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william-james88 wrote:

Kurona wrote:Loooordy I forgot how bad that outfit design was; it gets worse every time I look at it...

Someone was paid to design this. Someone was paid to look at this and approve it. Someone was paid to publish it. As a main character of a long-running comic.

It can be worse, someone approved this haircut being published in an ofshoot of the best selling Marvel book:

Is... is this the opposite extreme to Liefeldian art? I think I hate this. Why would you show me this

Kurona wrote:Is... is this the opposite extreme to Liefeldian art? I think I hate this. Why would you show me this

Its important, I will get to that in a bit. But yeah, you might not know Bill Sienkiewicz, but he s a rather legendary artist with a unique style. He designed both Legion adn Warlock in the x-men and thats what i thought of when we were looking at these extreme designs coming out of that era:



It kinda works when you see how the rest of pages he daws turn out:



But then artists are stl stuck carrying out his designs later in different styles so Legion is stuck with that crazy hair do and warlock always looks really out of wack with his suroundings.

But in the context of his art, it works.

Anyways, you might not like his art and thats ok, but Bill Sienkiewicz is still very much loved and a huge selling point to many. Back in the day, Marvel would use his eye catching style to sell books they werent sure of, like this one:



Yes, Bill Seinkewiecz, is behind the very first image of Optimus Prime (and Transformers) ever shown to the public.

I mean... you did show me him without any context or extra information, meaning my immediate knee-jerk reaction will be that it's not a good design. In-context with this artist's particular style and world and such, then yeah, it probably works very well. But I'm not entirely sure what point is trying to be made then...? If the point is that I should view Circuit Breaker within context and not just from a picture; no worries, I've seen her a lot in the past and always thought it was one of the stupidest costume designs I've ever seen, even considering the sort of costumes Superheroes usually wear. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the comparison if that's not the point being made...

Right, so.

I wanna preface this by saying that I'm reading the UK version of the Marvel comic -- and I haven't finished quite yet; I'm on issue 252 out of 332. I've also read the Headmasters mini and all the annuals bar the last one (since that last one is much later on the reading list).

So with that out of the way, and bearing in mind that, yes, I haven't finished Marvel quite yet... I feel a fair majority of the best characters in the Marvel comic were humans. I'm dead serious.

Buster, Spike and Galen all have long-running character arcs about overcoming fears and insecurities while learning compromise that are interesting and unique in their own right. Sparkplug's relentless concern and protection of his son, combined with his war backstory and the fact that he keeps on working with the Autobots as he sees it's the best option despite how much danger his son's been plunged into makes him a very sympathetic side character. Walter Barnett's work stresses, his dedication to his family and mankind and his eventual realisation that the Autobots are the good guys makes for a very satisfying read. Zarak's early complexity in that he's a corrupt politician yet still has a clear amount of care for his daughter and people - which is constantly getting choked by his mind-meld with Scorponok - makes for a sad ending when reading in-between the lines, and then he goes on to be probably the best Decepticon leader of the comic. Even smaller things like Gort's relationship with Highbrow end up being more interesting than one would expect.

Aside from Circuit Breaker - who I know has some sort of redemption and character resolution down the line, but goddamn if I'm not endlessly frustrated by all her appearances so far - I can't think of a single human character I've actually disliked in this comic so far. They've all had their own unique things going on while having the good grace to step into the background when we need to get to the robot action -- and the Headmasters provide a wonderful meld of both. I think the Headmasters mini might actually have been my favourite part of the comic so far for that reason; right up there with Target: 2006 and Gone but not Forgotten.

I actually struggle to come up with Cybertronian characters I liked this much, bar a handful of examples like Ratchet and Carnivac. I can't say I expected to get into this comic and come out finding the humans to be one of my favourite parts, but there you go.

Yeah, the G1 comics were good at human development. They had their share of a-holes as well as page-wasting side characters, but Budiansky and Furman both did well with humans. Yeah, Circuit Breaker was a seemingly irredeemable psycho, but she does have 1 redeeming moment, and it's a big one. (But you're not there yet ) That combined with the fact that it was Shockwave who caused her to be that way, I tolerate the character. My favorite G1 human is Spike, and I hated how he ended up in both G2 and Regeneration One, considering his satisfying and well-deserved ending in G1. I liked him because when I was younger and 1st read the comics, I wanted to be just like him.

In the cartoon series, I liked Ginrai from Masterforce as well as Rad and Alexis from Armada. But I think I am in the small minority there.

What ho? Is this a thread on good human characters in Transformers? And narry a mention of THE ANGRY ARCHER? Damnation! This will not stand!

