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[snavej]

I wrote a fanfic several years ago where Shockwave briefly became a giant, super-powered, funny-shaped ship, only without the honking great eye giveaway. See TFArchive.com under snavej.

[ZeroWolf]

See now I'm curious what does Shockwave know about Unicron coming. Also I feel sorry for whatever writer comes next as this is the Shockwave story to end all Shockwave stories. Going to be very hard to top this

[AllNewSuperRobot]

New writers do so all the time. It's how comics work!

[D-Maximal_Primal]

Couple more comments to add.

Firstly, With the revelation that Shockwave basically wrote history, we can now look at him, Brainstorm, and Whirl as being the 3 guys who basically wrote IDW. Shockwave handled everything pre-civil war, basically, and a lot of things that happened during and after too. Brainstorm is the reason the universe and the war started as it did, and Whirl is the reason Megatron went to violence and started the war.

Who would ever have thought those 3 would be the ones to write history eh?

Secondly: Whatever Shockwave's involvement with Unicron, and it is apparent thanks to the Unicron #1 cover, I think we can almost call him the herald of Unicron, if he really does know of his existence and what is about to come and how he set things up for that coming.

Finally: these past 2 issues made it really hard to decide between Onyx and Solus for my new profile pic here. But Onyx fit my name so much better, and I love Zama's art of him, especially the face

[AllNewSuperRobot]

and Whirl is the reason Megatron went to violence and started the war.

So MTMTE/LL retconned Megatron: Origin?

[ZeroWolf]

so if true then I must admit, I would have never seen that coming, that being Shockwave as a hearld though unless it's actually the opposite and Shockwave being the logical being he is has actually orchestrated everything as it is to give the best chance of beating unicron...

[D-Maximal_Primal]

and Whirl is the reason Megatron went to violence and started the war.

So MTMTE/LL retconned Megatron: Origin?

No, MTMTE pre-dated Megatron: Origin. Whirl beat up Megatron after he was arrested for a bar fight he had no part in, but his friend at the time, Impactor, did. After being beat up, he started to think about how words were not enough, and then he was transferred to Luna 2, where then he killed his first bot and then started down his path.

so if true then I must admit, I would have never seen that coming, that being Shockwave as a hearld though unless it's actually the opposite and Shockwave being the logical being he is has actually orchestrated everything as it is to give the best chance of beating unicron...

This is not a bad thought either

[Randomhero]

Maybe it’s becuase I’ve loved IDW almost from the beginning but I look at the reboot and I say “nothing can trump some stuff that IDW reimagined”

Nothing will ever be better than the following:

Shockwave
Galvatron
Cyclonus
Megatron
The wreckers
Stracream
Bumblebee
Rodimus
Magnus/minimus ambus
Human/cybertronian relations
Most importantly the reason for the war!

I don’t want to go back to the status quo that autobots are the good guys and the Decepticon are the bad guys who want galactic domination.

I don’t want a megatron that is evil because he’s evil. That’s nothing fresh and original. I don’t want shockwave to be megatron’s buttler and just hangs around on Cybertron. I don’t want Starscream to always betray megatron and never learn.

We got that stuff for 21 years before IDW decided to go Marvel ultimate universe and reimagine everything.

I guess things that could be improved on is probably Optimus. No fiction has managed to beat the original cartoon Optimus prime. He was heroic, charismatic, a true hero. While that may be generic it’s iconic in so many ways.

[Randomhero]

so if true then I must admit, I would have never seen that coming, that being Shockwave as a hearld though unless it's actually the opposite and Shockwave being the logical being he is has actually orchestrated everything as it is to give the best chance of beating unicron...

Shockwave ain’t no herald of unicron. He’s back to unify Cybertron. He’s here to try and save everyone or what he thinks is saving them. He shows up as onyx with a cure to the tainted energon. Everything he just revealed in 18 was to ensure Cybertron and everyone is what history says.

Remember this is a guy who was almost destroyed the space/time continuum to preserve Cybertron and make it the only thing in the universe.

He’s not working for Unicron

[AlphaBass]

So he's seen the future, seen what is likely to happen, and is looking to unite everyone against Uni.

The brain-bending thing is wondering how Dark Cybertron would have played out had he not been stopped.

[Randomhero]

So he's seen the future, seen what is likely to happen, and is looking to unite everyone against Uni.

The brain-bending thing is wondering how Dark Cybertron would have played out had he not been stopped.

That’s the fun thing. It never was suppose to succeed! Shockwave created the entire dark Cybertron prophecy knowing it would fail and pretty much unite everyone and the colonies. The real question is was dark Cybertron event the actual prophecy or is it actually unicron that is really the prophecy? All the way back in RID issue 10 Optimus was flung to the future and witnessed the planet he was on in all red and the ground being pulled up with Jhiaxus telling him “you don’t know what real chaos is”

That’s a plot thread still dangling. Something I thought was forgotten becuase I always believed dark Cybertron wasnt always planned and it wasn’t. James and John didn’t come up with dark Cybertron till mid 2012 when they met up with Hasbro to create the event and Syndromica part 1(issue 6) was already out and part 2(issue 10) would have already been produced or was in production. It’s always been my theory John was planning some big event maybe with unicron back in RID before they went with DC and retconned some stuff from the Syndromica story but there still are some threads left from that story. Mainly the time remote Optimus took from Jhiaxus. He still has it! It didn’t play a role in DC. Maybe it’s got a role to play with him getting tossed into the singularity.

