Windblade comic discussion (starting on page 2)

[Dominic]

Then in your review you say "And Card kinda botched the resolution, owing to his unconventional political views" not "I disagree with Card! Grade: EEEEEFFFFF!!!!!"

If I can trace the flaw in the comic (or novel or whatever) to a view the writer has, then the view is fair game and I am less likely to over-look th flaw, be it a back-write, gender theory or a nonsensical ending rooted in the author's NeoCon Universalism.

Scott said no such thing, I read her spiel. Her point was that she understood where Furman's idea was coming from, but that it inadvertently was kind of inappropriate an could be taken offensively (and you know what, much as I liked Spotlight: Arcee, I tend to agree with her) and wanted to go her own direction with the idea of female TFs.

It could be misread if somebody was trying to find a gender issue with the comic or if (as Shockwave pointed out) it was a publicity stunt. Neither makes me think especially well of her.

I disagree. TFs can and have looked great in any number of art styles (Animated and BM come to mind). The characters in 'Windblade' still look distinctly robotic, and Stone's art lends a welcome 'identity' to the setting that many previous iterations lacked (instead having leaned on co-opting the G1 artstyle).

I could see Stone's art maybe working for "Robots in Disguise" or (as stated above) any number of cape and tights books. But, it is too "soft" for a book about space robots living on a metal planet.

[BWprowl]

If I can trace the flaw in the comic (or novel or whatever) to a view the writer has, then the view is fair game and I am less likely to over-look th flaw

Then you outline that flaw in your review, and point out what it is and how it was affected by the writer's viewpoint. I STILL don't know what the big problem with 'Windblade' itself was, other than Scott introducing a character/concept into a comic in a way you don't agree with because...she explained it a certain way on a message board?

If Scott had used this so-called 'back-write' of 'evolving that way on a distant world' to explain the crew of new arrivals happening to, say, use nothing but melee weapons or all having faceplates, rather than appearing female, would you have so much issue with it?

It was a necessary inclusion brought on by Hasbro's requirement of introducing a new 'female' character, Scott just took it and ran with it. Any other writer would have had to 'back-write' something like that in, it was unavoidable.

It could be misread if somebody was trying to find a gender issue with the comic or if (as Shockwave pointed out) it was a publicity stunt. Neither makes me think especially well of her.

Are you sure you aren't the one mis-reading things? I think Scott made a good move: She knew that Hasbro's requirement of introducing Windblade would require her to (at least some degree) over-write what Furman had done to introduce Arcee, which, incidentally, didn't sit well with a lot of readers. She even acknowledged that Furman likely had no ill intent in his concept, only that it *could* be taken in an inappropriate way, and that she didn't want to be caught up in that, and would be going with her own concept/direction. She actually took the time to pre-emptively explain this 'back-write' you're decrying and her reasoning behind it, and yet you're still taking issue with it because you misread it as an attack on a writer you yourself have taken shots at in the past.

[Shockwave]

At some point, you have to separate the writer from the fiction they're writing. To review one is not to review the other and vice versa. If I'm reading a review of the Windblade comic I expect it to be about the comic and not the writer. I expect some sort of summary of events in the book and how those events were used to illustrate whatever ideas the writer is conveying. But that last bit is about as much as I'd want to be hearing about the writer in a review of the comic.

[JediTricks]

Just finished Windblade #1, and I'm not sure how I feel there.

The art is sloppy, I don't think the artist should have acted as the trio - there's a sense of shallowness and mess to it, and the bordering-on-cutesy manga feel crosses that border a couple times. I also didn't care for the color palette or the way backgrounds were used in some panels. This is why comics have inkers. But it's expressive and mostly engaging art. Oh, and one technical thing drove me nuts - the artist used the VTOL hoverfans in the wings as the mode of forward propulsion despite the plane design having jet intakes and what looks like a single nozzle in the back! That's not how those are supposed to work!

The writing though... well, this is someone who has taken comic book decompression too far. It's all setup, very little happens, not a single shot is fired or a conflict really delved into, the whole issue feels ultimately like 4 pages of a comic book padded out. Considering this is supposed to be a 4-parter, I really don't see why more script couldn't have been shown here. Also, Nautica is missing without word.

My advice is: if you plan on following the entire story, get it now; otherwise, if you're going to buy the figure, just wait for that pack-in copy.

