So it looks like Hachette's warming up a Transformers collection (http://www.transformerscollection.com). It talks about "remastered stories and exclusive bonus content" and word is Furman's been editing. The first four issues are pretty good on the whole: the rather fab Target 2006, IDW's fairly decent Stormbringer, The Primal Scream (TF origins), and Edge of Extinction (Unicron Saga). Issue five, though, is War Within – an unfinished chunk of the unfinished Dreamwave series.
Rumblings on Transformers forums have questioned the viability of this series, but I can't imagine Transformers doesn't have the nostalgia factor and fan base to succeed. I'm interested, though, in where they are sourcing the material. IDW's Classics books are on the whole dreadful, artwork on the US books ruined by boneheaded remastering, and the UK books with weirdly tiny art (double gutters) and poor scanning. I know Dredd partwork subscribers have grumbled about the repro there now and again, but, really, it's nothing on the IDW Transformers books.
Anyway, good to see Hachette's still trying new things rather than just flinging out Marvel books again and again. And I must admit that if I see issue 1 knocking around anywhere locally for two quid, that at least will be a must-buy.
I was a big fan of the Marvel UK comics and Target 2006 is probably my favourite story arc. I've bought a couple of the IDW books and was very impressed with them. I didn't know Hachette were doing anything along these lines so thanks for the heads up.
Cheers
I've been meaning for as long as i've been reading comics to dip into the Marvel Transformers UK material. So, far only the two omnibuses collecting the works of our favorite Freelance Peacekeeping Agent have made it into my collection. This part work has somewhat piqued my interest.
(http://the-artifice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Deaths-Head.jpeg)
Quote from: NapalmKev on 23 September, 2016, 10:26:31 AMI've bought a couple of the IDW books and was very impressed with them.
I like the
content of the Classics UK series, although said series appears to have died with book five. But the repro is shocking, with a weirdly small print size and massive double gutters. So although I love how comprehensive they are, I've still not parted with my ancient A4 reprints.
The US IDW Classics are terrible though. Shocking remastering that ruins the original art.
Good grief. I emailed their customer service team about repro, possibly expensive "no idea" as a response. Instead, I was told:
QuoteThank you for taking the time to write to us.
Kindly be advised that collection is based on a storyline on war,games etc.
Should you require any additional information, please feel free to contact us.
You know, I don't think I'll bother!
This will probably do okay as long as they make people aware of it, as Transformers is an evergreen property - though God knows why. At the time Dreamwave folded, it was an industry joke that the proof they were such a shitty company was that they couldn't turn a profit on Transformers comics.
Please please do this! Grew up on the great Marvel UK Transformers comics! Will have to put up some new book shelves and divert some spending cash lol but will be so worth it. :)
So issue one has arrived in the UK. As per the test run, this is Target: 2006 and it actually collects UK #78–88 along with US #21-23.
If you've bought a Hatchette partwork before, you'll be familiar with the nature of the volume. This book is a very nice hardback, about the size of a Dredd MC title. The spine has an Autobot logo, part of a Transformers pic, and the volume number – 6 – emblazoned on it. The front cover is a G1 cartoon Megatron and some greyscale Wreckers art. End papers show Ultra Magnus clashing with Galvatron. Simon Furman provides a quick intro, and there's a single 'story so far', before you delve into the comics. At which point, it all goes a bit wrong.
The repro is the problem, varying throughout the book from acceptable to dire. The UK content is frequently slightly blurry and a little washed out. Compared to the old Titan trades, it's not good at all. Compared to the IDW UK Classics, it's at least bigger (no massive gutters), but it almost feels like they've used the same art and just expanded its size. Everything is readable, and I'm aware that these are old comics; but it's pretty clear no expense has been made (rather than spared) on decent scanning here.
