Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

"What? Transformers made from animals instead of vehicles and stuff? Doesn't sound so great, throw it to Kenner division, maybe they can make a quick buck or something."
Beast Wars, Machine Wars, Beast Machines... seeing a pattern? Coming soon: "Wars Wars"
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by Sparky Prime »

Onslaught Six wrote:I doubt that, since I've long established my opinion that those "reasons" you're probably saying were concocted so that they could do the cameos in the first place. And to try and please BW fanboys who hated the series anyway.
Of course you doubt it, you're letting your hate of those few cameos blind your perception of the story. Again, they didn't concoct anything. The show left those plot points open so it was easy for the story of the comic to make use of them.
It's set in the same era as the BW universe? That's literally all you need to do to put it in there--that common time period and the fact that they're Transformers. In fact, the very existence of BWII and Neo--two shows that take place in the same time period yet are mostly unrelated--proves that you can do this. Because it's been done!
As andersonh1 said, just setting it in the same era is not sufficient. If you do a 'meanwhile, on Cybertron' story, you'd loose any reason for them to have beast modes and thus the justification to call it Beast Wars. You claim BWII and Neo proves otherwise, but those stories don't primarily take place on Cybertron do they? They all go to Earth. BWII explains why they needed beast forms similarly to Beast Wars, setting them on a planet with an environment dangerous to their robotic forms. And while Neo skips the explanations, it's conceivable they may have adopted those forms in preparations for their mission which essentially started out by picking up where BWII left off.
Shockwave wrote:Bigger armies = more characters = more interesting story possibilities.
I don't think that's necessarily true... Sure, you can cover a wider range with a larger cast, but that doesn't mean a small cast wont have just as many interesting story possibilities. And I think you loose some room for characterization if you go for a large cast of characters. Really, that's part of why BW stand out, it was known for its characters and great stories.
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

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I think one of the main differences between BW and G1 is that, like, 80% of the characters are toy only with no show characterization whatsoever. So anything set in the show's universe that would feature those characters would basically have to amount to a "Meanwhile on Cybertron" type story. but those characters still have toys under the BW line which unto itself justifies the title. More characters gives more personalities to draw from for more possible story conflict and whatnot, and that's what I was saying, it wouldn't be limited to 5 of each faction and that's it (although, Sparky, I do understand your point and you're correct, one doesn't necessarily = the other). Bottom line, having a broader cast of characters in the same setting wouldn't necessarily be bad and wouldn't necessarily be the same story. G1 comic and cartoon were completely different stories from each other even though they more or less had the same cast in the same setting, so again, why can't that work for BW? My argument is that it would because unlike G1 which initially had those two different stories, BW didn't. We have show version and we have... well that's it. So why not have comic version that is that, but different?
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

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Shockwave wrote:but those characters still have toys under the BW line which unto itself justifies the title.
I can't agree with that. Sure those characters might come from a toyline called Beast Wars, but calling a story 'Beast Wars' when there are no beasts in it just doesn't make sense. That would kind of be like instead of "Transformers: Cybertron" they stuck with the title "Energon" (I know it's not exactly the same thing but just work with me here). It's (essentially) the same characters right? But the gimmick behind the toyline/story plot is completely different. Hence a change in titles. I just can't see justifying calling a story "Beast Wars" if they don't have beast modes, even if those characters came from the Beast Wars toyline.
G1 comic and cartoon were completely different stories from each other even though they more or less had the same cast in the same setting, so again, why can't that work for BW? My argument is that it would because unlike G1 which initially had those two different stories, BW didn't. We have show version and we have... well that's it. So why not have comic version that is that, but different?
Well the major difference is that the G1 comic and cartoon were being produced at the same time. Running concurrently, it's understandable the two mediums would have some different ideas despite starting out with the same concept/characters. Beast Wars on the other hand, I think andersonh1 is right, despite new characters and different stories, I think it'd come off feeling more like a rehash instead, unless they changed up the concept.
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by BWprowl »

