Spotlight:

[andersonh1]

Answering for Dom, I'd say not trying to come up with some entity or group that overshadows the Autobot/Decepticon war. I at least liked that about ROTF--I was afraid that there'd be a cliche "The Autobots and Decepticons have to team up against the common omnipowerful threat!" bit again.

What overshadowed the war? Are you talking about the Dead Universe storyline? That had the virtue of being a threat posed by Transformers rather than an outside entity, as well as adding some mystery to the early issues.

One of the things I enjoyed about Furman's stories was the fact that it seemed like there was a wider universe out there, and that multiple threats existed on all sides. It wasn't just the war, there were threats from Skywatch, the Machination, the Reapers, and the Dead Universe Transformers. There wasn't a limiting and single-minded focus on the Autobot/Decepticon conflict to the exclusion of everything else.

[Shockwave]

I think it seemed like he was trying to tell the Unicron story over and over again and I think that's what Dom is irritated with. I think he'd like to see Furman write a story that says something more than just "OMG! Teh big bad is going to get us all!!" Personally, I'd prefer a story that focuses more on character development and we did get a lot of that in the early issues. At least for certain characters. Others got a lot of development in the Spotlight series, which I think was done really well.

[Dominic]

But was he ever going to get all the way through the phases with Earth? I doubt that was ever in the cards... there has to be something recognizable as present-day Earth in the long term for the stories to work. Even with the massive destruction in AHM, Earth was still mostly intact. Without the familiar to ground things in, at least in one little corner of the story, Transformers loses something.

The criticism is that Furman never even showed a standard infiltration before blowing it all to hell. For all the talk about how important the stages are, Furman himself threw them out the window very casually.

The artificial status quo of Earth being largely intact and unchanged is a common problem to most comics. One of the few bright spots in the ongoing is that said status quo might be meaningfully changed. Any franchise loses far more in terms of credibility when the status quo is artificially maintained. (The more event driven the stories are, the more impact the events need to have to prevent the story from becoming completely pointless.)

He was rebuilding the universe from the ground up. And what is a plot except setting up the pieces (plot threads and characters) only to knock them down (resolve the plots in various ways)?

Furman was getting ready to knock them all down, in exactly the same way as he had before, before he even set them up.

And, there is a difference between recounting fictional events, (as Furman was doing), and saying something/anything.

So were Jhiaxus, Nova Prime and Grindcore, at least as much as we saw them. There's a good plot reason for them being the way they are. I wouldn't expect a character like Galvatron to be anything other than over-powered though... like Megatron and Prime, he's in the big leagues in terms of Transformers characters.

Grindcore showed up? Really? Darn. How the heck did Furman over-power an obscure movie repaint whose most notable trait is that he liked heavy metal music? (Wait, am I thinking of a different character?)

Galvatron was not just powerful, he was "little kid favorite" over-powered..with all of the wanky back-story one would expect. Galvatron is just so over-powered and kewl. Woweezowwee. Tributes to bad 90s comics need to be handled carefully, and in small doses. Unintentional tributes along these lines, (as Galvatron probably is), need to be avoided.

IDW Jhiaxus, Nova Prime and the rest of the Eye of Terror, (erm, uh, Dead Universe), crew were rip-offs of Games Workshop characters. (Yeah, Games Workshop shamelessly rips of mythology and history. But, they do so a bit more honestly, and with way the heck more class.)

And all of this doesn't really answer the question "What should he have done differently?" You've described what you see as his shortcomings, but how should he have done things differently? Apart from written with tighter editorial control. What should the editor have demanded of him?

Actually, I touched on it here....

I get the feeling he writes best with an active editor, (like Rob Tokar is known to have been), or with limited scope (as seen in "Spotlights" or various old UK stories).

Furman needs limits and focus. He needs to write stories of limited scope that provide less occasion for his worst excesses.

Again, I am not saying Furman is the worst writer. He is not as pretentious or self-indulgent as other writers I regularly mention. But, he is prone to aimless and noisy writing.

And is it really the editor's job to direct the creative output of the writer? I'm not sure that's what an editor actually does.

