The Energon Pub

william-james88 wrote:Sure, and thats my point. Is that not the initial fiction of these toys?

Under a different, very much irrelevant label, yeah. But Takara tossed Diaclone to the wind and got behind Hasbro's initial Transformers vision of living converting robots at war and on adventures, ignoring the original piloted mecha premise of the dropped, non-Transformers line.

My favorite Combiner Wars figures are Air Raid and Prowl

megatronus wrote:The problem I see is, to continue the Marvel parallel, Disney is a media company whereas Hasbro is a products company. For Disney and Marvel, everything is built around media or fiction, and there's some natural order flowing from that. Hasbro and Transformers, on the other hand, as a products company with ever changing lines and brand managers, will see a lot less consistency or order within a similar time frame. I'd like to see at least somewhat more control over the Transformers brand, but I'm not sure the nature of the toy business lends itself to that.

Very good way to put it! I think a lot of the inconsistency over the years has also been due to the brand's survival and longevity being perpetuated by constant change. Some might say change is intrinsic to the brand, but I don't think that's the case, or at least it wasn't at first. It only changed when things started to falter - Micromasters were an attempt to chase the micro-play market that Galoob was rocking with Micro Machines, Action Masters were an attempt to get Transformers to catch up to the, at the time very successful, ARAH GI Joe line. Beast Wars only came about when Bandai and Saban crushed G2 under the boot of a Megazord (at least this is one reason of several). Can you imagine Beast Wars happening if there was some Transformers guru trying to keep the brand's presentation uniform?

Idk where I'm going anymore, got sidetracked and forgot the point I was trying to make. But in short, yep, I think I agree with you. We probably only have tangential ideas about what kind of model of consistency could work, and any existing brand building templates probably aren't a perfect fit for one reason or another.

Kibble wrote:This is how I feel about the comics in general... Now, I have never followed the comics so they could be utterly awesome and maybe I'd buy in if I thoroughly enjoyed them, but as someone that's never paid any attention, I hear some of what has happened and I think it's just stupid s#it some comic knob made up so I don't give any credence to it. Like Prowlastator or Autobot Megs...it just seems so....comicky. I'm sure the G1 toon is equally stupid, ridiculous, and nonsensical, if not more...but I was also a kid that accepted whatever nonsense back then.

Out of context, yes, some of IDW's moves look insane. Within context, they've been mostly handled extremely well with good justifications. The paths taken that aren't traditional have often been great. Prowl and Megatron are deeper and more interesting characters in IDW than they probably ever have been. Barber, Roberts, Scott, Roche, and yes, even McCarthy in the last Drift series have been fantastic caretakers of the brand and really made some new, interesting characters, plus taken our old favorites and made them fresh. That's my pitch to get you to give reading some of the material from the past 4-5 years a shot - it's really a golden age of TF comic fiction right now.

Sabrblade wrote:

Kibble wrote:I'm sure the G1 toon is equally stupid, ridiculous, and nonsensical, if not more...but I was also a kid that accepted whatever nonsense back then.

In addition to the G1 cartoon, isn't the notion of "someone in charge of a work of fiction doing whatever they want or whatever they feel needs to be done" pretty much the basic root of most fiction (not just Transformers fiction) in general, though?

Sure, but since it's all just made up BS, you don't really have to acknowledge all of it. You can say the G1 toon is my TF universe and can pay no mind to comics or otherwise.

Hey guys, I just found out something recently that's relevant to this topic. Fun Pub put Issue #65 of their magazine on their website in digital format for anyone to read, and this issue is the one that contains the comic story that destroyed the Singularity concept. So if anyone wants to see first hand how Primus, Unicron, and the Thirteen got their singular natures removed, thus allowing them have different versions of themselves in any series like any other normal character, you can do so by clicking here.

The specific pages on which the phenomenon takes place are Pages 7 and 8 (all except for the final two panels on Page 8 ).

