The Energon Pub

Let me start out by saying this issue was about 1 gajillion times better than #12.

The Sunstreaker story...while pretty useless overall, still had some nice power to it, and the art was well done too. The ending with the clue that he may be back makes it a nice cliffhanger possibility.


The Galvatron story was very good. Continuing the -tion series by letting us know what Galvatron and Cyclonus are up to after Devastation, and ruining folks theory about where IDW's Scourge might come from... here he is, and no TC involved...

Overall it was excellent. Much more relevant feeling than the previous issues, and I also liked the artwork a lot more too!

Your thoughts?

@ tigertracks, what do you mean no TC involved with Scourge? I already stopped getting suckerd by IDW's lame-O epic storylines that I'm waiting for the "revamped" main series with DonFig's art.

fenrir72 wrote:@ tigertracks, what do you mean no TC involved with Scourge? I already stopped getting suckerd by IDW's lame-O epic storylines that I'm waiting for the "revamped" main series with DonFig's art.

At the end of the AHM 13 discussion thread a poster thought that due to what happened to TC at the end of AHM, similar to his fate in the movie, that his ultimate fate would be the same, and he had a reformatted body coming in the way of IDW Scourge.

Since Scourge made his appearance as an Ark I member that Galvatron has infused with life after death... and mistakenly also copied Scourge's form to become his army, dubbed 'The Sweeps'. Now we have the Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and Sweeps group ready to make some trouble.

Ah that "reformat" storyline shift. IIRC Starcream made mention of the threat"Scourge" represented to Megatron in AHM. Maaaaaaan! I hate how they IDW scrambled the G-1 story bible. Galvatron,Scourge and Cyclonus should have been left alone as Unicron minions or maybe the way Brad Mick(short form) portrayed them as "mass produced" revived TM Unicron products (okay I'm exaggerating a bit)

Anyway thanks tigertracks.

Well i thought the Sunstreaker story was actually the better of the two. As far as explaining why S.S. did what he did, and how he could have been so stupid to think it work work, this does pretty well. I've heard people complaining that they changed the hunter/s.s. scene from devastation, but it's pretty much word for word minus ommitting the line about making him hurting other autobots. But since he asked hunter to kill him multiple times in devastation the addition of another time here works to emphasize that S.S. wanted this to end more than he wanted to fight back. the way they were written in Max Dino's as well, it felt like S.S. wasn't happy to be bonded with hunter, but since he was already bonded to so many, it was actually less painful focusing his attention towards hunter specifically rather than all the other voices in his head; it let him focus a bit more since hunter wouldn't be fighting for control. But anyways, i read this scene as showing how miserable this was for S.S. rather than how hunter didn't care about what S.S. wanted. I thought as a way of showing his state of mind and what he chose to hold onto from the experiance, this was a great piece.

As for the Galvatron story, it would have been fine if they hadn't messed up some details and retconned simon's influence out so displeasingly. The thing that bothered me first off was switching Galvatron and Cyclonus' places in the d.u. crew. Galvatron was always the one who could last out in the living world, and lines from his spotlight frame that if anyone has a spark left it was him. Even when he gets the darkness in Revelations it fits that he starts to say I.. am still alive. This is just a continuity glitch straight out, and while i can move forward this definately disrupts the ride a lot. Secondly they replaced Grindcore with Scourge. Honestly, couldn't Hasbro has just let them say "Grindcore, Straxus, and Scourge are dying.." instead of Straxus, and Scourge. Since he was carrying one of the bots pictured in SL:Nightbeat, the addition of Scourge would have been fine. I know these things are somewhat small, but they are what make the difference between moving the series in a new direction smoothly and showing that hasbro is stepping in to 'protect' (and by protect i mean ruin) their precious G1 baby yet again. It is quite possible for IDW to move forward away from simon's run and the places he had taken TF's that made Hasbro nervous. But they're screwing it up. combine these details with them allowing McCarthy to get in the line about Scourge in AHM before Hasbro shut down his reimagining of the character, and it feels like a mess. (McCarthy wanted to make scourge like a less controlled Megatron and Hasbro didn't want that for the character, but didn't do that till he had already written the script for issue 3 or 4 of AHM) Really, IDW's editorial staff needs to be micromanaging this and either preventing people from writing details that can't be continued, or resisting Hasbro's urges when it's already too late for the sake of not causing disruptions. I really could have no problem with these changes as long as i didn't see direct contradictions and plot changes about as suave as Pauly Shore. Little things would make this perfectly acceptable, but without them the it really causes me problems. I still like the story, but the quality of IDW's G1 comic is slipping in a way that scares me for its future.

