Five Page Preview of IDW Beast Wars #7

The art is definitely a step in the right direction. Except for the bizarre hands on Dinobot...

IDW's trip to prehistoric Earth or some near-to-that equivalent continues with today's release of Beast Wars #7. The issue begins a new arc called "Pod" and features the first appearance in this comic of Blackarachnia, and that's not a spoiler when she's on the darn cover. Her fictional debut is accompanied by another that's probably the hot topic when it comes to this particular issue, as a new artist takes over for a little while.


I'm personally a big fan of Josh Burcham's art style, but I'm also not blind - it's definitely a style and reading our boards here at Seibertron and elsewhere on the internet will tell you that style is not enjoyed by some fans. For those fans (who are wrong, but that's ok, I'm wrong on the internet a lot too) it may come as good news that issue 7 features Winston Chan as the interior artist, bringing along a change in that aforementioned style concept. Chan's beast modes are stellar, managing to find that careful point between realistic-ish animals and animals that are so large and out-of-scale with one another that they're completely unreal. SidVenBlu (yes, written like that) takes up the color work and brings major consistency with the opening arc of the series that helps make the transition from one artist to another much less jarring than I'd feared.


If there's an area where Chan's art has room for improvement, it's in the characters' robot modes. Something I'm not art-literate enough to describe just looks off about many of the facial expressions, but aside from that, some of the poses the characters are depicted in feel very stiff and artificial. It's worth noting that the action scenes were better than the talking scenes in this regard. Those action scenes are also bolstered by some of Jake M. Wood's best letter work to date - check the image before the one just above (with Dinobot and Optimus Primal from page 2) for an example. Multiple fonts, fun usage of onomatopoeias and nothing in the way of other things makes for a good time.

Art's usually not the first part of my reviews, but it's good to change things up, so this is also where I'll remind Seibertron.com readers that you can find all the cover images and full credits for the issue through our Vector Sigma Database page for Beast Wars #7.


As much as the art's changed and is rightfully the main point of interest in this issue, the plotting has changed very little, and by that I mean the decompressed pace of events. Eric Burnham's writing leaves little to be desired and gets out of the way when it needs to. The characters are further defined and more of each faction's situation is elaborated on. All of that's good to have, but just like with the "Savage Landing" arc, "Pod" is off to a start that makes it feel much like an episode of Beast Wars' first TV season, which is not as much of a compliment as it may sound like to some. If you see the switch in the book's credits where David Mariotte has moved to supervising editor while Jazmine Joyner takes up the mantle as editor and hope for a change to the pacing from that, let me go ahead and give you the bad news - there isn't any. This issue feels like it was plotted out for the trade paperback, just like nearly every issue of this series so far.


Beast Wars #7 continues a story where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The series itself is quite enjoyable, but it's tough to find a single issue that jumps out as better or worse than others. It's strange that comics publishers will judge a book's success based on how many monthly orders it gets from comic shops while simultaneously creating a product that is best enjoyed by those shops' customers when they abstain from the practice of subscribing to boost those monthly numbers as they wait until the collected version is released. You have to wonder when this anachronistic business model will crack, but that's another tangent for another time.

In short, this was another enjoyable issue that works well as part of the series, it's still not something that shines extremely brightly on its own, and fans turned off by the initial art style may find more to like here than in previous issues.



Look out for this issue today, August 25th, where you can pick it up at the Seibertron.com eBay store or at your local shop, check here to find the closest shop to you.

I already miss Josh's art.

The art is already leaps and bounds better than the crud in the previous releases. Let's hope this artist can replace whatever hack was employed for the others.

primalxconvoy wrote:The art is already leaps and bounds better than the crud in the previous releases. Let's hope this artist can replace whatever hack was employed for the others.

He's already set to return in November. I liked his art as well, just remember that art is subjective. Plenty of people hated animated for it's art style after all

Oh, and Cyberverse plenty of folk knock on Cyberverse but they missed out on some great stories and characters.

ZeroWolf wrote:

primalxconvoy wrote:The art is already leaps and bounds better than the crud in the previous releases. Let's hope this artist can replace whatever hack was employed for the others.

He's already set to return in November. I liked his art as well, just remember that art is subjective. Plenty of people hated animated for it's art style after all

Oh, and Cyberverse plenty of folk knock on Cyberverse but they missed out on some great stories and characters.

That's a shame that the "artist" it's returning. As for Animated, I liked the show, but the toys were awful. The aesthetic didn't translate into a great toy line. I remember someone telling me that Animated was linked to a female Hasbro employee, or something? She was demoted/let go due to poor Animated toy sales? Can't really validate that though. Cyberverse had a great little (and surprisingly mature) story too. In both cases, they were leaps and bounds better than the main art in this BW series.

And yes, art is subjective and subjectively, I think the regular art for these BW comics was of an extremely poor quality and out of touch with the majority of TF/BW fans.

primalxconvoy wrote:I remember someone telling me that Animated was linked to a female Hasbro employee, or something? She was demoted/let go due to poor Animated toy sales? Can't really validate that though.

Complete and utter bull. The people who spearheaded Animated in both toys and fiction were all men, the art design aesthetic stemming from the style of Derrick J. Wyatt.

And the toys didn't do poorly since Hasbro kept making them even after the show ended. The main reason Animated ended when it did was because Hasbro wanted to leave Cartoon Network and partner with Discovery to create the Hub Network, and wanted to start over and make a new TF cartoon, Prime, to be a flagship program for the new network.

