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an observation on MTMTE 56
You know, I haven't read the IDW books in some time. I dropped all but MTMTE a bit before the end of Combiner Wars, and MTMTE lasted ... a few months more? Maybe almost half a year? Long enough that I generally don't comment on recent comics events except with a few friends when tidbits pass by, because hey, I'm not reading them.
This time I heard a tidbit that actually had me look for the issue to see for myself. And, yeah, I'm not hugely impressed with this.
Without spoilers, and without going into too much detail, I'll say that I could have lived without a character/plot thread that is that much of a send-up of current American politics. (The guy is even orange-ish.) Especially since I'm not even American.
Come on, Roberts, you could do better than this once.




I've fallen out of love with MTMTE myself, and I can't figure out quite why, but yeah, that part definitely seemed like...ugh, can I PLEASE escape politics somewhere?!
It's certainly not as cute or as clever as they seem to think it is.
I mean I could say that about a lot of things in IDW!TF the last year or so, but this one is beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned.
I don't think it's terrible, but this 'season', especially, seems weak and sort of half-baked? Like he's writing on short deadline and doesn't have a huge overarching plan that the characters work into organically. It's very plot driven, and I kind of dig character-driven stuff a bit more? Not dissing anyone who loves it (who are the obvious majority)!
It's been weak ever since Dark Cybertron, imo (and DC was no joy itself), with Roberts indulging more in in-jokes and quips and "shock" than actually making use of the plot elements already at hand. (also too much Megatron, but that entire situation is a personal sore spot anyway.)
I suppose having his initial plans cut off at the knees by the DC event, and then knowing he's not escaping Titans Return -- or the multiversal fusion mess that's upcoming -- probably hasn't helped. But still, he can do better and has.
I'm not personally a fan of MTMTE. I think it moved very firmly away from what I wanted to read around the end of Dark Cybertron, although I only realized it around Elegant Chaos. The random references to pop culture/politics/real-world whatever were definitely part of that - I've just always had a hard time finding references funny, and given how much of the comic's humor they make up, if you don't find them amusing, it gets really unpleasantly dark really fast.
Oddly, my problem with it was partially that I wasn't /British/. I could tell that a lot of the jokes were references to something, because they made absolutely no sense unless they were supposed to be references, but not what... and then I'd look them up on TFWiki and it would turn out that they were referencing obscure BBC shows from the 90s. No wonder I couldn't make heads or tails of them. When you're supposed to be writing about aliens from another planet, many of whom have never seen Earth, I don't think that's good writing. How does Nautica reference British newspaper promotions? She's never been within lightyears of the UK!
To be honest, I've largely given up on James Roberts ever producing something I find worth the $4/month. I liked MTMTE until Dark Cybertron, and while I'm not a fan of some parts of LSOTW, it's definitely got its good points. But I own all of that already.
Roberts' in-joke references have always been there, and initially they didn't bother me because they were just a touch on the meat of the events rather than the bones -- post-DC they became touch on bone instead of meat, a lot of touches, and that got old very, very fast. That they exist in general I don't mind, but then I'm used to being subjected to non-stop foreign references (usually American) anyway so it's not really anything new for me. It's worth noting, and being fair, a good majority of Last Stand is actually Roche's creation; Roberts gets more credit there than he often should.
That being said, at the end of the day I still find personally that Roberts at his worst is still better than Barber or Scott -- but a writer overhaul at IDW in general would not go astray. Keeping writers on specific comics for this long is always a sure-fire scenario for staleness and diminishing returns.
I actually like the other IDW comics a lot better than MTMTE - not trying to make any sort of quality claim, of course, just saying that I personally find Barber and Scott's work more enjoyable to read. And yeah, eventually people run out of ideas. One person with the same stuff to work with for five years or so is going to get boring eventually. Marvel and DC have been dealing with this exact problem for decades.