TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Yes, it's time for another thread rounding up our thoughts on the year's comics that have just gone past (remember how we never bothered with these when Mike Costa was about? I hate that the comics now being good enough for us to care has created more work for me).

I'm bound to miss something out here as my brain is not unlike one of those things used to drain rice, so do feel free to chime in with whatever I've not at the very least mentioned. knowing me it'll be the best comic of the year.

So 2014 was a year that started and ended in fembot related controversy (though I was mildly surprised to see the Furman/Scott debate closed out 2013 when I was checking threads about it the other day, I'd have sworn it was much more recent than that), even if the discussions raised by James Roberts' comments on Twitter seemed much more mild and friendly than the first time round, indeed, I think Slag mentioning there'd been an issue was the first time I'd heard of it.

[As there was some discussion over exactly what James may and may not have meant in the MTMTE 36 thread, a LINK to a longer clarification from the man himself. Annoyingly he seems to agree with Warcry about gender being an issue of self identity rather than biology for the female Transformers.]

The real surprise of the year then was that the Windblade miniseries managed to avoid all the pittfalls inherent in the legacy of Spotlight: Arcee (and the treatment of female characters in Transformers generally) to be a nice, fun read that had a decent thoughtful ending. Helped no end by picking up on the Cybertron politics side of thing that RID had initially done so well and which had been sorely neglected for... what felt like a year at that point.

For our other "Main continuity" mini series of the year... Well, I must admit the mad completeism that had seized me once more in the early days of the relaunch has waned by this point. I read the first two (I think) issues of Primacy and became happy to wait for the trade. And I didn't even bother with Drift 2: Let's Have the Guy who Made Drift Uninteresting to the Point MTMTE Had to Make Him a Comedy Character Do Another Mini, it feels very much like something my life will be made much more cheerful by not experiencing.

Regeneration One shuffled to a somewhat embarrassed close this year, and though the final storyline actually managed to be good fun by just chucking away any pretence of being a serious continuation of Marvel and going for full on camp adventure instead, it was too little too late. The final issue itself was a rather mangled mess, and considering Furman seemed to be recycling various ideas IDW had already rejected once (including his very first pitch to them, a "Crisis on Infinite Cybertrons", plus what seems to the the vestege of his original Dead Universe notion that was chucked for AHM) and the fact it was treading not dissimilar ground to Dark Cybertron, you have to wonder how anyone thought it was a good idea. Certainly all the really, really loud and passive aggressive defenders of the series who so dogged me two years ago wound up going rather quiet on it at the end.

As a sign of how tired Reg felt, the series that replaced it as the "Retro" book, Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe has gone on to not only sell extremely well but has received all sorts of proper actual critical plaudits from the sort of places that would never normally bother looking at Transformers.

Yes, having a name aboard helps with getting attention, but it's approach of just tackling one specific apporach and doing it to the hilt means that, whilst it's clearly not to everyone's taste, those that do love it, loooooooooooooooooooooove it, and in a much more cheerful way than the big Reg fans enjoyed that book. I've not found time for issue 4 yet (I'm a busy man!), but I will be catching up with this.

The only real downside I can see for the future of this book is that, no matter how much Terome tries to persuade me otherwise, I just don't see it being sustainable in the long term. One more trade and then it being called a night could result in a great maxi-series, going on and on and on could run it into the ground.

There was also Angry Bird Transformers this year, did anyone read that?

That leaves us with the big two (of which, I'm just going to keep calling RID "RID" for both this post and all future ones indefinitely for ease of reference. I think we're all too old and grumpy to even notice the new cartoon, let alone be confused by it).

The year, to put it mildly, did not start well with the conclusion to Dark Cybertron. The series did rally round to a solid enough climax (and seemed to finally kill off the Dead Universe cancer that has been at the heart of all the really bad IDW moments, but then of course we've had a flashback with Nova and Jhiaxus in that suggests some bad ideas just won't be let go of) but an awful lot of damage was done to the momentum of both books, especially RID, that could well have been permanently disastrous.

For MTMTE, it managed to recover fairly quickly despite being lumbered with what could potentially have been the silliest idea ever in Megatron becoming an Autobot.

