In the middle:

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/1107/05/idwfirsts.htm

Seems like Bumblebee has become resentful of Hot Rod Rodimus.

Suuuuuuure it will.

Can you blame him? He gets picked by his fellows to be leader, he's had an absolutely horrible time on the job, and now a mech that had done nothing but cause trouble has come along with the Matrix and pretty much killed any chances of him maintaining the position. It'd be like a sitting US president going through an absolutely horrible first term, only for the guy he beat in the election to find the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant or (to name a Christian artifact that hasn't been found by Indiana Jones) the Spear of Destiny.

Seriously, it sucks to be Bumblebee.

Man, Costa, just because you want narration doesn't mean you should sugar-coat it Bible-style.

And lo did IDW release from their mighty pens a legend of epic epicness. All astonished were the readers, those lowly crawlers upon the dusty, fowl smelling Earth, for lo did the epic speak in tones of epic epicness, ever. Ever did it speak in ye old high pretentiousness like a badly written fantasy novel. And ever aft did they groan and wait for Roberts, the prophesized savior, to hopefully drop some better writting all up in this thing...


-ZacWilliam, the events aren't bad, per say, but ugh that naration grates. Just tell your story and if it's epic it will be epic. Writing the narration like that, badly, just... Ugh...

So the story that changes Transformers forever is either a rehash of '86 film events with a new stand-in for Unicron, or a rehash of late season 3 where Rodimus gives the Matrix back and we arrive at status quo again. Right. Got it.

What I'd like is for IDW to realize that there's nothing they can do with the comic that would make it sell more more than it already does without making the stories crappier than they are at the moment. Seriously, how many soft reboot will it take for them to understand that and just put a good writer in charge?

Nghh. The writing on that narration is horrible. It reads like a parody.

Well, James Roberts is doing co-writing for Chaos, and John Barber's apparently taking over from Costa at #125, so I guess...the number they've already had.

Seriously, I felt like I was reading the Covenant of Primus. Not necessarily a bad thing to me, but COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE!


Still loving Bee's not-so-new-anymore design, as well as Hot Rods/Rodimus, I would very much like toys of them.

I wonder what will happen now that Ironhide and Sunstreaker are back.

Nothing of importance. I'm placing bets.

Yes it does. It doesn't capture what its attempting to do.


But at least its a change from what we're usually getting from the comics. It feels refreshing in that way. We've never had narration in the IDW comics telling us what characters are thinking or their motivations.

Bumblebee's kind of a dick in those first few pages.

Yeah, that is what I felt they are going for with this, probably penned by Alpha Trion if he's this universe's chronicler. It doesn't annoy me, least not yet, its something new and different and could be interesting since Roberts is helping write the Chaos stuff.

Blerg. So this isn't a good time to start reading transformers comics, then?

And who is the giant guy in the back of this panel, Silverbolt?

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/110...sformers215.htm

Broadside.

I love how Broadside and Jetfire have been drawn so many ways at this point within the same series that the same question comes up, followed by exactly the same answer, regarding an almost completely different character design.

Not likely, this is Costa trying to tie up all his storylines before the next writer takes over.

I'm...liking the epic narration. It makes it seem like its building to something that may actually matter.

Whether it does or not is obviously up in the air, but I'll take this over "ugh" and "raawwr" and splash pages.

Bluestreak/Silverstreak shouldn't know that Rodimus has come back from the dead. The reader knows it but the Autobots on earth don't.

Its like Sunstreaker knowing Hot Rod now calls himself Rodimus despite the Rodimus name being given to him after Sunstreaker was left on Cybertron. Its not as if the comic can't use the name Hot Rod - they used it in issue 21.

Costa can't keep his characters together.

Yeah, if it felt like this was all going to actually matter, it's fine.

But there's always that nagging feeling like "a year later, all of this will be forgotten".

And I think we may have Tracks in there miscolored as Drift, too, just between Jetfire and Cliffjumper in the background. Who colored this?

