http://www.previewsworld.com/public/defaul...=88936&ssd=

not bad so far!

Me too. I'm even finding myself getting more and more used to it as is.

Speaking of, here's the 5-pager: http://www.previewsworld.com/public/defaul...=88936&ssd=

Good lord, they're gonna reveal the whole book to us!

I must say, that does look better. Still waffling on whether I'll pick this up or not, but I do have hope.

I don't think there was ever a question on whether I'd buy this issue. Have to know what all the fuss is about, right?

That looks promising.

Well. I have to admit, that 8-pager* actually has me a bit more interested... still HATE the TF faces, but the bodies, eh. I guess I can deal with them. I guess, just maybe, I've have to go with my original plan and give it 3 issues afterall. (Well, second original plan, first was jus to buy them all...)

*sigh*

Even after all the crap and mistakes and re-writes and all the complaining I do, I still love TF comics.




* EIGHT, plus the 3 we saw before w/ Ironhide, that's freaking half the issue!! IDW is trying reallllly hard to convince all us angy and upset fans...

Did someone lobotomize Prowl?

Just quoting myself from the other topic, 'cus, you know - it's better than retyping it all!




He is acting rather like Ratchet in Infiltration, in't he? And of course it pissed him off to no end the way Ratchet was acting...

It just seems weird a guy who is not above

HIGHLIGHT to view:
reprogramming a fellow Autobot to do what Prowl thinks is "for the cause"

Would balk at the humans killing a Decepticon, much less one that attacked *them* first.

Wait, wait. Energon?

The closest thing Earth has to Energon is Ore-13, which is like a roided up version of Energon that burns out quicker. It's been clearly established in Infiltration that Cybertronians have to rely on either artificial derivatives or foul local brews. In their galaxy-wide war it's been established that at this point, they believe Energon to have been native to Cybertron alone.

I'm thinking he's just using it interchangeably with "Fuel"

Very true. Didn't even think of that... hope this is somehow explained or at least meshes with what Nick did/is doing with Prowl. Could get bad if it doesn't.

Sadly no. Prowl uses the term too, here:

Breakdown as Universe Sunstreaker, with the roof piece removed?

Yeah Prowl seems way out of character here.

I do like Breakdown design; he looks like a cross of his upcoming toy and the Universe Sunstreaker mold.

What I gathered from Prowl's comment is that the humans capture transformers and siphon the energon out of them in macabre fashion.

Yeah, but... where's that Energon coming from? The entire supply's supposedly exhausted.

You know...

Prowl reprogrammed Kup. With an Axis Cradle type linkup.

Whenever this tech has been used it's been on TFs whose minds are mush when they're being controlled.

You don't suppose some of Kup has bled into Prowl?

Yeah, I got that too.

Which is something I really, really like the sound of - if they can succesfully portray this as a survival war between Humans and Autobots, where the humans are willing to kill and the Autobots are conflicted about betraying their principals, I will be ALL over this book.

A deal with Mephisto?

That would require them to build off prior stories in a meaningful way. They seem pretty allergic to that.

I would certainly hope that that (or something similar along those lines) is true, because it makes sense, but I doubt it. As Cattleprod said, it would require having some knowledge of prior stories and building on them in a logical fashion... which IDW has to prove to me that they can do.

Should we really be pasting pages from the ongoing preview? This is the thread for Continuum, and people shouldn't expect to be spoiled for other issues.

Kup would strike me as being even less concerned about what happens to a Decepticon.

I could've possibly bought Ratchet, maybe even Bumblebee, but Prowl is like the absolute last person I could see doing this.

As I pointed out in the Continuum thread.....

The people on this book have apparently forgotten that Energon was only found on Cybertron, is gone and Cybertronians now have to live off artificial derivatives or "foul local brews".

Really wish IDW would start getting their continuity straight... Andy Schmidt came out and apologized when he messed up with Galvatron's story in Coda, but no one really seems to take active steps towards making sure the continuity flows... (and if they do... it doesn't really show, I'm sorry to say...)

It's a handful of lines from one character. I think you're looking for something to disagree with.

Walky's ri... *uggg* Walky is.... *throws up in mouth*... Walky is right!


So let's keep ongoing discussion in the appropriate thread

I agree.

Moving the off-topic discussion to the appropriate thread.

We could split and combine the topic.

I would. Except I don't know how to do that.

Two characters. Breakdown and Prowl both use the term.