It was helped by just basically going right back to where it left off, meaning that whilst time was spent establishing the new characters over the old it still felt very much like the same series. Making the acceptance of Megatron's change of side amongst 200 odd Autobots made the early issues creak a bit (and- unless the final reveal is they're all in a plot against him- is something I don't think will ever really go away) but there was still a lot to like and the discovery of the ALL saw things really kick into an exciting new high gear with everything just working really well.

I would also say that the fight in the planes in issue 36 is the first unambiguously straightforward big fight scene Roberts has pulled off successfully. Previously he's struggled with them and has either written around them (the Barney with Overlord is basically made entirely about Pipes' death) or done them rather poorly (the Star Sabre/Cyclonus sword fight basically made everyone go "Is that it?"), mainly because he's clearly much more interested in characters talking at each other than punching each other. Which is fine as we get enough of that in other Transformers products, but it's nice to see this particular area of weakness improved upon.

All in all, Dark Cybertron and Megatron mandate wibbles aside, MTMTE has weathered the year very well.

RID on the other hand...

Well, I always want to like RID more than I do. The first year or so of the book was great, Barber has done wonders as editor (it can not be emphasised enough how much of a difference no Andy Schmidt makes) and the last few issues have been perfectly serviceable fun overall.

But it has to be said, it is telling that- whilst MTMTE went straight back into business as usual- RID has a reformatting for the post DC relaunch. There's the feeling that the failure of all that Prowlestator nonsense as the conclusion to a big serious political plotline has been acknowledged by Barber and so he's offloaded that side of things onto Scott and moved his own book into territory that better fits his big action scene ideas.

And there are places, most notably Galvatron who is simply brilliant and wouldn't have felt at home in year one RID at all, where that's worked fine. Even Prowlestator works better in the context of an all action romp than he did previously.

My problem largely remains Barber's desire to please the fans with lots and lots of continuity and revisiting of old plot threads, even if no one actually liked those plot threads to start with.

My rewatch of Doctor Who has just gone through the Colin Baker era, possibly the best example of what can go wrong if you try to play to the fans as it is possible to find. It's the mentality that leads to Attack of the Cybermen. Hell, it's the mentality that leads to Regeneration One. Absolutely nothing good can come from going "Hey, let's see what Spike's been up to!".

And sure, there are loud and vocal fans who want to know what happened to, say, Jimmy Pink. But they're not the fans who are interested in good storytelling (because there's nothing about the vacuum that is Jimmy Pink- a character who wound up boring his own creator to the point of barely featuring him- that screams "This is worth catching up on!"), they're the fans who are happy if you can give them something to tick off on a checklist or add to the wiki. I've certainly been guilty of that in the past (probably most of us have), but that's exactly the sort of mentality that needs to be avoided to keep the books actually good.

That's why I'm much keener on the newer fans being cultivated. From the demographics of AA attendees to the reactions on places like Twitter and (as the kids call it) Tumblr suggest there really is a different demographic out there reading the books. And if the series are going to play to anyone, it should be them. Because fandoms don't thrive on stagnation, they thrive on new people coming in, loving what works and ripping down what doesn't which has just been left to rot slowly by the old farts because they've always been used to it.

The sort of people in other words who can keep an author on their toes because they won't just go "Yay, Marissa Fairborne" or (to pick a Roberts example, he's generally handled reusing past elements well as he tends to hit on the ones with actually interesting story potential) "Nightbeat huzzah", but will be much more down on how well these characters they've not encountered before work to the story.

Of course, new fans won't get everything (or in a worst case scenario even most things) right, but then, that's what the generation of fans after that are for.

[On a similar note, I'd really love to know the digital sales. With physical basically remaining steady that's presumably where most of the new readers are coming from].

Hmmm...

MTMTE: I believe the year started with Dark Cybertron and ended with 36, so all in all good stuff. The book [from S2 onwards] mainly suffered from the fact that the stories are meant to be read in one sitting [especially the 3 parter] as reading them on release, one at a time, really took away from the whole thing. Megatron's trial was a joke [the end result] but it got Megatron on the lost light. It does look very promising though, and still remains my favourite series.

RID: After DC, RID suffers because for some reason they have to mop up the Earth storylines. I do not like Galvatron at all, as he appears far too dumb and "primitive barbarian" like for his own good. I've also grown a bit tired of the whole "Decepticons are our friends yay" thing, and can't help but feel that all issues thus far have just been serving as a prelude for the next crossover. I vastly enjoyed the Nova Prime issue as it gives some insight on the past and how this line of Primes came to be. Not a great fan of "is Prowl a villain? or not?" situations nor like, half of the cliffhangers appear to be something abrupt, evil, or out of character for him only to go back to normal on the first page of the next issue. Looks promising though.

