2012 State of the Union.
Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:22 am
It's been a while since I did one of these, but that's what happens when IDW suddenly start putting out comics worth reading again...
So this is the place to sum up your thoughts and feelings on the following:
More Than Meets the Eye 1-12 plus Annual;
Robots in Disguise 1-12 plus Annual;
Autocracy;
Spotlight: Orion Pax;
ReGeneration One 1-6;
Fight For Cybertron;
Rage of the Dinobots 1.
On average, it's been an extraordinary year for IDW. But it's also fair to say the batting average has been inflated hugely by one man: James Roberts. I've borderline felated him enough over the year year, but it's fair to sum up that at its worst MTMTE is a damn enjoyable book. At his best it is genuinely some of the best stuff I have ever read in any medium ever. Oh yes.
But where does that leave the other stuff? I think Barber has done a lot of good stuff as an editor, but as a writer he can be very frustrating. RID has a fantastic set up and some moments of brilliance (with the Annual probably being the peak).
But the onging political plot has moved like an asthmatic sloth culminating in Megatron's return ensuring it's wound up going nowhere. There have also been various things that haven't made even the slightest sense (Arcee being able to take out Shockwave- the guy who beat the Dinobots by himself- when he's backed up by Soundwave, cassettes and Triggerhappy?).
The "Lets kill everyone!" stuff got deeply silly as well, I don't mind named characters being treated as just cannon fodder (MTMTE 12 actually showed how to do it right, Nautilator may have been introduced to die but there's actual effort to make him a character first and so the trade off for his many fans is he gets a on page personality for the first time ever) and liked the surprisingly quick way Ratbat was dealt with in what was probably the one and only example of the political plot going anywhere.
But by the time you got to Triggerhappy and Blot being killed off panel with a joke mocking people who don't like the number of named character deaths ("Who cares") it became too much even for my blood-lust, and I feel for those who hated it from the start.
I'd still like to know how Arcee has ended up as a Mary Drift as well.
Good stuff includes Wheeljack, Blurr and Starscream before his inner monologue destroyed his ambiguity.
Autocracy started off interestingly enough, but gradually got worse and worse as it started quoting the film more and more directly. Considering it didn't fit into continuity very well to start with and has been firmly ignored by Roberts (despite what the intro to the Spotlight said) so he could do his planned follow up to Chaos Theory just makes me wish they'd set it in the cartoon Universe after Pax got rebuilt by Alpha Trion, you'd hardly have to change anything.
Spotlight was Roberts Minor, and it felt like the "Explain minor continuity issues" thing was an editorial mandate from Barber (as that seems to be very much his thing, and got a bit silly in RID). On the other hand though, it felt like a proper old school Annual story, a bit of entertaining fluff. And the Wildmanesque art was better than anything Wildman has done this year.
Ah. Regeneration One. The people who really liked it, really liked it. I'm not sure what about this book brought out the more eccentric elements of fandom (I think my favourite is the chap who described me as infamous. Because it always makes me think of The Three Amigos; "He's so famous he's IN-famous!". Plus is was slightly disingenuous to Blackjack who I think must have written more reviews for the site than me by now), possibly their own insecurities over its qualities.
[Though I should say that, as always, it's a small minority who ruin it for everyone. Most Reg fans are perfectly capable of talking about it in a smart intelligent way. It's just a shame they got drowned up by the "I've been stalking you for months, tell me why you said this in 2007!" and "Don't generalise!" "But isn't that true?" "I don't care, don't do it!" people are far more memorable]
The irony is over the last couple of issues everyone seems to have settled down into thinking the book is decidedly OK, if harmless. Which has both killed off any discussion and rendered the slightly OTT praise it was getting at the start even funnier.
I think we owe Furman a lot for the great work he did back in the day. But I think we owe Uncle Bob a lot as well and I wouldn't want him to come back again either. Time for a belatedly dignified retirement.
Did anyone actually read the Aligned stuff?
So this is the place to sum up your thoughts and feelings on the following:
More Than Meets the Eye 1-12 plus Annual;
Robots in Disguise 1-12 plus Annual;
Autocracy;
Spotlight: Orion Pax;
ReGeneration One 1-6;
Fight For Cybertron;
Rage of the Dinobots 1.
On average, it's been an extraordinary year for IDW. But it's also fair to say the batting average has been inflated hugely by one man: James Roberts. I've borderline felated him enough over the year year, but it's fair to sum up that at its worst MTMTE is a damn enjoyable book. At his best it is genuinely some of the best stuff I have ever read in any medium ever. Oh yes.
But where does that leave the other stuff? I think Barber has done a lot of good stuff as an editor, but as a writer he can be very frustrating. RID has a fantastic set up and some moments of brilliance (with the Annual probably being the peak).
But the onging political plot has moved like an asthmatic sloth culminating in Megatron's return ensuring it's wound up going nowhere. There have also been various things that haven't made even the slightest sense (Arcee being able to take out Shockwave- the guy who beat the Dinobots by himself- when he's backed up by Soundwave, cassettes and Triggerhappy?).
The "Lets kill everyone!" stuff got deeply silly as well, I don't mind named characters being treated as just cannon fodder (MTMTE 12 actually showed how to do it right, Nautilator may have been introduced to die but there's actual effort to make him a character first and so the trade off for his many fans is he gets a on page personality for the first time ever) and liked the surprisingly quick way Ratbat was dealt with in what was probably the one and only example of the political plot going anywhere.
But by the time you got to Triggerhappy and Blot being killed off panel with a joke mocking people who don't like the number of named character deaths ("Who cares") it became too much even for my blood-lust, and I feel for those who hated it from the start.
I'd still like to know how Arcee has ended up as a Mary Drift as well.
Good stuff includes Wheeljack, Blurr and Starscream before his inner monologue destroyed his ambiguity.
Autocracy started off interestingly enough, but gradually got worse and worse as it started quoting the film more and more directly. Considering it didn't fit into continuity very well to start with and has been firmly ignored by Roberts (despite what the intro to the Spotlight said) so he could do his planned follow up to Chaos Theory just makes me wish they'd set it in the cartoon Universe after Pax got rebuilt by Alpha Trion, you'd hardly have to change anything.
Spotlight was Roberts Minor, and it felt like the "Explain minor continuity issues" thing was an editorial mandate from Barber (as that seems to be very much his thing, and got a bit silly in RID). On the other hand though, it felt like a proper old school Annual story, a bit of entertaining fluff. And the Wildmanesque art was better than anything Wildman has done this year.
Ah. Regeneration One. The people who really liked it, really liked it. I'm not sure what about this book brought out the more eccentric elements of fandom (I think my favourite is the chap who described me as infamous. Because it always makes me think of The Three Amigos; "He's so famous he's IN-famous!". Plus is was slightly disingenuous to Blackjack who I think must have written more reviews for the site than me by now), possibly their own insecurities over its qualities.
[Though I should say that, as always, it's a small minority who ruin it for everyone. Most Reg fans are perfectly capable of talking about it in a smart intelligent way. It's just a shame they got drowned up by the "I've been stalking you for months, tell me why you said this in 2007!" and "Don't generalise!" "But isn't that true?" "I don't care, don't do it!" people are far more memorable]
The irony is over the last couple of issues everyone seems to have settled down into thinking the book is decidedly OK, if harmless. Which has both killed off any discussion and rendered the slightly OTT praise it was getting at the start even funnier.
I think we owe Furman a lot for the great work he did back in the day. But I think we owe Uncle Bob a lot as well and I wouldn't want him to come back again either. Time for a belatedly dignified retirement.
Did anyone actually read the Aligned stuff?