Interview with Shane McCarty

Listening to the interview, it sounds like Chris Ryall had decided that Furman Transformersverse wasn't "good enough" and needed to be shaken up to get more people in. This might have worked, if the "shaking it up" didn't involve such utter rubbish. All Fail Megatron took 12 issues to get us where? A set piece battle in New York? All that mucking about and all the autobots needed to do was hitch a ride on Omega Supreme?

I've had a standing subscription for all transformers comics for a couple of years now (back to when Dreamwave held the license) - heck, in the 80's I had a subscription at my local newsagent to the UK Transformers book. All Hail Megatron is the first time I've thought to myself "I wonder, do I really need to bother with this anymore". It is certainly the first time in my life that I won't buy a Transformers trade paperback, even though I have every other one and the Premium collection (and the 2nd one on order from Amazon).

If you are going to shake it up - make it good. Look at what Abrams did with Star Trek. Obviously there is some problem with circulation or they think they can do better than what they are doing. Better is great. All Hail Megatron is not better. It is significantly worse and by the howls that go on whenever the series is brought up (and of course there is a geek echo chamber, but really, has any other series ticked off as many people as AHM?). IDW can do better than All Hail Megatron.

Tell epic stories where there are consequences. Sure, I love Simon Furman's work and have loved it for more than 20 years - but I also acknowledge that other people can write excellent Transformers stories. Shane McCarthy is not that guy. His abilities as a storyteller do not appear to dovetail well with the epic nature of Transformers stories. Of course he wouldn't have a career in comics if he wasn't good at it. What I'm saying is that he doesn't appear to be a good fit for this particular comic.

Orin_Thomas wrote:Listening to the interview, it sounds like Chris Ryall had decided that Furman Transformersverse wasn't "good enough" and needed to be shaken up to get more people in. This might have worked, if the "shaking it up" didn't involve such utter rubbish. All Fail Megatron took 12 issues to get us where? A set piece battle in New York? All that mucking about and all the autobots needed to do was hitch a ride on Omega Supreme?

Ironically, the -ations verse is what got me hooked on IDW's TF comics in the first place. I liked that it was the most mature-seeming of the TF continuities I had come across at that point, and put the various elements of the TFverse to intelligent use. On the other hand, if AHM had instead been my first taste of modern TF comics, I would have never bothered getting into it.

What's even more ironic is... they curtailed the -ations just as all of the setup was just about ready to pay off and get exciting. Furthermore, the setup seemed to all be leading into pretty much exactly what AHM's concept was: Decepticons winning and conquering Earth, Autobots down and out, humans forming a resistance. Consider:

The Cons conquering and razing a planet was the entire point of Sixshot, the facsimilies, and the Infiltration Protocols to begin with. There could easily have been a Decepticons-winning premise off that existing structure, especially since the massive presence of Ore-13 was a perfect excuse for the Cons to simply conquer Earth instead of trashing it. Additionally, if they had the Con scientists busy refining the Ore to remove its downsides (instead of on pointless mindless drone army plans), that would have been a perfect excuse as to what advantage gave the Cons the upper hand (instead of the ridiculous ambush thing or the Autobots being brain-dead about security).

Then on the human side there was Skywatch, designed from the get-go to find ways to fight Cybertronians, positioned to be interesting players in any resistance. There was also the Machination, either potentially interesting side-faction, or Skywatch could have discovered them, shut them down, and incorporated their discoveries into their own efforts. (Picture government black ops Headmaster clones fighting against the Decepticons.)

And so on and so forth. Basically, I get the impression that if IDW had kept their eye on the ball, they would have gotten the exact same sort of story AHM was anyway. The difference is that it would have been done far more competently, with more interesting elements that would have grown out of the existing storyline naturally. Instead they screwed it up, and screwed everyone out of the satisfying end being leading up to with all the previous issues. </rant>

I spoke with Chris Ryall at BotCon for a few moments. I had some questions that I really wanted answered, particularly about Verity, Hunter, and Sunstreaker.

This led to some interesting between the lines answers in regards to a few things. From what he said, I inferred that Furman had kind of lost direction himself. I got this from the fact that he told me the plans for Verity and Hunter had pretty much run their course even before AHM (Huge disappointment for me...).

I'm not defending AHM, but I can kind of see how the direction around Devastation had broken down to a degree. I don't think it was unfixable, but editorial decisions to ratchet a storyline down are never easy.

I was also told that Sunstreaker is not beyond redemption, but that it's a story for another day and that his character has to 'stay down' for a time.

Counterpunch wrote:I'm not defending AHM, but I can kind of see how the direction around Devastation had broken down to a degree. I don't think it was unfixable, but editorial decisions to ratchet a storyline down are never easy.

Even if that's true, I still don't see why they couldn't have used all of these interesting existing elements that seemed ready-made to support the change in direction, as opposed to making up all of these other elements that were IMHO more cliche and inferior. I can think of so many ways that the IDWverse as it existed at the end of Devastation could have been used very interestingly without contradicting or throwing out everything that went before - and that bothers me, as I tend to think of myself as a medicocre writer and thus expect the pros to be coming up with way more interesting things than I can.