The Scioli Transformers vs GIJOE series

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Terome
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The Scioli Transformers vs GIJOE series

Post by Terome »

Has anybody else picked up #0 yet? I finally got my hands on a copy and I am keen to report good things. It's as mad and well-constructed as could be hoped for, looks great and captures that eerie strangeness that early peripheral media like the Ladybird books and Battle Beneath The Ice did so well.

Also, seriously, there are some impressive comics gymnastics here. I am an indie-comics dude and already a Scioli fan so this is a much bigger sell to me than it may be to anyone else but seeing this kind of visual literacy in American licenced comics (which aren't Adventure Time - seriously, those comics just go nuts with the format in every way possible) is very satisfying.

After a lifetime of studied disinterest in GI Joe, this has actually given me a reason to maybe give some of the lore a peek. Well, this and The Venture Bros.
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Denyer
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Post by Denyer »

Got a copy of the FCBD one if that's what you mean. Do we know how many issues this is likely to be for? It's generally batshit insane in a good way.
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

That's the one. As far as I know they are being cagey about how long they expect it to run for. I imagine they are hoping to give it enough air to burst into flames. I hope it does as can't see myself getting tired of this malarky soon. I'd like to see it get stuck into the stranger excesses of both franchises, especially if it's all treated in this casual 'another day at the office' kind of way.
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I have the FCBD issue of this and really enjoyed it. I like the sine waves (is that what they are, have I spelt it right?) used for the Transformers talking.

The only downsides are the usual tropes for GIJ/TF x-overs - Snake Eyes origin, the Deceps teaming up with Cobra (well, just Starscream) which I suspect are the work of Barber.

The sickly four colour,uh, colours and mad design of the thing and its sort of pop-art kitsch look and feel are all awesome though. Scioli doesn't half remind me of Mike Allred when he started off on Madman. Just with more lurid colours.
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

Skyquake87 wrote:I have the FCBD issue of this and really enjoyed it. I like the sine waves (is that what they are, have I spelt it right?) used for the Transformers talking.
The payoff - Bumblebee's giant scream when he went under - was pretty great as well.
The only downsides are the usual tropes for GIJ/TF x-overs - Snake Eyes origin, the Deceps teaming up with Cobra (well, just Starscream) which I suspect are the work of Barber.
Is Snake-Eyes origin well mined? I dimly recall it being in the Jae Lee one but that was a long time ago. And while it is no doubt on the cards, I found that neither Transformer teamed up with a Joe faction pretty refreshing - they were just this one part of the crazy melee.

Also, hey, is that Straxus on the last page?
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Is this on Comixology yet? I'm assuming it will be as the Reg issue 0 from a couple of years ago was on there by the time the series started, but it wasn't out on the actual free comic book day.

So I'm biding my time.

And basically relying on you people to do my research for me.
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Terome
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Transformers vs GIJOE #1

Post by Terome »

Holy hell.

That was incredible.

Scioli really pulled it off - juggling all those goofy Joe characters, putting several interesting spins on a scene and premise we've seen a dozen times before (most notably, in the new season of Robots in Disguise - this leaves that series in the dust), and doesn't make it seem as though the Transformers are playing second fiddle to the Joes even though the Joes end the issue with the definite upper hand.

The 'pre-credit' sequence with Cobra remnant in Springfield, USA was great and I liked all the gags that peppered it.

Also - best showing for Ravage in quite some time. Shockwave gets a very subsidary role but I think that's okay as he's had a big year. I'm sure he, Soundwave and Starscream will be back soon.

And I quite like the timeskip since the preview issue. I hope we get some more of those to move the franchises through their releases in good time.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Well that was nuts. Brilliantly nuts. I still can't see it having the legs to be an ongoing (and considering it's basically replaced ReGeneraton One as the "Retro" book I can see it winding up more an extended maxi-series) but this initial arc should be a good laugh.