Also, on the standard cover, the one done by Casey Coller, Windblade is holding a thing in her left hand for no reason - it kinda looks like a gun but with no grip or trigger; or perhaps an energy sword hilt, but remotely like not the one in her right hand (and no blade); kind of annoying.

https://twitter.com/MairghreadScott/sta ... 8296515585

It came in at #3, right after Walking Dead and My Little Pony. Fuck YEAAAAH!!! IDW is having a good day.

[]http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd160/MakoCrab/wind_zps64895abb.png[/]

That's cool. Very neat that IDW got the top 3 slots. I think that's the iTunes sales numbers based on the image. I am not surprised females would use iOS digital sales in greater numbers, I notice iOS stuff ends up in a lot more women's hands then men around here. I wonder what the floppies numbers will be.

Windblade #1:
I might be biased against this book because of Scott baiting Furman a few months back. But.....I do not like it.

Scott kicks off her back-matter with the universal greeting, and uses exclamation points non-sarcastically. (That latter is a huge peeve of mine.) The over-all tone makes me think "aimed at 12 year old girls".

Scott frames "Windblade" as being about "a young woman's....", which given the Furman-baiting from a few months back, makes me leery of this book. There is also the question of the back-write to reconcile the female TFs. It is not the first back-write in IDW. ("Dark Cybertron" had a few. And, "Chaos" was predicated on a significant back-write.) But, it is the first one that is specifically done to "fix" something that was not a problem unless somebody was looking to creatively misread something.

There is a moment between Windblade and Chromia that is likely meant to pander to shippers. (Chromia makes a comment about being "just as close in the morning". We can only await the fanfic.)

Scott notes that she is making a play for new readers. And, she thanks people for the early internet buzz. (Remember how that buzz got started?)

Misc notes: Assuming that a Cybertronian day cycle is the same as an Earth day cycle (which in soft sci-fi is not an unreasonable assumption), this book is set ~6 months after "Dark Cybertron". Yeah, it looks like "real-time:page time" ratios are pretty well gone.

Gonna be dropping this one.

Grade: F

As usual, Dom focusing almost solely on the meta aspect instead of the actual book's content. Also, I use exclamation points all the time nonsarcastically! Dick.

You know why they are allowed to backwrite Furman? Because FUCK THAT DECISION IN THE FIRST PLACE! It was a blown call and it's not served this canon well - the robots are designed with male physiques and even often male facial structures, so claiming they were genderless was crap in a hat. He was wrong, and fans who cling to that are just as wrong, this "fix" was necessary. Remember the fans, the ones who DESIGNED THE CHARACTER AS FEMALE?!? So now they get females from Mars while males are from Cybertron, evolution, man! Try putting yourself in a female TF fan's shoes, looking at a brand that views them as at best tertiary and at worst as freaks who shouldn't have broken their dicks off -- that has to go.

You are a crazy person who is crazy if you think that line about being just as close in the morning is any sort of lesbian hinting. The context blows your theory out of the water, Windblade in the very next panel says they are going to MEET back up there and continue the search. MEET! ASSHOLE! That means they aren't going to come from the same location as each other. What the fuck? You always are on the lookout for sexual references everywhere, I swear you see sex in every inkblot, every stucco wall, popcorn ceiling, probably the gentle clouds floating by. Either you are intentionally looking for something to troll with here, or you are deeply sexually repressed.

It says "6 months later", so I don't see what the problem is there, this book takes place over a single day, it makes that clear, not sure what page time to real time ratios have to do with it. Different stories have different pacing, why the complaint?

gotta love how it took Windblade just one issue to figure out about Starscream what that idiot Metalhawk never managed to catch onto in over a dozen

Metalhawk claimed to be a man of the people, but you ever notice how he never actually talked to the people? He spent all his free time arguing with Starscream and Bumblebee. Metalhawk was a politician through and through, a total blowhard*. (* - no Dom, it doesn't mean what you think.)

My view of the comic is informed by what I know of the writer.

That is why you fail. - Yoda

They have no place in legitimate writing aside from use in quotation (where they cannot be avoided), sarcasm or examples of what not to do. The more exclamation marks something has, the less important it really is.

A letter is an extended quotation, not a fictional work. Don't be a cunt. Don't be a cunt!