Pages 1-6 consist of the magazine's articles, Pages 9-12 are the rest of the comic's SG-based story (which pays homage to the 1986 movie), Pages 13-15 contain some character bios/history records, and the last page contains a parody mini-comic.

haha thanks Sabr! That was a good read

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:haha thanks Sabr! That was a good read

Hmmmmno. That link just reminded me why it took me so long to get into the comics, the first time round.
There's something about the writing that comes out of the Club that just, I don't know how to explain, it just gets me the wrong way. I can't put my finger on it, but I am not a fan.

And I mean from a narrative way (that may just be the ur-canon/continuity angle, however you want to split it), a simmering sense of niche elitism in the 'humour', and the actual way the dialogue is written. I just find it hard to like.

Va'al wrote:

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:haha thanks Sabr! That was a good read

Hmmmmno. That link just reminded me why it took me so long to get into the comics, the first time round.
There's something about the writing that comes out of the Club that just, I don't know how to explain, it just gets me the wrong way. I can't put my finger on it, but I am not a fan.

And I mean from a narrative way (that may just be the ur-canon/continuity angle, however you want to split it), a simmering sense of niche elitism in the 'humour', and the actual way the dialogue is written. I just find it hard to like.

They have limited page space and word counts that make the stories more choppy and rely on some not-so intuitive jumps in conversation or imagery to get a point across.

It's not the writers fault, it's the page allotment's fault. There's just no room for working through the more complex points or making jokes that aren't kind of blatant references.

I agree with what you're saying, I just feel like I understand where they're working from with these projects.

The one exception to the page count limit was in last issue, #66, that had to excise most of its article content to give a full 12 pages to finish off the comic's storyline in one big conclusion. Otherwise, the usual 6 pages just weren't gonna do justice to the final battle between Gaia and Primus.

Counterpunch wrote:

Va'al wrote:

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:haha thanks Sabr! That was a good read

Hmmmmno. That link just reminded me why it took me so long to get into the comics, the first time round.
There's something about the writing that comes out of the Club that just, I don't know how to explain, it just gets me the wrong way. I can't put my finger on it, but I am not a fan.

And I mean from a narrative way (that may just be the ur-canon/continuity angle, however you want to split it), a simmering sense of niche elitism in the 'humour', and the actual way the dialogue is written. I just find it hard to like.

They have limited page space and word counts that make the stories more choppy and rely on some not-so intuitive jumps in conversation or imagery to get a point across.

It's not the writers fault, it's the page allotment's fault. There's just no room for working through the more complex points or making jokes that aren't kind of blatant references.

I agree with what you're saying, I just feel like I understand where they're working from with these projects.

I'll take your word for that, as my stints into the Club's fiction are sporadic for the reasons above!

Va'al wrote:

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:haha thanks Sabr! That was a good read

Hmmmmno. That link just reminded me why it took me so long to get into the comics, the first time round.
There's something about the writing that comes out of the Club that just, I don't know how to explain, it just gets me the wrong way. I can't put my finger on it, but I am not a fan.

And I mean from a narrative way (that may just be the ur-canon/continuity angle, however you want to split it), a simmering sense of niche elitism in the 'humour', and the actual way the dialogue is written. I just find it hard to like.

It is a bit choppy yes, but I enjoy the read there. Not anything like the mainstream comics for sure, but still enjoyable concepts to go with

megatronus wrote:It's not your imagination or my imagination. Just those whose imaginations are licensed and therefore canonical.

Meant to reply to this before but forgot.

VP once gave an answer that essentially amounted to "If anyone can imagine it, it's probably happened somewhere in the multiverse anyway":

Q: Dear Vector Prime,

Are there any universal streams where...

A: Dear Inquisitive Imam,

I realize that this is very late in the process of our interaction, but when questions are asked in the form of "are there any" or "is there ever" the answer is almost invariably that yes, such a thing is true in at least some corner of the Multiverse. However, that doesn't necessarily make it noteworthy or interesting. Perhaps, if there is a future for this format, you should try for more specificity.