There are two types of editing. One is the basic editing for grammar. The other is editing for content. The first editor makes sure that basic rules are followed. The second asks if the the thing the rules are being applied to is even worth writing in the first place.

I have seen mechanically perfect papers that are terrible because the writer has nothing of interest to say about anything of importance.

There was a time when comic editors were heavily involved in content development, to say nothing of keeping stories cohesive and grammatically sound. Marvel even had a formalized, if not un-commonly circumvented, rule that a writer could not edit their own titles.

On a related note, am I the only one who notices that comics seem to have more errors now than they did even 10 years ago?

It wasn't just the war, there were threats from Skywatch, the Machination, the Reapers, and the Dead Universe Transformers. There wasn't a limiting and single-minded focus on the Autobot/Decepticon conflict to the exclusion of everything else.

There is nothing wrong with adding more characters/factions. The problem is that Furman was just doing the same thing with all of them...adding more toys to throw around and break. (Wow. Death Bring and company show up....prove they are bad ass....but not as bad ass as....._________, who is less bad ass than....._______, and so on....)

Unicron story over and over again and I think that's what Dom is irritated with. I think he'd like to see Furman write a story that says something more than just "OMG! Teh big bad is going to get us all!!"

Close. But, it is not just Unicron. Call him Shokoract. Call it....the Dead Universe. Call it.....the Anti-Monitor....call it...Superboy Prime....call it....

You get the idea.

Apparently, writing about big robots from another planet is not kewl enough. We have to have MORE COSMIC WANKERY at ever step.

Part of me wonders if this ties in with the resurgence in superstition and conspiracy theories that has gripped this country for the last 15 years. At first, some people were putting that sort of thing down to millenial lunacy. But, here we are...nearly a decade after the big calendar rolled over.....and it is still here.

The sort of writing Furman was doing is exactly the kind of thing Morrison was talking about in "Final Crisis". (This is not a defense of FC by the way. Morrison stating the obvious does nothing to solve the problem). If the world ends every week, who the hell cares? (This is expecially problematic with event-driven stories that have nothing to say beyond "look what is happening".)

Does anyone else here read "WarHammer" 40K stories? Consider the priority attached to the Emperor of Mankind. He has shown up, (to my knowledge), 4 times. There was a special edition gaming piece. He showed up in the old Inquisitor Draco novels, the "Eye of Terror" novel, and a recent short story "The Last Church". Granted, I am not a fan of the "Draco" novels. But, all of those stories can stand on something beyond "hey look, G*D shows up in this story". (And, yes, "G*D" properly indicates the importance of the Emperor in "WarHammer".) Part of the Emperor's value is the fact he is useful in those stories. But, part of it is that the Emperor of Mankind does not show up every year. (I have been a WH fan for 10+ years, and can only think of 4 appearances, counting a game piece.) For a while, I did not even think the Emperor existed in context for WH.

I cannot think of a single appearance of Khorne, Nurgle, Slanesh or Tzeentch. Gork and Mork show up in the game, but their importance is minimal.


Dom
-"Throne of Earth!" has more weight than "By Primus!".....

[Onslaught Six]

Grindcore showed up? Really? Darn. How the heck did Furman over-power an obscure movie repaint whose most notable trait is that he liked heavy metal music? (Wait, am I thinking of a different character?)

You are. There's some random Dead Universe guy who's named Grindcore, and then he dies, I think. He looks nothing like the Movie toy, but ten to one the only reason he has that name is because...there was a toy with that name.

I had more here, but I accidentally erased it and now I'm too lazy to rewrite it!

[Shockwave]

Yup. Sideswipe killed him and Straxus.

[andersonh1]

The criticism is that Furman never even showed a standard infiltration before blowing it all to hell. For all the talk about how important the stages are, Furman himself threw them out the window very casually.

Given the complaints from readers about how long the first two stages took, do you think he'd have had a chance to go through all six phases? And again, do you think a scorched, destroyed, barren phase six Earth was ever in the cards? I don't. I also don't think it's necessary to see all the details of destabilization to get the idea.

