Crybaby fans

I'm a huge fan of The Transformers and have been since they debuted in 1984, the robots in disguise have gotten me interested in such other passions such as comics, anime, video games, and even pro-wrestling my avatar for this blog is the cover of Transformers: Generation 2 #1. The Transformers have been and still are a huge part of my life.

I'm a member of many Transformers fan sites including and I'm a member of IDW's message board as well.

Now to the point: I love Transformers: All Hail Megatron maxi-series and the current The Transformers ongoing series from IDW the main reason I love these books is that they NOT WRITEN BY SIMON FURMAN! For those of you who don't who Simon Furman is, he is the man who wrote about 98% of Marvel UK's Transformers series and the latter half of the Marvel US series as well as the 12 issue Transformers: Generation 2 for Marvel and Transformers: The War Within, Transformers: The War Within II, and Transformers: Armada/Energon for the now defunct Dreamwave Comics, and created the current Transformers: G1 Universe through a series of mini-series (called Infiltration, Stormbringer, Escalation, Devastation, Revelation, and Maximum Dinobots) and Transformers Spotlight a series of one-shots. He is too The Transformers what Chris Claremont is too the X-Men he is the man who wrote the most stories.

That is my problem.

Furman hasn't written a decent Transformers G1 series since Transformers: Generation 2 ended. His work for Dreamwave was forgettable, and if it wasn't for the fact that The Fallen debuted in one of War With In mini-series and that it become a huge part of the second live action movie, I doubt I would remember even that.

His run at IDW was at best forgettable and at worse total and complete shit. Revelations was one of the worse comics I had ever read, a villain that was a rip off of Darth Vader, who was merging universes (or something like that), and the Autobots stopping him by speaking in technobabble straight out of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager and while Maximum Dinobots was a rush job to resolve what was left of his story lines he started and it was crammed with so many story lines I needed a score card to keep track of everything. After surviving this horrific ordeal I didn't pick up a new Transformers comic or trade paper back for over 2 years because I was so disgusted by Furman's crap.

A new writer named Shane McCarthy was hired to write a new maxi-series called Transformers: All Hail Megatron set one year after the events of Furman's last 2 duds and the vast majority of fans...hated it. They hated that it wasn't faithful to the continuity established in Furman's run, that a new Autobot character called Drift was introduced as a member of the Wreckers (a elite team of Autobots created by Furman during his Marvel UK run) and many fans felt that Drift was Gary Sue (it should be noted that Furman created several Gary Sues during his long reigns at Marvel US/UK, Dreamwave, and IDW) that there were too many humans, the story was dragged out, etc.

Basically they hated it because Simon Furman didn't write it.

Now I'm sure if Furman wrote All Hail Megatron word for word exactly the same as McCarthy did most, if not all, of those same fans that that hated it would love it.

Some how I through my upbringing and the events that shaped my life I see the world of pop culture as an outsider, or as I perfer as a pop culture iconoclast. I don't follow Hollywood news all that much and see little value in celebrity and even the news about various franchises that I love and care about, I don't pay much attention too.

Now I will say that Furman has written some great and amazing Transformers stories in the past, but like Chris Claremont, most fans and publishers seem to think that he is the ONLY person who should ever write Transformers comics (and same with Claremont there are fans who think that he should be the only writer to write The Uncanny X-Men) because they know these characters, they know the history, etc, well all I can say to these fans is: BOO-HOO, want a hankie?

I'm done calling these fans either fanboys and fangirls. From now on I will I call them for what they are: crybabies.

I honestly don't think it would matter to these crybabies who wrote All Hail Megatron or the ongoing series, even if it were guys like Peter David, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Mark Waid, or any other "hot" comic book writer, because the crybabies will never accept them even if they blew Furman out of the water and put sales through the roof and got great critical acclaim. They would still be the same whining bitching bastard crybabies that they are.

If I don't like a comic book series, toy, movie, TV show, video game, or whatever then I don't buy it, play it, read it, watch it, or bother with it. That is what I do. It has saved me the money and more importantly the time I would have wasted on a product that I consider crap.

Crybaby fans try to take all the fun and enjoyment out of media, it's fine that you don't like something but for God's sake stop acting like whining bitching bastard crybabies about it. You don't like something make your fucking point and move on with your lives and stop ruining the fun and pleasure of something for someone else.

