The Energon Pub

Transformers writer Simon Furman has updated his blog page yet again. The man gives notice that Devastation #1 is out now and gives us a clue as to what to expect. The following has been taken directly from his most recent blog.

"AND NOW… DEVASTATION!

Finally it begins! After what seems like an abyss of time since the end of Escalation (though there were compensations, ongoing story-wise, to be found in Transformers Spotlight: Galvatron and Transformers Spotlight: Optimus Prime), Devastation begins this week (issue #1 hits on the 19th in the US and here on the 20th). Was it worth the wait? You bet! Though Escalation certainly upped the ante (and the pace), in Devastation things go ballistic, and the so-called secret war goes decidedly public. The cause: the arrival on Earth of the Decepticons’ living weapon, Sixshot, not someone who cares about the niceties of covert infiltration, etc. Things get bad this issue and then get much, much worse as the series progresses. And, apart from Sixshot, we get much more on the Machination, we learn the ultimate fate/destiny of Hunter and Sunstreaker and we meet the (IDW) Headmasters! Phew! Plus, a whole lot of other subplots (Skywatch, Reapers, Dead Universe, Dinobots and Soundwave) are pulled along and developed. Expect stuff to wrap up and other stuff to roll on, and expect nothing to be the way you found it by the time issue #6 hits. Check out EJ’s cover for issue #1 below (click on the thumbnail) and go see what other TF goodies IDW have in store for you here".

Dude, I'm so jazzed about this story arc... it's gonna be a blast

Sixshot? I love that guy! But first, I gotta get Infiltration and all that before any sequals.

Oh Simon, if only Devastation was out that soon...

Someone forgot to tell him about the shipping problems with Devastation...

Raymond T. wrote:(issue #1 hits on the 19th in the US and here on the 20th).

Well, I can't say anything about the UK'ers, but it most certainly did not show up here yesterday.

Raymond T. wrote:Was it worth the wait?

I can't really answer that question. It's still not out.

Awesome! Sixshot and the Headmasters! Now maybe we'll eventually get some decent characterisation for the D-Con headmasters, and if they keep raking in the obscure characters, they'll bring in the Junior Headmasters and Junior Targetmasters.

Wow. There are still people who are actually reading the junk Furman is writing.

Grimshock wrote:Wow. There are still people who are actually reading the junk Furman is writing.

What's so bad about his stories?

Stormwolf wrote:What's so bad about his stories?

I don't have a problem with his Marvel stuff, but his more recent stuff, starting with the Dreamwave stories, more or less fall into one or more categories:

*Promising a big story and utterly failing to rise to the occasion.
*Cramming in references and characters at the expense of telling a good story.
*Utilizing characters with G1 names as the G1 character in situations that don't warrant it.

Darth Bombshell wrote:*Promising a big story and utterly failing to rise to the occasion.

I thought that the current IDW storyline plus War Within were pretty good. The only letdown was that Dark Ages got a bad coloring job and was screwed up by some crude editing work

Darth Bombshell wrote:*Cramming in references and characters at the expense of telling a good story.

Aren't you getting confused with Brad Mick here? Furman's references have only been fairly minimal so far.

Darth Bombshell wrote:*Utilizing characters with G1 names as the G1 character in situations that don't warrant it.

Please explain this one, I don't quite follow.

What's bad? There's so much I don't like about his writing. At this point, I don't even know where I'd start anymore. He's the biggest reason why I stopped buying comics.

Stormwolf wrote:I thought that the current IDW storyline plus War Within were pretty good.

I agree. Both of those are pretty good. Armada, however, while starting off good, devolved rather quickly into a string of Furman cliche's (most notably the dimension travel aspect of the G1 characters), Energon was only marginally better, and the less said about the Beast Wars books, the better.

Stormwolf wrote:Furman's references have only been fairly minimal so far.

Maybe so, but one of them (Grimlock in Beast Wars) is the most obvious and annoying of them all.

Stormwolf wrote:Please explain this one, I don't quite follow.

It's quite simple. Despite any proof that proves him right, Furman has decided that, in writing The Ascending, some characters from Beast Wars are the original G1 characters for seemingly no other reason than because that's what he thinks.

