and the game...Cliffjumper wrote:The problem is there are a bunch of wankers somewhere, probably on the Big Boards, going "WTF? Since when woz Snarl an engineer? Apart from that it woz great, LOL!". If you know any people like this it is your duty as a fully-functioning human being to hold them down and cut their face with a Stanley knife until they promise to have some taste.
SPOILER! (select to read)Isn't Sludge supposed to be dead? And not a Dinobot?
Yeah, a Gotrek and Felix approach to this -- well, the whole "slayers atoning, one/two of them along to chronicle the tale and try to survive in the meantime" -- would work nicely.Auntie Slag wrote:How hard is it to inject some new character into these... characters? How about Grimlock. He's a writer. In search of the best and grubbiest fights so he can write ecstatically about them afterward, and the others actually like him and they all get on. And they fight like nutters because they like him and want to be headline stars in his stories.
Well, it's two of the Prime cartoon writers writing this thing, so there probably won't be much danger of it ignoring that continuity's more distinctive elements in favor of G1-ification.Summerhayes wrote:The thing that makes it so bad is that the Prime TV series, and the actual IDW G1 comics, are all doing exciting new thingsd. But when they put Prime into comic form, they somehow forgot they had good writers they could hire.
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Really? I didn't feel that at all when reading through it. Maybe its just the art style and absence of human characters.dubbilex wrote:Well, it's two of the Prime cartoon writers writing this thing, so there probably won't be much danger of it ignoring that continuity's more distinctive elements in favor of G1-ification.
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