Also, anybody who holds fast to "rules" and "laws" is close-minded and a follower. A follower! God how I love exclamation points! It's like I'm yelling all the time. ALL! THE! TIME! ALLCAPS!!! (you brought this shit on yourself.)

PS - you're a total dickhead, I just read that letter to see all the offensive exclamation points, and there are 3. THREE! All used properly for emphasis. There's a fourth in a quotation from an imagined fan-bully who shits on other fans for not seeing it their way, what a fucking perfect irony that you'd miss the message and attack the style instead, and attack it wrong, no less.

It matters when a writers statements and views relate to their work. Scott made statements about Furman's work that relate to her back-writing and finding sexism where none existed. Similarly, Card's universalism (and being NeoCon) very much influenced (and diminished) the resolution of "Ender's Game".

Heaven help any plot work thought up on the toilet, eh? You are wrong about the sexism in Transformers, Furman is wrong about it too, but go ahead and suckle at his teat as much as you want as you drag your heels on an idea that was already around in this brand 30 years ago. As for the content itself, sexism appears nowhere in this book, and in fact there's no bigotry of any kind which is actually quite disappointing since she IS an outsider from another world who looks fuckin' weird, and she's an oddball fembot. The easy breezy way is a nice fantasy, and in fiction that's fine, especially from the underdog in that battle, but it causes the work to come off a tad shallow.

I tend to think that the Jhiaxus thing was Furman's original plan. And, it was never meant to go back and "fix" anything that Furman's predecessors wrote. Scott came in, calling Furman out for being a horrible misogynist and then back-wrote a whole damned thing.

Your brain just caused several retcons there, sport. You'd LIKE to think Furman planned it that way, but you don't know it. You'd like to pretend Scott called Furman a misogynist but in fact she didn't, she called the work he created was potentially misogynistic - which it was.

[BWprowl]

The art is sloppy, I don't think the artist should have acted as the trio - there's a sense of shallowness and mess to it, and the bordering-on-cutesy manga feel crosses that border a couple times. I also didn't care for the color palette or the way backgrounds were used in some panels. This is why comics have inkers. But it's expressive and mostly engaging art. Oh, and one technical thing drove me nuts - the artist used the VTOL hoverfans in the wings as the mode of forward propulsion despite the plane design having jet intakes and what looks like a single nozzle in the back! That's not how those are supposed to work!

I rather like the 'light' outlines around the characters, and after all the flat, muted colors in MTMTE, the warmer, 'glowing' effect to the colors in 'Windblade' really grabbed me. And while I know the more cartoony faces aren't going to be for everyone, you gotta admire the way they convey expressiveness and character in ways that we haven't seen in TF in a while.

I dunno, I haven't been this taken with the art in a TF comic in a long time. I actually read through the whole issue AGAIN last night, just to pore over the art again. Must just be a personal thing, but as I said, I can't overstate how much I *really* like it.

I didn't catch the issue with the hoverfans (mainly 'cause I know precisely dick about how aircraft work, and hey, who am I to question how a cyberalien spacejet works anyway?) but I did like the contrails effect she included showing it flying, and the way it flowed from panel-to-panel. And after Roberts handling of such things in MTMTE, I'm just grateful to have a TF comic where the title character makes liberal use of her *transformation* (even if no one else in the comic does, *sigh*).

The writing though... well, this is someone who has taken comic book decompression too far. It's all setup, very little happens, not a single shot is fired or a conflict really delved into, the whole issue feels ultimately like 4 pages of a comic book padded out. Considering this is supposed to be a 4-parter, I really don't see why more script couldn't have been shown here. Also, Nautica is missing without word.

Not sure I feel you on this one. It's definitely not a combat/shots-fired type of story, but coming on after a big stupid everyone-fightan event, a more 'down-time' type book makes sense. And you can hardly accuse anything of not happening, it's quickly sets up two parallel mysteries for Windblade to solve: what's wrong with Metroplex and where Starscream's true interests and motives lie, and we watch her follow them, with the latter 'solved' by her before the issue's over, so that's some progress made. And there's definitely a conflict outlined before the end: Starscream's trying to kill her (although the preview makes it seem like it might not actually be Starscream, and unraveling that will certainly contribute to the storyline). The more serene pacing of the rest of the book really helps that singular, explosive moment of attack pack more punch, it appropriately comes out of nowhere (and looks incredible). And then we get a solid infodump into Windblade's origins and backstory. I dunno, I thought the whole thing was decently meaty.

