The Energon Pub

In light of recent news from IDW which states that the "Transformers: Ongoing" story arc will shift to focus on Hot Rod and his exploits in space, I have been trying to figure out what we have in store for us in the coming months.

Will the story introduce new non-human civilizations or expand upon existing civilizations and their role in the plot, such as the Nebulans? Could Hot Rod's space theme lead to not only "Spotlight" issues focusing on characters such as Cosmos, but also expand on stories such as those presented in "Spotlight: Revelation", particularly the impact of Cybertronian space exploration as evidenced by Nova Prime's failed expedition?


- Bob

Bobton03 wrote:In light of recent news from IDW which states that the "Transformers: Ongoing" story arc will shift to focus on Hot Rod and his exploits in space, I have been trying to figure out what we have in store for us in the coming months.

Let me save you the trouble. On the evidence of what we saw in #1-#6, combined with Costa's proven non-talent when it comes to writing Transformers, we can pretty much see Hot Rod descend to further level's of Goth/Twilight emo-ness, the likes of which make his Season 3 characterization look like sheer brillance by comparison. And which, by the end, will have us all wishing the character would just bugger off and die, already.

am i the only one that doesnt give a monkeys about hot rod ?

i dropped the book at issue 8 though i probably will buy the trade for "international incident" on the grounds its half price but when i heard the next arc was gonna be "hot rod in spaaaaace !" any thoughts i had of buying THAT arc when its finished went right out the window.

how the hell do IDW keep **** things up?

its GOT to be schmit in editorial as i dont ever remember chris ryall being THIS out of touch . the bots back in space is something that i reckon most would welcome after the **** they've made of IDWs earth, yet STILL they find the one angle that'd put me off.

on the OP.

I reckon you wont get ANY of that mate. what well get is hot rod chasing starscream for the matrix and knowing these bunch of knobs, rodimus prime for no real reason whatsoever.

partholon wrote:am i the only one that doesnt give a monkeys about hot rod ?

i dropped the book at issue 8 though i probably will buy the trade for "international incident" on the grounds its half price but when i heard the next arc was gonna be "hot rod in spaaaaace !" any thoughts i had of buying THAT arc when its finished went right out the window.

how the hell do IDW keep **** things up?

its GOT to be schmit in editorial as i dont ever remember chris ryall being THIS out of touch . the bots back in space is something that i reckon most would welcome after the **** they've made of IDWs earth, yet STILL they find the one angle that'd put me off.

on the OP.

I reckon you wont get ANY of that mate. what well get is hot rod chasing starscream for the matrix and knowing these bunch of knobs, rodimus prime for no real reason whatsoever.

Well the thing with Ryall was that all comics, bar a select few, where all written by Simon Furman who had everything planned out and the only thing Ryall had to do was make sure the lettering and art was done correctly, at which he failed quite often.

And so far I've only ever liked the Marvel UK Rodimus and I've only read one story with him.

partholon wrote:how the hell do IDW keep **** things up?

They gave the keys, so to speak, to Mike Costa. And they let him keep them even though he's now given us thirteen reasons why he shouldn't have them.

It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Stormwolf wrote:It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Gimme a break.

All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Cyberstrike wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Gimme a break.

All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Which is more than what you can say about McCarthy and Costa, Twilight is more exiting than ongoing.

Cyberstrike wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Gimme a break.

All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Well, that's your opinion.

Don't agree with it though.

Cyberstrike wrote:All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Um...the reason Furman didn't explain any of it was because IDW didn't give him a chance to do it properly, deciding to tidy up three years worth of plot in four rushed "Spotlight" (I use those quotation marks to make a point) issues, while giving the keys to McCarthy for All Hail Megatron: Subtitled Reset Button Version 1.0.

You know, I would say give the Keys to Nick Roche, but I kind don't want him running the risk of becoming burnt out. I like way he works now, showing up with carefully crafted material when he's ready for it.

As for Furman, I think things would've picked up by now had he been allowed to stay on, but he's got more than enough experience to know that he had to throw us more bones to stay on as head writer than he actually threw out.

