menasor: off road?

[Undrave]

It's not like we followed the Stunticons much...

[Shockwave 75]

Originally Posted by Larkhainan

Actually the comics followed the toys, there was no mention of the Stunticons breaking up until this guy came down the pipeline. It isn't something they built to, him and Blackjack just showed up one day pretty much.

Originally Posted by JLvatron

Seriously?
That's some lame writing there.

That's not exactly true. Read those wiki links. Basically Wildrider got fed up with the Stunticons/Decepticons bullshit and left.

[RNSrobot]

Barber's hand was forced by Hasbro. Not only "do combiner wars" but "and the stunticons now include off-road and blackjack because reasons."

They DID do a better job with Superion, planning seeds issues before. Superion was in bad shape after the battle with devastator. Slingshot's spark fizzled. Starscream recruited powerglide and alpha bravo into the aerialbots as replacements. Not without precedent; the aerialbots had six members in a much earlier issue.

That said, combiner wars was a pretty lousy crossover. I'm a little surprised barber and Scott couldn't do better. It's not up to par with the normal comic or More Than Meets The Eye. Some neat ideas but poor execution.

Arcee is less transgender as "Furman decided no female Autobots except Jhiaxus experimented on Arcee to introduce gender", since retconned into " of course female Cybertronians duh --- they just all left on the various colony ships millenia ago." Magnus is an office/armor. Prowl merged with Devastator (fan name is Prowlvastator).

Idw has done a lot off cool, new, unique things in their TF comics the past forty+ issues. Generally Hasbro has been hands off... Combiner wars as a major exception. I'm disappointed First Aid has been subsumed into Defensor; he had significant character development as an individual over the past four years. :P

[Larkhainan]

The First Aid thing is especially vile since he was hinted at as the chief medical officer to follow in Ratchet's shoes but instead now he's a combiner forever and ever.

What I'd really like to know is where Barber's retcon of how combiners function comes from, but I don't want to get too spoilerific at the moment. I'm not talking about the engima but rather the implied "nature" even though they have never functioned like that.

Originally Posted by Shockwave 75

That's not exactly true. Read those wiki links. Basically Wildrider got fed up with the Stunticons/Decepticons bullshit and left.

No, it is exactly true. Wildrider did not at any point voice such an opinion in the issues leading up to CW. Last year, it comes down the pipeline he is out of the team, so they hastily jam in a retcon where Offroad and Blackjack join the team during the build up to the event or during the event itself.

IDW did not make the decision. Hasbro did. According to the wiki Wildrider is actually in a couple issues between bumblebee soloing the stunticons and being off the team, and I don't think he voices anti-stunticon or anti-decepticon rhetoric at any point.

The Superion thing is even funnier to me, since if you've read the original storyline, Superion was made by Megatron's tampering and Devy ripped him in half, severing Silverbolt's portion of the Combiner at the waist.

I'm not an expert on grievous bodily harm when it comes to Cybertronians but I feel like someone's forearm dying because the central combiner unit was torn in half might not be "seeding the storyline" and more just going with something that sort of works.

[RNSrobot]

I really dislike the entire enigma of combination. Strongly dislike. Granted, idw has the matrix and so forth --- but goddamn the enigma is lazy. Point it at random bots and bam, combiner. Not even an attempt at some kind of explanation. They just are. And fuck losing first aid as a key mtmte cast member.

[chans formers]

^they have to be like minded bots who have had previous history and can work together as a team.
starscream noted this just before he created defensor with the enigma.

[RNSrobot]

That was still lazy as fuck. They were a "team" for like five minutes. And rook was literally pasted in behind the group.

Like I get it. But still. Frustrating. Hoping now that barber has his normal book back he can explore the combiners. Problem is how Furman set up the whole "COMBINING IS SO HARD GUYS" in the early days of idw. Which reminds me, where is monstructor...

God, much as I love Furman's marvel g1 stuff, the current idw crew has spent a lot of time undoing some of his worse ideas (Arcee being the most offensive).

[RNSrobot]

Back to op. Offroad exists because Hasbro. The end.

He's a cool toy though. I dig him.

[justprime]

All I can say not following the comics...that said I still like the original members of these combiner teams hasbro would have been wise in both sales and to provide the characters for the g1 fans that would prefer the missing bots ....rather than the chase to get them at inflated prices out of takara as it seems there are a lot here that would prefer to be able to assemble
what they consider g1 combiner teams as they say don't screw with the recipe that works but in this case they could have the best of both worlds .

[lars573]

Hasbro did do that. Else I wouldn't have Slingshot or Wildrider figures.