All Hail Megatron Issues 1 to 6 (Vol 1)

[STL]

I don't think with comics its really fair to give the creative team a benefit of the doubt, bossbot. Across the entire comic community these days there's a fair amount of misrepresentation and deception that is intended to lure fans into buying certain comics thinking one thing but giving them totally another. There are instances when writers and editors flat out lie to the fans via news reports and whatnot that one thing is the case and then as you read you realise that's not the case at all. For instance, Marvel's X-Men First Class was touted originally as fitting into original X-Men continuity. They were supposed to be stories between the original stories of the X-Men. That's turned out to not be the case. And Marvel have never come out and admitted that. Yet in all their pre-advertising that's how they marketed at. There are countless more examples across the bolard.

So I don't blame some of the others for being harsh on the writer and editor. He might be an Aussie but I don't like the practice of most comic companies today. There's a high level of misrepresentation that goes on to lure and compel readers to buy stuff even when the editors know the cold hard fact that they're not telling the truth. In fact when they are confronted by an interviewer they give a very frustrating "We knew it all from the start but b/c the story was..." line.

So a lot of the time you have to draw inferences and can't rely on the words of even the writers and editors and I hold firmly to the view that this isn't meant to be in continuty but IDW are trying to maintain that it is to keep hold of the existing readers following their line while attracting new readers as IDWs TF stuff has been on a heavy decline for over two years now.

I think you'll notice too that AHM is much more DW styled. And I think they're trying to stick to that nostalgic G1 feel unlike Furman who was creating his own universe. Furman's story which wasn't very G1-esque though it used G1 characters.

[TheDirtyDigger]

I just hope IDW doesn't buy the dust the way DW bought the dust.
I am absolutely loving this interpretation of TF fiction. Definitely my favourite by a long shot.

[Pulse]

I just hope IDW doesn't bite the dust the way DW bought the dust.

Don't cha know an explosion of that magnatude only occurs once in a stella cycle...

(hopefully )

[GoktimusPrime]

If IDW goes belly up I say that Hasbro should give Marvel back the rights to publish Transformers and Marvel should include TF with their Ultimate universe!

[FFN]

I think Hasbro prefers working with smaller independant publishers because they would be able to have a greater say and be able to nix and demand things without the publisher getting their little feelings all butthurt.

[GoktimusPrime]

It never seemed to bother Hasbro or Marvel back in the old days. Furman has commented about the surprising about of freedom they got from Hasbro. Everything was meant to be approved by Hasbro but Furman never had anything knocked back so he started wondering if they were even bothering to read his scripts, so he wrote this utterly ridiculous story which he thought should never be approved as it would utterly trash Transformers continuity... and sure enough, it was flagged by Hasbro. Heh.

[Sky Shadow]

The amazing Trevor Hutchison propaganda covers are the redeeming feature of this series. From the solicitations and those images it seemed like this was going to be a comic about an Earth ruled by the Decepticons with Megatron as a dictator. That would have been a great comic. Unfortunately this comic starts too early and it's not about a world or even a city run by Megatron. It's about the Decepticons fighting humans on a small scale. Sigh.

McCarthy himself said "While this isn't a complete reset it's certainly a new direction for the universe IDW has established and we're taking giant steps forward in establishing a new tone, new outlook and new approach to the license." Unfortunately by "new tone", he seems to have meant "Dreamwave Year One". This is far too bright, sunlit and human with puffy-robot art. It doesn't focus on the character of any of the Decepticons - they're generic 1984-85 toyline robots who smash things. And the comic seems to believe that an unoriginal line about a toothpick is a positive development for Daniel Witwicky, almost the most universally loathed character in Transformers fiction. It's not. The only intriguing two pages in the first two issues were the silent pages with the Autobots at the end of issue one. That isn't yet followed up in issue two and by contrast the 'cliffhanger' at the end of issue two is more like... I don't know... a coathanger? Something that's not a cliffhanger, anyway.

This series has not been worth my money so far. Hopefully it will improve. And if IDW ever do produce that series about Megatron ruling the world (with Trevor Hutchison propaganda art) then I'll be there.

[roller]

i just read #2 a bit odd that the demise of the machination is quickly mentioned, do you think we will ever see how the machination collapsed?

Is this the main problem you all have with the series? The year long jump into the future with minimal explanations to certain changes? EG: seekers new bodies, humans forgetting about the tfs-like the shuttle crash etc

[GoktimusPrime]

From the solicitations and those images it seemed like this was going to be a comic about an Earth ruled by the Decepticons with Megatron as a dictator. That would have been a great comic. Unfortunately this comic starts too early and it's not about a world or even a city run by Megatron. It's about the Decepticons fighting humans on a small scale. Sigh.

Yeah... I found G1's "Rhythms of Darkness" where the Decepticons ruled the United States with remainder of humans and Autobots forming a struggling band of resistance fighters to be a far more interesting story. Ditto the destructive awe of the 2nd Generation Decepticons... phwoar!


San Francisco is pwn'd by Jhiaxus in one strike

[Sky Shadow]

Yeah... I found G1's "Rhythms of Darkness" where the Decepticons ruled the United States with remainder of humans and Autobots forming a struggling band of resistance fighters to be a far more interesting story. Ditto the destructive awe of the 2nd Generation Decepticons... phwoar!

Exactly. G2 actually did establish "a new tone, new outlook and new approach to the license." And Transformers #67 contained a real sense of drama because it was a handful of underdogs against the Doomsday Clock and Galvatron's empire (and it had a Jim Lee cover.) There was actual characterisation of the Pretender Monsters as Decepticons who fear and resent Galvatron's regime but aren't strong enough to challenge him, and an Autobot resistance that consisted of Chainclaw, Getaway, Inferno, Crossblades, Jazz, Guzzle, Prowl and two humans. That's an interesting cross-section of characters and it came out in 1990, with only seven years of Transformers history. Eighteen years (which reminds me: I'm clearly getting old) later, the most interesting Decepticon army IDW can conceive is Megatron, the Seekers, the Constructicons, the Insecticons, two triple-changers, Soundwave and the cassettes. I was bored to death with that line-up two-and-a-half decades ago. I don't want to see them again, not as a group. Just once I'd like to see a Mainframe-equivalent Transformers comics revamp with actual "giant steps forward". A Transformers Generation 3, so to speak.