Shockwave didn’t do that to get rid of Optimus. He did it to enlighten him.

[ZeroWolf]

So he's the true saviour of this continuity, a misunderstood character...yeah it's going to be hard for any future writer to top this Shockwave

[Randomhero]

So he's the true saviour of this continuity, a misunderstood character...yeah it's going to be hard for any future writer to top this Shockwave

I think it’s going to be hard to top most of IDW. They broke almost every rule and remade everything. Where do you go? Back to them crashing on earth and waking up in 1984? Again?

[AlphaBass]

So he's the true saviour of this continuity, a misunderstood character...yeah it's going to be hard for any future writer to top this Shockwave

I think it’s going to be hard to top most of IDW. They broke almost every rule and remade everything. Where do you go? Back to them crashing on earth and waking up in 1984? Again?

No one is topping Shockwave. Even if Marvel or someone else gets the license, MTMTE/RID has the multi-layered continuity that will be hard to replicate.

Actually, I do not envy who comes after because they'll be required to perform great almost immediately and won't have the luxury of world building that IDW had. A lot of what makes this stuff awesome are the callbacks and shades of grey.

[ZeroWolf]

So he's the true saviour of this continuity, a misunderstood character...yeah it's going to be hard for any future writer to top this Shockwave

I think it’s going to be hard to top most of IDW. They broke almost every rule and remade everything. Where do you go? Back to them crashing on earth and waking up in 1984? Again?

No one is topping Shockwave. Even if Marvel or someone else gets the license, MTMTE/RID has the multi-layered continuity that will be hard to replicate.

Actually, I do not envy who comes after because they'll be required to perform great almost immediately and won't have the luxury of world building that IDW had. A lot of what makes this stuff awesome are the callbacks and shades of grey.

Oh definitely, in fact the new releases will be judged a lot harsher, especially by the different tribes that have formed ("not as good as marvel g1" "not as good as marvel UK g1" "nor as good as dreamwave" "not as good as furman idw" "not as good as pre-doop idw" "not as good as IDW") in one sense I think it would be good for the writers to throw caution to the wind and just let the creative jucices flow but I fear they are going to play it safe and just try to replicate what made g1 successful (and tie it into what hasbro are doing to boot, essentially getting the comic of the toy line which could work...)

[Randomhero]

That’s a sad thing about reboots in general nowadays. The big thing now is “play it safe”

Force awakens is a shining example of that. Play it safe and just remake A New Hope. That’s really why I didn’t like force awakens but that’s not what this is about. Just an example.

I will say this. I will do two things.

1. I will go in fresh and unbiased and give the reboot a shot and not try and compare it to this universe.

2. I’ll wait a year and pick up the trades and binge the first year and go monthly

That’s what I did with the first year of IDW becuase I wasn’t 100% sold right at the start. I waited till escalation ended grabbed infiltration, stormbringer, escalation and vol 1 and 2 of the spotlights and and then started going monthly. I read a couple here and there but wasn’t picking it up every month.

[AllNewSuperRobot]

and Whirl is the reason Megatron went to violence and started the war.

So MTMTE/LL retconned Megatron: Origin?

No, MTMTE pre-dated Megatron: Origin. Whirl beat up Megatron after he was arrested for a bar fight he had no part in, but his friend at the time, Impactor, did. After being beat up, he started to think about how words were not enough, and then he was transferred to Luna 2, where then he killed his first bot and then started down his path.

That is retconning Origin. He was just a miner and the death of.. Nameless prompted him to strike back and started him down his path. Even his first kill is explicitly stated in Origin!

You know, the kill that was the basis for This Cover:

[ZeroWolf]

Retcons are a part and parcel of comic books, especially for long running series. I can live with these as they don't dramatically affect things too much. It's not like they retconned the whole thing to say that he was actually a used car salesman who decided one day that he wanted control. They wanted to look at megatron in a new light but there wasnt too many openings in origins they could use so they went before it.

[AllNewSuperRobot]

Retcons are a part and parcel of comic books, especially for long running series. I can live with these as they don't dramatically affect things too much. It's not like they retconned the whole thing to say that he was actually a used car salesman who decided one day that he wanted control. They wanted to look at megatron in a new light but there wasnt too many openings in origins they could use so they went before it.

I've said this before, but having followed comics for two-ish decades, IDWverse is not old enough to warrant any retcon.