In response to this very good post over at the AllSpark:

Are you sure he really has something against that character in particular? He might have just seen an opportunity to tell a really dark story in his capture and dismantlement. Execution, debatable, but intent good.

I can't see it as anything else, I mean first he separates them, when we know from Hail and farewell that they'd been written to end up as both major players and heroes in the IDW'verse. A unified being, with that rarest of things, actually character growth in a Transformers character, and one from 1984 to boot, the characters usually held up as untouchable.

Next, we find out Sunstreaker is a traitor, selling out the Autobots and that what he'd be getting out of the deal was that the entire human race would be murdered.

Next, Sunstreaker commits suicide, and the very next issue (I think) we see from the second bridge, pointlessly.

Now we get to see hunter, dissected, lobotomised, and trussed up like a plaything for Bombshell to torture. We're told that Sunstreaker really died for nothing, and that it was Hunter that gave them the magic codes by magic.

Hunter is then found by Sideswipe, who in a complete turn around from saying they need to do the right thing and try harder to save lives, simply euthanizes him without getting a medic to check to see if Hunter can be saved or not, or even doing more than basically glancing at him.

And now this, Sunstreaker gets brought back from the dead to experience a living hell for the rest of his extremely painful and possibly extremely long life. And it doesn't exist to explain anything, or apparently set up any future plot points, it's just 13 pages of hell heaped on a character that's had nothing but abuse by the author.

I mean AHM was needlessly dark and depressing, but the fate of Sunhunter went through that and out into basically torture porn.

I wrote this (and I stand by it)

RE: Shane McCarthy, retcons, Sunstreaker torture porn

You know, it's like the difference between a fanfic and a story with real editorial guidance. The fanfic takes the author's view on a character, event, or relationship and warps the world around it until that character, event, or relationship is no longer a part of the story but rather some akward plot device.

A stronger editorial hand in all of AHM and in particular what was happening to certain characters and existing plot lines could have fixed a lot of this stuff.

Mr. McCarthy, I don't think you have any place participating in Transformers fiction. You are heavy handed in your story telling at best and negligent to detail and history at worst. You are to blame for the direction the Transformers fiction has suffered over the past year, but IDW has to share some of that blame for not reigning your shenanigans in.

(sorry, I typically lurk these kinds of discussions. I haven't really voiced anything on AHM as I've gone through it, but eh...I'd had enough and felt #14 was worthy of a rant)

Ive read the Galvatron story twice and I still dont understand what happened to and what his new power or existence is supposed to be.

Scourge didnt know what was going on. Cyclonus didnt know what was going on. I'd be surprised if I were the only confused by this story.

I'll leave the debate about the canon and whether or not certain people are worthy of writing TF stories to y'all, since I really have no ethos to speak of that. I'm not disagreeing, just saying it's not anything I can add any more to than what's already been said. (Other than, if you're seeking to replace Mr McCarthy, I'm available. )

My take: I agree with Tigertracks about the Sunstreaker story: it was well done, and the art was really nice--just moody and dark enough to support the mood of the story. In fact, the art throughout the entire issue was great. No complaints at all from me. But overall, I didn't really see the point. Stories should involve conflict and change. We saw conflict, but it wasn't a NEW conflict--as others have already spoken to, this was something that's been around since the official 'run' of AHM (before they tacked on these coda issues). Sunstreaker = angst. Yeah. I get it. Nice, but not really adding anything new to the overall storyline. And at the end, NOTHING has changed from what we knew going into the story.

The Galvatron story, though at least, well, *stuff happened*, (again, smarter people than I can talk about whether or not the series is doing creative things with the canon or screwing it up), but I have to say that that story's tone was marred for me by the horrendous dialogue. LIke at points Schmidt was *trying* to be funny. Now, I notoriously don't have the keenest sense of humor on the planet, so perhaps the 'I still function' and the 'wait, what?' memes are HILARIOUS to others, but it did not really seem to fit in with the overall tone of the story. Especially alternating with the slightly overblown Furmanesque dialogue ('Aaaahhh, the power, I FEEL it!') ('THe pain, it's *coruscating* through me')(which is a malapropism, actually).

Still, I'm a moron. I like the pretty pictures. And disregarding canon, I liked the issue. And I really like reading up on these debates and learning from you guys. Gives us something to talk about--yay!

HK, sucker for pretty robot pictures.

The word coruscating also really bugged me. I could not get over how it did not seem to fit.

And man, they are making Scourge out to be dumb aren't they?