So that's what I meant by how "anything's possible in an infinite multiverse." If we can think it up, it could happen. Like D-Max said, nothing's completely absolute. If one want to play with their toys in a story that has a female Optimus Prime playing tag with Duke, He-Man, Pikachu, and Mario, then to quote Sideways, "Sure, why not?"

Sabrblade wrote:VP once gave an answer that essentially amounted to "If anyone can imagine it, it's probably happened somewhere in the multiverse anyway"

That applies to the theory of multiple universes for us too.

Imagination! I loves imagination

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:Imagination! I loves imagination

Let's reboot Hearts of Steel with the Imagination Airship as someone's alt mode. The character can even sing the imagination song in the note cadence of the Empyrean Suite.

ScottyP wrote:

D-Maximus_Prime wrote:Imagination! I loves imagination

Let's reboot Hearts of Steel with the Imagination Airship as someone's alt mode. The character can even sing the imagination song in the note cadence of the Empyrean Suite.

i like this! Let's do it!

Found another quote from Vector that's even more straightforward on the matter:

Q: Dear Vector Prime,

Are there any particular realities where Cyclonus's Armada were as prominent in the war as the Sweeps, or perhaps more prominent?

A: Dear Mass-Produced Master,

The Multiverse is vast. Almost anything you can imagine exists within its confines.

Sabrblade wrote:Found another quote from Vector that's even more straightforward on the matter:

Q: Dear Vector Prime,

Are there any particular realities where Cyclonus's Armada were as prominent in the war as the Sweeps, or perhaps more prominent?

A: Dear Mass-Produced Master,

The Multiverse is vast. Almost anything you can imagine exists within its confines.

Confirmed.

Everything I make up regarding the fiction and characters is canon now.

Thank you Sabrblade.

mmmwwwaaahaha

Counterpunch wrote:Confirmed.

Everything I make up regarding the fiction and characters is canon now.

Thank you Sabrblade.

mmmwwwaaahaha

Be careful, that means that reciprocally, al the fan art you get when you google image search rodimus and ultra magnus are also true.

Finally got around to listening to the episode and have gotten to both the RID 2015 cartoon discussion and the multiverse discussion. A few comments on what all was discussed in each:

RID 2015 cartoon talk

* Though is pretty much an eccentric manchild (but at heart, aren't we all?), he has had his share of moments of competence.

* Whoever it was who asked for a gif of Chip breaking the floppy disk, I have no gif but here's a jpeg:



* Optimus did not go back to the Realm of the Primes at the end of season 1. He's now a member of Bumblebee's team on Earth.

* I don't want TF: Prime back.

* The comparison of how RID is to Prime like how Beast Machines was to Beast Wars is, I think, kind of a fair comparison, but for different reasons. With RID, a lot of the same creative team that worked on Prime is heading RID, while Beast Machines had a different group of people behind it than Beast Wars had, and whom Hasbro essentially told to ignore Beast Wars and start anew with Beast Machines, hence why some of the characters acted differently in the second show than in the first show (Optimus being spiritual and Zen-like, Rattrap being cowardly and will to bargain with Megatron, Megatron practicing honor and hating beast modes, Silverbolt being dark and brooding, etc.). For RID, it's a spiritual successor to Prime, being far enough into the future from Prime to be a jumping on point for new viewers rather than feeling like the midway point of a larger story that might confuse people. Beast Machines was kinda the same with it letting us know that stuff happened before it, but that stuff wasn't so important to the present series that it needed to be watched to know what all was going on (it helped to watch it, sure, but it wasn't required). The same was also the case for Energon being a sequel to Armada.

* Beast Machines had two seasons.


Multiverse talk

* I see now that the notion of the multiversal singularity concept being destroyed was mentioned in the podcast.