Windblade mini: Ugh. I honestly can't see how people like this. The art, while new for transformers, is nothing f*cking special in the grand scheme of comic books, the writing is atrocious, the plot laughable, the fact that it's main gimmicky draw was "hey female transformer written by female and drawn by female yay girl power" sickens me, the end resolution was basically ---SPOLERS--- Chromia killing people and never going unpunished, even joking about it later on, Rattrap going into a weird torturing scene with Windblade.

And this sh!t gets another mini that will probably be extended to a full comic. WTF IDW?

Transformers VS GI JOE Only got the free comic book day issue, and didn't even finish it. I applaud it for trying something different, visually, but it's not for me.

Primacy: The culmination of a series that started out okay and got worse with every single installment. As with Monstrosity, there are some good scenes but the entire thing is so mediocre and G1-Cartoon like it brings down RID and MTMTE. Thank heavens this didn't go over the Simanzi massacre as it was originally rumoured. I feel bad because Livio's art is wasted on this writing. Seriously, the writers are just another gimmick like Windblade on this one.

Drift: Empire of Stone: Absolutely nothing groundbreaking. The only good thing going for it is the fact that you try to frame it, time-wise, to MTMTE as Ratchet is in it. Overstretched, overhyped, promises too much...but at least it's not Windblade.

Regeneration One: I actually liked this one. There are definite flaws-the fact that Furman writes it basically means that he will spend issues drawing out a massive battle towards the very end of the series, where the bad guy will die unceremoniously in 2 panels, then the real threat will materialize but will have to be dealt with in ONE issue. You had 20+ issues Furman, any pacing flaws are just unacceptable. Despite that, it was good fun -overall-, and Guido's art was great. Wildman is just too bored to draw anymore.

Good, thoughtful post Dalek. Knightdramon, your point-by-point list is a very useful recap. I'd completely forgotten about Regeneration One as a concept, which is about all I really have to say about it. Looking back, I feel that if they'd just released the Senior covers as the entire product then we'd have loved it.

RID is still a bit awkward. I think you're spot on, Dalek, when you say that the reshuffle suits the tone much better than the setting of the last season - dumb stuff like the Prowlestator and silly stuff like Thundercracker's TV addiction are right at home on IDW's Earth.

I dug the Windblade mini. Didn't see a problem with Chromia going unpunished. And sure, Sarah Stone isn't Fiona Staples but then, who is? IDW are pretty good at trying promising artists with an interesting angle to them.

It's no secret that GI Joe VS The Transformers is the highlight of the year for me. Brilliant as MTMTE is, this is the book that hits me between the eyes. I'm very pleased at how broad the appeal seems to be beyond the fandom and how well it is doing in terms of sales and criticism.

On that note, MTMTE seems to be getting all sorts of nods and making many best-of lists this year, but mainly for concepts from the last season. I'm really impressed with how the Megatron arc was pulled off - I honestly thought that Megatron was better off screen than on but he's really been good value. I also appreciate how characters like Nautica and Riptide are eroding that emphasis on toys that will always be there. I am also Riptide's only living fan, I feel. I do agree that the necessary work on Megatron has distorted the focus very noticeably, and it's refreshing that we end the year with an arc that has the 'old cast' firmly in the spotlight.

With all this attention though, Roberts is bound to get poached by Image or Boom! any minute now isn't he? I wouldn't be surprised if IDW were paying him peanuts and the idea of taking his very dedicated fanbase and Milne with him to a creator-owned series must be an opportunity he's semi-prepared for. Has anyone been following Nick Roche's Monster Motors? I know nothing, which is a failing.

I've avoided Primacy and it sounds like I was right to do so. I've heard some mild praise for the Drift mini and might get round to it. I do suspect that McCarthy's perceived flaws are more to do with how he's been managed than his writing itself.

The new fan / old fan thing is something I think about a lot too. It's heartening to hear of people picking up MTMTE or GI Joe VS Transformers or Angry Birds who will get a taste without being bogged down by any sort of opinion of Jimmy Pink or what Furman would have done with Expansion. I guess that RID is targeting the 'old fan' demographic, what there is left of it. Likewise for Primacy and such, though I feel that they would be far more comfortable being set staunchly in whatever version of the Sunbow universe they would like rather than awkwardly dancing with the proper stuff Roberts is doing. Hasbro's previous reluctance to expand into alternate universes seems to have evaporated, doesn't it?