Ah, but will it stick? How long after that until the next reboot-in-vain happens?

Its interesting how Hot Rod in his current IDWverse incarnation is like Season 3 Rodimus in G1, but Rodimus in this currrent IDWverse is like G1 movie Hot Rod.

To be fair, I guess he could be working on that assumption since he was missing and has come back with two people who were definitely dead (well, Sunstreaker was just mostly dead...) that he had also died and come back with the others.

Still, you'd think Bluestreak would burst in and mention how Ironhide wasn't dead anymore first, rather than mentioning Hot Rod.

Phazer

Seeing Ironhide, Wheelie and Sunstreaker next to the other guys really points out how bad Don's redesigns still are and how much they stick out.

I was really happy to see them using the name "Hot Rod" again... then I got to the last panel. Argh.

I generally advocate removing Furman from TF comics and never allowing him to write them again. His time has come and gone, he's stale, he's told his stories, time to move on before he repeats himself yet again, especially before Grimlock becomes god again.

But holy hell, this is like horrible Furman in writing. It's like some guy was masturbating to everything Furman wrote and splashed on the pages and that's the end result we got.

I've seen better fanfics from 8 year olds during the Armada run for crying out loud.

Huh. I had mentally completed Bumblebee's unfinished question with, "dead?" Meaning that he was as confused as the reader that Blue/Silverstreak would've been privy to that. If I'm right, then we still don't know how 'Streak knew, but at least it's not a mistake. On the other hand, given the Sunstreaker gaffe last issue, maybe I'm being too credulous.

Speaking of continuity issues, if Bumblebee is just now able to walk again after his assassination attempt, then when did "Infestation" happen? In the HoD #4 thread, I tentatively put it between #19 and #20. I still think that's overall the best spot, Bumblebee's condition be damned, but is there somewhere better that I haven't considered?

IDW said when Infestation came out that it was between #8 and 9. At the time I thought it was just them trying not to spoil Bumblebee's survival, but the cane thing means it's the only time that makes sense.

Do you know where they said that? I've looked through Infestation-themed threads on the IDW boards, and the closest thing I've found is this post from Andy Schmidt, referring to "Heart of Darkness": "But it does take place or at least begin before the INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT arc. And it catches up to INFESTATION by the end and then even catches up to TRANSFORMERS ongoing series #20 in June."

So we know that HoD starts before #9, but Infestation could still be anywhere. The phrasing of "catches up to INFESTATION" makes me think Infestation is meant to be somewhat later on. Plus Infestation doesn't feel right before #9 because that puts an awful lot of time between Galvy's Earth and Cybertron visits, when in HoD they were portrayed with very little delay in-between. And the Vegas incident was a giant public display of Autobot/US-military cooperation, so the president's ban on robots as WMDs in #9 seems incongruous.

Compared to that, I'm willing to accept Bumblebee's recovery-timeline problem. (If I were feeling particularly retconny, I'd say that maybe he'd been fully repaired between issues, and then his leg injury was sustained during the zombie battle... but there's still the problem of his dialogue suggesting he's been bedridden for six weeks, so I won't bother.)

Say, now that I think of it, why is Spike in a wheelchair? I skimmed the preceding ongoing issues, and I couldn't find him getting hurt anywhere. Some dialogue placement in #18 suggests that he's the one seen recuperating in a hospital bed with his arm in a sling, but the soldiers are all drawn so similarly, and his hair color is inconsistent over the long run. Besides, that still doesn't tell us how he actually got hurt. I see no reason why Infestation couldn't happen after #18 (with the hospital-bed guy not being Spike), and the zombie battle being the cause of Spike's wheelchairitude.

What's the deal about the rumored skip to #125, anyway?

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

All we know so far is that it's a part of the post-Chaos reset and will likely involve a new creative team.


ZacWilliam, and that a certain plot point that is used constantly is getting recycled again, but I don't know if you want to be spoiled there...