But even if Furman had gone through the process... say, Senator Alexander Holt got to be President, and did sneaky Decepticon things to destabilize the USA and the other synthetic humans did similar things in their countries... would we be reading a Transformers comic, or Invasion of the Body-Snatchers? How would readers who want to see Transformers as the main characters, and who were complaining constantly about Jimmy, Hunter and Verity in any case, be entertained by a story about Decepticon-controlled artificial humans doing their damage to the Earth?

The artificial status quo of Earth being largely intact and unchanged is a common problem to most comics. One of the few bright spots in the ongoing is that said status quo might be meaningfully changed. Any franchise loses far more in terms of credibility when the status quo is artificially maintained. (The more event driven the stories are, the more impact the events need to have to prevent the story from becoming completely pointless.)

Changing the status quo is one thing, and I'm all for it. But the sixth phase of the infiltration plan involves leaving behind a dead planet. That's just not going to happen to Earth, not in a Transformers comic that depends in part on Transformers interacting with humans to ground the story.

Furman was getting ready to knock them all down, in exactly the same way as he had before, before he even set them up.

He was? Did he say that? And even if he did, what's wrong with that? McCarthy likely had his story planned out from start to finish, and had his plans to set up characters and knock them down. According to Casey Coller, Sunstreaker was planned as the twist character revelation from the beginning, so he was set up to be knocked down later on. I'd be willing to be that Megatron and Thundercracker's fates were in the cards from very early on in the writing process as well. Why should Furman be an exception to the process of planning out and setting up characters and events for later resolution?

If your complaint is that he was repeating himself, you'll have to be more specific. How so?

And, there is a difference between recounting fictional events, (as Furman was doing), and saying something/anything.

Agreed. We've got different tastes in fiction on this one. Either type of storytelling is acceptable and enjoyable to me, provided that I find the story being told interesting.

Galvatron was not just powerful, he was "little kid favorite" over-powered..with all of the wanky back-story one would expect. Galvatron is just so over-powered and kewl. Woweezowwee. Tributes to bad 90s comics need to be handled carefully, and in small doses. Unintentional tributes along these lines, (as Galvatron probably is), need to be avoided.

I don't see that he's any more powerful than Prime or Megatron. Admittedly he's 'undead' for lack of a better term, or was, as all the other Dead Universe inhabitants were, so he could survive having his brain blown out by Sideswipe for example. I'm not sure that's the case any longer.

I don't really get your problem here. He's Galvatron. The character is a top tier, powerful and full of himself character, and always has been. How far can you take him from those attributes before he isn't really Galvatron any more? His use in the story is appropriate.

IDW Jhiaxus, Nova Prime and the rest of the Eye of Terror, (erm, uh, Dead Universe), crew were rip-offs of Games Workshop characters. (Yeah, Games Workshop shamelessly rips of mythology and history. But, they do so a bit more honestly, and with way the heck more class.)

To be honest, I've never heard of Games Workshop, and I'm completely unfamiliar with it. But to go to an even more basic level, the Dead Universe characters are zombies, or more appropriately, vampires (with their life-draining abilities) whose leader is a fascist. You don't have to narrow the character types down to a specific games universe or whatever. Many Transformers characters are broad archetypes rather than individuals, so the Dead Universe crew are nothing out of the ordinary for the franchise.

Regardless, I found their story interesting, and I'd rather it hadn't been cut short.

Furman needs limits and focus. He needs to write stories of limited scope that provide less occasion for his worst excesses.

Why hire someone to be creative if you're only going to limit their creativity? Why not just have the editor write the stories?

Again, I am not saying Furman is the worst writer. He is not as pretentious or self-indulgent as other writers I regularly mention. But, he is prone to aimless and noisy writing.

Sometimes, sure.

There is nothing wrong with adding more characters/factions. The problem is that Furman was just doing the same thing with all of them...adding more toys to throw around and break. (Wow. Death Bring and company show up....prove they are bad ass....but not as bad ass as....._________, who is less bad ass than....._______, and so on....)

On the other hand, having multiple threats from different sides of varying power levels helps when there's a large cast of characters to write for. Different groups get a chance to share the spotlight as they deal with different threats. If there's one threat, then either every character gets to deal with that, and no one gets development, or most of the characters are left in the background in favor of a core cast. This is my fear for the ongoing, by the way, that with a current storyline focused on "Autobots vs. Skywatch" that too many characters are left with nothing to do and no reason to be in the story.

