Randomhero wrote:The renumbering and renaming doesn't bother me. I've been reading comics since I was 6 and it's something you have to just get adjusted to. This wasnt batman or Spider-Man getting in the 700s and 800s and going back it issue one, it was issue 56 and then changing. Wasn't that big of a deal.
My biggest issue has always been and will always be unless it changes is that Roberts writes this like a television show and not a comic book and those are two very different medias. The structure is an utter mess at times. The ideas and characterization have always been its strengths where as it's structure has always been something to be desired. I'm not going to go as far as some and accuse James of writing knock off red dwarf fan fiction but it's hard not to see it. I've talked to James, he's a great guy but I wish he'd work on his storytelling and grow from it instead of making tongue and cheek remarks from characters in the book like hes done a bit whenever "community" was referenced.
I used to get furious for so long at this series because it never does anything with the quest and I finally gave up by season 2 because there wasn't a single issue in those 2 and half years that actually had any form of progress with the quest. They got a map halfway but we had to have more deviations. James said with lost light he's making the quest priority. Now we know for the next few months thanks to solicits and probably for the rest of the year we will be in functionalist universe and all I can do is toss my hands in the air and ask "well why did you even say that James?"
He said it a few times in interviews and podcasts by the way.
That's interesting because I seems to me he has started writing things more like a comic, just not in a good way. One of the best things about Roberts' writing in the early MTMTE was that it was episodic, so we would get a more or less complete mini story in one or two issues, unlike other modern series where every single issue would end on a vital to the current plot cliffhanger. At the same time, each episode would lead into the next more or less, like when the fall out from Fort Max's therapy session lead into the next issue or the lead into the spark eater story.
It was annoying that the whole quest thing was a loose framework to hang the story on, but as long as the individual episodes were decent I could deal with it. Ever since season 1 ended, however, plots have gradually gotten more drawn out in some areas and severely truncated in others, and in some cases the payoff for the episodic stories don't have immediate consequences until a few issues later. For instance, the way I saw it, the episode with Froid and Sunder's main point was Skids' memories which doesn't come into play until the ending bits of Dying int the Light. This makes the lack of quest progress even more noticeable in the grand scheme of the series.
Now, as of LL, we're in full comic mode. Where the Functionist universe plot seems to be going on for 6 issues, and has almost nothing to do with the main threads introduced in the last series. Meanwhile, in just these 4 issues of LL, we've gotten so many new plot points to deal with, and it's infuriating that none of them are related to the quest or the Lost Light Mutiny, imo one of the most interesting things that happened in the last season.
To count every new thing that's been introduced, trapped in the Functionist universe, embroiled in the conflict of said universe, possible addiction to mood altering drugs for several characters, tailgate going nuts, whatever is going on with Anode, swerve and ten displaced to somewhere else entirely, future visions of pharma doing something. It's super exhausting.
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