I don't like Furman's IDW Transformers (which makes me in the Transfan community a cross between a loser and an idiot) because I simply know what I like and don't like. I didn't like the vast majority of Furman's IDW run it was slow, dull, boring, and very predicable but I don't start threads on the message boards at seibertron.com, TF2005.com, theallspark.com, TFArchive.com, or at IDW and flame others who disagree with me. I try to state my opinions bluntly and too the point.

When I say that I would rather be hated for being honest with my opinions than being loved as a liar that is exactly what I believe. I think that are more fans out there who agree with me but are so worried about offending the crybaby fans (some of which are mods and admins on these sites) and that will be ostracized or banned by these communities because they have a different opinion my advice is: There will are those who will agree with you and those that don't well fuck them, if they can't accept your opinions. Don't be afraid to be different.

I'm a pop culture iconoclast who doesn't give damn about what people think of me, or maybe I don't have a real high opinion of humanity, but that is another subject for another day.

In comics everything that is old is new again it seems

I think there is a growing disdain (I think that is best word to describe it) for the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe or at least how the companies are ran. I think a growing number of fans, retailers, and creators are sick of the never ending crossover events that only lead to another crossover event, the bad PR stunts like the "deaths" of Steve Rogers and Bruce Wayne and the whole Spider-Man: One More Day debacles, titles get canceled and restarted over and over, legacy numbering, retcons after retcons, endless variant covers, single characters like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Wolverine each being in over dozen different books published every month, late books by creators with egos bigger than the state of Alaska, and well you get the point. So some fans, like me, are looking for an alternative to the corporate nonsensical crap that Marvel and DC are currently putting out.

So some companies are looking to the past to find "new" ideas or inspirations so companies like IDW, Ardden Entertainment, Dark Horse, Dynamite Entertainment, and others are looking around and picking up old properties and dusting them off and re-introducing them to the world and hoping for some fans of the old stuff and maybe get some new ones as well because there is was market for new Atlas Comics. Jason Goodman (whose grandfather Martin founded Marvel Comics and his family owns the rights to the Atlas Comics) and his partners at Ardden Entertainment know this and hope to feed off both nostalgia and hopefully produce new comics that will appeal to fans, (like me because I wasn't born yet) that missed Atlas/Seaborad the first time around. While some companies like Boom! Studios are creating new superhero universes with high-profile comic book creators like Mark Waid and the legendary Marvel Universe co-creator Stan Lee, mostly I think this so that Lee can prove he's still "The Man" in comics but maybe he has some ideas he thinks will bring new readers to the company.

As for Marvel dusting off the New Universe, 2099, and Crossgen lines and DC dusting off Milestone and the Impact/Red Circle lines is basically so that they can't lose the copyrights and trademarks. The sad truth is that IIRC none of the Impact/Red Circle titles that DC published lasted longer than a year and I will be surprised if DC's revival of Milestone's Xombi survives the year. Marvel's 2099: Timestorm was a mini-series, the same with New Universal and The Untold Tales of New Universe was a bunch of one-shots and a couple of back ups. Marvel's recent revival of Crossgen is right now 2 mini-series that both look awful. The people running both Marvel and DC really don't see comics as anything more than as beta-tests for movies, TV shows, video games, and other media.

While titles like John Byrne's Next Men is being published again by IDW because the fans wanted Byrne to finish what is in my opinion is his greatest masterpiece and deep down I think Byrne wants to finish it too. The same with Breed III by Jim Starlin slated to be released this summer from Image Comics, Starlin stated in The Art of Jim Starlin (which is a great book check it out if you get a chance) that he doesn't need the money to do comics (he said that he sold the movie rights to his prose novels years ago and that made him financially secure) now he does it because it's his addiction and he loves doing them.

In cases with companies like IDW, Dark Horse, Ardden, Dynamite, and the rest it's easier to bring back an existing brand or known characters because they have a built in audience that is hungry for new material so it's easier to get people to read their books without having to build up a brand which takes a long time to. While companies like Boom use high-profile creators like Stan Lee and Mark Waid to lure in customers. I mean think about it: if Stan Lee's name wasn't attached to The Traveler, Starborn, and Solider Zero and the same with Mark Waid on Irredeemable and Incorruptible do you think anybody would have cared about them?

There is nothing wrong with bringing back known brands and high-profile creators' names attached to a title as long the books are good, if not then they don't sell and they get cancelled. Which is how it should be.

This is of course is just my opinion, and I might be wrong.