[Dominic]

Given the complaints from readers about how long the first two stages took, do you think he'd have had a chance to go through all six phases? And again, do you think a scorched, destroyed, barren phase six Earth was ever in the cards? I don't. I also don't think it's necessary to see all the details of destabilization to get the idea.

The fact that they named the first two volumes after specific stages, and then jumped ahead 2 stages, shows how badly planned this was.

Part of me gets the feeling that Furman was just trying to fill space. Perhaps he did not want to finish the "stages" because he lacked any idea about what to do next? I have had that problem with any number of projects. (I resist finishing one because I am unsure of what to do with the next.) But, I am not making excuses for myself here.....

But even if Furman had gone through the process... say, Senator Alexander Holt got to be President, and did sneaky Decepticon things to destabilize the USA and the other synthetic humans did similar things in their countries... would we be reading a Transformers comic, or Invasion of the Body-Snatchers? How would readers who want to see Transformers as the main characters, and who were complaining constantly about Jimmy, Hunter and Verity in any case, be entertained by a story about Decepticon-controlled artificial humans doing their damage to the Earth?

Playing to the purists is never a good idea. Who are the memorable comic writers? Is it the guys who write the same filler, (even "epic" filler) over and over, or the guys who actually expand (or even redefine) the genre?

If nothing else, TFs are partly about stealth. Furman could have played with the disguise idea for some time. Think of those great few pages in "Escalation", where nobody transformers but everybody blows their cover. Now, imagine the effort they would have to put into maintaining a convincing high-profile human disguise. Why is Bendis the only one who can write political super-heroes while (at least usually) avoiding overt polemic?

But the sixth phase of the infiltration plan involves leaving behind a dead planet. That's just not going to happen to Earth, not in a Transformers comic that depends in part on Transformers interacting with humans to ground the story.

They would not need to have all 6 stages happen on Earth. "Stormbringer" could have been a depiction of all six stages, (with Nebulous or some other planet as the subject), rather than "woweee, look at Thunderwank go!"

As it was, Furman said, "oh no, the time table is being pushed up, and here is uber-bad-ass Sixshot....and he gets beaten by a handful of shell-shocked Autobots despite being unbeatable."

He was? Did he say that?

Its Furman. That is mostly what he does.

The fact is that since '03/'04, (some would argue earlier), Furman has not had the credibility for readers to assume anything else from him.

And even if he did, what's wrong with that? McCarthy likely had his story planned out from start to finish, and had his plans to set up characters and knock them down. According to Casey Coller, Sunstreaker was planned as the twist character revelation from the beginning, so he was set up to be knocked down later on.

There is a difference between having a plan for a story, (which any writer should have), and for the plan to consist only of setting up stuff so it can be knocked down. Furman's writing was like watching a kid with blocks. Yeah, most kids knock down their block towers. But, Furman would only put a few blocks up before knocking them down and screaming "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" It was almost like even he did not have patience for his own writing.

The fact that McCarthy had something to say that did not need apply only to TFs is also a factor here.

If your complaint is that he was repeating himself, you'll have to be more specific. How so?

For a long time, Furman's stories revolved around big stupid McGuffins that were.....COSMIC....just so he could use cosmic McGuffins.

Galvatron is another example of this principle. Furman wrote an over-powered gaming character into "Transformers" just to have show up and break stuff. Wow. Riveting stuff that does not at all resemble a child's play session. Undead Galvatron? That sounds like a fanfic.

. You don't have to narrow the character types down to a specific games universe or whatever. Many Transformers characters are broad archetypes rather than individuals, so the Dead Universe crew are nothing out of the ordinary for the franchise.

Jhiaxus was pretty much Fabius bile. He was even redesigned to look like a Chaos Marine. The comparison is almost on a level with "Squadron Supreme" and "Justice League". I love SS as much, if not more, than anyone on this forum. But, damned if it ain't a thinly disguised copy of "Justice League" Had it been published even 5 years later, DC likely would have picked it up as an "Elseworlds".

