Transformers: More than Meets the Eye season two discussion

[Death's Head]

Just to confuse matters, classic Doctor Who was arranged in 'seasons' but modern Who uses 'series'!

[Cyberstrike nTo]

I've read somewhere 20th of April, but don't quote me on that. Is that even a Wednesday?

Kind of an odd thought---USA has an "obsession" with naming parts of their stories "seasons", for instance, Lost Season 1, House season 2 etc.

On the opposite end, weirdly enough, the UK seems to use "series". Which is confusing because it almost sounds like a completely different show. Being Human 2nd series, Sherlock 3rd series and so on.

So how come the fruit of an English writer, in comic book format no less, is labelled as "season" from the get go?

And is this the very first time we've had that "distinction" in a transformers written story?

A lot of it is cultural differences, as an American the word series (when used for TV and comics) means the whole thing like Angel for example would be every episode over the course of 5 seasons (or years) or in the case of comics the whole series. A series finale for MTMTE in America would mean or be interperted as "IDW is ending it!" I think that Roberts using the word "season" was basically saying: "my first major arc is ending not the series".

The whole season thing in comics has became more popular due to popular TV shows being picked and continued as a comic book series. Dark Horse had Buffy, The Vampire Slayer-Season 8 (it is now season 9 or season 10 I don't read the book) as a way to justifed doing a glorified maxi-series (a long run series that lasts for anywhere from 10-300 issues depending on the series) so when BtVS season 8 came to an end at whatever number it ended DH could do a restart with season 9 #1.

IDW also does it with The X-Files. I've been wanting IDW to do season 8 comics on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager and a season 5 comic of Star Trek: Enterprise.

[Warcry]

Sometimes solicits can be deceptive and throw you off entirely...

Oh, I can't deny that. I'm thinking less about solicits spoiling the issue they're for than I am them spoiling the outcome of issues that haven't happened yet. If I'd cared about Dark Cybertron I would have been incredibly pissed that IDW was sending out cover pics featuring Megatron as an Autobot three or four issues before it happened in-story. It took something that would have been an utterly mind-blowing swerve and sucked all the emotion out of it. And it totally changes how you read the spoiled issue...instead of being surprised by Megatron's slowly growing epiphany until the final jaw-dropper hits, you're just waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Roberts went on to say last AA that he writes the first 3-5 pages with the mindset that they'll be revealed as previews; he puts just enough story in them in order not to ruin/spoil/reveal too much further down.

I figure that's probably common practice in this day and age of online previews. Though he doesn't always do a perfect job of it. Didn't the preview for the last chapter of Remain in Light skip a page to avoid spoiling a sadly unsurprising Roberts non-death?

IDW also does it with The X-Files. I've been wanting IDW to do season 8 comics on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager and a season 5 comic of Star Trek: Enterprise.

I don't see the Star Trek ones ever happening, because that ground has already been covered fairly exhaustively by the Pocket Books relaunches. As long as Pocket's universe is ongoing I don't think there will be a market for comics aimed at the same niche, because a good chunk of the potential readership is already invested in the existing relaunch stories.

[Red Dave Prime]

Megatron as an Autobot three or four issues before it happened in-story. It took something that would have been an utterly mind-blowing swerve and sucked all the emotion out of it. And it totally changes how you read the spoiled issue...instead of being surprised by Megatron's slowly growing epiphany until the final jaw-dropper hits, you're just waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Absolutely. Its the big twist at the end of the whole Dark Cybertron saga (and I still dont think it was done well despite the enormous amount of page time they had) and its just thrown away with a cover reveal. Its bad enough to get a spoiler in the 3/5 page preview - you know whether you want to look but I think a cover like that should have been held back a bit.

[Unicron]

Absolutely. Its the big twist at the end of the whole Dark Cybertron saga (and I still dont think it was done well despite the enormous amount of page time they had) and its just thrown away with a cover reveal. Its bad enough to get a spoiler in the 3/5 page preview - you know whether you want to look but I think a cover like that should have been held back a bit.

I think part of the problem on the cover reveal is that all of the covers for the issue in question give it away. I can see why they'd all have a cover like that, it's somewhat of an eyecatching thing if you recognize the significance. But yeah, they definitely need to come up with fake or placeholder covers situations like this.

[Warcry]

It wouldn't even be an especially difficult task in this case -- just produce a version of the cover with Megs wearing a Decepticon badge and send that out with the solicits.

Of course that presupposes that IDW didn't want to spoil their own story but we all know that they did. They consciously chose to ruin the ending of their big six month long mega-series in the hopes of luring in casual buyers with a big shocking visual so they could rake in a few more dollars in sales in the short term.

[Auntie Slag]

Yeah, the money shot is the problem. Otherwise I'm sure they would commission the artists to do cover images that didn't blow the reveal. Imagine if they did a cover that totally botched the Senator Shockwave bit in the final episode of Shadowplay?

If only they'd gone with an image of say; a table with some of high command sat round, a hand is in shot holding an Autobot badge and Rodimus looking stunned.