Depending on where you looked, you got different view points of the art, as D Max pointed out a few pages ago.

The animated toyline was superb and I felt it captured the style brilliantly, look at Deluxe Prowl/ Samurai Prowl for instance, the engineers worked miracles. There was a few duds of course (Voyager Megs) but they were outshone. It was a shame the last few toys never got a wider release.

Not heard of the female employee story

Edit:

Thanks for the clarification Sabrblade!

Sabrblade wrote:

primalxconvoy wrote:I remember someone telling me that Animated was linked to a female Hasbro employee, or something? She was demoted/let go due to poor Animated toy sales? Can't really validate that though.

Complete and utter bull. The people who spearheaded Animated in both toys and fiction were all men, the art design aesthetic stemming from the style of Derrick J. Wyatt.

I think it's a reference to Samanttha Lomow but a bunch of facts are getting twisted.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

primalxconvoy wrote:I remember someone telling me that Animated was linked to a female Hasbro employee, or something? She was demoted/let go due to poor Animated toy sales? Can't really validate that though.

Complete and utter bull. The people who spearheaded Animated in both toys and fiction were all men, the art design aesthetic stemming from the style of Derrick J. Wyatt.

I think it's a reference to Samanttha Lomow but a bunch of facts are getting twisted.

Could you elaborate? Also, for reference, I'm not suggesting that sex/gender is an issue here.

Xenos Prime wrote:I already miss Josh's art.

Same, this looks good, but I like Josh's more

I give this issue the same score

william-james88 wrote:I give this issue the same score

I mean, on my scale/our very unofficial scale a 3.5 = "good", so nothing wrong with that!

Sabrblade wrote: The main reason Animated ended when it did was because Hasbro wanted to leave Cartoon Network and partner with Discovery to create the Hub Network, and wanted to start over and make a new TF cartoon

It tends to be a running theme with Transformers shows of old. Just when they were getting good, becoming their own thing (usually third season) they end. Animated picked up significantly by Season 3.
Beast Wars to me, was it's own exception. As Season 3 wasn't great. But, I wanted to see where the show would have gone post-Beast Machines (so Season 5, in essence). Yet it was not to be.

As for the art. This is an objective improvement. It's not perfect. But this artist understands the fundamentals. Character scaling, basic anatomy, panel composition AKA The arty-farty stuff. That anyone who has chosen this career should know. Many stylised artists IE Tom Scioli, understand that. So it isn't a justifiable excuse to hide behind.

Then again, I've read comic books since I was 4 or 5yo. Everything from Tintin to Lone Wolf & Cub to Watchmen. Even the worst art gets it's plaudits. Rob Liefeld had his fans, after all...



^This art, a few pages ago in this very thread, was considered more favourable than Burcham.

Some poor soul in the letters page doesn't understand what Alone Together was supposed to be and asks if the writer of this series can tie it into this.

Sigh

One of the many reasons this was the wrong era to bring back Beast Wars.

The art is definitely an improvement on what was seen in the first few issues, not enough to get me to start reading however.

o.supreme wrote:The art is definitely an improvement on what was seen in the first few issues, not enough to get me to start reading however.

Honestly, in good conscience I couldn't recommend this book. Between this and 2.0, I don't think IDW are doing justice to the franchise of late. Clearly money is a factor and the talent is either inexperienced and/or cheap.

Personally, as far as respecting licensed IP. I would suggest Transformers being given to Dark Horse. They did fantastic stuff with Star Wars, Conan, Hellboy etc (before the former two were poached by Disney). I think they could do much the same for the bots of Cybertron.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Honestly, in good conscience I couldn't recommend this book. Between this and 2.0, I don't think IDW are doing justice to the franchise of late. Clearly money is a factor and the talent is either inexperienced and/or cheap.

Personally, as far as respecting licensed IP. I would suggest Transformers being given to Dark Horse. They did fantastic stuff with Star Wars, Conan, Hellboy etc (before the former two were poached by Disney). I think they could do much the same for the bots of Cybertron.

I've not read a single 2.0 story. Honestly, after the first continuity ended, I kept all the IDW books (450+ of them), in boxes in my closet for over a year, never looking back at a single one, which is why I decided to sell them. Unfortunately in the Purge I also sold most of my Marvel and DW collection as well. I do regret that a bit, but if I could get them back digitally, that would suffice.

Seems like most of the more talented individuals from the bigger publishers (Marvel and DC) are being poached by smaller businesses like Substack. Will it last? Is it viable? Who knows? In the past I'd agree that Dark Horse was a great publisher. I enjoyed their Godzilla series in the 90's quite a bit. But in the current environment, I am unsure. Comics overall have really gone down in quality, especially in the last 5-10 years, I really can't point to any story from any publisher that compelled me to read it.

I have read everything Transformers upto the Devastator storyline (Transformers Galaxies), thanks to the Part Work. But if asked for IDW Transformers recommendations, my go-to options haven't changed: Last Stand of the Wreckers and Furman's -Ations run. Nothing else since 2005 has screamed "Transformers" to me, from their entire output.

It takes a great creative team to make a noteworthy book in this day and age. Strange Adventures from DC and Immortal Hulk from Marvel, being very strong examples. A publisher brand alone doesn't cut it like it used to. If anything, I'd recommend IDW for their TMNT work.

Back when Image was formed in the 90's, it was for a purpose. To continue further splintering the industry into smaller and smaller entities, won't end well. "Too many cooks" and all that...