Revisitation 139: The Emptiness of Prime (literally).

25/8/2023

This week, it's the direct sequel to Chaos Theory...

...sort of, as Prime is pissed, Bumblebee is a killer and Swindle is a committed Decepticon. All in my look at the digital comic Autocracy Chapter 1!

3 Comments

Post Mordor

27/8/2023 09:44:16 pm

Autocracy was the second comic I read when beginning my journey through IDW Transformers in chronological order. I started with Megatron: Origin, and then made my way through this trilogy. After finishing it, I thought that we had already reached peak Transformers storytelling. It was my first introduction to Livio Ramondelli's art, which at the time was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Combine that with his beautiful color work and I was in complete awe. Only later on would I notice some of the weaknesses in his art, like his faces and background characters.

I also remember loving the plot the first time I read it. The focus on a pre-war Cybertron setting wasn't anything new in Transformers, but this was still one of the earliest stories I read about it. Things were starting to kick off from the previous events of Megatron: Origin, and it was my first introduction to IDW Optimus.

Nowadays...my opinion on Autocracy has completely soured. That has a lot to do with finishing the continuity and spending countless times reminiscing on what I disliked about it (which is a personal problem of mine I admit, especially if we're gonna be talking about these comics in a retrospective manner, I ought to give these stories a more balanced and fair outlook).

Most of my problems with this story draw back to the biggest issue I have with IDW Transformers as a whole: Optimus Prime himself. I've talked about it before, and I'll undoubtedly talk about it a LOT more in the future, but I just wasn't a fan of the way Optimus was written as this gritty self-doubting leader. I guess I've always preferred the virtuous compassionate leader from G1 more...

...but it's not as if the concept of Optimus/Orion as a cop is inherently unappealing to me, because I LOVED how Roberts wrote him in Chaos Theory. So for this story to be a follow up on that, it really disappoints. There's something about the way Roberts writes Orion Pax/Optimus that no other writer in IDW could replicate imo. He feels the most heroic, his anger is controlled, and he still radiates that aura of leadership just like his more classic versions do.

But this story's Orion doesn't really capture any of that. Sure, he's steadfast in his mission, but he's so stern and quick to beat up somebody just for talking to him funny (like he does with Swindle here) that I can't bring myself to like this portrayal. I know it's unfair to criticize a writer for not capturing the same voice of a character that some other writer did, but when you've seen the potential shine in another depiction, it's hard not to wish for a similar resonance in every iteration of the character.

And that's pretty much all I have to say about this one, even though this is just the first chapter! I realize that I rambled on a bit too much about my own feelings rather than the actual story of this issue. It's something I'll be working on improving down the line when we get further into the rest of IDW.

Llama God

28/8/2023 11:47:14 pm

Here we, here we, here we go with the other ongoing comic that'll balance out More Than Meets the Eye and provide some ground and political intrigue and oh no it's not that comic is it I'm a week early.

Right, give me a moment to go and read the right comic.

Okay, so, Autocracy... Now this is an interesting one to me, and this is where my memories of reading it at the time won't quite line up with everything else, because I didn't actually read it at the time. I've never been a fan of reading things on digital devices, really (I work with them, so I prefer to look at paper when not working), and bought the entire run of the IDW Transformer comics as physical versions. When this project was released as a digital only thing I shrugged and figured that one day it'd get a physical release, and I'd pick it up then.

Months later, the physical release did indeed appear. I picked it up one day on a trip to the then-local Forbidden Planet, came home and read it with a cup of tea. And I found the whole thing to be... fine. It was certainly not a boring read and passed an hour or so on a wet Saturday afternoon. And being so far away from Chaos Theory (and probably Shadowplay, too, at that point) it didn't feel all that jarring, really. Even though by that point there were even more contradictions.

And I'm really glad I didn't read it at the time, because I've spoken before about my lack of faith in IDW editorial to provide any sort of continuity across their comics. This coming out at the same time as the rest of their soft reboot would really have unnerved me. And reading the comic right now, in release order, it really is jarring.

Now the issues with the story itself I won't go over, since you've already gone over those already. And Post Mordor makes some great points about Prime/Pax, too. So all I'll say is that this does feel a little disjointed, but it does read a lot better in one sitting than it does in individual episodes.

What *is* good about this story is Ramondelli's art. He's really cementing his position here as the artist to be used when visiting the past or when things are getting weird, and it really works here to give a different feel to these "historical" stories than we get from the present day stories in the other ongoing titles. And it really is great, moody and evocative work, and it just works really well here.

So this isn't a bad issue, as such. It just doesn't work quite so well as an individual issue than it does as part of a whole. So it'll be interesting to see how the rest of the issues fare when being read like this...

LiamKav

6/9/2023 11:35:23 am

I always feel Friedman is someone who's reputation was forever tarnished with "he's the guy who script edited the first seasons of the 90s Iron Man and Fantastic Four cartoons which were terrible and then he was replaced and the second seasons were much better".

And I have no idea how fair that is. Maybe he was ordered to do campy nonsense and then the powers that be changed their mind? Maybe there were other factors in okay? Maybe if I rewatch those seasons I'll realise they're actually good? Maybe?

(Although the S1 Iron Man theme is clearly terrible compared to the awesome S2 theme)

Revisitation 139: The Emptiness of Prime (literally).

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