Why hire someone to be creative if you're only going to limit their creativity? Why not just have the editor write the stories?

Most companies supervise their employees. Hiring someone to do a job is not the same as saying "here do the job as you see fit, as if you are the boss, regardless of your qualifications". A manager supervising or directing a crew is not the same as a manager doing the work themself.

Furman's worse excesses tend to emerge when he is writing under certain conditions. Therefor, an editor should do what they can to minimize those conditions.

If there's one threat, then either every character gets to deal with that, and no one gets development, or most of the characters are left in the background in favor of a core cast.

There is a difference between having more than 2 parties to a conflict and just swapping out one/both of the parties at regular intervals for "the next big thing", which is what Furman was doing.


Dom
-Fabius Bile

[Shockwave]

The fact that they named the first two volumes after specific stages, and then jumped ahead 2 stages, shows how badly planned this was.

No it doesn't. It just shows that he didn't want to bore the shit out everyone by saying "Welcome to Decepticon conquest stages. Level 1: Infiltration and you: Getting to know your enemy..." and so forth and so on. He doens't need to show all of them for us to get the point that things got messed up here.

Playing to the purists is never a good idea. Who are the memorable comic writers? Is it the guys who write the same filler, (even "epic" filler) over and over, or the guys who actually expand (or even redefine) the genre?

There's a difference between playing to the purists and staying true to the original concept. It's called Transformers, not Robots trying to pose as humans. If we want stories about human political/military intrigue, I'll read a Tom Clancy novel. As for memorable writers, it's the ones that further the development of the characters in some significant way.

As it was, Furman said, "oh no, the time table is being pushed up, and here is uber-bad-ass Sixshot....and he gets beaten by a handful of shell-shocked Autobots despite being unbeatable."

Umm... no he didn't. The Autobots left, they certainly did not beat Sixshot. That's like someone getting nearly beaten at a game of chess and just walking away from the board. That doesn't mean the person walking away won the game.

There is a difference between having a plan for a story, (which any writer should have), and for the plan to consist only of setting up stuff so it can be knocked down. Furman's writing was like watching a kid with blocks. Yeah, most kids knock down their block towers. But, Furman would only put a few blocks up before knocking them down and screaming "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" It was almost like even he did not have patience for his own writing.

The fact that McCarthy had something to say that did not need apply only to TFs is also a factor here.

Here we go again with the "something to say" arguement . Look, I know you don't give 2 shits about character development, but that's a lot of what was going on in the initial stages. And that development set up a lot of what happened in AHM, and far beyond the "cosmic mcguffin" story. It definately was NOT just setting stuff up to be knocked down. The fact that most of it was character development and set up might be why it was primarily lost on you.

Galvatron is another example of this principle. Furman wrote an over-powered gaming character into "Transformers" just to have show up and break stuff. Wow. Riveting stuff that does not at all resemble a child's play session. Undead Galvatron? That sounds like a fanfic.

Actually, I think since Galvatron was around long before WH or even GW, a convincing argument could be made for the WH character to actually be based on Galvatron, not the other way around. Probably not, buuuuuut, just sayin'.

Jhiaxus was pretty much Fabius bile. He was even redesigned to look like a Chaos Marine. The comparison is almost on a level with "Squadron Supreme" and "Justice League". I love SS as much, if not more, than anyone on this forum. But, damned if it ain't a thinly disguised copy of "Justice League" Had it been published even 5 years later, DC likely would have picked it up as an "Elseworlds".

Again with the TF was here first thing (although I might have to give you the design). I was under the distinct impression that Squadrom Supreme was Marvel's deliberate attempt at lampooning the Justice League?

Most companies supervise their employees. Hiring someone to do a job is not the same as saying "here do the job as you see fit, as if you are the boss, regardless of your qualifications". A manager supervising or directing a crew is not the same as a manager doing the work themself.

Furman's worse excesses tend to emerge when he is writing under certain conditions. Therefor, an editor should do what they can to minimize those conditions.

