IDW RiD teaser images, 14 this time... Options

[Dante]

It's very interesting thinking about the military/civilian breakdown between the Autobots (and 'Cons) vs the Nails. Never having been in the military myself, it's usually much easier to identify with the civilians, but here we identify with the military because the Autobots are the characters we know and love and the Nails are, for the most part, a bunch of random guys in the background.

Eh. Even from a neutral perspective, the NAILs need an attitude adjustment. They come across to me as the spoiled, rich descendents of a Russian Jewish family that fled the Cossacks and moved to New England in the late 19th century, returning to Israel in 1946 and cursing out the Holocaust survivors because they had to put up with rationing and the draft during WWII. You wanna deal with the Naz-- uh, I mean the Decepticons? Yeah, they're your problem now, bungholes.

[Xaaron]

Perhaps even more on point, there's a large Cuban population in Florida. Some of them believe that, when Castro dies and the Communist government of Cuba falls, they will be allowed to go back and claim the land and homes they abandoned decades ago by fleeing to America. One can see their point, but the people who have been living in those homes for the past generation or so might have something to say about it, too.

[Moroboshi]

Terri-Bull.

Horri-Bull's brother, who wants REVENGE!

[ZacWilliam1]

Terri-Bull.

Horri-Bull's brother, who wants REVENGE!

Actually, it should probably be his sister. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon-hotrod.gif)


-ZacWilliam, the children of Fulla and His loving sparkmate Aloada.

This post has been edited by ZacWilliam1: Feb 5 2012, 07:55 AM

[Dante]

Nah, their sister would be Deplora-Bull. Don't you read Sluggy Freelance? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon-waspy.gif)

[BB Shockwave]

Terri-Bull.

Horri-Bull's brother, who wants REVENGE!

Actually, it should probably be his sister. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon-hotrod.gif)

Someone needs to draw that. So that finally Strika will have someone to hang out with! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon-fire.gif)

[Jackpot]

I'm kind of sad that these ones aren't as humorous as the MtMtE teaser images were.

In retrospect that makes sense, now that we know the difference in tone between the two series.

Wow, Metalhawk comes of as a lot more of a jerk there than in DoOP. I mean you got the impression there that he was positioning himself politically but it was an undercurrent beneath someone who seemed to care about the situation. Here he just seems to be flat out undermining Bumblebee in a pretty obvious dickish way to take authority.

Agreed that he's taking a harder line regarding Bumblebee, but I'm not sure it's due to power-lust. This could just be the evolution of his honest opinion.

Lastly, while I can see the sense in putting the Decepticons to work as "Police" to keep them busy I think it would make more sense to make sure every group of them was working with an Autobot overseer. It just seems like you're asking for this sort of trouble if you let them keep the peace under their own reconnaissance.

I had that thought too. Really, empowering Decepticons with any kind of authoritative role was just a terrible idea from the beginning. When they desperately needed the manpower to quell an uprising, it made brief sense, but that should've been the end of it. Then again, maybe manpower is still a desperate problem? It's not hard to believe that, but I feel like Barber isn't giving us quite enough foundational information to really understand the situation.

I am really loving how different they all look, thus allowing for multiple design styles to come into play, like the more "gundam" style guys, boxy g1 guys, transtech, and even beast wars type characters as well.

Years ago, M Sipher told me about a story idea he and Trent were cooking up set on post-BM Cybertron, with the planet being mostly wilderness and the population being a mix of all types of TF. I always dug that idea, so I'm happy to see a variation on it finally playing out (with less green, but still).

Thundercracker was revealed to have been summoned back to Cybertron or could he still be on earth? I wanna say somewhere on Cybertron because even Drift was being afflicted when all the Decepticons were being brainwashed.

I don't think he was specifically seen on Cybertron, but for narrative reasons I prefer to believe that there are no TFs left on Earth. There are enough other variables at play in the current setup.

It reminded me strongly of Battlestar Galactica, and I'm really intrigued at the politics.

I've definitely gotten that vibe too, and it makes me wary. (I loved Galactica at first but grew to hate it by the third season.) While I could give a laundry list of plot points I was dissatisfied with in that show, what really killed me was the relentlessly serious, grim, personal-conflict-heavy drama that was almost never broken with an ounce of levity or genial comradery. I think RiD's tone is in danger of going down that path, especially compared to MtMtE. Of course only time will tell, and I'm not condemning it out of hand, but the thought will be in my head as I read it.

Eh. Even from a neutral perspective, the NAILs need an attitude adjustment. They come across to me as the spoiled, rich descendents of a Russian Jewish family that fled the Cossacks and moved to New England in the late 19th century, returning to Israel in 1946 and cursing out the Holocaust survivors because they had to put up with rationing and the draft during WWII. You wanna deal with the Naz-- uh, I mean the Decepticons? Yeah, they're your problem now, bungholes.

That's... an oddly specific and charged example. Is that a thing that actually happened in Israel?

Anyway, I think it's difficult to find a good real-world example to compare this situation to. I can't think of a time when there's been a massive return to an ancestral homeland by immigrants who hated all of the contemporary inhabitants and blamed them universally for their original dispersal. Usually, non-war reclaim-the-homeland movements require the support of a seed group in the established population.