Anyway, now that nonsense is out of the way, I was always a fan of Alexis in Armada- I wouldn't mind seeing her return to the franchise in some manner. To be honest, actually, most of the female humans outside of the movies have been decent. Alexis was cool, Lori was good, Sari was hilarious, Miko was great...Even the G1 human girls are mostly pretty good!


"Eh? D-Does that mean I'm a good character?"

NO NOT YOU GO AWAY

(I still want to see the Kiss Players girls put into something actually not terrible. They're adorable but, well, >Kiss Players)

I always liked the human characters in G1. They weren't overbearing or anything and the main focus wasn't entirely on them. And they still managed to be memorable and decently developed.

I also like Kelly.

She was a humorous character that you can't help but feel bad for.

Marissa Fairborn. Yay or nay?

Depends on which one we're talking about. imo they range from pretty good to best human character in the franchise.

There was also... that one. But we don't talk about that one.

I feel like we might all (myself included!) be forgetting a certain "duuuuuuuuuuude": I genuinely enjoyed Sir Edmund Burton in The Last Knight. He toed the line between Serious Exposition Mentor Figure and Totally Out of Place Absurdist Comic Relief in a way that was probably not the slightest bit deliberate, but worked fantastically. Not sure anyone other than Hopkins could have pulled it off, at times it seemed like Anthony Hopkins playing a Slightly Bemused Anthony Hopkins with Robots.

I'm not seriously proposing that he's anywhere near the top 5, but far and away among the best bayverse characters. IDK, say what you like about how stupid it is (ie: astoundingly so) but I had a lot of fun with TLK, and it wouldn't've been the same without him.

I've not watched TLK myself, so can't say it's something I forgot
Talking of movie characters though, I guess Simmons or whatever the recurring agent's name was would be a pretty good candidate. If ever we make a Top 5 worst list, though, Sam's parents should certainly be near the top

Kurona wrote:I've not watched TLK myself, so can't say it's something I forgot
Talking of movie characters though, I guess Simmons or whatever the recurring agent's name was would be a pretty good candidate. If ever we make a Top 5 worst list, though, Sam's parents should certainly be near the top

Fair lol- personally I'd recommend it, but I've heard "this will save the movie franchise" and "this is the final nail in the coffin" in roughly equal amounts...

Simmons is a good shout though, he's born the brunt of some of the bay films' worst kinds of "humour" but he's also had some genuinely pretty good moments. Credit to John Turturro for portraying his slow descent from agent to conspiracy-theorist in an at least moderately amusing way.

...I'd forgotten about Sam's parents though and am sad that you reminded me. Oh lord, remember Alice from movie 2 or 3? Ok so she turned out to distinctly not be a human but... sheesh. I do my best to erase a lot of the early bay films from my mind, I think the humans in them could fill up a top worst human characters list and then some

I dont mean to piss anyone off but there will be 0 movie humans on this top 5 list I am cooking up. I don have anything against em, but there are 5 better human characters out there outside the films.

I look forward to reading any arguments in the comments though

Aw crud. I forgot that I still haven't yet given you a good write up on the Rescue Bots humans. I need to get on with doing that.

Sabrblade wrote:Aw crud. I forgot that I still haven't yet given you a good write up on the Rescue Bots humans. I need to get on with doing that.

Thanks man. And either make it about a particular character (like a villain) or a particular family. And the Kurona and I will decide if it beats some of the Marvel UK humans for the top spot(s).

Kurona wrote:There was also... that one. But we don't talk about that one.

And just which one would that be?

As for movie humans, I like

Sam's parents (except when they take Sam to college in RoTF)
Maggie Madsen
John Keller
Lennox
Bobby Bolivia
Bruce Brazos
Dylan Gould
Dutch
Cade Yeager
Tessa Yeager
Joshua Joyce
Harold Attinger
Merlin
Sir Edmund Burton
Viviane Wembley
Izabella

I didn't like

Sam
Mikaela
Simmons
Epps (and the other soldiers during Scorponok's attack)
Glen Whitmann
Leo Spitz (and his idiotic friends)
Theodore Galloway
Professor Colan
Carly
Charlotte Mearing
Jerry Wang
Hardcore Eddie
Shane Dyson
James Savoy
The kids at the beginning of TLK
Santos

Rodimus Prime wrote:

Kurona wrote:There was also... that one. But we don't talk about that one.

And just which one would that be?

If you don't know, I'm so happy you've been spared the knowledge.


kiss players

Can I just say how disappointed I am that nobody has mentioned the Greatest Hero of Them All?

Ian Noble is the greatest human TF character.

He's better than every human Transformers character, that's for sure