IDW Comics - Where to Start?

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inflatable dalek
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I have found my kin.

Vaguely on topic, the aforementioned Chaos Theory is a good mythology one as well, looking at Megatron's secret origin and the start of the war (in a much better way than Megatron Origin or the recent Autocracy have).
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
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Post by Cliffjumper »

I think AHM gets most of its' bad press from middlebrow fandom, TBH. In isolation, brought from a bookshop or something by someone who's never heard of a minor league licence renter like IDW or a failed Alpha Flight writer like Furman it's not bad. The basic set-up, at least enough of it to get the ball rolling, can be deduced from rough memories of the old cartoon and it's big on familiar faces and exposition. The TPB format also eliminates many of the pacing problems. It's a good starting point on the whole because it leaves plenty of places to go to - if you want to find out the story behind Sunstreaker you can brave the Furman material; if not you can move forwards onto stuff not written by an irrelevant aging fanboy.

Last Stand is, IMO, pretty much the opposite in every way. At best most normal people think the Wreckers are three NASCARs. It's a truly great book but the deliberately lo-fi cast, fannish leanings, dense narrative and determination to salvage something from the whole Furman shit-pie would be distracting to anyone not already fairly well-read in TF comic lore already.
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relak
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Post by relak »

Cliffjumper wrote:I think AHM gets most of its' bad press from middlebrow fandom, TBH. In isolation, brought from a bookshop or something by someone who's never heard of a minor league licence renter like IDW or a failed Alpha Flight writer like Furman it's not bad. The basic set-up, at least enough of it to get the ball rolling, can be deduced from rough memories of the old cartoon and it's big on familiar faces and exposition. The TPB format also eliminates many of the pacing problems. It's a good starting point on the whole because it leaves plenty of places to go to - if you want to find out the story behind Sunstreaker you can brave the Furman material; if not you can move forwards onto stuff not written by an irrelevant aging fanboy.

Last Stand is, IMO, pretty much the opposite in every way. At best most normal people think the Wreckers are three NASCARs. It's a truly great book but the deliberately lo-fi cast, fannish leanings, dense narrative and determination to salvage something from the whole Furman shit-pie would be distracting to anyone not already fairly well-read in TF comic lore already.
I can attest to that judging by what books move here at the bookstore.

All Hail Megatron is still consistently the fastest moving Transformers title we got.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

inflatable dalek wrote:It's worth noting that regarding All Hail Megatron as a good comic is akin to my long standing lonely belief that The World Is Not Enough is the best Bond film. An extreme minority viewpoint.
IMHO out of the Bronson's Bond films Goldeneye and Tommorow Never Dies are the best (namely due to Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce being great villains). The World is Not Enough is just plain forgettable and Die Another Day was really God-awful, not as God-Awful as Quantum of Solace and that is IMHO the worse James Bond film of all.
You might like it if you want something a bit cartooney (I would disagree with Cyberstrike's assertion that the Decepticons are true monsters in it, their plan basically consists of conquering a city- though that and what they plan to do with it does shift and change back and forth over the course of the series- and sit around and pick their bums whilst the Autobots sit around and pick theirs on Cybertron) that has some nice Guido art but other than that I'd say its appeal is limited.

Lets see:
Megatron standing in front of the firey remains of Air Force One is one of the most frightening things I've seen in comics in a long time.
The Seekers wiping the USAF out of the skies.
Astrotrain looking to kill humans in a subway tunnel.
The Decepticons wipe cities all over the world.
They're not out to enslave humanity or steal energy or some technology like in the orginal cartoon show. They want to wipe us out, as in genocide, and in my book that makes them monsters.
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Knightdramon
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Post by Knightdramon »

Cyberstrike nTo wrote: Megatron standing in front of the firey remains of Air Force One is one of the most frightening things I've seen in comics in a long time.
The Seekers wiping the USAF out of the skies.
Astrotrain looking to kill humans in a subway tunnel.
The Decepticons wipe cities all over the world.
They're not out to enslave humanity or steal energy or some technology like in the orginal cartoon show. They want to wipe us out, as in genocide, and in my book that makes them monsters.
While I do agree with you that the Decepticons are more ruthless, on-panel and what not, in the series, you've got to note that the first two points you make are entirely lost\lose a LOT of their meaning on non-USA readers.