Have we talked about how there are no movie comics? That's for the best from my perspective - nobody could really make that universe work beyond its primary medium and it pulled good creators away from better stories - but I wonder how willingly Hasbro were with it and such. I can imagine a line of movie comics appearing in ten years or so, when no further movies are being made, that could have great potential. However, RID has borne the brunt of that strange 'make everything similar to each other' idea from Hasbro that they were talking about a while back and become a de facto movie comic with Optimus fighting Galvatron on Earth.

Do we think the new Robots In Disguise show will get a comic? IDW were very tentative on their Prime offerings. The show looks like fun and not too heavy on the story arcs and mythology and there's probably a comic in there. Odds are that it will remain unexploited, like Rescue Heroes. Boom! Studios would know what to do with them.

Terome wrote:With all this attention though, Roberts is bound to get poached by Image or Boom! any minute now isn't he? I wouldn't be surprised if IDW were paying him peanuts and the idea of taking his very dedicated fanbase and Milne with him to a creator-owned series must be an opportunity he's semi-prepared for. Has anyone been following Nick Roche's Monster Motors? I know nothing, which is a failing.

Fun enough concept, but it's very light fare and the first one's mostly setup.

Has Roberts demonstrated an interest in comics writing outside of TFs? Very hazy recollection of interviews in which I think was stated he was a freelance writer before TFs (non-fiction) and I think has been involved in law enforcement or private security.

I've just been reading MTMTE, although picked up Windblade (read better collected) and the first trade of Joes/TF is on order. Hoping for less tosh like Dark Cybertron in future.

Windblade: Harmless, really. Story wise, however, nothing especially groundbreaking. A bit gimmicky too, but Windblade the character is likeable and goes someway to amending the blight that is Spotlight Arcee.

Dark Cybertron: IDW put their main TF titles on hold for six months for the Dead Universe.

......

I repeat; IDW put their main TF titles on hold for SIX MONTHS for the Dead Universe.

Fuck off, Dark Cybertron. Fuck off.

XRID: Not following too closely.

Sorry.

MTMTE: While it was one of the series' more "weaker" moments, I still... liked the trial storyline in spite of my own reservations and, well, the implausibility of it all. Annnnnd I also agree it dragged on too long, reading much better as a whole.

Convincing us that Megatron is somehow redeemable was always going to be a tough sell, if not nigh-impossible -- not at all helped that about, what, a year before (?) Barber had unleashed that Prowlestator bullshit upon the world -- but I felt Roberts did a respectable job, regardless of editorial mandate and what have you. It's helped by some pretty memorable moments. Starscream's speech, Optimus's rather shocking behavior throughout the whole thing, Rodimus's "moral dilemma", and yes, that single panel of Prime's figure moving away from a weeping Megatron, come to mind. All stuff I really dug.

That 10-million year-old legal loophole, though? And the "total visibility theory" thing? Didn't dig that so much. They're both really hard things to overlook that not only hurt the overall story, but also took me out of the moment.

Overall; it may have been implausible, but hey, at least it was well written

While MTMTE "season 2" (hey, I'll stop using quotations when it stops feeling awkward to break a comic series into seasons) didn't quite have the strongest start -- a fine start, but not great -- issue #31 and onward have showcased this series' strengths. Newcomers, like Nightbeat and Nautica, are wonderful additions to the cast, there's a lot more of the universe-building we all love and the exploration concepts that I never expected to see in any Transformer fiction, and of course Megatron, who has seen some amazing growth in just under a year.

Issues #31-34 -- which for all intents and purposes I'm simply calling "Slaughterhouse"-- is a strong contender, coming short only to the likes of Shadowplay and Delphi, as a one of my personal favorite MTMTE stories. While Slaughterhouse continues the "season 2" trend of skewing focus towards Megatron, it's a bloody fantastic horror-mystery and classic sci-fi with great characterizations all around, and some pretty memorable moments too. Let me count the ways: quantum duplication, the disappearances, Ravage and Megatron's heart-to-heart, pretty much all of Nightbeat and Nautica's scenes, Alt. Rewind and Chromedome's "reunion", the fucking DJD being portrayed as an actual threat, Megatron's time on Messatine, all discussion involving morality and the like, Trailbreaker's sudden death (and Roberts sticking to his guns).....