There's a difference between supervising someone's work and cutting them off at the knees. Although, given what we got with BW Ascending and Garthering, I think maybe Furman should be limited a bit. Although I really wish we knew more of the behind the scenes stuff here, specifically what was mandated and what Furman had free reign over. Then we could make better judgements about whether or not he should be left to his own devices. Without knowing that for sure, this is all guesswork and I think Furman winds up taking the blame for a lot regardless of whether he actually is to blame.

[There is a difference between having more than 2 parties to a conflict and just swapping out one/both of the parties at regular intervals for "the next big thing", which is what Furman was doing.

There's also a difference between swapping out factions randomly and having a complex story with multiple elements going on at once. That's pretty much what we had with the IDW-verse. It was all going on simultaneously, not just being used as story fodder.

[Dominic]

No it doesn't. It just shows that he didn't want to bore the shit out everyone by saying "Welcome to Decepticon conquest stages. Level 1: Infiltration and you: Getting to know your enemy..." and so forth and so on. He doens't need to show all of them for us to get the point that things got messed up here.

I just got the impression that Furman thought it would be really kewl to have a 6 stage plan get disrupted, and he never considered that an actual 6 stage plan might make for a good story unto itself. Maybe Furman, like other writers and fans, has been so immersed in the franchise that they cannot keep perspective while writing it.

If we want stories about human political/military intrigue, I'll read a Tom Clancy novel. As for memorable writers, it's the ones that further the development of the characters in some significant way.

The problem here is that "staying true" requires franchises to become boxed into themselves, and increasingly self reverential/referential. Nich Roche is not a good writer because he is a TF fan. He is a good writer who happens to be a TF fan, and happens to be working on TF.

Roche has only written two stories, focusing mostly on a character that he defined (rather than developed) in modern context. And, those stories work because Roche actually had, (as I have said elsewhere), ideas not strictly relating to TF.

The inverse applies with Galvatron and Jhiaxus. Their IDW-iterations are *new*. Galvatron predates GW. Jhiaxus, less so. But, IDW Galvatron and Jhiaxus are *much* newer than all but the most recent GW. And, IDW Jhiaxus is about as naked a rip-off of a unique GW character as I have ever seen. He even *looks* like a Chaos Marine. Furman "re-imagined" characters.....as knock-offs of another properties characters. Shame on him.

Umm... no he didn't. The Autobots left, they certainly did not beat Sixshot. That's like someone getting nearly beaten at a game of chess and just walking away from the board. That doesn't mean the person walking away won the game.

Coulda sworn they beat him. Either way, having any of them live after facing SixShot is dodgy.

I was under the distinct impression that Squadrom Supreme was Marvel's deliberate attempt at lampooning the Justice League?

Initially yes. But, that changed.

"Squadron Supreme" the series was less a lampoon than it was Gruenwald writing a well thought out, and respectful, "Justice League" story that he would not otherwise have been able to write. At that time, jumping from one company to another, (such as there were others that mattered beyond the big 2), was much more rare. And, Gruenwald really wanted to write the DC characters.

Had he stayed "true to concept", one of the best "capes and tights" books ever would never have been written. (I would argue it is better that "Watchmen", if only for lacking Moore's pretense.)

I think Furman winds up taking the blame for a lot regardless of whether he actually is to blame.

I can see this, to a point. Editors bear a certain responsibility, if only for green-lighting projects. (JMS' awful work at Marvel is not *all* his fault after all.) As one of the guys at "Howling Curmudgeon put it (paraphrasing here I think, sometimes an editor's job is to tell a writer to go home and sleep off a bad idea.

But, Furman has such a long, and until recently positive, history with the franchise that I get the impression he was given freedom to do as he liked. If nothing else, editing his work or asking him to change something may well have been intimidating.

There's also a difference between swapping out factions randomly and having a complex story with multiple elements going on at once. That's pretty much what we had with the IDW-verse. It was all going on simultaneously, not just being used as story fodder.

The Reavers, show up, are bad asses, then they get beaten by the next big thing. Bravo Simon.


Dom
-wants Dan Abnett on TF.

[andersonh1]

Part of me gets the feeling that Furman was just trying to fill space. Perhaps he did not want to finish the "stages" because he lacked any idea about what to do next?