If there is some obscure fact from 25 years ago that conflicts with a current story, that can be justified retcon. Megatron Origin is barely 11 years old and still readily available. Not some lost tome that needed a modern redux due to it's rarity.
It speaks more to the ability and/or lack thereof, among the IDW writers for such a thing to be employed. For nothing more than to justify the "early adventures" of their roster in the already documented dawn of IDWverse.

I assume no such retcon of Prime has taken place either? Otherwise uproar would have been noted already.

A good writer would find enough wiggle room within the characterisation of the Origin story to tell their own tale, without lazily resorting to retcon. As shown in the many decades of comic stories featuring Magneto, Dr. Doom, Joker, Darkseid etc

[Randomhero]

Retcons are a part and parcel of comic books, especially for long running series. I can live with these as they don't dramatically affect things too much. It's not like they retconned the whole thing to say that he was actually a used car salesman who decided one day that he wanted control. They wanted to look at megatron in a new light but there wasnt too many openings in origins they could use so they went before it.

I've said this before, but having followed comics for two-ish decades, IDWverse is not old enough to warrant any retcon.

If there is some obscure fact from 25 years ago that conflicts with a current story, that can be justified retcon. Megatron Origin is barely 11 years old and still readily available. Not some lost tome that needed a modern redux due to it's rarity.
It speaks more to the ability and/or lack thereof, among the IDW writers for such a thing to be employed. For nothing more than to justify the "early adventures" of their roster in the already documented dawn of IDWverse.

I assume no such retcon of Prime has taken place either? Otherwise uproar would have been noted already.

A good writer would find enough wiggle room within the characterisation of the Origin story to tell their own tale, without lazily resorting to retcon. As shown in the many decades of comic stories featuring Magneto, Dr. Doom, Joker, Darkseid etc

well retconning means just fixing stuff really. Megatron Origins had some issues that needed retconning. Between issues one and two Megatron went from freaking out he took a life to straight up killing combatants in the arenas. MTMTE/Costa Ongoing showed flashbacks of Megatron before megatron origins who didnt believe in violence as an answer but things done to him started seeding anger in him. Things like Whirl beating him and trying to kill him in jail andTerminus telling him violence is necessary.

another thing retconned was Milne putting female cybertronians around in Megatron Origins when there shouldnt have been thanks to Alex Milne just drawing background characters for no good reason. LL retconned that some cybertronains came home and changed their gender by choice. thats a retcon.

Barber has been retconning problems since he started writing Transformers. They brought him on movie comics and all he did was write stories to fix the movies. Did a damn good job too.

John has also been retconning the IDW-verse since he started RID. The problem with two different reflector groups, Prowls constant personality changes, some of the real wonky stuff from the -ation era.

Its small stuff that later comics decided to fix problems fans pointed out and the current writers wanted to change.

Theres a lot of stuff thats also been retconned not due to error but by choice to make a story. Things like Project Regenesis, Headmasters, the Prime lineage, Prowl, Combiners, the infiltration protocols, etc.

[ZeroWolf]

Ah so it was Barber that tried to fix the movies, shame that bay and the writing team never read them.

[Randomhero]

Ah so it was Barber that tried to fix the movies, shame that bay and the writing team never read them.

he did it after Dark of the Moon but before Age of Extcintion. that was when he came on as Editor and writer to RID.

he fixed so much stuff that was in the scripts that went into the comics that were omitted and cut form the final cut of the films.

things like Barricades constant disappearances and a big one like the Fallen being in a sarcophagus in every fiction but the movie. for that he explained that Thundercracker took one of the Spacebridge pilers from the ark and brought it to the nemesis and it broke the Fallen out of his prison. Chris Mowry and Furman who wrote all the comics for the first two movies and their sequels said they were so confused when the saw Revenge of the Fallen because a lot of the stuff in the script that was important and put in the comics wasnt in the movie.

Stuff like that!

he literally took all the errors and continuity problems and fixed it all. just a shame no one read the movie comics. the comics are actually good and went off the final scripts, its the awful editing michael Bay was doing at the zero hour of the movies that caused some stuff.

[ZeroWolf]

Hopefully whoever takes over the movies can do a better job with them

[Deadput]

Force awakens is a shining example of that. Play it safe and just remake A New Hope. That’s really why I didn’t like force awakens but that’s not what this is about. Just an example.

People bring this fact up all the time but you know...

what were they supposed to do?

After the whole Prequel drama people wanted a return to original roots Star Wars, they had to play it safe they couldn't risk the big return of Star Wars with a gamble.

It could of been executed slightly better but the Force Awakens was overall more good then bad.

[Deadput]

I like (Read hate) how people act like they know what the reboot is going to be like just because their way to attached to IDW.

I think this is the right time to have a reboot, long running series only ever have one fate...to decline and end up being mediocre: Lost light is an example of this.

Best to let IDW end on as much of a high note as it can and start over fresh with a hopefully well thought out path for the comics. (If we want to be simple think about how the Marvel movies had all been planned out for awhile and not made as they go) because comics suffer when they have dozens of different visions clashing over each other of which vision will take the spotlight for an amount of time.