David Willis writes about BW

[Onslaught Six]

IDW screwed up bad, though--because we got was neither a comic that played to the BW hardcore (which would have just been more stories with the BW guys that took place inbetween other episodes, or something) nor those who wanted something that featured non-show and Japanese characters (which would have alienated the BW fanboys but actually could've been interesting and good) so each was compromised.

The exact same story that was told in The Gathering could've been done on *any* planet with animals--which BW itself even establishes because, in the first episodes, everyone is pretty sure that This Isn't Earth. Nobody questions why there's Earth animals, which, to me, heavily implies there's identical or similar lifeforms on other planets that the BW guys are aware of. The fact that it was shoehorned into the existing BW timeline while doing "temporal displacement" so they SPECIFICALLY couldn't interfere with or interact with the existing BW cast (Seriously!) is why it's a bad concept.

If you're going to set it on Prehistoric Earth and involve the BW cast, do that. Have them show up and go "Surprise, show guys! We're here now and this is an alternate continuity!"

[andersonh1]

IDW screwed up bad, though--because we got was neither a comic that played to the BW hardcore (which would have just been more stories with the BW guys that took place inbetween other episodes, or something) nor those who wanted something that featured non-show and Japanese characters (which would have alienated the BW fanboys but actually could've been interesting and good) so each was compromised.

For those who wanted non-show and Japanese characters, we got both. For those who wanted more of an examination of the politics and situation on Cybertron, we got that as well. IDW explored new areas of the Beast Wars timeframe that the TV show barely touched on. They added something new. And they did so in a way that worked around the existing storylines of the Beast Wars TV show.

The exact same story that was told in The Gathering could've been done on *any* planet with animals

No, it couldn't. Because the entire reason for the plot was the Predacons sending Magmatron to Earth to capture Megatron. You throw that out, you've got to come up with a whole new premise for another group of Maximals and Predacons landing on another planet and adopting animal forms just like the tv BW characters did. THAT plot re-use stretches credulity, not what we got.

If you're going to set it on Prehistoric Earth and involve the BW cast, do that.

They did.

Have them show up and go "Surprise, show guys! We're here now and this is an alternate continuity!"

Alternate continuity? How does that do anything except make things worse?

The fundamental question here is this: why did IDW publish a Beast Wars mini-series in the first place? Because Beast Wars is popular and fondly remembered and would sell. What made the line popular? The Mainframe television series is largely responsible. It's also largely remembered as the best written and highest quality Transformers show that we've gotten.

So IDW goes to create a Beast Wars comic, and they set all of that aside and start from scratch. Or they overwrite what we saw on the show that inspired the comic with an alternate continuity. How well do you think that would have been received?

[Onslaught Six]

For those who wanted non-show and Japanese characters, we got both. For those who wanted more of an examination of the politics and situation on Cybertron, we got that as well. IDW explored new areas of the Beast Wars timeframe that the TV show barely touched on. They added something new. And they did so in a way that worked around the existing storylines of the Beast Wars TV show.

In tiny bits and pieces, and they still had to shoehorn those damn show characters into it.

No, it couldn't. Because the entire reason for the plot was the Predacons sending Magmatron to Earth to capture Megatron. You throw that out, you've got to come up with a whole new premise for another group of Maximals and Predacons landing on another planet and adopting animal forms just like the tv BW characters did. THAT plot re-use stretches credulity, not what we got.

BWII and Neo both did that successfully without a single stretch of credibility. (I hate to keep bringing those up, but they're the best example I have.)

The fact is that the whole Mags-gets-sent-to-capture-Megs plot was invented because they wanted to uselessly involve the show cast--not the other way around.

You need a plot? "Hey, I'm Magmatron. I want Energon. Oh look! There's some on that planet. I'm gonna go get it. Shit, there's Maximals here." Replace Energon with the MacGuffin of your choice and you can easily have anything.

The DNA scanners that the BW cast has obviously shows that the technology is in wide use by the time of BW. This is further supported by the Predacons in Car Robots.

If you're going to set it on Prehistoric Earth and involve the BW cast, do that.

They did.

No they didn't, because the existing BW show characters were just kind of in the background. Until The Ascending, anyway, which is just fucking terrible.

The fundamental question here is this: why did IDW publish a Beast Wars mini-series in the first place? Because Beast Wars is popular and fondly remembered and would sell. What made the line popular? The Mainframe television series is largely responsible. It's also largely remembered as the best written and highest quality Transformers show that we've gotten.

