RID #30 - A little stuff happens, and then they separate and talk about it. Also some flashbacks to prior times, and Barber decided to tackle head-on what Scott has treated with kid gloves: gender just showed the fuck up in Transformers. To be fair, the gender element is only a notable deal for 2 flashback pages, but from meta perspective, it is interesting to see someone finally take this on directly at IDW. As for as the actual story, it was a decompressed little affair doing a post-mortem on the battle that just happened for all sides. Prowl has changed, and for the interesting, but it and the way that change affected those around him seems like it's still in flux and odd. I'm tiring of Marissa's tough gal stuff, it's so damned over-the-top you have to wonder how she could have ever made command at all, much less in the short time given.
The book also tackles the timeline a little, placing the events of AHM even further back from these than we thought (another year's worth), but since Barber himself said that this story doesn't take place in 2014 but ahead by a few years, that's fine... if only the book itself had said that, then people wouldn't be seeing this as a floating timeline as the wiki thinks it is, but instead it leaves it for the audience to figure out with just a question we asked at Botcon as the answer - looks like we caught the early train on this matter by bringing it to him before the issue hit stands!
The flashback tease has Alpha Trion younger and talking with Galvatron after seeing his brutality, it's the only thing that is really a question-mark in the story worth pursuing right now.
All in all, too decompressed and simplistic, somewhat uneven and lacking a true outcome, and it really doesn't feel like we're going to be done with Earth anytime soon which is a damned shame. I would place this somewhat generously at a: C
andersonh1 wrote:Okay, my big sticking point in this issue is Galvatron. Since when did he become a dumb brute of a commander? I can buy the bigotry against certain types of Cybertronians, but Galvatron was never this stupid. I think we've got another case of the current writers altering a character's personality to suit their story. The actual action and fighting and Prowl's gambit are fine, though Prime is awfully passive in the face of Prowl's open insubordination. This is the same Prime who took Prowl's command of the Earth mission away from him, isn't it? You'd never know that here.
There is this need to repaint Galvatron as a barbarian, this was brought up at Botcon and I didn't really see where it was coming from. Galvatron had been shown as crazy and brutal, but not a dumb rage brute. I don't even think Barber is trying to rewrite Galvatron as a character, but as an entire idea - he's ancient and therefore a barbarian throwback.
As for Prime and Prowl's changes, they have each gone through some shit lately, that I will reserve judgement of.
Dom wrote:The betrayal and sneakiness angle gets played up to good effect. It looks like I may have been wrong about Prowl's false-flag attack unless Barber intends for Prowl to be playing for a larger hand (in which case Prowl is working under a false flag with Optimus as well). Humans are playing Decepticons. Soundwave is playing Galvatron. Galvatron is too brutish to play anyone.
Glad you recognized that about the false-flag angle being not the case and said as much, it's the first thing I took note of when we got to that point in the story. Your angle would have worked here just as well, but they went another way. I'm not interested in them having a double-bluff there though, that would not be a false flag on the Earthlings at that point, Prowl's stated goals were still achieved either way and didn't play either faction up or down, so if they pull a cheat later and go back on that to make it a false flag, it'll be lame.
Soundwave is playing Galvatron? How do you figure? I am still a little annoyed at the stupid that is the humans playing the New 'Cons, that was such a dumb thing because it's what I said earlier: nonsensical to lure your enemy into a trap when you could have eliminated them at their weakest at the outset. But I'm not seeing Soundwave playing Galvatron, or I forgot something.
It is not even clear which way the time-sliding is going. There are any number of possible fan-made excuses that could be back-written in as something legitimate. Maybe time "broke" at the end of "Dark Cybertron" and the extra 4 or 5 years are a result of the universe re-expanding or something. But, that would actually sound stupider as a back-write than it does as a fan theory, (which is really saying something because I feel stupider just for having typed it).
No, it's not Dark Cybertron, Barber was saying some of it was in RID/MTMTE having longer-than-seemed storytelling, so the 22 pre-Dark Cybertron issues are not 22 months but longer, and some of it was expanded time in the Costa run and AHM, I believe.
IDW not only embraced a problematic cliche of the big two (despite having less practical need to do so, Barber has been exceptionally sloppy about it, despite the fact that he should know better. (The guy is just shy of being an editor and has written enough comics meant to polish over the sort of problems he is causing right now.)
You do realize he IS an editor, he's been an editor since before he was at IDW even. Also you have a nested parenthesis without a closing parenthesis and no need for either.
The next issue or 2 need to impress the hell out of me.
He said it's a 5-part series, so I will ride out this run and the next book after, so that's 3 more issues I guess, but I am definitely not feeling it yet either, and "hey, they're talking about disguises again" is not enough to somehow going to get me to keep buying a book.
Onslaught Six wrote:I was curious so I asked Barber on Twitter and actually got a response!
https://twitter.com/TheJohnBarber/statu ... 8985518080
Transcribed:
Me: I am a little confused over this '8 years after AHM' thing going on. Care to elaborate? I just don't see how it all fits.
Barber: We're a few years in the future.
So, there's that. Going by "few," I am assuming that we're going with Dom's second option.
I swear to god, you posted this exactly at the time I was writing up my notes from Botcon which included his lengthy answer, that killed me.
Shockwave wrote:So Prowl was definitely flying the false flag. My only gripe with this story so far is the portrayal of Galvatron. I always got before that he was primarily a scientist and was fighting because of the whole Nova Prime/Dead Universe thing. Here, he's being presented as having always been a warrior barbarian with a "Hit first, ask later" mentality. Even Devastator with Prowl as the head comes across as smarter than Galvatron. Either way, I don't see the human/Decepticon alliance lasting long.
No no, Prowl isn't pulling a false flag move, it's an honest move, it isn't casting aspersions on another group so much as unveiling truths.
As for your point about Galvatron, I haven't read as much but it seemed that way to me too. And while Starscream proves that one can be a scientist AND brutal dictator, the shift isn't so wildly out of character as it is with Galvatron.