Hello all,
I found #14 to be a waste of time, honestly. Ok, so we are going to get Galvatron/Cyclonus/Scourge in a near-future carrying on the Dead Universe/Nove Prime/whatever you prefer to call it agenda, but the Sunstreaker flashback, really? I thought we'd been over 99.9% of the Sunstreaker biz by now in AHM/MAx Dinos/*-ation runs. I don't think this issue added much of anything at all, and while it was a decent read, it felt pretty light on anything of consequence.

Dagon wrote:Hello all,
I found #14 to be a waste of time, honestly. Ok, so we are going to get Galvatron/Cyclonus/Scourge in a near-future carrying on the Dead Universe/Nove Prime/whatever you prefer to call it agenda, but the Sunstreaker flashback, really? I thought we'd been over 99.9% of the Sunstreaker biz by now in AHM/MAx Dinos/*-ation runs. I don't think this issue added much of anything at all, and while it was a decent read, it felt pretty light on anything of consequence.

I have to agree. The Sunstreaker story was a waste of pages. I did like the Galvatron story and bought the issue just for the cover (I havent been reading Transformers in awhile and am getting caught up through the trades.)

Hotrod wrote:

Dagon wrote:Hello all,
I found #14 to be a waste of time, honestly. Ok, so we are going to get Galvatron/Cyclonus/Scourge in a near-future carrying on the Dead Universe/Nove Prime/whatever you prefer to call it agenda, but the Sunstreaker flashback, really? I thought we'd been over 99.9% of the Sunstreaker biz by now in AHM/MAx Dinos/*-ation runs. I don't think this issue added much of anything at all, and while it was a decent read, it felt pretty light on anything of consequence.

I have to agree. The Sunstreaker story was a waste of pages. I did like the Galvatron story and bought the issue just for the cover (I havent been reading Transformers in awhile and am getting caught up through the trades.)

I don't want to sound like I'm being too critical or harsh on this issue, and in truth, AHM has been my favorite series since Stormbringer, probably ever, but all the Sunstreaker half did was show us stuff we already knew, and inform us that the one labcoated guy tried to have sex in front of Sunstreakers' head and apparently Sunstreaker turns off the ladies by being a large, disembodied robot head. Not a very necessary handful of pages.

Dagon wrote:

Hotrod wrote:

Dagon wrote:Hello all,
I found #14 to be a waste of time, honestly. Ok, so we are going to get Galvatron/Cyclonus/Scourge in a near-future carrying on the Dead Universe/Nove Prime/whatever you prefer to call it agenda, but the Sunstreaker flashback, really? I thought we'd been over 99.9% of the Sunstreaker biz by now in AHM/MAx Dinos/*-ation runs. I don't think this issue added much of anything at all, and while it was a decent read, it felt pretty light on anything of consequence.

I have to agree. The Sunstreaker story was a waste of pages. I did like the Galvatron story and bought the issue just for the cover (I havent been reading Transformers in awhile and am getting caught up through the trades.)

I don't want to sound like I'm being too critical or harsh on this issue, and in truth, AHM has been my favorite series since Stormbringer, probably ever, but all the Sunstreaker half did was show us stuff we already knew, and inform us that the one labcoated guy tried to have sex in front of Sunstreakers' head and apparently Sunstreaker turns off the ladies by being a large, disembodied robot head. Not a very necessary handful of pages.

I believe that what was trying to be portrayed here, was why Sunstreaker would go to the extremes of hating all humans...to betray the Autobots, and leave Earth to Megs and the Decepticons. While there is not a whole lot of extreme reason, the fact that all the humans that he met besides Verity, and Jimmy, ignored his pleas for help to serve whatever self-serving motives they had, and the fact that they were scared and treated him as a primitive, thoughtless monster most of the time, probably helped to put him in the state of mind that it took, and then we were seeing his remorse and having to fight with his feelings over what he did later on (shown in flash back? now), in a section of the book, when at the time, it was thought that Mirage was the traitor...certainly not Sunstreaker.

We see him go from one extreme to the other, being loved and lauded, to being tortured and hated... for a bot who is all about his looks, and wanting others to like him as much as he likes himself (I think???), this was very difficult to take, I guess.

I'm just guessing here. But I would believe this to be the why's...the psychological POV of Sunstreaker as he turned into something/someone else... someone he did not like much, and blamed others for getting him there.

^ I understand you completely Tiger, but to me, and just me, I'm not argueing you or trying to paint too broadly, it just felt like some more of the same. Maybe BECAUSE it was the de facto culmination of the SS story and everything he's been through (til this point, I bet he's gonna come back eventually), maybe becuase of that it just felt like "here, read this part again. In case you missed it before." I get what you're saying, and I'm sorry if I'm being too negative, 'specially if you enjoyed it that much, but I guess it's just too much SS for me. I'm only allowed one serving of him per month. It's this diet I'm on.