Nautica shows up in the flashbacks, so they clearly haven't forgotten about her. I figured this part of the story just didn't have anything for her to do, so they didn't worry about including her yet, they might have her pop up later.

Also, on the standard cover, the one done by Casey Coller, Windblade is holding a thing in her left hand for no reason - it kinda looks like a gun but with no grip or trigger; or perhaps an energy sword hilt, but remotely like not the one in her right hand (and no blade); kind of annoying.

It's the scabbard for her sword, something the toy (if I recall correctly) comes with, so.

You know why they are allowed to backwrite Furman? Because FUCK THAT DECISION IN THE FIRST PLACE! It was a blown call and it's not served this canon well - the robots are designed with male physiques and even often male facial structures, so claiming they were genderless was crap in a hat. He was wrong, and fans who cling to that are just as wrong, this "fix" was necessary. Remember the fans, the ones who DESIGNED THE CHARACTER AS FEMALE?!? So now they get females from Mars while males are from Cybertron, evolution, man! Try putting yourself in a female TF fan's shoes, looking at a brand that views them as at best tertiary and at worst as freaks who shouldn't have broken their dicks off -- that has to go.

As I said, I actually thought Furman's idea for Arcee was reasonably clever: He took the only defining trait Arcee had ever actually had (Being A Girl) and found a way to turn that into an actually interesting characteristic worth writing a story about. Problem was, yeah, it was also the sort of thing that's really easy to take the wrong way, and brought in a whole host of unfortunate implications. Even liking the book when I first got it, I still felt a little squirmy about the subject matter. It's a really ambitious sort of concept that I don't know that a lot of writers (much less Furman) would be able to handle with the required delicacy. Full points for trying to Furman, but I also certainly see why Scott wouldn't want to touch it when asked by Hasbro to introduce more female TFs into the IDWverse.

You are a crazy person who is crazy if you think that line about being just as close in the morning is any sort of lesbian hinting. The context blows your theory out of the water, Windblade in the very next panel says they are going to MEET back up there and continue the search. MEET! ASSHOLE! That means they aren't going to come from the same location as each other. What the fuck? You always are on the lookout for sexual references everywhere, I swear you see sex in every inkblot, every stucco wall, popcorn ceiling, probably the gentle clouds floating by. Either you are intentionally looking for something to troll with here, or you are deeply sexually repressed.

The thing I really don't get is that Dom (particularly recently) seems to see ANY romantic/sexual implications as 'pandering to shipping' and thus A Bad Thing. Which is bizarre to me, since I've consumed a shit-ton of media, and romantic/sexual tension is a hallmark of writing in...just about every iteration of fiction in the history of ever. Does Dom watch something like, I dunno, Pulp Fiction and complain about the way it 'panders to Mia/Vincent shippers'? Is that sort of thing just not allowed in fiction anymore because some people on the internet liked it?

Even if there's mild implications in any of Chromia and Windblade's dialogue (and they're close friends who grew up on a planet full of ladybots, so hey), it's barely on the level of high school jocks making cracks about hitting the showers together, nothing of it, get over it.

Spoiler

Also, regardless of where it goes, you have to admit it'd be funny for Transformers, a series with so few female characters to begin with, made some of them into other girl Transformers.

Metalhawk claimed to be a man of the people, but you ever notice how he never actually talked to the people? He spent all his free time arguing with Starscream and Bumblebee. Metalhawk was a politician through and through, a total blowhard*. (* - no Dom, it doesn't mean what you think.)

Even before Barber shat all over my hopes and dreams with the Prowl/Bombshell reveal, his handling of Metalhawk was something I took serious issue with, how ineffectual and annoying the character came off as despite seemingly presented as this neutral, right-on, voice of reason. Seeing Windblade learn to avoid his idiotic mistakes *in the first issue* really made me happy.

As for the content itself, sexism appears nowhere in this book, and in fact there's no bigotry of any kind which is actually quite disappointing since she IS an outsider from another world who looks fuckin' weird, and she's an oddball fembot. The easy breezy way is a nice fantasy, and in fiction that's fine, especially from the underdog in that battle, but it causes the work to come off a tad shallow.