Things are even worse when you hit the US content. From what I recall, this artwork is the result of IDW faffing about for its IDW Classic reprints that recolour the original stories. The changes are in theory subtle, making the odd correction and 'smoothing' out the original colouring. What this means is all of the half toning is gone, replaced by flat colour. Also gone: any subtle linework. The 1980s Marvel US art had a tendency to be and look quite simplistic anyway, but it's far worse in this collection: blobby and robbed of fine details. Also, in flattening some of the colours, you go from some fairly iffy colouring to absurdly overbearing vivid blasts of pink and red.
For £1.99, the first issue is worth grabbing if you don't already own Target: 2006 and fancy reading one of the best classic Transformers strips. But £9.99 per issue of this run, for the classic Marvel content? Only if you don't already own it in some other fashion. Certainly don't go near this partwork if you were considering replacing existing editions with shiny new hardbacks.
Also, if you're griping at repro in the Dredd partwork at any point, know this: this Transformers one shows how things could have been much, much worse.
Wow. You are not wrong. The repo in this is terrible. Especially on the US stories. That said I didn't really buy it for them. It's nice to be able to have Target:2006 on me shelf for £2. I don't think I'll be going near the rest of the series which is a pity.
Bought issue 1 despite not being into Transformers at all.
But at two quid it was too cheap to pass up.
As you mention the repro is not very good and I was not impressed with the art or the writing much.
Won't be getting anymore issues.
Some of the art in 1980s Transformers can be really good, although it's variable. Geoff Senior, for example, does some pretty bloody awesome stompy robots. (I wish he was in 2000 AD a whole lot more, too.) The writing... well, this is very much aimed-at-kids territory – a strip based around plastic toys. I think given those constraints and the era in which the comic was made, the UK material in particular was pretty good, and Furman's run on the US material was also a great read. But I also suspect that in much the same way the very early Dredd (or, for that matter, 1970s/1980s Marvel) might not hit home with a reader coming to it entirely fresh, Transformers is heavily reliant on the nostalgia factor.
Picked this up because it's only 2 nicker, and the repro is as criminal as mentioned above. Sure, we're all comics nerds - many of us even making our own - so we might be a bit more sensitive to technical failings, but these pages look objectively terrible, all the more so between a good-looking hardcover adorned with vibrant colours and clean linework.
Although now that we know low quality isn't a barrier to seeing material appear in these things, perhaps it's not too much to hope for a Robo Machines collection at some point - hey, they're owned by Hasbro these days, and are identified as alternate-universe Transformers in the main TF line, so a man can dream.
I've got part 1and, as others have said, it's a bit ropey. The reproduction of the pages isn't great and my copy has some faded Lettering. A problem seen in one or two if the Dredd partworks! I'm going to give a couple more issues a go just to see if things improve. If not then bollocks to it.
If you want a good laugh head over to Amazon where issue one is on sale for £7.99 instead £1.99.
Cheers
I bought #1 because of the low price. I remember getting some of the UK weeklies back when I was a young chap and kind of enjoying them. I wouldn't pay the £9.99 though.
I don't think the reproduction is quite as bad as people make out.
In terms of the US reprints these are from a period when Marvel were printing their comics on very poor quality paper. I think Marc Silvestri's run on Uncanny X-Men was from around the same time and I remember his art in particular looked as if he hadn't finished drawing each page (or else the inker had only inked three quarters of it). An awful lot of fine lines just wouldn't see the printed page. The colouring wasn't good on those original issues either so IDW may have had no option but to recolour. From that point of view the reprint is quite faithful.
Unlike some others here I haven't seen any other TF collections so its hard to say whether you should buy this or not.
Issue 2 (volume 36) has arrived. The book is titled Stormbringer and also contains four Spotlight stories: Shockwave, Soundwave, Nightbeat and Hot Rod.
The artwork looks lovely. Crisp lines, excellent colouring; a far cry from issue one's poor repro, but then the source material is much newer than Target 2006.
Also got two nice metal keyrings, Autobot and Deception insignias.
Cheers
Quote from: Tony Angelino on 12 January, 2017, 09:13:38 PMI don't think the reproduction is quite as bad as people make out.
Unlike some others here I haven't seen any other TF collections so its hard to say whether you should buy this or not.
