The Energon Pub

Much as I hate multi-quoting and answering arguments piecemeal, this one kinda demands it.

Damolisher wrote:Yeah, even though the comic was full of ridiculous concepts itself, including, but not limited to:

• Carwash of Doom
• Optimus blowing himself up over a game
• The stupid issue with the children in space with the teddy in a space suit
• Meccannibals
• Scraplets being cured by the mystic tap water
• Megatron losing his memory and regaining it by being thrown to the ground
• Micromaster Wrestling.

All of which can be attributed to Bud's 'get me off this rag' phase, and which account for a definite minority of the 332 issues out there just in the G1 series... Leaving aside the fact that I never said the comic didn't have its down points, it's my considered opinion that the ratio of good to dumb stuff is significantly higher in the comics than the cartoon. This is especially true when you consider the amount of near-blind interleaving the UK writers had to do with the US material, a problem which the cartoon producers didn't have to deal with; and yet the comic still achieved a much higher level of internal continuity with much more complex material.

Damolisher wrote:Compared to regrettable concepts from the cartoon:

• BOT

Honestly, that's all I can think of from the cartoon.

You've got to be kidding, right? Let's find a few more:

• The Constructicons have at least three mutually-exclusive origins
• Me Grimlock dumbass! Us Dinobots too stoopid to live!
• Any number of new toys - sorry, characters - coming out of nowhere, getting no characterisation and never being seen again
• Megatron's stupid-and-overcomplicated-weapon-of-the-week
• Seaspray and Powerglide's respective fleshy love stories (weren't you one of the guys saying how much you hated romance in TF and the concept of mech-on-squishy love in general?)
• A minor bad guy race from TFTM turns out to be the secret creators of the entire Transformer race
• Elita-One
• Primacron and the whole Unicron origin story
• City of Steel
• Anything connected with Carnage in C-Minor
• Bruticus has shutdown buttons conveniently placed on his back

I really could go on...

Damolisher wrote:Plus, we wouldn't have the following were it not from the cartoon:

• Starscream's voice, and OVER cowardly personality - his whiny, irritating voice and the almost comic-relief cowardice which makes any idea of him rising to power in the Decepticons beggar belief.
• Galvatron's insanity - which could have been an interesting story but was way overplayed. Besides, have you ever actually read any of the Galvatron comics? Cartoon Galvy got cranky and punched out his lieutenants a few times. Comic Galvy was as mad as a box of frogs - he tried to destroy the entire universe in his insanity.
• Cyclonus' Loyalty - two continuities, two characters; this is hardly a defining concept of TF mythos.
• Soundwave's awesome voice - which makes any kind of actual dialogue impossible.
• A Decent Optimus - give me an Optimus who thinks, and has issues worth thinking about, over a one-dimensional Good Guy Hero strutting about in John Wayne mode all the time.
• Any characterisation for the 1986 line - excuse me? Whatever you're smoking, could you share it with the rest of us?
• Quintessons - I rest my case.
• Unicron - an unexplained ultimate-monster-outta-nowhere that only the McGuffix can stop, who later turns out to be the overgrown pet of some diminutive monkey creature?

Damolisher wrote:And Unicron IS most important, because without the cartoon, the comics wouldn't have Unicron. And the UK comic wouldn't have most of it's most important stories. And the last 20 or so issues of the US comic wouldn't have happened. (Well, they would, but the story would be vastly different.)

Uh. Firstly, TFTM was a huge project that was always going to impact every available continuity - cartoon, comics and toyline tech specs. Secondly, comics Unicron is a vastly different character from cartoon Unicron. The Unicron you seem to be talking about (the godlike, Chaos-driven Devourer of Worlds) is a comic creation, not a cartoon one.

Besides, if we're in the pissing contest of who wouldn't have what if the other continuity didn't exist, a brief list of things the cartoon wouldn't have if not for the base material created for the comic by Marvel includes: the civil war, the Ark, a crash-landing on Earth millions of years ago, Optimus, Megatron, or just about any of the characters. Sorry, but the comic came first.

Damolisher wrote:So to say the cartoon isn't canon and yet the comic is is a very, very flawed statement.

Yes, it would be a flawed statement, which is why I didn't make it. They are both canon in separate continuities. I vastly prefer the comic version, and frankly could scarcely care less about the so-called 'continuity' in the cartoon. But if you read back a few posts, you'll see that it was you who made the blanket statement that one version was the most important piece of Transformers canon ever, not me.

Besides, I thought this topic was about fembots?