And if I was "just looking for something to disagree with", I'd be assaulting the horrible, horrible art, or the goofiness of those combat suits.
But continuity is what concerns me the most. Especially in Continuum's wake.

It's a neat fanwank, though.

The preview looks alright, but it doesn't really do much for me. Humans vs Transformers isn't that compelling, and I kind of roll my eyes at the Autobots suddenly claiming the moral high ground. "What's this? The humans, whose home planet was invaded and civilization destroyed by giant robots, have taken to killing said robots? Gasp! Monstrous!"

Most of the sugar I consume is actually high-fructose corn syrup, but I darn well call it "sugar."

I don't see this as an error so much as an issue of semantics.

This looks interesting, but I was happy with my clean break. Buying this will eventually make me want to get everything else that came out since "Revelation".

Oddly, for the first time in...actually I can't even remember how long, I feel the need to actually defend IDW here.

Breakdown actually seems to be complaining about the lack of real energon in his second word balloon. It's cut short, but the fact he's complaining that the humans can't create the right kind of something for him to recharge, sounds like he can't find actual energon to me.

Plus I always took 'foul local brews' to mean foul local brews of artificial energon, since it'd still have to be a kind of energon for their bodies to be able to process it. It may not be as potent or tasty as the real thing, but it's still a kind of energon. Not all that different from ore 13 really, except that was refined from the Earth over thousands of years using natural geological processes and a bit of fine tuning by shockwave. It's still not really energon, and it too is made using materials from Earth.

Saying that, while I agree with the comments that this is better than the last five pages, this is still ugly, Spikes still a tool, Prowls out of character, and I just don't really find this interesting. Plus the last five pages and Ironhides death still exist, all that immature dark and gritty false drama and cheap deaths are still going to be in this issue, and I don’t want to spend money on it.

Oh, I'm also amused by the fact that it says this is in the near future, when the three year gap would actually bring it up to now. I suppose it could be the next couple of months, but that doesn't look like New York in winter to me

Man, they still look fugly as sin.

Glad I never got into the comics.

This looks pretty good, I don't see the need to have put out the other really spoilerific preview.

Great stuff, looking forward to it.

I like it. It's a good start. There's conflict and danger, cleanly set up. Costa doesn't mess about in introducing the antagonists. Point of utmost importance: I actually want to know what happens next.

But I find myself sympathising with Commander Shockwav's recent comments about dumping past continuity and starting again. There are already some things that urgently need explaining, which weigh the preview down somewhat. Why can't the Autobots leave Earth? What happened to Ore13? Where did Breakdown come from? Why is Prowl acting out of character?

As to the latter question, I'm happy to go with (a) it's part of a bigger ruse that will be revealed, or (b) Prowl is very good at being calm and rational when it comes to fighting a war against his own kind, but more given to irrational fear and anger when it comes to other races hunting them down. ie. for him, this is somewhat off flowchart.

As to the other questions, it seems a shame that a new story has to answer them, but if this is supposed to be a follow-up, then not answering them is rather unsatisfying.

These pages are exciting, action packed and dynamic. The story sounds really promising, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next, so that ticks those boxes...

However....

Prowl seems quite wildly out of character in this brief preview, and yeah, I don't like the faces, and it doesn't reconcile as well with the 'Ations era as it perhaps could....

So I'm torn. I think I'll buy it, give it a chance. I got more of a kick out of this preview than I did from 12 issues of AHM.

I like what Prowl did. It seems very "Autoboty".

Though I'm a little wary of all the human stuff in this first issue. I couldn't stand all the military round table discussions in AHM and it actually prevented me from reading the whole series. There's nothing I can't stand more than people sitting around talking in a comic book.

Have you seen any TF media that kept it's continuity straight? It's like most writers think that since TF's are nothing more than a toyline and Hasbro doesn't really give a jive so long as they stick to a few core principles, they can pretty much do whatever they want, from issue to issue, episode to episode, movie to movie. Hell even a lot of the individual stories aren't internally consistent. TF continuity is nothing more but an endlessly churning sea of chaos that's given whatever thought and form that suits the fancy of whichever writing team is currently in charge.

I think we've gotten way past the point where reconciling with the 'Ation stories can even be considered a realistic goal.

If this series is any good in and of itself, I'll gladly think of it as Post-Crisis Transformers. Everything before kinda vaguely happened sort of the way we remembered it, but not really.

Thoughts:

1) A more interesting, coherent and exciting preview.