I think that's the key thing here. If you don't care much about repro and/or don't have other collections, the early stuff in this set might not bother you. But I have the Titan runs of the UK and US material, along with the IDW UK reprints. The Hachette book is worse than all of them.
QuoteIn terms of the US reprints these are from a period when Marvel were printing their comics on very poor quality paper. I think Marc Silvestri's run on Uncanny X-Men was from around the same time and I remember his art in particular looked as if he hadn't finished drawing each page (or else the inker had only inked three quarters of it). An awful lot of fine lines just wouldn't see the printed page. The colouring wasn't good on those original issues either so IDW may have had no option but to recolour. From that point of view the reprint is quite faithful.
The original Titan books were straight reprints. Those were faithful. These saw IDW outsource scanning/recolouring to a studio in India that apparently didn't care much about the end result. That means when you originally had rubbish 1980s US colouring with dots aplenty, you now have rubbish US colouring transformed into eye-searing solids, and a lot of the fine details have just vanished. On the assumption this is the same content as in the IDW US Classics line, this isn't the worst of it either – some of the recolouring work is
really bad.
On the notion that there may have been no other option, that's perhaps true – at least from Hachette's standpoint. But it's interesting to compare this approach with, say, Rebellion's. With 2000 AD collections, I sometimes have the odd gripe, but broadly speaking the scanning and retouching work has been very good.
I imagine with licensing from both Marvel and Hasbro AND having to pay the original creators all over again, IDW couldn't afford to spend more money and time on a higher-quality restoration of what was likely - from their point of view - a one-off reprint to cash in on the TF nostalgia factor/online buzz about the UK comics and to set up any sequels to the material that they would later produce (Simon Furman's ReGeneration One, for instance). They had a similar situation recently with the ROM reboot, where they pointedly didn't reprint the Marvel series, presumably because even something that sold as well as TF didn't make them back enough money to justify what they'd paid for the Marvel material, and I suppose it's not like ROM's creator Bill Mantlo needs the money or anything.
I can somewhat forgive Hachette, but not IDW. The recolour job for classic TF is bloody awful, and I fail to see why it was even necessary. I recall at the time them talking about faded colours and corrections being made. But the end result is just shit. As for the UK material, I've no idea where the hell the material came from, but the UK Classics reprints are ridiculous with their double gutter. Perhaps they had fairly low-res scans and that was the only way they looked half-decent (and these have now been enlarged for the partwork, hence their blurry appearance).
I've never liked anything idw have crapped out.
I know it sounds petty and all but my hatred of the company started when i was conned into buying their "angel season six" comics. it was hyped up big a continuation of the tv series joss whedon playing a huge role in keeping things tick like the dark horse buffy season 8 (thats another farce altogether) A 12 issue telling us what happened after the apocalyptic battle at the end of season 5.
Then issue 1 came out. Its set months after said battle. Characters are acting off. Dead characters are brought back. Characters from other angel comics show up for no goddamn reason. It all read like officially produced fanfic. Sure the buffy ones were not amazing either but at least whedon and other show writers wrote those ones. Yeah thats right Whedon did nothing for this series despite hyped as being a part of it. His entire involvement was saying "go ahead do it" to the writer who did do this mess. Then it became an ongoing and i just gave up. Even now i never read the end of it but i hear a very huge deus ex machina waved it all away.
Is it shocking it was canned and the rights were handed to dark horse?
and don't get me started on the judge dredd comics. Its obvious if you are not british or John wagner you clearly have no clue how to write Dredd. How it still goes on is beyond me.
So yeah tldr not a fan of idw
I always thought those Whedon series were missed opportunities. Firefly, in particular, had such a following, and yet the comics were pedestrian at best, and generally poorly written. On the others, I've read most of Buffy S08 and that's OK. Probably no worse than the last couple of seasons of the TV show, but a long way from its prime. I have Angel in digital, but haven't bothered with it as yet.
You think thats bad, Buckaroo Banzai had comics as well. How do you mess up Buckaroo Banzai in comic format? IDW did.