Sparky Prime wrote:
Shockwave wrote:but those characters still have toys under the BW line which unto itself justifies the title.
I can't agree with that. Sure those characters might come from a toyline called Beast Wars, but calling a story 'Beast Wars' when there are no beasts in it just doesn't make sense. That would kind of be like instead of "Transformers: Cybertron" they stuck with the title "Energon" (I know it's not exactly the same thing but just work with me here). It's (essentially) the same characters right? But the gimmick behind the toyline/story plot is completely different. Hence a change in titles. I just can't see justifying calling a story "Beast Wars" if they don't have beast modes, even if those characters came from the Beast Wars toyline.
That's the perfect reason to call it 'Beast Wars'. People can see the book's title, and they immediately know about when in the canon this takes place. Done and done. It's not like everyone in 'Headmasters' was a Headmaster, right? You make a comic book set in the 'Beast Wars' era of Transformers, you call it 'Beast Wars'. Hell, they insinuated that DNA scanners were pretty standard at that point, so any Transformer going off planet is likely going to pick up a Beast Mode. All it would take is one trip to Planet Quzybuk for the characters to get the Beast Modes you would require to read this series.
Anderson wrote:Look at it this way. We've seen Autobots and Decepticons locked in their civil war for years, all the way back to the beginning of the franchise. Simon Furman has twice found a new way to portray that basic concept. Once with Generation 2, where the massive civil war suddenly became very small in the face of the Generation 2 Decepticons empire, and once again with the stealth warfare/six step infiltration process that really played up the disguise concept behind Transformers. And then Shane McCarthy allowed the Decepticons to win the war and explored the consequences of that, something we hadn't really seen before. In both cases, the new ideas and new approach made going back to the well worth doing, because there was a new angle on the old characters and material. Nothing you or O6 are suggesting with regard to Beast Wars has offered that. Cosmetic changes like a new location or new characters are very surface level. What's the new concept behind the Beast Wars you'd like to see? What makes it new and different and interesting?
I don't think it's fair to say that a BW reboot won't work simply because the fans who want it to happen aren't coming up with truly new, original ideas. That falls on the writer. All we're asking for is for one of IDW's writers to reboot BW and do something new with it, like G1 gets to have happen every other Tuesday. You act like BW being redone THREE WHOLE TIMES makes it impossible for anything new to be done with the series, when G1 has been doing that for twenty-five friggin' years.

And God Dammit, I just realized that we've ended up arguing about this again. Call me when it's time to argue about an Energon reboot.
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by Sparky Prime »

BWprowl wrote:That's the perfect reason to call it 'Beast Wars'. People can see the book's title, and they immediately know about when in the canon this takes place. Done and done.
I see a couple problems with that assumption... You're not considering the general audience. Fans who know Beast Wars might not have any problems figuring that out but you'd also have to keep in mind other perspective readers who would see the book and not know that background. They wouldn't immediately know when in the canon it takes place just because of the title. Also, given time travel has become a common technology in the Beast-era, conceivably, they could set a story at any point in the canon. Heck, even the Beast Wars cartoon takes place on pre-historic Earth rather than the Beast-era Cybertron/Earth.
It's not like everyone in 'Headmasters' was a Headmaster, right? You make a comic book set in the 'Beast Wars' era of Transformers, you call it 'Beast Wars'. Hell, they insinuated that DNA scanners were pretty standard at that point, so any Transformer going off planet is likely going to pick up a Beast Mode. All it would take is one trip to Planet Quzybuk for the characters to get the Beast Modes you would require to read this series.
Would they have still called it 'Headmasters' if there weren't any Headmasters in it at all? I think not. Beast Wars wasn't named for when it took place, it was named for the predominate use of Beast Modes. Internalizing the DNA scanners really isn't going to make any difference if they aren't going to go off world to use them. And running over to another planet just for the sake of getting a beast mode with out any purpose to the story isn't going to make any sense.
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by andersonh1 »

Beast Wars without any beasts just doesn't make sense. It's that simple.
BWprowl wrote:All we're asking for is for one of IDW's writers to reboot BW and do something new with it, like G1 gets to have happen every other Tuesday. You act like BW being redone THREE WHOLE TIMES makes it impossible for anything new to be done with the series, when G1 has been doing that for twenty-five friggin' years.
Not exactly. We've had (in the US anyway) four major iterations of G1. And the first two, the Marvel comic and the cartoon, began and were produced at the same time so neither can be called a reinvention of the other. The G2 comic was a continuation of Marvel's G1 comic. After that there was no G1 fiction for almost a decade until Dreamwave came in and began publishing Transformers comics. And then they went bankrupt, and IDW started over again. And it's really only IDW that's come along and restarted the whole thing from scratch, and they did so 21 years after the original two first appeared.

It's not as though G1 has been reenvisioned over and over again constantly for 25 years. That's simply not the case. A reboot of G1 has really only happened once, given how closely Marvel G2 was tied with Marvel G1, and how well Dreamwave fit in with Sunbow's cartoon. IDW's version was the first really new G1 that we've had in all that time.
And God Dammit, I just realized that we've ended up arguing about this again. Call me when it's time to argue about an Energon reboot.
Eh, does anyone care enough about Energon to argue about it? :lol:
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

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andersonh1 wrote:Who said it couldn't be done? The question is, why do it? If IDW was going to go back to the well one more time, what new angle could they offer? New characters alone, or a new planet, or even a new McGuffin (anglomois, energon, whatever) don't constitute a creative use of the Beast Wars setting. Supplementing the earth-based storyline of the tv series with new characters from Cybertron, which allows us to look in on the planet in detail and avoids creating yet another pretext for Maximals and Predacons to turn into animals, is creative. It's a great idea, and far better than retreading the same old storylines and pretending that they're new and better because different characters are going through the same old motions.
I never said they had to use a MacGuffin.

