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IDW vs Dreamwave: Which is better?


Dark_Supreme_Jetfire

  

14 members have voted

  1. 1. What Company is better?

    • Dreamwave
    • IDW
    • Both Are About the Same
      0
    • Could Care Less
    • Make Mine Marvel!


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jeffafa: why not browse through a recent issue at your local comic shop and see if you like it? :)

 

I say IDW is worth the time and money. If you actually have the time to read everything in chronological order it is just one big awesome epic.

Yeah but no where near as awesomely epic as Marvel was. The thing I dislike about DW and IDW TF comics is that, if you read them as a TPB or as an entire series, then it's okay, but when you read them as stand alone individual issues, they're fairly lacklustre. Like there are certain issues where, from cover to cover, not a whole lot happens. (-_-) Marvel gave you bang for your buck in that a lot of stuff happened in a single issue. And Furman was particularly good because there would also be a continual story arc happening on top of that!

 

I had forgot about the Ironhide mini so I guess that does count as a resurrection. As for Hearts of Darkness, I did read that and the 'bots they did resurrect where just cannon fodder. And yes I do hate that the artwork is all over the place for IDW.

Oh gawd... IDW's Visual Continuity (or lack thereof) FTL. :(

 

As for Marvel I have the 1st 43 issues and I have tried numerous times to read it but it just doesn't seem to hold my interest. Maybe its the artwork or lack of detail.

I assume you're talking about the US issues. The print quality of Marvel USA in the 1980s was horrible... I don't know why, but everything's really low resolution and 'pixelated'. The UK issues from the 80s on the other hand had MUCH better print quality with crisp and clear images. Also, some of the US artists weren't that great -- José Delbo has really poor visual narrative and struggles in using the cinematic technique in comics when it comes to dynamic action (which is something that UK artist Geoff Senior just excels in), and Delbo also can't draw proper generic Transformers... like all the background mooks - they just look like generic scifi robots from some Isaac Asimov-era story. They don't look like Transformers at all; why? Because they don't have alt mode kibble! The UK artists on the other hand were much better at designing their own original Transformer characters -- Impactor is a good example of this. Hey look, Soundwave has a MOUTH sometimes in the US comics... WTF? (o_O)

 

Another thing that hurt the US issues was Nel Yomtov, who couldn't colour a comic if his life depended on it. (-_-) Things that irked me about his colouring included:

+ Getting lazy and just splashing a single colour onto entire Transformers - particularly if they weren't in the foreground, but even if they were in the midground. Entire groups would be just coloured blue or purple or red. Hell, there was one cover where Optimus Prime's head was in the foreground, and the entire head was coloured RED. Ooookkkaaay.

+ Really dull and lazy colouring -- it was like he was colouring by numbers. There was no real effort to give them any sense of shading or to make them look metallic or anything.

 

Here are some pics for comparison between the standard of art from Marvel USA and Marvel UK:

* US Emirate Xaaron VS UK Emirate Xaaron

* US Straxus VSUK Straxus

* Scorponok drawn by US artist José Delbo VS Scorponok by UK penciller Andrew Wildman (inked by Stephen Baskerville) - even with Yomtov's crappy colouring it looks awesome :)

* Cover art for US#75 VS The UK version of the same cover (#319)

* US Galvatron VSUK Galvatron - although US Galvatron was drawn by UK artist Wildman, it still suffers from Yomtov's colouring.

 

And artwork aside, the writing quality in the UK comics were a lot more awesome and epic compared the the US comics. The writing in the US comics got a lot better after Budiansky stepped down and UK writer Simon Furman took over the helm from #56 (so if you've only read up to #43, then you've missed what is widely considered to be the best of the US Marvel comic run). And Budiansky's writing got especially bad toward the end of his run (Autobot pro-wrestling FTL!).

 

It was the UK comics who gave us:

+ A predecessor for Optimus Prime, Sentinel Prime.

+ A god for the Transformers, Primus

+ Established Unicron as a Dark God, Primus' nemesis - and both of whom tie into the very creation of the universe(s)

+ The best incarnation of Galvatron ever.

+ Establishing the Matrix as a divine artifact (embodiment of Primus' Spark)

+ Substantial development for many Transformer characters - he treated them as characters that you could care about, and not just one-dimensional caricatures.

+ Mass killings! (holy crap, war has consequences!! :o) Bloody Furman... he spends issues developing a character to get you emotionally connected to them, then he KILLS them!

+ Taking rather pedestrian toys and making them really interesting characters (and thus jacking up their aftermarket value :P) - e.g. Thunderwing, Bludgeon, Nightbeat etc. - let's face it, nobody would care about these characters had Furman not made them awesome! We had ROTF Bludgeon and Generations Thunderwing because of this... where's Generations Vroom, eh? :P

+ Furmanisms! -- last Sunday I was having lunch with some other TF collectors, and we kept on spouting Furmanisms at each other. Could we do no less? (lolol) :)

...etc etc etc etc etc et al.