Dagon wrote:^ I understand you completely Tiger, but to me, and just me, I'm not argueing you or trying to paint too broadly, it just felt like some more of the same. Maybe BECAUSE it was the de facto culmination of the SS story and everything he's been through (til this point, I bet he's gonna come back eventually), maybe becuase of that it just felt like "here, read this part again. In case you missed it before." I get what you're saying, and I'm sorry if I'm being too negative, 'specially if you enjoyed it that much, but I guess it's just too much SS for me. I'm only allowed one serving of him per month. It's this diet I'm on.

I didn't enjoy it that much, do not find you to be being negative at all, and I was simply trying to present what the writer/etc., may have been thinking when they pieced this together. It was a pretty big leap that SS would just go and condemn the whole human race, and betray the Autobots... last we saw of him in Maxi Dinos, he was playing hero with Hunter...

tigertracks 24 wrote:

Dagon wrote:^ I understand you completely Tiger, but to me, and just me, I'm not argueing you or trying to paint too broadly, it just felt like some more of the same. Maybe BECAUSE it was the de facto culmination of the SS story and everything he's been through (til this point, I bet he's gonna come back eventually), maybe becuase of that it just felt like "here, read this part again. In case you missed it before." I get what you're saying, and I'm sorry if I'm being too negative, 'specially if you enjoyed it that much, but I guess it's just too much SS for me. I'm only allowed one serving of him per month. It's this diet I'm on.

I didn't enjoy it that much, do not find you to be being negative at all, and I was simply trying to present what the writer/etc., may have been thinking when they pieced this together. It was a pretty big leap that SS would just go and condemn the whole human race, and betray the Autobots... last we saw of him in Maxi Dinos, he was playing hero with Hunter...

I gotcha. Let's slap hands and get some Gatoraide before the next issue comes out.

Dagon wrote:I didn't enjoy it that much, do not find you to be being negative at all, and I was simply trying to present what the writer/etc., may have been thinking when they pieced this together. It was a pretty big leap that SS would just go and condemn the whole human race, and betray the Autobots... last we saw of him in Maxi Dinos, he was playing hero with Hunter...

I gotcha. Let's slap hands and get some Gatoraide before the next issue comes out. [/quote]

Might need something stronger than the Ade of Gator, gentlemen. I suggest a strong, straight hard liquor of choice to accompany the next issue.

Then we can all sit around mildly buzzed and talk about it. Yay! It's almost like being back in grad school, but without the language requirement and insane dissertation director!

HK (body shots off of Starscream) (Oh, did I say that out loud?)

The Sunstreaker story was, as the all of AHM, pathetic. I mean, Streaker selling the humans for some months of torturing? C'mon, in the hands of decepticons, I doubt no autobot was tortured before, and didn't sell the autobot race because of it... And the fellow bots giving Sunstreakers ego a boost at the start of the story (including that Prime needed only Sunstreaker from a whole planetary crew)? Pointless story, at the level of bad fanfiction, as everything McCarthy wrote before...

The Galvatron storyline was better, at last the first Coda story that picks up an earlier line and starts new stories...

(However, at the end of the story:
"Cyclonus: - Hey Brain, what do you want to do tomorrow?
Galvatron: - Same thing we do every series, Pinky. Try to take over the World.")

Chaoslock wrote:The Sunstreaker story was, as the all of AHM, pathetic. I mean, Streaker selling the humans for some months of torturing? C'mon, in the hands of decepticons, I doubt no autobot was tortured before, and didn't sell the autobot race because of it...

While I see your point, I have to politely disagree with one teensy part of your argument. Autobots being tortured by Decepticons is totally different than Autobots being tortured by a third party (humans) who pretend to be the ally of the Autobots. In the first instance, the torture is to deliberately break the subject--torture as part of an act of war, if you will.

In the second, however, the torture wasn't an act of war. It was a betrayal by a possible ally. Betrayal often calls for betrayal. I'm not saying I justify Sunstreaker's act, especially because McCarthy has whanged out the moralistic sledgehammer on us enough to make sure we get that He Feels Really Bad About It Now.

Just saying it's not the simple moral equivalence.

Pointless story, at the level of bad fanfiction, as everything McCarthy wrote before...

*Smile* when you say 'bad fanfiction', pardner!

HK, hey, if bad fanfic's their standard, someone slip 'em my digits!