Though as Terome says, as with Reg, it does touch on several of the ideas the main books are doing at the same time, which seems like poor editing (though, here at least, those ideas look to being handled better than RID has managed thus far).
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

inflatable dalek wrote:Well that was nuts. Brilliantly nuts. I still can't see it having the legs to be an ongoing (and considering it's basically replaced ReGeneraton One as the "Retro" book I can see it winding up more an extended maxi-series) but this initial arc should be a good laugh.
You might be right but, at the breakneck pace its started at, I'd really like to see what this series looks like in 30 issues time.

Some predictions:
Joe and Cobra characters becoming Headmasters and Targetmasters
Unicron, Primus and any number of the Transformers pantheon showing up
Joe and Cobra built Transformers (possibly linked to the Headmasters)
Cybertron turning out to be Earth in the future
Longtooth and Shipwreck team-up
Carnivac getting lines
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Mildly surprised in the commentary the authors talk about taking the Joes to Cybertron being a fresh new idea, am I the only one who remembers The Art of War?

Considering they've made play of hawk's tomahawk... wasn't there a generations toy of that name? It could make a surprise appearance and team up with him.
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

Did they do that in The Art of War? I remember the Seacons and Cobra Commander taking control of Megatron's mind and a robot Serpentor thingie and didn't Hawk get the Matrix or something? I dunno. That one where Cosmos blew up Unicron tends to edge out the other memories. The Six Million Dollar Man was in it?
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Blackjack
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Post by Blackjack »

Yeah, I'm actually surprised that the verdict for this series has been almost unanimously good...

Am I the only one out there to find the dialogue extremely dull, the art terribly clunky, random scenes inserted here and there and the whole affair generally ridiculous?

I know that it's trying to go for a retro kind of look, and I respect that, but a lot of the times I find the art outright screaming bad instead of nostalgic. I'm not a big fan of the big battle scenes with badly drawn people running in the background like something from a colouring book. We've got Starscream's head randomly popping down from his jet mode, the scene with Tomax and Xamot kicking that Joe, Soundwave shaking the humans down into his chest, we've got the scene with the Joes cutting open Soundwave's chest, that horribly drawn group of jets in the background when the Decepticons landed... battle scenes in particular generally look awkward and static it all looks terrible to me.

Storywise I find the pacing tedious, and the randomly inserted 'the Plan' interlude which took a fair bit to read and realize it's a random flashback instead of something taking place concurrently because all the Duke Hawk Flint all look the same to me... random scenes of Snake-Eyes cutting down a tree, or Duke and Scarlett meeting a street prophet...

There was a couple of points when dialogue was covered by the art or other speech bubbles. Is it intentional? It looks like it's intentional. If it's supposed to be a joke of any sort I don't get it.

The random space Buddha comment? The hell is that about.

Yeah, trying to keep an open mind after absolutely loathing issue #0, and while it's an improvement I'm sorry to say that this is not a series I like at all. There are some pretty interesting concepts like the Joes using a giant space laser (granted it's something that's been done in both the first Devil's Due mini, Dreamwave's Armada and the Prime cartoon), having Snake-Eyes as this villainous vendetta-ridden maniac and having Joes invade Cybertron (and it's also been done in the third Devil's Due series) but generally the issue just feels so tedious and trying too hard to try and pull off this way of parody-not-parody storytelling that doesn't work at all for me.
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

I can see your point, Blackjack, though I don't share it. But I can also see the ghost of my high school English teacher raging at your use of 'random!'

The space buddha line is a spin on one of my favourite koans:

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?o ... Itemid=247

The idea is that if you can kill God then he wasn't really God now, was he?
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Post by Blackjack »

Yeah, but that's what this issue generally feels to be. It just feel that it's bordering on parody levels of randomness (and that word really conveys how I feel about this series as a whole). One moment you have big cover page style letters pockmarking a page, and you jump from a dark-era-style 'kill a transformer violently' with Ravage getting stabbed through the head with the most ridiculous tomahawk I've ever seen, then you have this giant Cobra mothership that looks like a rejected idea from the 80's cartoon...