That's my main question, as Dom's 'review' seems to allege that Scott's frothing accusations of Furman of misogyny (which, as we've established, never actually happened, but) somehow bled onto the page and the comic was nothing but a 22-page diatribe against Furman and his Arcee/female TFs concept, except there's NOTHING about that in the book whatsoever. There's one throwaway gag line from Rattrap and *that's it* on the subject of gender at all!

I think the book is doing an interesting enough idea with the concept of 'outsiders finding their place in the world', but less to do with females and more to do with 'new' characters in TF fiction learning how things work here, IE: Windblade having to actually do some digging to find out what Starscream's really like, and how he defies all her previously-comforting concepts of what a 'leader' is supposed to be like.

[JediTricks]

I rather like the 'light' outlines around the characters, and after all the flat, muted colors in MTMTE, the warmer, 'glowing' effect to the colors in 'Windblade' really grabbed me. And while I know the more cartoony faces aren't going to be for everyone, you gotta admire the way they convey expressiveness and character in ways that we haven't seen in TF in a while.

I said "expressive" in the post you quoted, "But it's expressive and mostly engaging art."

The lack of inking gives a distinct "digitally colored over" look to everything, there's some lack of focus because of it too, it feels like cel animation art. The colors are over the top IMO, vivid colors come from organics and from paint, but this story has no organics and the idea that everybody is painted garishly is unlikely - all of that leads to it feeling too cartoony. I also don't like how unfinished the "pencils" look, drives me nuts, this is where an inker should have fixed it, "show your work" is not appropriate for art IMO.

I dunno, I haven't been this taken with the art in a TF comic in a long time. I actually read through the whole issue AGAIN last night, just to pore over the art again. Must just be a personal thing, but as I said, I can't overstate how much I *really* like it.

This book is practically pandering to you: it has "cute" female designs (both safe to female readers as they are nonsexual yet unattainably-perfect feminine physiques), it's heavily influenced by manga, and it doesn't really have much actual Cybertronian going on.

I didn't catch the issue with the hoverfans (mainly 'cause I know precisely dick about how aircraft work, and hey, who am I to question how a cyberalien spacejet works anyway?) but I did like the contrails effect she included showing it flying, and the way it flowed from panel-to-panel. And after Roberts handling of such things in MTMTE, I'm just grateful to have a TF comic where the title character makes liberal use of her *transformation* (even if no one else in the comic does, *sigh*).

Hoverfans BARELY can lift an aircraft, they raise it upright, then the chief propulsion kicks in. On the Windblade toy, the hoverfans do tilt forward a la the Osprey, but they're much too small for chief propulsion, they'd at best get the plane moving a few miles an hour before the jet kicks in. Even if it is alien, it still has to obey the laws of physics, or not bother showing anything remotely propulsion-like and claim it's anti-grav nonsense type stuff, but don't show jet intakes and a nozzle at the back only to not use them.

Not sure I feel you on this one. It's definitely not a combat/shots-fired type of story, but coming on after a big stupid everyone-fightan event, a more 'down-time' type book makes sense. And you can hardly accuse anything of not happening, it's quickly sets up two parallel mysteries for Windblade to solve: what's wrong with Metroplex and where Starscream's true interests and motives lie, and we watch her follow them, with the latter 'solved' by her before the issue's over, so that's some progress made. And there's definitely a conflict outlined before the end: Starscream's trying to kill her (although the preview makes it seem like it might not actually be Starscream, and unraveling that will certainly contribute to the storyline). The more serene pacing of the rest of the book really helps that singular, explosive moment of attack pack more punch, it appropriately comes out of nowhere (and looks incredible). And then we get a solid infodump into Windblade's origins and backstory. I dunno, I thought the whole thing was decently meaty.

It doesn't have to be a battle, but that's the easiest thing to do in an action comic book. Still, there is essentially no conflict at all, merely a bomb that goes off, there is no story yet, just the opening setup of a mystery and a few personality differences.The weight of finding out what's wrong with Metroplex (the mystery) doesn't really go anywhere, it feels weightless since we're never shown the results of the problem - at best it's like being a power company worker, nobody writes stories about tracking down a fault electrical vault because it's mundane. Starscream's goal is equally weightless, he already has what he wants, so the book never takes time to properly explain why him being a jerk is a significant negative impact.

Nautica shows up in the flashbacks, so they clearly haven't forgotten about her. I figured this part of the story just didn't have anything for her to do, so they didn't worry about including her yet, they might have her pop up later.