Definitely a highlight for 2014's reads, that one.

Meanwhile, Elegant Chaos kicked off with a bang too, continuing another theme of the season: duplicate realities. With two issues left in EC, I'm feeling pretty optimistic for what 2015 has to offer.

Denyer wrote:Fun enough concept, but it's very light fare and the first one's mostly setup.

Has Roberts demonstrated an interest in comics writing outside of TFs? Very hazy recollection of interviews in which I think was stated he was a freelance writer before TFs (non-fiction) and I think has been involved in law enforcement or private security.

I've just been reading MTMTE, although picked up Windblade (read better collected) and the first trade of Joes/TF is on order. Hoping for less tosh like Dark Cybertron in future.

Ah, cheers. I see that IDW publish it and there are more issues coming out in February. I should delve.

Haven't heard anything like that from Roberts but Dalek is slightly more glued to his Twitter feed than I. I figure that he has a day job of some sort and I reckon he's got more than a few great novels in him. Didn't Douglas Adams start out as a bouncer in a night club on account of his tallness? Literary stardom through private security has a precedent.

Did anyone like Dark Cybertron without reservation? I get the sense that even the creative teams feel like it was at least a little bit of a misfire. I wonder how sales did and what benefit IDW got out of the toy pack-ins beyond scoring good graces with Hasbro. I do think that in the long term, the comic pack-ins will intrigue a lot of young fans.

Terome wrote: Did anyone like Dark Cybertron without reservation? I get the sense that even the creative teams feel like it was at least a little bit of a misfire. I wonder how sales did and what benefit IDW got out of the toy pack-ins beyond scoring good graces with Hasbro. I do think that in the long term, the comic pack-ins will intrigue a lot of young fans.

I get the feeling that I'm one of the few people that actually liked it, but it too suffered from what I earlier called "Furmanistic writing".

As in, we get many issues building up to something, then we get more issues building up to something, then we get 1-2 issues of an all out big epic fight...only to see after it that it was not the main event at all, rather, the main event is something that will have to be dealt with in a tiiiiny moment comparatively.

I found the writing and super powers of the ores something that they pulled out of their a$$ at the last possible moment just to have something vaguely infinity gauntlet like. Furthermore, to this day, having read it 5-6 times, I still do not care nor pay any attention to what the damn ores did and their combinations that caused this.

Unlike most others though, I do not mind the Dead Universe at all [the idea of certain A-listers being undead, and a big, chosen, fascist Prime being the leader of the undead? Rock on!], and this gave us a time loophole that basically made it and unmade it forever.

It also provided a nice catch up with the cast from both series, and in hindsight, provided some very unfortunate events that went by completely unnoticed---Bumblebee's final days were a recollection of how much he sucked, how his people were kicked out of their city, and in the end, his only hope and ally to the end was Megatron. Optimus and Rodimus never came in contact with Bumblebee since The Death of Optimus Prime and MTMTE 1.

Of course this also brings some other unfortunate events---such as the fact that Megatron wanted to kill all Autobots AGAIN and went on slaughtering them like...1 day ago, and within the span of a few hours since he was active again, decided he wants to be an Autobot.

Hmmm?

Dark Cybertron, I thought, was a bit of a mess. It wasn't as much of a mess as DC or Marvel's massive crossovers, but there was simply too much going on for the series to make a lick of sense. The mix of writers and artists didn't help either, and the end result wound up having a very uneven tone. From one page to the next it felt like you were reading an entirely different book. In spite of reading both the comic itself and the Wiki summaries, I can't honestly say I have more than a vague idea what actually happened.

I'd already forgotten that ReGeneration One had actually happened. I'll probably have forgotten again by the time I submit this post.

I enjoyed Windblade a fair bit more than I'd expected. The marketing made it sound like GIRL POWER guest staring the Transformers, so I was expecting dreck that made no sense in the context of the universe. The end result was a lot better, completely subverting my expectations by being an entertaining little yarn in which the protagonist's gender was completely and utterly irrelevant. Windblade herself is one of the most likeable and sympathetic characters in the IDWverse (props to the creative team for ignoring the toy's "badass samurai with a sword" shtick and making her an inexperienced civilian) and that makes me willing to overlook some of the weak spots in the plot and the frankly awful art.