Why do we even need to establish this as our premise? Do we even have to show the "origin" of our new BW characters? Can't we show up with them in media res?
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by andersonh1 »

Onslaught Six wrote:
andersonh1 wrote:Who said it couldn't be done? The question is, why do it? If IDW was going to go back to the well one more time, what new angle could they offer? New characters alone, or a new planet, or even a new McGuffin (anglomois, energon, whatever) don't constitute a creative use of the Beast Wars setting. Supplementing the earth-based storyline of the tv series with new characters from Cybertron, which allows us to look in on the planet in detail and avoids creating yet another pretext for Maximals and Predacons to turn into animals, is creative. It's a great idea, and far better than retreading the same old storylines and pretending that they're new and better because different characters are going through the same old motions.
I never said they had to use a MacGuffin.

Why do we even need to establish this as our premise? Do we even have to show the "origin" of our new BW characters? Can't we show up with them in media res?
What does when they show up in the storyline have to do with a creative new premise for a reboot? I don't care if we're dropped in the middle of the story and skip the origin or not. That's perfectly fine. But we've seen Maximals and Predacons with beast modes on primitive planets in three different series. I really don't want to read a new version of that same old story again without some interesting new reason that will compel me to do so. If they're just fighting over energon/anglomois/whatever, then why should I care? It's been done already.

Let me try approaching this from yet another angle. Beast Machines was a sequel to Beast Wars, but it didn't simply go over the same ground yet again. We had a new premise for the conflict, a philosophical and physical war over the future of Cybertron based on technology versus organic life. It wasn't just about power or a conflict over energon, it was a struggle over an ideal. That's new, and that's interesting, and it made yet another war between Megatron and Optimus Primal worth watching.
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by Shockwave »

andersonh1 wrote: But we've seen Maximals and Predacons with beast modes on primitive planets in three different series. I really don't want to read a new version of that same old story again without some interesting new reason that will compel me to do so. If they're just fighting over energon/anglomois/whatever, then why should I care? It's been done already.
You must have hated DW's run then. And the UC. They were all rehashes of "Autobots and Decepticons fight over MacGuffin X". So why do Autobots and Decepticons get a free pass on that when Maximals and Predacons don't? It's a double standard. I'll try this from another angle: G1 cartoon and comic were different, and it shouldn't matter when they were done. They each did something different with a particular set of characters in a particular setting, why can't that be applied to BW? And actually, that also worked for Armada and Energon.
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Re: Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

Post by Onslaught Six »

andersonh1 wrote:What does when they show up in the storyline have to do with a creative new premise for a reboot? I don't care if we're dropped in the middle of the story and skip the origin or not. That's perfectly fine. But we've seen Maximals and Predacons with beast modes on primitive planets in three different series. I really don't want to read a new version of that same old story again without some interesting new reason that will compel me to do so. If they're just fighting over energon/anglomois/whatever, then why should I care? It's been done already.
I wanted to elaborate more but I'm at work and had to do actual work.
Let me try approaching this from yet another angle. Beast Machines was a sequel to Beast Wars, but it didn't simply go over the same ground yet again. We had a new premise for the conflict, a philosophical and physical war over the future of Cybertron based on technology versus organic life. It wasn't just about power or a conflict over energon, it was a struggle over an ideal. That's new, and that's interesting, and it made yet another war between Megatron and Optimus Primal worth watching.
That's what I've been trying to say--I never said it had to be another War For The MacGuffin. It could be anything. Hell, here's one right now: Magmatron has one of the Maximal Elders assassinated by someone (I don't know, Insecticon or Injector) to advance his own position (because Pax Cybertronia would assume everybody is on the same political level) and by the second issue, the trail comes back to him. Mags flees across the universe and eventually hides out on a lush organic world. LioConvoy, chief commander of the interdimensional Maximal Police Force, is sent to find and capture him successfully.

Along the way they meet Torca, who's been stranded on a planet of weirdass sentient elephant dolphin things and took the form of one of them to disguise his presence. (Yeah, this is a shameless rip off of the same thing we did in Ethereal, but damn if it's not a great idea to put Fuzors into space.)
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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