So IDW goes to create a Beast Wars comic, and they set all of that aside and start from scratch. Or they overwrite what we saw on the show that inspired the comic with an alternate continuity. How well do you think that would have been received?

Fuck how those fans would have received it. Yeah, I said it. Fuck those people. The G1 purists see their continuity rebooted and ripped to shreds almost literally every other year. Why do the furries get protection? Because BW was above average? And most of them don't even fucking like the second half of their little piece of continuity!

[Dominic]

No, it couldn't. Because the entire reason for the plot was the Predacons sending Magmatron to Earth to capture Megatron. You throw that out, you've got to come up with a whole new premise for another group of Maximals and Predacons landing on another planet and adopting animal forms just like the tv BW characters did. THAT plot re-use stretches credulity, not what we got.

The whole point was to get a bunch of non-show and Japanese characters on the board. The same scenario could have been set up just by having the characters be memebers of competing energy survey teams or some such.

And, when O6 says "involve the show characters", he means "in some meaningful way".


Dom
-regrets subscribing to "Nefarious".

[Onslaught Six]

And, when O6 says "involve the show characters", he means "in some meaningful way".

Yes. "Involving show characters" isn't "Hey look! Toy-only and Japanese characters! Now here's Cheetor for a panel! You guys like Cheetor, right?"

[andersonh1]

No, it couldn't. Because the entire reason for the plot was the Predacons sending Magmatron to Earth to capture Megatron. You throw that out, you've got to come up with a whole new premise for another group of Maximals and Predacons landing on another planet and adopting animal forms just like the tv BW characters did. THAT plot re-use stretches credulity, not what we got.

The whole point was to get a bunch of non-show and Japanese characters on the board. The same scenario could have been set up just by having the characters be memebers of competing energy survey teams or some such.

And what's the draw of such a scenario? What's the hook, other than "these guys have beast modes instead of vehicular modes"?

The appeal of Beast Wars is not so much the beast modes, it's the storyline that the tv show developed and the way in which that storyline is linked to what came before. We got some good episodes out of the characters simply fighting over energon and stasis pods in the first season, but it wasn't until the planet was revealed to be Earth in the past that things really took off. Megatron in particular benefited as a character. The stakes became higher because Cybertron's long history was in danger. This allowed the treachery of Tarantulus to take on more meaning.

We got more than two small groups doing what Transformers have always done, we got two groups of characters locked in conflict because of the history behind their factions and how that had shaped them. It makes a lot more sense to me to tap into all that development and place the new characters into that storyline than it does to simply present another group of Maximals and Predacons fighting on another planet for whatever reason. I don't see how that could be anything except derivative.

And, when O6 says "involve the show characters", he means "in some meaningful way".

I can get on board with that idea. I don't have a problem with how the show characters were used in the series, but I'd have enjoyed a more substantial role for them, or some of them.

BWII and Neo both did that successfully without a single stretch of credibility. (I hate to keep bringing those up, but they're the best example I have.)

But it's not a good example. Those shows were made for the Japanese market and audience. That's not the market that the IDW comic was aimed at. I doubt the majority of Transformers fans have ever seen either show, or any Japanese TF show for that matter. The fan base for BW II or BW Neo is tiny compared to the fan base for Beast Wars.

The fact is that the whole Mags-gets-sent-to-capture-Megs plot was invented because they wanted to uselessly involve the show cast--not the other way around.

You need a plot? "Hey, I'm Magmatron. I want Energon. Oh look! There's some on that planet. I'm gonna go get it. Shit, there's Maximals here." Replace Energon with the MacGuffin of your choice and you can easily have anything.

How is that creative in any way? It's nothing we haven't seen before. It's new faces filling the same old roles. Giving Magmatron the mission that Ravage failed to complete is far and away more interesting than having yet another scavenger hunt for energon between two competing beastformer armies just so that tv show characters can be ignored.

The fundamental question here is this: why did IDW publish a Beast Wars mini-series in the first place? Because Beast Wars is popular and fondly remembered and would sell. What made the line popular? The Mainframe television series is largely responsible. It's also largely remembered as the best written and highest quality Transformers show that we've gotten.

So IDW goes to create a Beast Wars comic, and they set all of that aside and start from scratch. Or they overwrite what we saw on the show that inspired the comic with an alternate continuity. How well do you think that would have been received?

Fuck how those fans would have received it. Yeah, I said it. Fuck those people. The G1 purists see their continuity rebooted and ripped to shreds almost literally every other year. Why do the furries get protection? Because BW was above average? And most of them don't even fucking like the second half of their little piece of continuity!