And don't even get me started on that Ultimate Guide. I mean, the fact he tried to get across that every Primus and every Unicron in every continuity, and that their presence is in every universe is just downright stupid. They're clearly not the same characters in any different continuity, I mean, Cybertron Primus is not G1 Primus from the comics, nor is Cartoon Armada Unicron the same as G1 comic Unicron.

Also, theres the fact that he claims both are indestructable when they clearly aren't just proves that Fruman may just be losing his touch in some parts.

Darth Bombshell wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:Please explain this one, I don't quite follow.

It's quite simple. Despite any proof that proves him right, Furman has decided that, in writing The Ascending, some characters from Beast Wars are the original G1 characters for seemingly no other reason than because that's what he thinks.

Well, BW Grimlock is actually the future version of G1 Grimlock, just look at his toy bio:

http://www.tfu.info/1997/Maximal/Grimlock/grimlock.htm

Furman wasn't aware of this until somebody pointed this out to him.

Well, Prowl is up for debate:

http://www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Prowl/prowl.htm

And at any rate, he can link back as much characters as he likes since barely any background was established for them (barring the ones that were on the show).

Stormwolf wrote:Well, BW Grimlock is actually the future version of G1 Grimlock, just look at his toy bio:

http://www.tfu.info/1997/Maximal/Grimlock/grimlock.htm

Furman wasn't aware of this until somebody pointed this out to him.

Yeah, Ben Yee. I'm well aware of that. I'm also well aware of the fact that, while I respect Ben as a person, he loses major points for doing that.

Stormwolf wrote:And at any rate, he can link back as much characters as he likes since barely any background was established for them (barring the ones that were on the show).

Thing is, though, Grimlock is the only one to which that is true. Doing it to anyone else is the supremest form of fanwank one could do.

DBS wrote:Thing is, though, Grimlock is the only one to which that is true. Doing it to anyone else is the supremest form of fanwank one could do.

QFT

While I'm fine with a few claiming namesakes, considering BW Megs and Primal, and even perhaps someone questioning if they really are the original TF could be nice, if every single recycled name is actually the G1 with a maximal/ predacon upgrade I will be sorely disappointed that the fanwank didn't stop with Super Sayajin Sunstorm.

I'm not being horrible but I don't see any of you guys writing comics for 3 major franchise/license holders or consulting on TV series'.

AxiomScion wrote:

DBS wrote:Thing is, though, Grimlock is the only one to which that is true. Doing it to anyone else is the supremest form of fanwank one could do.

QFT

While I'm fine with a few claiming namesakes, considering BW Megs and Primal, and even perhaps someone questioning if they really are the original TF could be nice, if every single recycled name is actually the G1 with a maximal/ predacon upgrade I will be sorely disappointed that the fanwank didn't stop with Super Sayajin Sunstorm.

I actually prefer the characters who share names with G1 characters to be namesakes, kinda shows how popular/respected the G1 era bots/cons were.

But it was only a 300 year gap between Headmasters and Beast Wars, so really many of the G1 bots that were around at the end of G1 could easily be around in Beast Wars.

Either way Furman will do whatever he wants, and as long as there is no Sunstorm appearances in BW I'll be fairly happy.

That's a good point: 300 years is not a long time in Cybertronian terms and so it seems logical that there would be more G1 robots than just Grimlock still around. However, I agree with Darth Bombshell that only Grimlock is specifically stated as being his G1 namesake*, and that TM Prowl is suggested as being his G1 namesake.* I also don't like the idea of reusing too many G1 robots as I prefer the idea of new characters.

*Is it still right to use the word 'namesake' if it is actually the same person?

My experience of Transformers comics began with Escalation, and as such any "fanwank" shoots straight over my head (if you'll pardon the rather graphic metaphor). All I can say is that I love the coherence, consistency and credibility of the storyline Furman is weaving.

As I understand it, throughout Furman's pre-IDW work he has been constrained by the need to link his writing in with someone else's continuity, established "universe", or marketing requirements, i.e. "Here's a japanese cartoon series badly translated into english, we'd like you to write the accompanying comic book"

Now for the first time we're getting an unadulterated, from-scratch vision of Transformers from someone who's had more creative involvement with the milieu than any other single person. I think the IDW-verse (and Furman's current writing) is best judged on it's own merits, without requiring it to be consistent with the (impossibly inconsistent) body of earlier writing. Surely that's the point of the whole concept?