Personally, if IDW could afford it, I think hiring a crack staff of writers with a solid editor base would've been the answer for an ongoing series, kind of like what Marvel did with Amazing Spider-man. Man it would be mind blowing if Warren Ellis was given the keys to the ongoing.

As for Hot Rod: I don't like where the character is now. I'm a fan of him (just check my post in the Rodimus... Blasphemy thread), but he's a lot different from Furman's run. I don't think he would've made the mistake of running away, let alone blindly trusting Swindle. That said, I do hope that "Hot Rod in Space" is a redemption run for him. Man, just let him be grown up without the Matrix already.

Edit: I think the real problem with everything IDW has been putting out TF related is this "Write for the trade" mentality. It just doesn't work for every story. Some stories only work well being short as possible. I mean the original Marvel US and UK run had great stories in their stand alone issues, and I do agree Furman's idw run took too long to play out before we saw any real fruit start to grow. However, Furman got more than enough experience to know when to speed things up. I mean seriously, why does everything have to be told in six issues now a days? It's not just IDW, but the industry as a whole now a days. As a consumer, I won't be offend if I pay for a six issue trade that actually is several collect stories in one trade. I call that a bargain. I don't think we'll see the pacing from before the trade boom until online comics really start to bring in the bacon for publishers.

IDW has more or less lost me as a consumer.

They have shown complete disregard to the people were fans of the storylines from DW and Devil's Due, when they have taken control of their Hasbro titles.

Most of the books are in the hands of hacks, with subpar writing and inconsistent art.

Over hyped series promising interesting concepts or necessary plot points, resulting in fan wanks.

too much crap to often.

Editor wrote:
They have shown complete disregard to the people were fans of the storylines from DW and Devil's Due, when they have taken control of their Hasbro titles.

No, that's DW's/Pat Lee's fault, not IDW's. And well, the Devil Due's issues were only crossovers, so that meant more paperwork than any publisher would be interested in handling. Not to mention any money going from one business' pocket to a competitor's, which mean even less after paying the license to Hasbro to produce new TF comics.

Also, DW comics suffered from bad art due to them mandating Pat Lee's style on other artists, which makes the job all the more difficult for any penciler.

All your other reasons have validity to them though.

The Devil's Due is NOT just related to crossovers. Their run with the basic GIJoe book was very well handled and many readers were dismayed with their losing the license to IDW. (The World War III storyline was great)

IDW in turn chose not only to ignore the current stories in the creation of the new incarnation seen in their regular ongoing, origins, and COBRA series, but with there new "continuation" of the original Marvel series, they torpedoed the entire Devil's Due run.

YES, YES, DW and Pat Lee screwed themselves, nobody disputes that, but the fact is that there are people who for whatever reason, looked at the DW books and were ok with the faults, enough to be miffed that they ended in the way they did. As far as I'm concerned, the DW take on G1, for all it's faults was better than IDW's take on it with their current inconsistent dreck.

Furman gave us actually a good amount of bones, considering how little idw let him do to further the main story
He had 6 issues a year to tell the main story
The first year he was given an extra 5 for Stormbringer which took place during Infiltration so it didn't further the story
And then there where the 12 Spotlights a year which where advertised as standalone one shot stories with no importance to the main plot, while in reality they where very important.

idw expected Furman to tell a complex epic story with just 6 issues a year.

And by the time idw realised that the Spotlights actually fitted into the main story it was already too late and the readers disregarded those.

Oh and the only series by idw that had any kind of quality was the first 3 years of tf, I've read Ghostbusters, well the 2 issues they actually delivered to me and man does that blow, horrible lazy inconsistent art and a very bad story which doesn't even feel like Ghostbusters.

I wish someone else would do the GB and TF books.

Dead Metal wrote:Furman gave us actually a good amount of bones, considering how little idw let him do to further the main story
He had 6 issues a year to tell the main story
The first year he was given an extra 5 for Stormbringer which took place during Infiltration so it didn't further the story
And then there where the 12 Spotlights a year which where advertised as standalone one shot stories with no importance to the main plot, while in reality they where very important.

idw expected Furman to tell a complex epic story with just 6 issues a year.