2) Don't mind the bodies at all (That's very close to being RotF Brakedown being reassigned before even being released) and the heads, while still not good, aren't particulary grevous on these pages.

3) Yes, Prowl seems out of character. Yes, there could be many decent explanations for him acting so, the question is will we GET any of those explanations, stated or implied? I kinda doubt it given IDW's track record but we'll see.

4)This makes me semi-interested in picking this up, though the other preview of the end of the issue makes me semi-interested in skipping it. In the end I'll probably get it out of curiosity, but how long I stay or wether I drop it for the TPB depends on what they deliver.


- ZacWilliam, wishes Wreckers was sooner...

I love the direction they're going in this book, and I think it's a breath of fresh air after All Hail Megatron. That being said I just want to cover some things. The comic itself says in clear print "a few years later" so that wouldn't mean winter in new york. Prowl "breaking character".. How many people have you known in your life that were reserved or quiet and kept to themselves that saw people abused and snapped. If I wear in his situation, being hunted by humans constantly, watching them LEECH or STEAL energy from others, especially with how desperate that bot is for food or energon.. I would snap to, no matter how calm I was in the past. These may be robots but it's known that with emotion comes emotional snaps. It happens in war, it happens in real life, its most likely happened to all of us, to call it a break in character is a far stretch, and to say its wrong for a character to make any moves out of the norm is denying the evolution of a character and keep them static, boring, and plain. IF his speech changed, or common words and phrases differed from the norm then maybe, but its a different writer than Furman. What would you rather have, all characters acting exactly the same, or all of them having their specific traits quirks and mannerisms. Really, its a comic about robots that turn into cars and fight over energy in cube form... what more can anyone really expect?

Looks good to me so far.

Randy

As I said above, there are certainly posible explanations that could explain Prowl's change in characterization well. *BUT* as a writer if you want people to understand that the character has changed you need to in some way show, state, or imply the reasons for those changes consistantly. ESPECIALLY when your writting for a company that has now established themselves as likely to just ignore/mistake past continuity/characterization like IDW has.

IF going forward they show us good consistant stated or implied reasons for Prowl's acting contrary to his established character, if that's part of his character's story arc in the book, then this is fine. But will they? That's the thing, with the reputation they've established, most folks are, I think, just assuming this is not an intentional story point but just sloppy/bad writing.




I would like them to have their specific traits, quirks, and mannerisms, yes. Prowl doesn't here, that's the problem.
Characterization's a GOOD THING. Now characters can change and evolve sure, but you have to SHOW that happening and be consistant with it for it not to just be random misscharacterization.



Decent exciting and creative writing, consistant characterization and continuity.

I'm going to propose an alternate explanation for Prowl's behavior:

Prowl is, as established, a tactician. He's been watching the humans, he knows a fair bit about the technology they've developed to hunt Cybertronians, and he has a reasonable suspicion that it's based off of reverse-engineering those that have been captured, likely starting with the disabled Decepticons that were left behind in New York City. He also knows (and directly states) that the humans are getting better at it with every subsequent capture. Energon is being siphoned from Cybertronian prisoners to power the mechanized units used in the captures, and each prisoner also adds to the corpus of knowledge the humans have accumulated on Cybertronian physiology and weaponry. Bear in mind that the Tyrest Accord considered any Cybertronian technology falling into the hands of an outside species to be an unacceptable outcome. That's a protocol that Prowl would know the reasoning behind intimately, and he's seeing the direct results of it being violated with each successive capture the humans achieve. Now conversely, Prowl may have avoided intervention thus far because he can also see the pragmatism in humans picking off the remaining desperate Decepticons who remain on Earth. It's a pragmatic goal, and enforcing the Tyrest Accord was perhaps a luxury they could afford prior to Megatron's last offensive, but they can't dedicate the resources to now. But again, he's seeing that start to backfire and he's done the math. By the time the humans mop up the last of the Decepticons they will likely be very good at hunting Cybertronians, perhaps good enough to take down the Autobots.

Prowl hasn't necessarily gone maverick. Perhaps he's just seen the writing on the wall.

That's how I see it. Breakdown's death means future Autobot deaths. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.

Breakdown's metal monster face doesn't look so bad. I guess the difference in color separating his overly complex face from his overly complex mouth helps a bit, but those silver-faced bots are so screwed.

While that works, I still wouldn't count on it being the writer's reason unless we see more from him later in the issue.

Of course, that goes both ways.