She's in one panel in a flashback, that doesn't really count since she was such a part of this trio before. No explanation, no hint, no thought.

It's the scabbard for her sword, something the toy (if I recall correctly) comes with, so.

If that's supposed to be the scabbard, it's drawn wrong. The opening is the wrong shape and it's way too short.

The thing I really don't get is that Dom (particularly recently) seems to see ANY romantic/sexual implications as 'pandering to shipping' and thus A Bad Thing. Which is bizarre to me, since I've consumed a shit-ton of media, and romantic/sexual tension is a hallmark of writing in...just about every iteration of fiction in the history of ever. Does Dom watch something like, I dunno, Pulp Fiction and complain about the way it 'panders to Mia/Vincent shippers'? Is that sort of thing just not allowed in fiction anymore because some people on the internet liked it?

Even if there's mild implications in any of Chromia and Windblade's dialogue (and they're close friends who grew up on a planet full of ladybots, so hey), it's barely on the level of high school jocks making cracks about hitting the showers together, nothing of it, get over it.

If the only new females in the brand turn out to be lesbians, it's going to tarnish things, it's pretty cheap to grab an audience with lazy theatrics and it minimizes their role as equals when their sexuality is immediately taken to the most fetishistic place possible. I don't remember Windblade saying the only gender on her world was female, just that they evolved, so there may be menbots as well as fembots.

And pandering to 'shippers is a lazy way to get an audience, it's pathetic and grotesque and trivializes the story's every other goal when the focus of getting fangirls to squee takes any level of importance. It's essentially having sexuality but with the audience doing all the heavy lifting, it's cheaper than cheap. So if it's in here, then to hell with it. But it's not in what I saw.

Spoiler

Also, regardless of where it goes, you have to admit it'd be funny for Transformers, a series with so few female characters to begin with, made some of them into other girl Transformers.

Another trivialization of women and lesbians? No, I wouldn't find that funny.

I think the book is doing an interesting enough idea with the concept of 'outsiders finding their place in the world', but less to do with females and more to do with 'new' characters in TF fiction learning how things work here, IE: Windblade having to actually do some digging to find out what Starscream's really like, and how he defies all her previously-comforting concepts of what a 'leader' is supposed to be like.

That's fine for a normal issue of an ongoing, but we already had that with the Sky Byte issue of RID, there has to be more at this point, especially in a 4-part series.

[Sparky Prime]

Nautica shows up in the flashbacks, so they clearly haven't forgotten about her. I figured this part of the story just didn't have anything for her to do, so they didn't worry about including her yet, they might have her pop up later.

She's in one panel in a flashback, that doesn't really count since she was such a part of this trio before. No explanation, no hint, no thought.

Didn't you guys see the MTMTE preview? The reason Nautica doesn't show up much here is because she isn't on Cybertron anymore. She joined the Lost Light crew.

[BWprowl]

This book is practically pandering to you: it has "cute" female designs (both safe to female readers as they are nonsexual yet unattainably-perfect feminine physiques), it's heavily influenced by manga, and it doesn't really have much actual Cybertronian going on.

Y'know, I certainly can't argue with this. If what we can get to is that the art is super-appealing to me but might not be for everyone, I can live with that.

It doesn't have to be a battle, but that's the easiest thing to do in an action comic book. Still, there is essentially no conflict at all, merely a bomb that goes off, there is no story yet, just the opening setup of a mystery and a few personality differences.The weight of finding out what's wrong with Metroplex (the mystery) doesn't really go anywhere, it feels weightless since we're never shown the results of the problem - at best it's like being a power company worker, nobody writes stories about tracking down a fault electrical vault because it's mundane. Starscream's goal is equally weightless, he already has what he wants, so the book never takes time to properly explain why him being a jerk is a significant negative impact.

Starscream's goal doesn't necessarily have to have weight (yet), we've always known he was a jerk. The 'weight' comes from Windblade *herself* discovering he's a jerk, and how this affects her, both mentally after gathering the information, and physically, as she's blown up while she's still reeling from the effects of the revelation.

