ScottyP wrote:I don't like the art. No, seriously, that style could be ok, but not given how the rest of Combiner Wars has looked. In the context of this story, I passionately dislike how this looks.
I have to overall agree. It's not that Howell's art isn't good (it is good), it's just her style didn't seem to be a good fit. I see the similarities between her and Stone but where as Stone's was very animated when it comes to facial expressions and whatnot, Howell's is just overall cartoony. In fact her work reminds me a lot of the early Archie TMNT comics. So having said that, I would love to see her work on some less serious MTMTE oneshots in the future. But as what I assumed was an emergency/unplanned replacement for Stone, I think we could of ended up with a lot worse.
Super Megatron wrote:The self-pity/emo quality of Optimus is obviously dominating the gestalt in this scene. I'm really hoping IDW will eventually writing out this annoying aspecting of Optimus in the future stories.
I didn't take that scene as an "Emo Optimus" but more as a powered downed Optimus Maximus as he struggles to communicate internally with Prowl after just becoming an combiner for the first time.
Gearslide wrote:Genericon #378 wrote:Seriously IDW? What the hell were you thinking?! Killing Swindle? Ian's replacing him with some generic?
And don't think about asking why I'm not complaining about Slingshot and Wildrider being replaced, because I'll tell you why right now: those two were nobodies. Swindle is freakin' SWINDLE! He's the guy that sells you parts and other stuff for a really "great" price.
Did you read the comic? Because that rant makes it seem like you didn't read the comic. Unless you don't understand that Rattrap is known to lie and Swindle is known to act.
EXACTLY. I was worried Swindle was actually going to be killed off for good until Rattrap of all bots was the one and ONLY one to "confirm" his death. If anything that right there tells me that Swindle WILL be back.
CaptainMagic wrote:Does it seem to anyone else that this story, which exists solely to support the CW toyline, totally fails to sell the combiners effectively? No media that I'm aware of has ever done a very good job of selling the mix and match aspect of combiners, but this story is actively discouraging it by having Superion state that Optimus Maximus doesn't exist without Prowl.
All I can say is that for me personally as an non-serious collector I never really found myself thinking to myself, "Man maybe I should throw some $$ down on these things." Actually I take that back, I am really interested in Generations Magnus... but that's solely thanks to the entirety of MTMTE. Then of course there's Devastator, which I totally realize is targeted to the hardcore collector. As an outsider looking in at the end of it all it just felt like Hasbro tried way too hard to sell the concept.