Since lots of fiction, not limited to transformers, takes place in the US and features a lot of mayhem, the points they try to make across are lost after the 100000000000th time.
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inflatable dalek
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Cliffjumper wrote:I think AHM gets most of its' bad press from middlebrow fandom, TBH.
Better than lowbrow I suppose.
In isolation, brought from a bookshop or something by someone who's never heard of a minor league licence renter like IDW or a failed Alpha Flight writer like Furman it's not bad. The basic set-up, at least enough of it to get the ball rolling, can be deduced from rough memories of the old cartoon and it's big on familiar faces and exposition. The TPB format also eliminates many of the pacing problems. It's a good starting point on the whole because it leaves plenty of places to go to - if you want to find out the story behind Sunstreaker you can brave the Furman material; if not you can move forwards onto stuff not written by an irrelevant aging fanboy.

Last Stand is, IMO, pretty much the opposite in every way. At best most normal people think the Wreckers are three NASCARs. It's a truly great book but the deliberately lo-fi cast, fannish leanings, dense narrative and determination to salvage something from the whole Furman shit-pie would be distracting to anyone not already fairly well-read in TF comic lore already.
Regardless of their qualities I'd genuinely say Last... is the more accesable of the two books. All you really need to know going into it is there was a massive Decepticon attack against the Autobots. Which, considering the war based nature of the franchise and that the Decepticons are the sneaky bad guys is a fairly easy concept to grab and is explained within the first few pages. The only old buisness that doesn't really work in isolation is the Kup thing (which I regard as the only weak link in the book) but that's only touched on briefly.

AHM on the other hand, has an entire subplot entirely dependant on that whole Huntstreaker bollocks. The only thing it really has going for it is more of the "Classic" cast. And I'd say the three main big hitters in Wreckers (Kup, Springer and Perceptor) get more time spent on them in five issues than the bulk of AHM's do in 12.
Cyberstrike nTo wrote: Megatron standing in front of the firey remains of Air Force One is one of the most frightening things I've seen in comics in a long time.
IIRC Starscream shoot down AF1, Megatron only left New York for that dream conversation with Starscream.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Top picks from IDW...hmm...

Probably:

All Hail Megatron - good , knockabout fun. Doesn't really rely on that much prior knowlegde - Huntstreaker is explained along the way - just suffers from the aforementioned 'bum-scratching' that doesn't add anything to proceedings. Oh, and the miraculous recovery of one of the Autobots number despite being at serious risk of pegging it completely. I think the latter is what really brings the story down. It seems to be the sign of a writer whose painted himself into a corner and can't think how to get the good guys out of their funk.

Infiltration, Escalation and the first three collected volumes of the Spotlight solo stories under the Furman penned era are pretty good, just don't read anything beyond them.

As everyone else has said, Last Stand Of The Wreckers is arguably the finest Transformers comic book since Marvel's Generation 2 book. It's certainly the only one that is more attuned to how comics are written more widely in the rest of the industry (plot, drama, tension, characterisation, you know, all that stuff IDW generally think no one gives a crap about because Transformers is just a silly toy tie in), which is probably why everyone raves about it so much - it's as good as, say, a run of X-Men or whatever. The more I think about, the more that makes me sad.

Beyond that, the two current ongoings are good solid reads (MTMTE & RID) and don't require reading the Costa stuff. Basically, the war is over and here's how a society thats been at war for millenia struggles to getalong.

Also overlooked, but actually good fun is Transformers : Animated (collected in digest format as 'The Arrival') . Although not G1 related and reliant on the reader having a strong recollection of various episodes, its actually a fun little tie-in book. Has the best colouring IDW have ever managed too.

Stuff to avoid:

Megatron: Origin - just awful, with indicipherable art from Milne. the thing I despise about it most is that megatron is not this radical sh*t-stirrer that galvanises people into action, but is just a victim of cirumstance washed along by the machinations of others. Plus, silly visual with spiky face bits.

Stormbringer - No idea why so many folk adore this. Its one of Simon Furman's psuedo-scientific lectures and is as dry as old toast and about as much fun to read as Death's Head 3.0 which mined similar scientific fancies. I think the art by TF poster boy Don Figueroa has something to do with it.

Devastation, Revelation, Maximum Dinobots, Drift, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Ongoing, Movie Tie-ins, Beast Wars - Trees died for these things. What a waste.
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Post by Rack 'n Ruin »

Going slightly off on a tangent, I'd really like to get into MTMTE, but haven't bought any of the comics yet. I've read that the 1st TPB will be somewhat thin for the money it will cost. Can anyone recommend a (hopefully easy) way for me to pick up the individual issues so far?
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Download them. It's free and it means IDW don't get any money for it (which they wouldn't if you were buying back issues off ebay anyway; they'd only spend it on the licence for Glee or somesuch shit anyway).
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Post by Denyer »

http://oneshallstand.com/shop.html

See if Steve'll do you a bulk postage deal.