Or a partial silhouette minus the fusion cannon and only the badge is coloured.

I dunno, its not hard. They just totally went for the unit-shifting image. That's showbusiness.

[inflatable dalek]

OH WOW I HOPE SWERVE DOES SOMETHING CRAZY LIKE A JOKE

Look, if we promise to go round up everyone who voted for Swerve and force them to sign a disclaimer admitting they were wrong, will you let it go?

That's a Thursday, so it must be the 19th. I've grown up with TV programmes being referred to as series, and even then series has (as far as I'm aware) only been majorly referred to when buying videos or DVD's. So for example when the new series of Red Dwarf was starting up again on TV we'd say "Oh, Red Dwarf starts again this Thursday". I don't recall ever saying "The third Series starts this Thursday" or whatnot.

From the third series Red Dwarf was actually promoted in the Radio Times (and subsequently on video and DVD releases, with the first two years retroactively included) with the series number in the title (ie: Red Dwarf III). Which eventually even made it into the onscreen credits with series VII. Though exactly what Back to Earth Counts as (other than underwhelming) means we have a Red Dwarf X without having had a Red Dwarf IX.

Presumably there was some influence from the way Blackadder worked its series number into the show title every year as well (or possibly even the Primary and Secondary Phase stuff from the radio version of Hitchhikers).

The influence of the Big end of season episode goes back at least as far as when all those power dressing American soaps were big over here (Who Shot J.R.? was massive, and gave lots of good press coverage for a slow news day when the master tape for the resolution was brought into the country under armed guard), possibly even earlier as Doctor Who tried its hand at- a fairly rubbish and poorly executed- end of season cliffhanger in 1982 that, considering JNT's love of kitsch, was likely influenced by the American style.

Of course, "Has Tegan finally buggered off?", was about as exciting as the rest of Timeflight.

I think that, whilst "Series" is still "Officially" how production blocks of British shows are referred to most people not writing a thesis or working in the industry have happily taken up the American convention for casual conversation just because it is that little bit neater in differentiating between a year's worth of episodes and the entire run of a series.

Anyone remember how the people who put out the original British DVD of the first season of the G1 cartoon seemed to get a bit confused between the American and British methods and called it "The Complete Original Series Collection"?

Blake's 7 ended every season with a big cliffhanger as well, though half the time that was a "Wait, this isn't supposed to be the last episode after all? Bugger...." moment.

And that was a show that refered to it's seasons by letters. The weirdos.

I think the American's call them seasons because the airing of a new series tends to coincide with the seasons of the weather. Like; "Coming this fall season, Lost Housewives of the Dead".

Their TV makes a big distinction between Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter I think, as a way to focus the viewer to key TV events in time. I'm sure the UK will follow suit.

in fairness, despite the Series thing, British TV does it's big launches based around specific times of the year as well (IIRC the Remembrance of the Daleks DVD has a trailer promoting it as part of the BBC's Autumn season launch, and traditionally the Summer is supposed to be a bit of a place to bury mildly rubbish shows as people are supposed to be outside enjoying the sun, though things are changing with catchup TV and the like).

Target: 2006 never said Part 6 of 8 did it. It just hurtled on and freaked my little brain out with torture, death and fantastic Geoff Senior artwork, with NO indication that the whole thing was gonna be ring-fenced in three issues time. Was Galvatron just going to kill everyone? Who could tell?

Target: 2006 was promoted as an 11 part story by the comic right from the off, the EPIC length basically being a selling point.

Yeah, I've pedantically and joylessly corrected two of your posts. That'll teach you to correct mistakes in my blog. BWAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAHHHAAAAAAA.

Agreed on the dropped ball on the Autobot Megatron cover, I wonder how clumsy the attempts to set up the change in the final few issues would have seemed if we hadn't known it was coming?

[Auntie Slag]

Target: 2006 was promoted as an 11 part story by the comic right from the off, the EPIC length basically being a selling point.

It actually says that in the comics somewhere?

[Edit] Oh yeah I see it now, issue 78: The column you've screenshotted on your blog of the same issue. Damn that's obscure, but ok. Point proven. I would definitely have glossed over that as a kid.

[inflatable dalek]

It actually says that in the comics somewhere?

[Edit] Oh yeah I see it now, issue 78: The column you've screenshotted on your blog of the same issue. Damn that's obscure, but ok. Point proven. I would definitely have glossed over that as a kid.

The Transformation page mentioned it more than once over the course of the story's run as well (and, IIRC, the length was also played up in the weeks leading up to the start of the story).

[Auntie Slag]

OK, I never read those Transformation pages. The only bit of them I liked was the mention of who did the cover art, otherwise I was too eager to read the actual story.

I also didn't read the text stories in the annuals because there were like, too many words, man! And the accompanying art was too Ladybird. How could you sit there reading that stuff when Magnus and Galvatron were bitchslapping each other on the next page?

[Knightdramon]

I must be the only person not flipping out with Megatron being an Autobot?