MTMTE took a while to get going after the nonsensical addition of Megatron to the cast, since Roberts spent a lot of time futilely trying to convince us that the idea could ever be anything but absurd. But once that stopped and he went back to telling good stories with the characters that he had at his disposal, the series took a quick turn for the better. I think the fact that dalek and I can spend so much time arguing over things is a sign of just how good the book can be. I mean, when was the last time any Transformers fiction inspired that much debate here?

I agree with those who've said that Roberts will probably move on to bigger and better things in the years to come. But he's also a fan of the franchise, and when the time comes for him to leave I'd like to think he'd feel obliged to give his story a worthy ending.

I don't think I've even glanced at an issue of any of the other series aside from the preview pages, which have done a good job of reminding me why I decided not to follow them to start with.

inflatable dalek wrote:[As there was some discussion over exactly what James may and may not have meant in the MTMTE 36 thread, a LINK to a longer clarification from the man himself. Annoyingly he seems to agree with Warcry about gender being an issue of self identity rather than biology for the female Transformers.]

VICTORY IS MINE!

[EDIT]

inflatable dalek wrote:That's why I'm much keener on the newer fans being cultivated. From the demographics of AA attendees to the reactions on places like Twitter and (as the kids call it) Tumblr suggest there really is a different demographic out there reading the books. And if the series are going to play to anyone, it should be them. Because fandoms don't thrive on stagnation, they thrive on new people coming in, loving what works and ripping down what doesn't which has just been left to rot slowly by the old farts because they've always been used to it.

Honestly, I think trying to appeal to new fans is just as shortsighted as trying to appeal to old fans. When you write good stories, the fans take care of themselves. MTMTE appeals to newbies and crusty old-timers in equal measure, but mostly it just appeals to people who enjoy good sci-fi.

Monster Motors is great fun, a very good comic for kids as well, which is nice.

In the script he was selling for Chaos Theory Roberts actually refers to himself as an ex-policeman at one point (IIRC saying he never used guns but his fellow officers who did had advice on how to hold them that Orion should follow. Of course, the only time police in the Channel Islands need to use a gun is when a tourist makes a Bergerac joke).

Of course, as much as people talk about the likes of Rung or Skids being his favourite/avatar character, giving Optimus Prime his old job is all sorts of suggestive.

I think he'll get grabbed up by someone else at some point (though based on how dense his scripts are, I suspect novels are where his heart would truly lie over scripting), but if he were to go off and do a bit of [insert other comic here] whilst still doing MTMTE I think that'd be a win win situation. Too often in franchises the people who work on them become so myopic they lose track of developments in the media and genre around them. At times it's happened with Who, Trek and Bond, they all became stuck in a rut completely devoid from contemporary film and television because the makers only knew how to make Who, Trek and Bond. Always best to keep your finger in other things.

[I actually don't think there's a job Douglas Adams didn't do during his poorer days. I think his author blurb used to end his list of past vocations with "...And all the sorts of jobs authors do to fill up a biography in the back of the book like this".]


As for Windblade, I had no problem with the ending. It was much more interesting than them defeating Starscream or Chromia getting her comeuppance, they basically all have to accept they've been dicks and need to move on and actually work together or Cybertron's going to descend into the same old shit all over again. The real problem is the (otherwise rather sweet) Wheeljack issue of RID didn't handle the follow up very well with Chromia being far too gittish for it to be remotely likely this new alliance would ever work.

Certainly if Barber or even Roberts were to stand down from their series I'd have no issues with Scott being the new full time writer.

Warcry wrote:
I think the fact that dalek and I can spend so much time arguing over things is a sign of just how good the book can be. I mean, when was the last time any Transformers fiction inspired that much debate here?

Can I just say how much I appreciate that.

It warms my heart to see the MTMTE threads so lively. Lively by this forum's standards, at any rate. I enjoy it very much.

Closest I can think was Last Stand of the Wreckers, which, if I recall, drew in plenty of discussion. But views were, well, disproportionately in favor of the thing and that did kind of limit how far discussion/debate went.

I recently just started picking up the old DW's Generation One series that I missed. Ugh, they are just . No wonder people hate that guy that much. So anything we have now I will just say pretty good. Well, only thing I don't like too much is now Hasbro involved too much in the comics direction for their toy sale.