Or maybe he wrote the story he intended to write from the beginning. As for filling space, originally he was writing what was essentially an open-ended ongoing series, albeit in the form of a series of minis. He was also laying the groundwork for the revamped universe of Transformers. So a lot of what he was doing was developing characters, as Shockwave pointed out. A lot of it was setting up plenty of future story material. I don't get the sense that any of it was written just "to fill space".

Playing to the purists is never a good idea. Who are the memorable comic writers? Is it the guys who write the same filler, (even "epic" filler) over and over, or the guys who actually expand (or even redefine) the genre?

Who said anything about purists? Even a general comic reader picking up a coming entitled "The Transformers" is going to expect to read about Transformers.

But the sixth phase of the infiltration plan involves leaving behind a dead planet. That's just not going to happen to Earth, not in a Transformers comic that depends in part on Transformers interacting with humans to ground the story.

They would not need to have all 6 stages happen on Earth. "Stormbringer" could have been a depiction of all six stages, (with Nebulous or some other planet as the subject), rather than "woweee, look at Thunderwank go!"

Who cares if some other planet gets destroyed though? For the concept to have emotional resonance, it either has to happen to Earth, or else a lot of time has to be spent building up somewhere else so that the audience cares about it enough to care when it's destroyed.

As it was, Furman said, "oh no, the time table is being pushed up, and here is uber-bad-ass Sixshot....and he gets beaten by a handful of shell-shocked Autobots despite being unbeatable."

Sixshot wasn't beaten by the Autobots. He tore through them pretty good actually. He was recalled by Megatron to fight the Reapers, then shut down by Starscream who had Megatron's deactivation code for Sixshot in case Sixshot ever got out of control and rebelled.

Its Furman. That is mostly what he does.

The fact is that since '03/'04, (some would argue earlier), Furman has not had the credibility for readers to assume anything else from him.

This explains a lot about the lens through which you view his writing at least. That clears a lot of things up for me. I don't know, I tend not to assume the worst from the man and just take each story on its own terms. To me, a story about a fallen demi-god that exists across dimensions who is trying to devour the universe isn't quite the same as a group of undead fascist Transformers who believe in the supremacy of their own race and want to impose their view of what life should be on all others. One is big cosmic menace, the other is at least more grounded in reality when it comes to motivation (think eugenics), if not in execution. And since it's a fantasy series about shapeshifting alien robots, I don't expect it to be entirely down to earth.

There is a difference between having a plan for a story, (which any writer should have), and for the plan to consist only of setting up stuff so it can be knocked down. Furman's writing was like watching a kid with blocks. Yeah, most kids knock down their block towers. But, Furman would only put a few blocks up before knocking them down and screaming "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" It was almost like even he did not have patience for his own writing.

I think you're being a bit too cynical here.

For a long time, Furman's stories revolved around big stupid McGuffins that were.....COSMIC....just so he could use cosmic McGuffins.

Or maybe for a race as powerful as Transformers are, you need a big threat.

I know he brought in Unicron in the US G1 comic. At the time, it was novel to see the villain from the movie turn up in the comic. It was new and different and not overdone, and it was a good move, which gave the series some direction. G2 gave us the Swarm and the second generation Transformers, both interesting concepts, along with the Liege Maximo which we never got to see apart from one panel. It's Hasbro who has the responsibility for placing Unicron in AEC, so Furman can't be blamed for using the character in the comics he wrote for Dreamwave, which were otherwise focused on the Transformers and not some cosmic menace. The Universe comics, again, had Unicron as part of Hasbro's backstory.

So most of Unicron's appearances weren't necessarily Furman's choice. And I really enjoyed the G2 series, apart from the constant character deaths, so I'm hardly inclined to hold those ideas out as bad. I haven't read enough UK comics to comment on those, but given what I have read it's hardly given me the impression that cosmic mcguffins are all Furman can write.

Jhiaxus was pretty much Fabius bile.

I checked out the link, and I honestly can't see a resemblance, beyond 'mad scientist'. And that's a pretty broad generalization. Jhiaxus has his G2 head, if not the same physique. He appears to have grown a hump in this continuity. Richard the third?