Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Transformers: Movie Prequel #1

Transformers: Movie Prequel #1
This comic sure sucked ASS. Pages and pages of exposition with very little story. And what story there is, is nearly incomprehensible. I hate to knock Chris Ryall, he's one of my favorite people. But what is this CRAP supposed to be? My only conclusion is that he was given very poor material to work with, and that he was doing the best he could with it. Which should give an indication as to how godAWFUL the original material must have been. I'm sure he won't be able to say anything about it until after the movie's release, but jeez. I'm assuming that he got put on this project because he's the head of IDW, and, being a fan of the old '80s cartoons, accepted the contract to produce this piece on faith, and only later realized what tripe it truly was. Thus, he had to grin and bear it and make the best of a bad situation.
This book lowers my expectations for the movie quite a bit. And the art, oh my god, the art. Or should I say, the lack thereof? AWFUL. Truly mind-numbingly AWFUL. These sentient robots are rendered with few, if any, distinguishing characteristics, to the point that I can't tell any of them apart. Is that really what the artist was shooting for?
I'll read the rest of this series - or at least try to - but if this doesn't improve, then you can bet I'm absolutely not going to see the film. And in that case, wouldn't this book entirely defeat its own raison d'etre?
Ryall's gonna be pissed at me, and Chris, I apologize , but I really, really, didn't like this book a bit. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this story was mostly Simon Furman's work - to the extent that he even snuck his name into the book (SimFur).

1 comment:

NucleonSaber said...

If I said I disagreed, I'd be lying.

The art was decent, but the writing was nowhere near what I have come to expect from IDW Transformers titles. I certainly hope the movie and its other tie-ins don't suck so much.