I get that they're attempting something different. There are a bunch of different concepts here compared to other TF/GI Joe crossovers, like Snake-Eyes being the villain, or Bumblebee dying in the first issue, or the Joes riding a spaceship to Cybertron... but the general execution of the art and scripting simply disagrees with me and I think that's saying something considering I slogged through a lot of other idiotic Transformers-related crap and never have I been so indifferent to something. I'm just surprised that I seem to be the only one out there who hates this thing, since practically every review I see is singing praises about how this is the best comic ever. Maybe I just don't "get" the retro storytelling? I dunno.
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Terome
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Post by Terome »

I can totally understand that - Scioli is of a very academic breed of cartoonists where its taken for granted that every element is meticulously placed. For example, the thing about The Plan page is that you don't know the plan, Scarlett says that the plan is working, you turn the page and a palette shift tells you that you're in a different setting and the title cheekily tells you up front that you're being told all about The Plan now. It's a moment you're supposed to chuckle at - 'I can't believe he would go right ahead and DO that, it's so audacious!'

But then if you're not an overinvested snob like me you might not have that reaction.

I feel a lot like Professor Frink - 'No you can't play with it, you won't enjoy it on as many levels as I do... Mm-hai bw-ha whoa-hoa. The colours, children.'
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Post by Blackjack »

Terome wrote:I can totally understand that - Scioli is of a very academic breed of cartoonists where its taken for granted that every element is meticulously placed.
Mmm, I'm not at all familiar with Scioli's work and to an extent I do love these kind of artists with meticulous detail on everything, except that for me at least, in the case of this particular series neither the art nor the script are catchy enough to drive enough interest for me to notice every single thing in every panel instead of just flipping the page waiting for something interesting to happen.

With most 'bad' comics I've read, usually one or the other manages to be somewhat good or at least attention-grabbing enough not for me to get so... bored, I suppose? At points the script and art just feel so childish and/or ugly that I just want to get it over quickly so any joke that hinges on me paying real close attention flies over my head. It borders on parody without actually poking fun at things and it ends up feeling blah.
For example, the thing about The Plan page is that you don't know the plan, Scarlett says that the plan is working, you turn the page and a palette shift tells you that you're in a different setting and the title cheekily tells you up front that you're being told all about The Plan now. It's a moment you're supposed to chuckle at - 'I can't believe he would go right ahead and DO that, it's so audacious!'
Yeah, it totally makes sense when I flipped back and went 'oh, they said something about a plan', but in between all the random "noise", so to speak, of random Starscream heads peeking out of the bottom of the jet and big announcements a la old comic book cover pages and the countdown numbers, well, it simply gets lost in the presentation and the joke just falls flat.
But then if you're not an overinvested snob like me you might not have that reaction.
Yeah, must chalk it up to differing tastes I suppose.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Terome wrote:Did they do that in The Art of War? I remember the Seacons and Cobra Commander taking control of Megatron's mind and a robot Serpentor thingie and didn't Hawk get the Matrix or something? I dunno. That one where Cosmos blew up Unicron tends to edge out the other memories. The Six Million Dollar Man was in it?
Nah, they went to Cybertron where Snake Eyes was able to hypnotise a Decepticon and Overkill was almost literally masturbating over the idea of having ladybots. Who could forget that?

Don't worry Blackjack, you're not alone, I've seen a few people not like it.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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Post by Blackjack »

inflatable dalek wrote:Nah, they went to Cybertron where Snake Eyes was able to hypnotise a Decepticon and Overkill was almost literally masturbating over the idea of having ladybots. Who could forget that?
Yeah, Snake-Eyes hypnotized a Stunticon or something to murder Nautilator, because no one in the world loves poor old Nautilator.

Overkill and the ladybots was ridiculous. Of all the D-lister Decepticons that cameos in that massive scene, and Overkill is the one to get focus and talk about harems.

One of these days I should reread the Devil's Due crossovers. They're ridiculous.
Don't worry Blackjack, you're not alone, I've seen a few people not like it.
Ah, good. I thought I was just weird.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Blackjack wrote:Y
Ah, good. I thought I was just weird.

Oh, this isn't the thing that makes you weird.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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Post by Blackjack »

inflatable dalek wrote:Oh, this isn't the thing that makes you weird.
Eh, all the other things I can live with.
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