;)
I had a look in W H Smiths for the first issue. I don't plan on getting this series, but I'm fond of Transformers and I figured the first issue would be worth it. All gone, but there's a few of the second issue available. Still not bad for £6.99 but I think I'll save the money for now.
Quote from: The Monarch on 16 January, 2017, 11:38:48 PM
So yeah tldr not a fan of idw
And yet, IDW have produced some amazing comics.
Locke & Key is widely (and justifiably) regarded as a modern classic.
Ragnarok is one of the best ongoing comics currently being produced.
I've also really enjoyed several other series by the company- Transformers Regeneration One and the Dredd / Anderson / Rogue Trooper minis.
All of those comics also had fantastic production values (although the thicker card stock covers seem to have disappeared).
Yeah, they have produced some lemons- but every publisher has.
Personally, I've bought and enjoyed far more comics from IDW than I have from Marvel over the past few years.
As i said i may be a wee bit petty all comic publishers make good and bad stuff i am just basing things on the shite i rrad
Link Prime: I'm with you on Locke & Key, one of the very few things I've ever triple-dipped on. I bought it on Kindle, and then grabbed a bunch of paperbacks. When I could only get one volume in hardback, I rebought them all and sold my paperbacks.
Quote from: The Monarch on 17 January, 2017, 07:00:30 PM
As i said i may be a wee bit petty all comic publishers make good and bad stuff i am just basing things on the shite i rrad
Fair enough- and for what it's worth I didn't rate either of IDW's 'ongoing' Dredd titles very highly (both volumes were dropped after a couple of issues).
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 17 January, 2017, 07:57:30 PM
Link Prime: I'm with you on Locke & Key, one of the very few things I've ever triple-dipped on. I bought it on Kindle, and then grabbed a bunch of paperbacks. When I could only get one volume in hardback, I rebought them all and sold my paperbacks.
Triple-dipped? Pffft, fair-weather fans!
I have this (in particular the 1st collection) in so many formats it's embarrassing (including 'PSP Digitial Comics' :lol:).
And I'm still tempted to buy the new Hardback editions.
Quote from: Link Prime on 17 January, 2017, 06:13:43 PM
Quote from: The Monarch on 16 January, 2017, 11:38:48 PM
So yeah tldr not a fan of idw
And yet, IDW have produced some amazing comics.
Locke & Key is widely (and justifiably) regarded as a modern classic.
Ragnarok is one of the best ongoing comics currently being produced.
I've also really enjoyed several other series by the company- Transformers Regeneration One and the Dredd / Anderson / Rogue Trooper minis.
All of those comics also had fantastic production values (although the thicker card stock covers seem to have disappeared).
Yeah, they have produced some lemons- but every publisher has.
Personally, I've bought and enjoyed far more comics from IDW than I have from Marvel over the past few years.
Their rebooted and ongoing version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has been top, consistently great art and great writing IMO. I hear that their reprints of the old Eastman and Laird era have been good too.
IDW's "Season 10" of the X Files was also much better than the actual return of Season 10 we got on the TV.
There was an interview with some guy who bankrolled The Asylum where he said it didn't matter how terrible the movies were, it just mattered that they had content to sell. In a similar vein, I think of IDW's licensing-heavy portfolio as being the comics equivalent of shovelware, and I wouldn't like to be the poor fucker trying to sell Star Trek comics in 7 or 8 years' time when the brand has run out of goodwill. Or Judge Dredd TPBs, come to that.
Wasn't there mgs comics for the psp?
Quote from: The Monarch on 24 January, 2017, 05:31:10 PM
Wasn't there mgs comics for the psp?
Yeah, I have a UMD with all of the MGS comics collected on it (with stylish art by our own Ashley Wood).
PSP / Sony also had a Digital Comics app though, with a wide range of comics from Marvel, DC, IDW and even 2000AD available.
It's been defunct for a few years now (all of my previous purchases had to be backed up on a PSP memory stick or they'd have been lost).
It was dead handy for on-the-go comics, before the iPad / Tablet became the ubiquitous option.