Either way, the story had enough for me, I was happy to see them quickly reveal a problem with Metroplex, and show the characters starting out to fix that, with the subplot of Windblade learning about Cybertron and the things that brought on. Windblade interacted with a variety of characters in her search for those answers (it's not like the issue was just spent with her talking to Chromia, or Ironhide, or Blurr), and all that buildup to the explosive moment towards the end was plenty for me.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm trying so hard to get you to like the book, you outlined just fine what didn't work about the book for you and said that it was half-decent anyway, unlike *some* people who went in looking to poo-poo the book because they misread some message board posts by the author months ago and did just that without seeming to even actually glance at the book itself. And I really enjoyed the book personally, and it's apparently doing pretty good anyway, so.

Spoiler

Why DO we spend so much energy on the internet trying to change other people's opinions, anyway? Especially considering it's all but impossible to do so.

She's in one panel in a flashback, that doesn't really count since she was such a part of this trio before. No explanation, no hint, no thought.

My point was that if they were looking to draw attention away from the fact that they didn't include Nautica (which was obviously conscious since she appears in the flashback at all) then sticking her in that flashback was pretty much the opposite of the way to do so. They clearly didn't just forget about her with no reason, or she wouldn't be on-page at all. Anyway, Sparky already explained the full reason she's not around, so there you go.

If that's supposed to be the scabbard, it's drawn wrong. The opening is the wrong shape and it's way too short.

Hey, you just asked what it was, and I happened to know what it was, so I said what it was. I thought it looked kinda funky to be a scabbard to. Maybe that's what it looks like on the toy? *shrug*

If the only new females in the brand turn out to be lesbians, it's going to tarnish things, it's pretty cheap to grab an audience with lazy theatrics and it minimizes their role as equals when their sexuality is immediately taken to the most fetishistic place possible. I don't remember Windblade saying the only gender on her world was female, just that they evolved, so there may be menbots as well as fembots.

I'm not sure how characters being homosexual makes it 'fetishistic', at least in this context. Either way, the relationship between Windblade and Chromia is definitely more one of close friends, or surrogate sisters or something, I wouldn't argue otherwise.

[Dominic]

If Scott had used this so-called 'back-write' of 'evolving that way on a distant world' to explain the crew of new arrivals happening to, say, use nothing but melee weapons or all having faceplates, rather than appearing female, would you have so much issue with it?

I would if it was obvious pandering and accompanied by balkanizing comments.

The art is sloppy, I don't think the artist should have acted as the trio - there's a sense of shallowness and mess to it, and the bordering-on-cutesy manga feel crosses that border a couple times. I also didn't care for the color palette or the way backgrounds were used in some panels. This is why comics have inkers. But it's expressive and mostly engaging art.

The more I look at it, the more I think that the artist does not work for "Transformers" . This is similar to how Ramondelli does good city/battle-scapes. But, he is weak in terms of drawing infividual characters. (There are panels in "Chaos" and "Autocracy" that are gorgeously drawn. But, even putting aside the writing, Ramondelli's skill is over-shadowed by the fact that individual characters are not his strong suit.)

I would like to see Stone on a capes and tights book that did not have much in the way of armour of tech.

It's all setup, very little happens, not a single shot is fired or a conflict really delved into, the whole issue feels ultimately like 4 pages of a comic book padded out.

Why does there need to be a fight every issue?

You know why they are allowed to backwrite Furman? Because FUCK THAT DECISION IN THE FIRST PLACE! It was a blown call and it's not served this canon well - the robots are designed with male physiques and even often male facial structures, so claiming they were genderless was crap in a hat. He was wrong, and fans who cling to that are just as wrong, this "fix" was necessary.

Furman has long thought that differentiated genders in robots was stupid. And, I tend to agree with him. TFs do not reproduce sexually, and would have no need for differentiated genders. (DvD wrote a good "Transformers are Gendered" essay earlier this year. But, it was less about reproduction and more about function.) He assumed that TFs were roughly analoguous to biological males (because that was the easiest thing to do and stay consistenet with Hasbro's marketing) and went with it. Oh, and "Spotlight: Arcee" was good.

Try putting yourself in a female TF fan's shoes, looking at a brand that views them as at best tertiary and at worst as freaks who shouldn't have broken their dicks off -- that has to go.

Really?

Who said that women could not like TFs? Conversely, how many bronies bitch and whine about there not being enough male ponies? (Seriously. How many? I do not recall seeing that.)

It says "6 months later", so I don't see what the problem is there, this book takes place over a single day, it makes that clear, not sure what page time to real time ratios have to do with it. Different stories have different pacing, why the complaint?