Especially when, considering MTMTE story so far, the insignia/allegiance does not play any role at all in regards to the story. Pharma and Tyrest were/are amongst the most highly decorated Autobots. Sentinel and Zeta were the leaders of the Autobots.

Considering that, again, for MTMTE, the villainy of a character depends on their thoughts and actions and not their badge, they could have easily made Megatron join the crew but with a Decepticon badge or no badge at all, like Cyclonus.

Again, thinking back to how through flashbacks and stories they tried to make Megatron look like a misguided antihero instead of an outright villain, we *should* have seen his switch coming.

And lastly...for the past nearly 20 years there have been either outright evil Optimus Primes with a decepticon symbol, shattered glass autobots and black/evil repaints...shattered glass aside, this is the first "hero" reveal of Megatron ever.

[Auntie Slag]

Again, thinking back to how through flashbacks and stories they tried to make Megatron look like a misguided antihero instead of an outright villain, we *should* have seen his switch coming.

Really? His statement to Prime in Chaos Theory where he said "Prime, I can assure you I will not rest until I have turned every one of you into pate. For reals, yo".

He totally believed and savoured every word. He a bad mutha.

[inflatable dalek]

I think part of the problem is that- in fiction- Megatron's side switch happens the same week he thought Prowlestator was a good idea. That's a really rapid learning curve there.

[Knightdramon]

Really? His statement to Prime in Chaos Theory where he said "Prime, I can assure you I will not rest until I have turned every one of you into pate. For reals, yo".

He totally believed and savoured every word. He a bad mutha.

Yeah, and in the same issue, in his flashbacks, he was a poor an naive idealist who was nearly beaten to death and like Rung, got his name spelled out wrong every time.

In Soundwave's origin story in RID 21 and 22 he was portrayed as the one guy that wanted equal rights for everybody and was treated so bad it's natural to be mistrustful towards even his followers.

In Autocracy he was portrayed as a rebel with some dark tendencies who's far too brutal for his own good.

In Monstrosity, which I'm personally trying to erase from memory, he's a victim of an internal power struggle, has to survive on his own in order to return to Cybertron, take charge of his troops again and SAVE THE ENTIRE PLANET like a hero.

In Chaos he saved the planet on his own, more or less.

So yeah, while rare and inbetween, he does has moments of a true hero and a "good" person.

[Auntie Slag]

Good ol' Megs. He hits you because he loves you.

Actually I really like the depictions of Megatron and Shockwave in MTMTE. Their goals and origins and that are different. Back in the marvel days they were great too. Shockwave was far and away the better character but ultimately they both just wanted to crush ortobots for the glorious benefit of Decepticon empire.

Now its the guy from Brassed Off who writes and presents his own poetry in Camden and the other gets shafted in office worse than Jerry Maguire.

[Red Dave Prime]

I think part of the problem is that- in fiction- Megatron's side switch happens the same week he thought Prowlestator was a good idea. That's a really rapid learning curve there.

This. Very true. In fact, Megs arc would have made sense if he had NOT been involved at all with the bombshell/ prowlestator (is that a thing now?). In Chaos Theory, He has his debate with Prime and while he doesnt back down, maybe it opens his mind a little. In Chaos he somewhat becomes Cybertrons hero and sacrifices himself for the good of all (and his ego to be fair). Then if we simply had his time in the wilderness allow him to really question his ideals then the transition in Dark Cybertron would work. But it doesnt because in the RID he is very much back to Mu-wa-ha-ha evil villain mode. He is a full on bad guy, completely with over elaborate plan and urge to explain said plan before it is complete (and also orders to kill the good guys and then epic fails that)

Its a pity because they probably had the general idea of an Autobot megs for a while. I just dont think the journey was done well enough/

[Unicron]

I think it's worse than the same week, didn't Dark Cybertron happen all of a day or two after the Prowlestator mess? Had they handled that whole plan as Megatron just sort of going through the motions because it's what his troops expect, it would have made the transition to Autobot easier to believe.

[Knightdramon]

Not in the same week---from my calculations, the very next day, or one day and a half later.

Issue 16 happens, [RID]Megatron is imprisoned, Starscream kicks the Autobots out of the city on the sunrise of the new day [attack happened at night].

Next sunrise, which came early, was the beginning of Dark Cybertron, and unless I'm mistaken, that was it, no other sunrise. Bumblebee is driving with the torn apart Megatron at night halfway through Dark Cybertron.

I've been re-reading MTMTE S1...going at issue 2 tonight.

A sad realization...Bumblebee and Rodimus last spoke to each other in Death of Optimus Prime, on the balcony when Orion left. They were never in the same place at all on issue 1, and Rodimus did not take Bumblebee's call.

Seeing as Rodimus is trapped in the DU until the end of Dark Cybertron, only spoke to Starscream on "the phone", and helped carry the wounded instead of fighting Shockwave at the end...

Poor guy never saw or spoke to Bumblebee again. Neither did Pax.

[Terome]

If I'm feeling charitable I'd put most of the Prowlestator whatnot at Bombshell's feet. Even so, it does mess with Megatron's arc quite a lot.