And by the time idw realised that the Spotlights actually fitted into the main story it was already too late and the readers disregarded those.

Yeah, he did throw a lot bones out through the spotlights, but those 6 issues a year were meant to be the "Ongoing" TF comics in lieu of an actually ongoing series. So they did, at least to me, suffered from the write for the trade mentality. Had he been given a proper ongoing series, I think we would still be reading Simon's IDW Transformers. Again, that slow pacing makes picking up the individual issues almost not worth it for me. Six months is kind of ridiculous waiting period for a single story, especially when it is used for almost every story for a "ongoing" series, Furman's or Costa's run. Which leads to a bigger problems sales wise.

While publishers do make money off the trades I think they try to make as much money as they can off of it. The individual issues, these days, are responsible for not only recovering the cost to make them, but bring profit to the table as well. So when you have a story that that's six issues long, not every issues sells as well as first one, so thats basically six months of declining revenue. Meanwhile the generally consensus among people who do enjoy/want enjoy the current ongoing series is that it takes too long of wait for the payoff, and when it comes, most of fans have been left frustrated. The six issue arch works great for those grand epic stories like Stormbringer, The last issues of the Marvel run, and Last Stand of The Wreckers, but any other sort of story suffers because they're not meant to be drawn out like that. So this basically levels Costa, and even Furman, screwed, because thanks to TV and Youtube most of us have a short attention span, or get our thrills elsewhere.

I'm so glad I stopped reading when War Within was cut off...

Rodimus Prime wrote:I'm so glad I stopped reading when War Within was cut off...

Wow, what do you do for Transformer fiction fix then?

Can't talk for Roddy, but I get enough from the club fiction, and HMW that I'm not worried about missing IDW stuff.

Dead Metal wrote:

Cyberstrike wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Gimme a break.

All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Which is more than what you can say about McCarthy and Costa, Twilight is more exiting than ongoing.

I find Ongoing one the most exciting series on the market and I can't wait to read each month. I'll take character-driven stories over dumb pointless action stories every time.

Cyberstrike wrote:

Dead Metal wrote:

Cyberstrike wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Gimme a break.

All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Which is more than what you can say about McCarthy and Costa, Twilight is more exiting than ongoing.

I find Ongoing one the most exciting series on the market and I can't wait to read each month. I'll take character-driven stories over dumb pointless action stories every time.

Just a quick question, how would you rate the following issues:

http://www.seibertron.com/comics/issue/ ... ers-20/22/
http://www.seibertron.com/comics/issue/ ... k-135/295/
http://www.seibertron.com/comics/issue/ ... k-136/296/
http://www.seibertron.com/comics/issue/ ... ne-10/742/

Editor wrote:Can't talk for Roddy, but I get enough from the club fiction, and HMW that I'm not worried about missing IDW stuff.

You know, you're right. I should just sign up again for the magazine, and the online stuff too. I'm addicted to TF fiction like a crack baby. Also, my TF Exodus book can't get here fast enough.

And for those who haven't, try HMW out, create your own team of TF's and write your own fiction for them. and send them out to fight TF's others have done the same for.[/shameless plug]

Cyberstrike wrote:

Dead Metal wrote:

Cyberstrike wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:It all went downhill with All hail Megatron...

Let's face, the best story after Furman's run was Last Stand of the Wreckers.

Gimme a break.

All Furman did was just dog piled crap on top of crap after Stormbringer and never bothered to explained any of it and he wrote almost 50 issues for IDW with zero characterizations, old worn out plots, and no real sense of direction.

Which is more than what you can say about McCarthy and Costa, Twilight is more exiting than ongoing.

I find Ongoing one the most exciting series on the market and I can't wait to read each month. I'll take character-driven stories over dumb pointless action stories every time.

Yea you keep saying you prefer those over action yet you seem to confuse AHM and Ongoing with them.

Dead Metal wrote:Yea you keep saying you prefer those over action yet you seem to confuse AHM and Ongoing with them.

Said it better than I could.