If a book or property is marketed as an ongoing series/story, I want there to be some passage of time. For example, I think Bendis established that 100 issues of "Ultimate Spider-Man" worked out to a year.

I generally do not expect comics to hold together above the compilation level (or maybe for the duration of a writer's tenure on the book). But, if the book is marketed as ongoing, and has used real-time in the past, I want to know if the new writers are doing the same.

The thing I really don't get is that Dom (particularly recently) seems to see ANY romantic/sexual implications as 'pandering to shipping' and thus A Bad Thing. Which is bizarre to me, since I've consumed a shit-ton of media, and romantic/sexual tension is a hallmark of writing in...just about every iteration of fiction in the history of ever.

It depends on the medium.

Bendis's work has romantic/sexual tension. (More per page than TF I would guess.) I did not care that DC rebranded Alan Scott as gay in "Earth 2". (And, I really hate using that second example because it makes me seem like a Cambridge type.) But, "space robot romance" has been enough of a thing in the fandom and fanfic that I *really* do not want it in my official content. Similarly, some of my favourite parts of "Dark Wolverine" were scenes that had Daken and Sofen (effectively two sexual predators) interacting.


But, for the purpose of TF, I see it as pandering to shippers.

Maybe I am wrong. But, given how fannish the content has gotten over the years, I am wary. (I can even concede a degree of hypocrisy as I tend to count Strika and Obsidian as *one* of my favourite characters.) I know that TF is (very) soft sci-fi, and that aliens are only going to be so "alien". But, I do not want them overly humanized either.

I'm not sure how characters being homosexual makes it 'fetishistic', at least in this context. Either way, the relationship between Windblade and Chromia is definitely more one of close friends, or surrogate sisters or something, I wouldn't argue otherwise.

It depends on the reasoning behind making the characters gay.

For example, Byrne's logic in making Northstar gay (or trying to) was that gays make up a given number of the population. If you assume superhumans, you should assume a certain number of gay superhumans. Northstar, a C-lister of some note, was a good character to do that with...until Marvel's fecklessness made it a joke. Victoria Hand in "Dark Avengers" was established to be gay. But, it was not "hurr hurr hurr, lesbians am teh hotzzzzz". It just happened that the most stable and morally sound member of the team was gay. (Daken was arguably bi. But, that was a question of him trying to hurt people in different ways, including subtle threats of rape towards at least two male members of the team.)

On the other hand, Dreamwave making Sunstreaker gay by editorial decree was just....unfortunate for all sorts of reasons. (The "gay sociopath wants to rape men" stereotype? Oh lordy...) Similarly, Hasbro's official statement about Knock-Out being gay was just cringe-worthy in 2012 (when it happened).

Characters like Apollo and Mid-Nighter are iffy because part of the gimmick is arguably "Superman/Batman shipping".

[BWprowl]

I would if it was obvious pandering and accompanied by balkanizing comments.

Okay, first of all, if you think 'introducing more than a single female character into the canon' counts as 'pandering', you seriously need to re-evaluate your view on these things, because wow.

Second of all, it's not even as if she's inserting new female characters for shits and giggles, she's doing it because the CHARACTER she's been specifically tasked with HASBRO to write a comic about is a FEMALE. There was literally no way around 'pandering' as you call it by introducing additional female characters. It simply had to occur. Windblade isn't Drift or Rung, a new character wholly invented by the writer to fill a particular role in their story, she's a character that the fans voted on the characteristics of as things they would like to see, that Hasbro then mandated be represented in the comic. Nothing about her was created as a way to push any agenda you may think Scott had, she's simply running with what she's been given.

And if you seriously can't see "All females are dangerous aberrations created by the sick needs of a mad scientist" as a concept that might not sit well with some people, then...I don't even know.

Who said that women could not like TFs? Conversely, how many bronies bitch and whine about there not being enough male ponies? (Seriously. How many? I do not recall seeing that.)

Maybe because male Ponies are actually fully acknowledged as existing in the canon of MLP, and one of 'main' defining writers of the property never put on the page that they thought male Ponies were a bizarre mistake of fucked-up science that were so inherently dangerous that only one could even exist?

You didn't bitch at all about Arcee, Airachnid, and others existing in TFPrime. Was that series 'pandering' just by introducing female characters too?