Asides from being dull, repetitive, cartoony, heavy on undeserved splash pages and eking a four or five issue story out into twelve, AHM also causes cancer in rats.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

I don't like rats.
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Post by relak »

Stormbringer - No idea why so many folk adore this. Its one of Simon Furman's psuedo-scientific lectures and is as dry as old toast and about as much fun to read as Death's Head 3.0 which mined similar scientific fancies. I think the art by TF poster boy Don Figueroa has something to do with it.
Ooh, i found Death's Head 3.0 rather fun to read.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

relak wrote:Ooh, i found Death's Head 3.0 rather fun to read.
It's only interesting (and i loose the term loosely) for the final splash page which has the mechanoid introduced here adopt the familar spiked lower jaw of the original, which hints that what we have just sat through is the 'true' origin of Death's Head.

Why Furman felt 'The Body In Question' was no good for this is beyond me, as its still one of the best things he's ever written.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Skyquake87 wrote:Why Furman felt 'The Body In Question' was no good for this is beyond me, as its still one of the best things he's ever written.
So's G2, but he's happy to shit all over it in ReGeneration One.
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Post by Red Dave Prime »

Skyquake87 wrote: Devastation, Revelation, Maximum Dinobots, Drift, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Ongoing, Movie Tie-ins, Beast Wars - Trees died for these things. What a waste.
You're not too far wrong but I do think that if your going to invest in Infiltration, escalation and those early spotlights you really have to read through Devastation and Revelations too. Even consider taking in Max Dinobots to complete the Furman era.

And the thing is, its not all bad in there. Devastation does have a fun chase between Sixshot and Ratchet and the first issue rackets up the tension. Yeah, it falls apart once the Reapers get involved but its not as bad as other stuff.

Revelations is actually half good. Spotlight Cyclonus is probably the best single issue Furman did for IDW and Spotlight Hardhead isnt too shabby either. What follows is guff but thats the IDW trend.

Even Maximum Dinobots has its moments. Scorponok is quite fun and the ending is so all over the place its entertaining in a weird kinda way.
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Post by relak »

So's G2, but he's happy to shit all over it in ReGeneration One.
Sadly yes. Instead of treating Regeneration One like actually part of the Marvel continuity, he's treating it like a Elseworlds title.
Revelations is actually half good. Spotlight Cyclonus is probably the best single issue Furman did for IDW and Spotlight Hardhead isnt too shabby either. What follows is guff but thats the IDW trend.
I still to this day cry over E J Su's best ever artwork (perhaps the best ever artwork in Transformers art history) gracing the pages of one of the worst spotlights ever.
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Post by GhettoBlaster »

Now that the dust has cleared a little, I wanted to check back in with you guys. How have the Robots In Disguise, More Than Meets The Eye And Regeneration One series all fared? Are they easy to dive into with prior TF knowledge (but not necessarily TF comic book knowledge) and worth my time?

With Christmas quickly approaching I might seek out a couple of the trade paper backs…
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Post by Knightdramon »

Regeneration One requires some knowledge of the Marvel universe. Only read one issue so far, and it's typical Furman, so I never looked back.

RID and MTMTE are designed and written in a way that you can jump on them without much previous knowledge. The MTMTE paperback has "The Death of Optimus Prime" which is pretty much the prequel to those two. And MTMTE 1 comes before RID 1.

MTMTE is definitely worth your time, I was hooked since issue 1. RID is arguably good, but in my opinion, not as good. Also, RID has most of the big TF names attached to it [Prowl, Bumblebee, Arcee, Wheeljack, Ironhide, all of the Decepticons] whilst MTMTE, with few exceptions, has second tiers as protagonists.
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Post by Terome »

I like them all for very different reasons but if it came to recommendation I'd still say that you should go whole-hog on MTMTE and ignore the others. RID is meandering weirdly and Regeneration is wildly uneven, sometimes being pretty affecting and sometimes outright baffling.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

It's also worth noting that both main books have slowly slipped into referencing previous plots, though in MTMTE's case it's not to intrusive as of yet. Barber did admit in the Underbase interview on the issue that RID 10 was pretty much a massive **** off to those who haven't read the earlier series (though in fairness to him, he wasn't completely happy with that, but still wanted to tell the story).
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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