 

And another thing that impresses me with the writing quality in Marvel - both US and UK really, is that it was all done within the context of marketing a current toy line from Hasbro. This puts a significant amount of creative restraint on writers because Hasbro dictates which characters needed to be introduced or removed and when. DW and IDW's G1 comics have a LOT more creative freedom because they're not doing this... and yet the results aren't even half as satisfying as what Marvel gave us.

 

Furman has been voted by fans as the favourite/best TF writer back when Rob Jung was running the "Trannies" Awards. No other TF writer has a volume of work that spans across Transformers as vastly as Furman's. From G1 (starting in 1985) to G2 to Beast Wars (where he wrote the BotCon comics and the final episode of the cartoon), Dreamwave (The War Within, Armada, Energon) and of course now, IDW. He's also been to like 6 BotCons, 2 OTFCCs, 1 SDCC and however many UK conventions. I can't think of any other TF writer who's been loved so long and by so many as Simon Furman... and for good reason too!

 

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I say IDW is worth the time and money. If you actually have the time to read everything in chronological order it is just one big awesome epic.

I had forgot about the Ironhide mini so I guess that does count as a resurrection. As for Hearts of Darkness, I did read that and the 'bots they did resurrect where just cannon fodder. And yes I do hate that the artwork is all over the place for IDW.

 

As for Marvel I have the 1st 43 issues and I have tried numerous times to read it but it just doesn't seem to hold my interest. Maybe its the artwork or lack of detail.

 

I am just interested in seeing what IDW is up to especially with this issue 125 which they have yet to explain, and what their plans are for the 2 ongoing's after that. On the upside with the movies being done, there isn't any movieverse comics in the future.

I haven't read the whole IDW run from the beginning but I believe Galvatron resurrected Scourge and Cyclonus too. Not sure if they count though since I don't know if they appeared previously in the IDW universe. However, with regard to Hearts of Darkness, I'm more interested in the future implications of those cannon fodder resurrections. Who knows who we'll see? It seems that Galvatron will figure heavily in upcoming storylines. I can't wait to find out who'll show up with him.

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I haven't read the whole IDW run from the beginning but I believe Galvatron resurrected Scourge and Cyclonus too. Not sure if they count though since I don't know if they appeared previously in the IDW universe.

Yeah, they did appear. They were part of the crew of the original Ark (under the command of Nova Prime (now Nemesis Prime)) -- who all went into the Benzuli Expanse and fell into the Dead Universe. After the Autobots severed Cyclonus and Scourge from the Dead Universe, they both began deteriorating... until Galvatron came along. ;)

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Good. Then I'm counting Scourge and Cyclonus as resurrections also.

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Good. Then I'm counting Scourge and Cyclonus as resurrections also.

 

Technically they weren't deactivated yet. Galvatron only made them stronger and reformatted them to a point. Now if they where truly dead and he brought them back to life then yeah I would count that as a resurrection.

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I figure they had an incurable case of death that just hadn't killed them yet. If you're dying from death and someone cures you it's a form of resurrection right?

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Ressurection is more of a mythological terminology rather than a scientific one - but it's classified as someone returning from death (e.g.: ressurection of Achilles, ressurection of Christ etc.). In terms of medical science, when someone is brought back from clinical death, then it's seen as resuscitating or reviving the patient. Of course, this is all based on organic life.

 

For Transformers I'd say:

+ Resuscitation: restoring a Transformer to life who has ceased to function but is not Spark dead (e.g. bringing someone back from stasis)

+ Ressurection: bringing a Transformer back to life whose Spark had been extinguished (e.g. using the AllSpark shard to ressurect Megatron, using the Matrix to ressurect Optimus Prime & Sentinel Prime etc.)

 

Now the tricky thing is -- Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and indeed all the crew of the first Ark are undead since they went into the Dead Universe. But I'd say that ressurection of an undead entity would be after that entity had been 'killed' - much like say, if someone slays a vampire, but someone else later brings that vampire back to undeath. If a vampire was nearly dead but not absolutely dead, like say Lestat in Interview With A Vampire, then bringing it back would be resuscitation or revitalisation or restoration.

 

I dunno... it's all fairly subjective since ressurection isn't really a scientific terminology and is more mythological.

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Has anyone kept track of the Death's in IDW's Universe to date? I know its quite a few.

 

Also one other thing: Did it bother anyone that Dreamwave's Devestator was too big? I know construction vehicles are large to begin with, but not that large.

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