Primus C-00 wrote:I'm not being horrible but I don't see any of you guys writing comics for 3 major franchise/license holders or consulting on TV series'.

How is that relevant, exactly?

QuickBeam wrote:My experience of Transformers comics began with Escalation, and as such any "fanwank" shoots straight over my head (if you'll pardon the rather graphic metaphor). All I can say is that I love the coherence, consistency and credibility of the storyline Furman is weaving.

As I understand it, throughout Furman's pre-IDW work he has been constrained by the need to link his writing in with someone else's continuity, established "universe", or marketing requirements, i.e. "Here's a japanese cartoon series badly translated into english, we'd like you to write the accompanying comic book"

Now for the first time we're getting an unadulterated, from-scratch vision of Transformers from someone who's had more creative involvement with the milieu than any other single person. I think the IDW-verse (and Furman's current writing) is best judged on it's own merits, without requiring it to be consistent with the (impossibly inconsistent) body of earlier writing. Surely that's the point of the whole concept?

That's all true, really. But it's got one problem: you're talking about the G1 IDW-verse, which is not what I'm talking about.

i_amtrunks wrote:I actually prefer the characters who share names with G1 characters to be namesakes, kinda shows how popular/respected the G1 era bots/cons were.

But it was only a 300 year gap between Headmasters and Beast Wars, so really many of the G1 bots that were around at the end of G1 could easily be around in Beast Wars.

Either way Furman will do whatever he wants, and as long as there is no Sunstorm appearances in BW I'll be fairly happy.

So do I. I'm not sure if I wrote it quite right though

True about the 300 (spartan) years w/o video coverage on the(god of) war, just I, much like Leonardo, don't much like reusing that many G1 characters and would enjoy seeing new ones.

I take it you don't want a gold recolor of Terrorsaur with powers of the legendary pokemon Zapados

How about a golden TM Waspinator remold named Goldbug?

Leonardo wrote:*Is it still right to use the word 'namesake' if it is actually the same person?*

not really

so to fix my last post i'll toss it up edited here.

Darth Bombshell wrote:Thing is, though, Grimlock is the only one to which that is true. Doing it to anyone else is the supremest form of fanwank one could do.

QFT

While I'm fine with a few claiming namesakes, considering BW Megs and Primal, and even perhaps someone questioning if they really are the original TF could be nice, BUT if every single recycled name is actually the G1 CHARACTER with a maximal/ predacon upgrade I will be sorely disappointed that the fanwank didn't stop with Super Sayajin Sunstorm.

Ah and...

Darth Bombshell wrote:That's all true, really. But it's got one problem: you're talking about the G1 IDW-verse, which is not what I'm talking about.

I think DBS was referring to furman works predating your comic exp QuickBeam

Then again i'm not always in the loop myself

i once wrote wrote:What do you mean Furman wrote G2

I choose to disbelieve

*then I roled a natural 1D6*

Thus I succeed in my disbelief

yeah that happend...

Oh ok



See beyond the in work stated, or is it merely alluded (?) fact that BW Grimlock is G1 Grimlock I don't see any evidence for any of the other characters being anything other than just plain namesakes.

Also any deviations in the naming of characters from, I dunno, let's say their BWII and BW Neo incarnations isn't really a deviation but a reflection of the names they had when released as toys in the west and as far as I can tell from preview pages will more than likely be rectified by the BW Sourcebook.

As for the other accusations of fanwank, having just this day read the Armada comics alluded to as needless G1 intersplicing, whatever man. They're a lot more engaging and a good complimentary to the Armada cartoon. I'm sure Furman concieved and fleshed out in mind a good enough story whereby these characters became the Heralds. Maybe if Dreamwave hadn't bit the dust he might have taken the G1 comic away from the shameless easter egging fanwank that that was and in this direction?

If he didn't? Well I'm just glad that I could concieve of a story to fill this gap myself.

Which in a roundabout way leads me to my final point about my prior point. Furman has dedicated a lot of time and creative effort to the Transformers fanbase, and though, for example even the revised Ultimate Guide has it's inconsistencies at least he tried.

Just been reading reactions to the Beast Wars Sourcebook on the IDW boards.

Might have to eat my words...