I don't know, this preview is kind of nice. Amazingly doofy, but nice.

"Not moved by counsel," Costa. Not council. Unless there was some group of stuffy officials that, at one point, tried to give Hot Rod an intervention. If you're going to wax epic you can't have glaring grammatical errors in the text.

Who is the next writer?

I don't think it's been officially announced yet.

But I think they HAVE said that there will be two seperate books after so we've got two chances at a creative team that clicks.


-ZacWilliam, still pulling for Furman, Roberts, and Roche...

Say what you want about Furman's plots, but he does know Transformers very well.

I'd rather have Furman than Costa. At least then we get some respect for the characters and overall mythos.

By Primus, is that narration pretentious.

Still, liking where the story seems to be going. Seems like Costa's finally getting all his ducks lined up in a row ready for the epic conclusion of his run.

That wasn't Spike, it was one of the other recurring Skywatch soldiers. The name escapes me, but he's been showing up semi-regularly.

It's not a skip, it's just them deciding to properly number the series now. At this point there are 115 issues of IDW G1 comics, 117 if you count Infestation.

I don't mind what Costa has been trying to do, but I don't like how he's done it. I don't like what Furman generally tries to do, but I like how he does it.

By which I mean, as lame and '90s-X-Men-y (Furman's own comparison) as I found Furman's IDW-G1 stories, they really did have a solid structure. This became apparent to me when I did a thorough overhaul of the Maximum Dinobots summaries on the wiki. The intricacies of Shockwave's dealings with Soundwave and the cassettes, and how they played out in re: Skywatch, the Machination, the Dinobots, and Hunter/Sunstreaker, were very well-thought-out and consistent. Furman doesn't tend to make the kind of mistakes we've just seen where, for instance, characters have knowledge that they shouldn't. He's not infallible, but he's still impressive.


Why do you say that? Did we see that other guy get hurt? I hope you're right, since it would make no sense to put dialogue solely about Spike over a panel without him in it, so he would have to be one of the standing guys, which would mean there would NEED to be some Spike-endangering event between #18 and #21... so, voila, Infestation. If we accept all of that, then Bumblebee's condition really is the only discrepancy, and like I said, I can totally live with it.

Uh... what are you getting at? Spike wasn't mentioned at all in those preview pages. Pennington (who's blond, unlike Spike) got run over by Dead End in Revenge of the Decepticons, and was last seen getting medical treatment. It's logical to assume that's him in the wheelchair.

I distinctly remember Andy Schmidt saying that Infestation was before International Incident, in direct response to people pointing out that Bumblebee was severely damaged (at the time believed to have been killed) at the end of that story.

.....You are absolutely right. I had just assumed it was Spike because he's the default young-soldier-who-talks-to-TFs. Fair enough; disregard that last paragraph I wrote.


Google's still letting me down when it comes to finding that statement. (Of course, being Schmidt, some grains of salt are probably in order anyway...)

Like I said, at the time I thought the "it takes place before International Incident" line was just to hide the fact Bumblebee survived, but now it's the only time that makes sense on account of Bumblebee being out of action for the entire period after II until now.

And like I said, I don't think it makes sense to put it before II because there would then be too much time between Galvatron's Earth and Cybertron trips, plus the president's "robot-cooperation = terror" announcement doesn't jibe with the big, public display of Skywatch/TF cooperation that would've just occurred.

I don't see either option being a clean one. Shrug.

(For what it's worth, I have thought of a new point in the pre-II theory's favor: By taking place in Vegas during an emergency situation, Infestation is a serviceable bridge between Prowl's west-coast sabbatical and his later appearances back with the main Autobot force.)

Remember though that there's virtually no time that passes between the second storyarc and Revenge of the Decepticons. And Space Opera happens concurrently to all that stuff.

Really? Going by the wiki, it didn't seem like nearly that much...

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

It is. All the minis and spotlights and such can throw you off but yeah, they've been going for a good while after all.