The Energon Pub

Mechabreaker wrote:I just picked up issue three today, I have to say that this new series really demonstrates Mike Costa's strength as a writer, say what you will about the art, but I am just loving the story so far. I also can't wait for Bumblebee # 2 and Last Stand of the Wreckers #1.

My thoughts exactly. I'm loving the story thus far.

I am very intrigued by the direction of this series.

It is starting to answer some "what if" questions. What happens when the war is over? Well, on Earth who won and who lost is completely irrelevant. The Autobot command structure has broken down and all you have is a bunch of soldiers on both sides stuck on a planet they don't want to be on. There is no reason for Motormaster to shoot Hot Rod so he doesn't and vice versa.

This premise has more potential than the old Dreamwave storyline that saw Shockwave unite Cyberton after the Ark/Nemesis crash on Earth.

But you have to admit the scene with red alert, Mirage, and swindle is pure expressive gold. ah heck it's just gold anyway you look at it. Though that said, his face is significantly closer to previous incarnations in style than to the nightmare that is bumblebee's face in issue 1.

Overall i have a much bigger problem with the inconsistencies across concurrent comics than the drastic difference of Don's redesigns. It bothers me a lot that bumblebee looks like sunbow Bee in his mini than how fugly his face is in the ongoing. Especially when cliffjumper retains the basic design he had in AHM and the ongoing, while bumblebee resembles none of his previous IDW designs at the same time he has Don's redesign in the ongoing which occurs concurrently. Some of Don's designs are really cool to me, like Swindle, Omega Supreme, and Thundercracker; some are horrible to me: like Bumblebee and Jetfire. Since they are giving artist license, i'm not bothered to see whoever is on art duty on the ongoing have control of designs. But I would like to see some level of in story reasoning if designs change when art duties do (we have a multiyear gap and a semi clean-start storyline in this case though, so now would be the time to do what Don did), and i fully expect consistency in a temporal form. No sunbow Bee on sundays and Matrixed out version the rest of the week. I know Chee's style isn't as technical or detailed, but then just simplify darnnit. Adaptation is what make for a skilled craftman. It's not the tools....

That said, there is one thing that bothers me very much about where the ongoing is heading. I like the whole setup, though i don't quite understand the need to show every possible random autobot on earth with out mentioning some sort of rounding up having happened. The decepticons make sense overall, they were all there so Megatron could keep an eye on them. Since most of the autobots are supposed to be dead having that many decepticons on earth makes sense. But this seems to be going back to the marvel days of circutbreaker and RAAD. And to be honest i'm sick to death of the whole "humans don't understand or care that autobots are good, autobots won't fight humans, and therefore will just suck at life" storyline. I didn't like it then and i don't now. I bores me more than i can politely express. But with the Hotrod plotline and Primes words to spike i have hope this is going somewhere new. Especially without anykind of JB Blackrock around. But if this whole thing doesn't start to advance by the time the bumblebee mini is concluded i might drop this series. I just really don't won't to read about autobots who are emo and humans who are arseholes. I much prefer the Machination/autobot interactions. The bot's were not particularly vengeful nor overly violent, but they weren't about to let themselves be dropped left and right and do nothing about it.

I'd really like see hotrod's group capture spike or the general and basically sit them in a cage and say, "we're going to talk now, and you're going to listen."

Calvatron wrote:
That said, there is one thing that bothers me very much about where the ongoing is heading. I like the whole setup, though i don't quite understand the need to show every possible random autobot on earth with out mentioning some sort of rounding up having happened. The decepticons make sense overall, they were all there so Megatron could keep an eye on them. Since most of the autobots are supposed to be dead having that many decepticons on earth makes sense. But this seems to be going back to the marvel days of circutbreaker and RAAD. And to be honest i'm sick to death of the whole "humans don't understand or care that autobots are good, autobots won't fight humans, and therefore will just suck at life" storyline. I didn't like it then and i don't now. I bores me more than i can politely express. But with the Hotrod plotline and Primes words to spike i have hope this is going somewhere new. Especially without anykind of JB Blackrock around. But if this whole thing doesn't start to advance by the time the bumblebee mini is concluded i might drop this series. I just really don't won't to read about autobots who are emo and humans who are arseholes. I much prefer the Machination/autobot interactions. The bot's were not particularly vengeful nor overly violent, but they weren't about to let themselves be dropped left and right and do nothing about it.

I'd really like see hotrod's group capture spike or the general and basically sit them in a cage and say, "we're going to talk now, and you're going to listen."

This is the big fly in the ointment. I had a bad flashback too when that human just jumped up and took out an Autobot while wearing some kind of power suit.

IDW would serve themselves well by resolving the human/Autobot thing as quickly as possible.

Wasn't the old Marvel group called RAAT?

Great points though. I do not like that the Autobots are big freakin' pansies afraid to show the humans that they deserve a little respect back, and that they simply need time to decide on a course of action, which may end up being leave the planet, especially since the humans have expressed that they do not like the aliens on their world.

We humans are big jerks, and we cannot get over ourselves is the main lesson to be learned from this. And I suppose that this is a reason I particularly dislike the human aspect of Transformers. It is usually very far left, or very far right when they interact. Either the humans are like Rad, Carlos, and Alexis, or they are like these humans, they either love the Autobots so much that they become basically Autobots, or humans hate them so much that they must, hunt, control, or dissect them. There never seems to be any middle ground that the humans take. Leave it at robots vs. robots action. Let the humans be background noise, or nothing.

It's for this reason that I think I will be enjoying 'The Wreckers' much more. That reason and Overlord anyway. That, Overlord and Springer...

I'm ALWAYS of the opinion that the less humans in my robot stories, the better.

The power suits have bothered me from minute one of this series, but I suppose they have to do something to make the humans a credible threat, right? I just find the arrogance of the humans in those suits to be...well, I'm all for blowing them up.

The mystery to me in this issue is...was that supposed to be the 'interrogation' we were promised back in issue 2? I sooooooo looked forward to that and...I'm still not sure what to think. If it was a 'friendly up' it was failing abjectly, and he should have changed strategies before the end. If he's 'speaking from his heart' trying to get Optimus to spill, he's a terrible interrogator, and then...what do we make of the end? (she says, delicately trying to avoid spoilerage) I'm not bashing, because I don't see how it's all played out yet, but...bad interrogations cheeze me off the way bad art gets to some of y'all.

Honestly, I do like the art. Don Figueroa is awesome. The faces are a bit...grouchy looking, but they're kind of growing on me--the body designs are pure win so I'll overlook a bit of faceyness. (Hey, we can't all be hot slabs of botcake).

I have a feeling I'll be woefully disappointed, but I'm holding out hope. Unlike the Bumblebee series which...just makes me want to put a belt sander to my face.

HK, we don't need no steenkin' badges!