Sorry, but "those fans" are the vast majority of the audience that IDW was aiming for. Ignore them, and who's left? Not enough to make any Beast Wars comic a success.

The approach to Beast Wars that you and Dom are arguing for would not have been a commercial success. That's what I'm saying. The first series sold fairly well and was well-received. It was the second series and then the sourcebooks that soured the fans on IDW's Beast Wars output, and criticisms of those are very fair. But the idea that all of the problems could have been avoided by IDW rebooting Beast Wars or going with some form of the Japanese material just doesn't make sense. That wouldn't solve anything, and would cut down the audience for the comics considerably. You might have been much happier, but I don't see how such a series would have sold.

[Onslaught Six]

Eh. And therein lies the problem--the IDW BW books were made because IDW and/or Hasbro could make a quick buck, not because somebody actually had something interesting to do with the universe.

[138 Scourge]

Eh. And therein lies the problem--the IDW BW books were made because IDW and/or Hasbro could make a quick buck, not because somebody actually had something interesting to do with the universe.

True that. And the thing is, if "The Gathering" and particularly "The Ascending" had been what the Beast Wars fans wanted, we'd have seen more BW series, Spotlights, and the like.

I just can't shake the thought that doing the BW comic as a series of "Lost Episodes" would have worked better. Isn't that what the hardcore BW guys wanted, more of the guys you know and love from the show? And I'm not talking down about it here, I would have been thrilled with this. You want non-show characters? Bring 'em in one or two at a time, like the show did, find decent reasons to get rid of 'em. That would have especially worked for episodes set within the first season, when new characters showing up and then up and leaving wasn't unheard of, at least on the Maximal side. Yes, it probably would have descended into a joke after awhile, by the time the third or fourth new guy showed up and took off or died immediately, but I think that a decent writer could have caught the feel of the show, toss in some good artwork (and they had that part down), maybe throw in some issues done up to look like the show's animation, I believe you could have something. Hell, make it last long enough, maybe you can get Bob or Larry to do a guest issue, tell me that wouldn't get people's attention.

So once you've got this main BW series going, you test the waters a bit with a few Spotlights that deal with what's going on over on Cybertron. Maybe make these hypothetical Spotlights tie in to the basic plot of "BWII" or "Neo", but loosely. Damn loosely. If they're one-shots, you make sure that the people are getting a complete story. Hey, why not throw a Spotlight on present-day Earth? Be interesting to see if any Cybertronian Beast artifacts survived the however many years between then and the present. Then, if they've got enough of an audience going, hit 'em with the "Beast Wars: Neo" series or the like. Again, not an adaptation of the show as such, nor something written around it like the "Gathering" was, but more straight-up re-engineering of the Japanese series. If the audiences don't know that Neo's cool, the writer and artist have to damn well show 'em it's cool by making it that way. Now, maybe not this, but if you get enough sales on the main BW series to justify it, then may as well give it a go. After building up trust in the BW comic franchise, it'd be more viable.

Or, y'know, just do "The Gathering" and "The Ascending" and call it a day. Whichever.

138 "Entirely too lazy to draw an entire damn comic on his own, yet apparently thinks he knows how to run a company, cripes" Scourge

[Sparky Prime]

Eh. And therein lies the problem--the IDW BW books were made because IDW and/or Hasbro could make a quick buck, not because somebody actually had something interesting to do with the universe.

"The Gathering" I really can't see as simply to make a quick buck. Audiences had been asking for some Beast Wars comics since Dreamwave had the license. IDW was the one that delilivered on it. And again, "The Gathering" works as a nice set up to tell some interesting stories in that universe. It's just unfortunate the follow up "The Ascending" didn't live up to that potential.

Sorry, but "those fans" are the vast majority of the audience that IDW was aiming for. Ignore them, and who's left? Not enough to make any Beast Wars comic a success.

The approach to Beast Wars that you and Dom are arguing for would not have been a commercial success. That's what I'm saying. The first series sold fairly well and was well-received. It was the second series and then the sourcebooks that soured the fans on IDW's Beast Wars output, and criticisms of those are very fair. But the idea that all of the problems could have been avoided by IDW rebooting Beast Wars or going with some form of the Japanese material just doesn't make sense. That wouldn't solve anything, and would cut down the audience for the comics considerably. You might have been much happier, but I don't see how such a series would have sold.

I completely agree.

[Onslaught Six]

An attempt to please everyone quickly becomes an effort that pleases no one.

toss in some good artwork (and they had that part down)

No they didn't. Figgy Pop can't draw animals.