Megatron: Origin #1-4/TPB

Auntie Slag · Post by **Auntie Slag** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:26 pm

Wow, proper zombie love resurrection (do it Alison Moyet, it'll get your career going again!). I'm glad I have Megatron: Origin. I've read it through quite a few times. Its pretty dodgy, but compelling. I like it.

Mind you I was really lucky. I got all four in a Forbidden Planet 'grab bag' for £1.

That Cy-kill scene, Clench, Bumper and Fastback, Ratbat, and Sentinel changing his appearance more often than Bowie.

Its an odd, interesting... thing. I'd have appreciated six issues.

Patapsco · Post by **Patapsco** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:32 pm

pandagork wrote:I have to applaud the writer for actually being able to decipher Origin to put that together. Seriously, every time I read it it makes my head hurt and not just from the horrible, horrible, horrible art

oooh... 29 year old me was a grumpy sod

Auntie Slag · Post by **Auntie Slag** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:42 pm

There was a lot more shit than roses back in them days, though. After having been on here for a few years I was desperate for some new TF material. I desired the Dreamwave stuff from afar, thinking that now matter how bad the story, the artwork would make up for it.

I was wrong on both counts (this is referring to the first arc with Lazarus). It was bilge.

I was mildly surprised by Megatron: Origin. I mean, if I were a teacher I'd still put a 'must try harder' comment on it in red pen. But you could see what they were going for, there's some pep in it, more so than the War Within stuff.

Patapsco · Post by **Patapsco** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:49 pm

Auntie Slag wrote:There was a lot more shit than roses back in them days, though. After having been on here for a few years I was desperate for some new TF material. I desired the Dreamwave stuff from afar, thinking that now matter how bad the story, the artwork would make up for it.

I was wrong on both counts (this is referring to the first arc with Lazarus). It was bilge.

The second volume is even more so, as it complete ignores volume one's cliffhanger and moves through treacle story wise until the last issue where Shockwave explains his master plan for what seems like forever. There's also a tremendous ricket with the TPB of volume two where it repeats a dozen or so pages from issue four instead of issue five so it makes absolutely no sense. Thankfully IDW got better about publishing TPBs after that

Auntie Slag · Post by **Auntie Slag** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 9:34 pm

I'm really enjoying this current phase of Transformers. Its definitely my favourite era of all Transformerdom. And that's because of the films, MTMTE and the Archive.

All the toys are really cool too. It feels fantastic to be in 2016 and be able to find a Cyclonus toy in the shops, or not just one, but four or five Transformers comics running concurrently.

You know, as a kid I always thought that by the time I was in my early 20's like I am now (cough), that no-one on the planet would remember an obscure name like Seaspray. Yet here we are, and look at all this! Its fantastic!

Skyquake87 · Post by **Skyquake87** » Tue Jan 12, 2016 8:13 pm

Meagtron : Origin is still a big plie of ploppy plop though. That one page scribble sums up how bloody cack-handed the story telling was. A massive waste of resources and everyone's time. And clearly, the colourist thought so too, smearing the whole mess in their own excrement.

Patapsco · Post by **Patapsco** » Wed Jan 13, 2016 10:10 pm

it's a six issue series cut down to four that was meant to serve another continuity. There were some good ideas - Sentinel being an absolute arse, Ratbat being some sort of inside trader - but all drowned in terrible colouring and overly line-y art

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Wed Jan 13, 2016 11:34 pm

I liked the idea of Sentinel and the corrupt Autobots at the time, but I think even that looks a bit crude with some distance, and compared to the nuance in flashbacks. Because, yeh, the storytelling of it was really bad.

Red Dave Prime · Post by **Red Dave Prime** » Wed Jan 13, 2016 11:36 pm

The quality of megatron:origins was massively improved by chaos theory pts 1 & 2.

James Roberts: So good his stuff makes other peoples stuff better.&#55357;&#56842;

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Wed Jan 13, 2016 11:46 pm

I do think it deserves a little tiny bit of credit for being the first thing to intentionally (so Rodimus doesn't count) make the Autobot leader a massive, massive prick. I mean, between the rest of IDW's work and DOTM we're used to this idea that all the Primes before Optimus were a procession of twats but at the time all we really knew about Sentinel was that he was camera shy and tended to lose fights to Megatron.

Now it's a bit of a trope; I wouldn't mind Sentinel or Zeta coming back - IIRC we don't really know much about what exactly happened to them; wasn't S.P. explicitly still alive at the end of Origin? I mean, everyone else has come back, it might be nice to have one of them in the mix of the current situation.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 7:17 am

IIRC everyone assumed Sentinel was dead at the end of M:O at the time, though Eric Holmes said the intent was he survived. With the new toy coming we'll presumably be learning about the time he decided to look like an orange Astrotrain soon enough.

Zeta waa fairly decisively finished off by the first Dille series wasn't he?

Red Dave Prime · Post by **Red Dave Prime** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 9:41 am

Oh yes. Zeta is definitely dead. Not sure on sentinal though

Terome · Post by **Terome** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 2:47 pm

Not sure if I can take a re-reading of Origin but it did put some interesting ideas out there as well as cause a chunk of State Games to bob to the surface.

I think the single most interesting thing about it was having the Autobot badge be on the riot police shields as a symbol of oppression.

The single least interesting thing about it was the whole 'Decepticons have inbuilt weaponry' angle.

Soundwave as some sort of superhero merc was weird.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 7:07 pm

Oh yeh, forgot about the Dille ones. Still, don't particularly recall them being much deader than anyone else IDW have killed off, so it might make a good idea for a resurrection.

M:O got the biggies right I think - it was nice to have an origin for Megatron, and the idea of the Autobots being a genuinely corrupt and oppressive police force was sound. Shovelling in the whole Decepticon movement so we've got it going from one disgruntled miner to a whole army of superpowered bastards was insane; might have worked better as a Spotlight or two.

Or, yeah, the flashbacks we got later.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 8:39 pm

The thing that still annoys me about Megatron: Origin is we'd have had a proper James Hill written State Games comic if IDW hadn't commissioned it first. Considering how much the backstory borrows from Hill (though to be fair, Holmes was unlikely to have been aware for it as he was originally writing for Dreamwave where Furman was the one who brought the gladiator stuff over) it would have been nice if he could have had a punt at it instead.

The big disconnect for me in Origin is the massive skip between Megatron escaping from the prison ship and suddenly being a top gladiator.

Still, if the condensing of the original six issue idea had been better handled; if the art was more solid and if it was a book actually about Megatron rather than some guy who occasionally says "Huh" it would be a much better series.

Brendocon 2.0 · Post by **Brendocon 2.0** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 9:36 pm

GUYS. WE AGREED TO NEVER MENTION THIS AGAIN. WHAT THE ****.

Red Dave Prime · Post by **Red Dave Prime** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 10:39 pm

We never learn. We're doomed.

Patapsco · Post by **Patapsco** » Fri Jan 15, 2016 7:18 am

Brendocon 2.0 wrote:GUYS. WE AGREED TO NEVER MENTION THIS AGAIN. WHAT THE ****.

those who never learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. Besides, we have to teach the cute newbies that Transformers comics weren't always as good as they are now

Red Dave Prime · Post by **Red Dave Prime** » Fri Jan 15, 2016 8:48 am

As bad as M:O was, I would still put Drift (both of them), Bumblebee and Heart of Darkness as being worse.

Edit: Jesus, that Bumblebee mini... just the worst thing ever.