* RiD 2001 is still by itself on its own. The Japanese version Car Robots, however, is what was retconned into the big Japanese G1 timeline, and having watched it and compared it to the English, it's very different in many ways, containing a fair amount of the same continuity elements as the Japanese Beast Wars cartoons and the Japanese G1 cartoons, all of which were changed or erased by Saban and Hasbro when they dubbed Car Robots into RiD 2001.

* The idea of there being only one Unicron originated with Simon Furman in his writing both the Dreamwave Armada comics and the BotCon Universe comics in which he got to explore that idea. Later, Hasbro copywriter Forest Lee would flesh out and cement Furman's idea, while making the same true for Primus, Vector Sigma, and the Thirteen, in the early TCC magazine comics. And at the time, almost everything seemed to jibe with singularity concept as far as fictional depictions of all these characters went. But then would come several works of fiction with depictions that didn't jibe with this idea, ignoring it altogether. ROTF created its own take on The Fallen, HasLab wanted the Aligned Continuity and its versions of Unicron/Primus/VS/13 separate from the multiverse, and even the original G1 cartoon had its own unique origin for Unicron. The singularity concept that Simon and Forest had crafted never gained ground with anyone outside of the niche fan-oriented media that they had created it in. Thus, all the clashing depictions of these characters who, in theory, were all supposed to be the same persons necessitated a retraction of the singularity concept, which was done in the TCC magazine issue #65 story written by Jesse Wittenrich & Pete Sinclair. So even though it started with Simon and Forest, since none of the movies or other cartoons wanted or cared to adhere to that idea, Jesse and Pete ended it to end all the headaches it was causing.

* The Classics universe was destroyed in the BotCon 2012 comic story "Invasion", but its planet Earth was spared by having it pulled into the Shattered Glass universe (and any Classics characters who were on Earth at the time survived their universe's destruction), so for a time there were two planet Earths in that universe. But then the final chapter of last year's magazine comic story took of that.

RodimusConvoy13 wrote:As I said on the show, I wasn't a big fan of the "Aligned" Continuity. It was just too hard to reconcile differences.

Agreed. It struck me as far too forced and it infuriated me when it was defended as, quite frankly, it made exactly zero sense. There is nothing wrong with having a Multiverse, just don't insist on having it cross over. Allow each of them to breath and grow on their own!

One thing I will say is the occasional crossover can be fun. But that's it. My only time where I've ever been cool with one universes character joining another's is actually Miles Morales joining the (ugh) 616 universe. This comes down to Miles and Peter meeting already, Miles being a very strong character and that Marvel utterly screwed up the potential of the Ultimate universe. Frankly, Miles DESERVES to be in (double ugh) 616.

I cannot really see anything like that in the Transformers universe. The Rodimi appearing in Regenesis just put the final nail in a truly awful coffin of a crappy series. Regenesis freakin' hurt with it's mediocrity.

william-james88 wrote:

Counterpunch wrote:Confirmed.

Everything I make up regarding the fiction and characters is canon now.

Thank you Sabrblade.

mmmwwwaaahaha

Be careful, that means that reciprocally, al the fan art you get when you google image search rodimus and ultra magnus are also true.

btw, your new sig is gdlk

Counterpunch wrote:
btw, your new sig is gdlk

Thanks man!

Seibertron wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:What got me was the sweeping declaration that a certain medium of fiction is somehow less than official compared to other mediums when they all come from the same source of writers working from the same license as the likes of IDW and Hasbro Studios. I get it was meant as an opinion, but it came off as sounding like a factual statement.

It's my opinion, but I have a suspicion that a lot of the fandom probably agrees! Though I could be wrong. Curious to hear what the rest of you think.

It's okay if you don't like it, that's an opinion but if a novel/facebook page is approved by Hasbro (even if it wasn't published in physical format), it being official is a fact, you can't just decide it's unofficial, because that would be denying the truth.