Courtesy of Tumblr, we have a new iTunes preview of the Combiner Hunters special one-shot comic that will be released at SDCC! The issue contains lovely art by the talented Sara-Pitre Durocher along with writing by Mairghread Scott, and features the fembots rocking their new Combiner Hunters paintjobs:
“Transformers: Combiner Hunters Special one-shot
COMBINER WARS FALLOUT! Because you demanded it—WINDBLADE and CHROMIA team up with ARCEE to put an end to the menace of the COMBINER WARS—but will they end each other first?!”
If you don’t mind some spoilers, you can take a look after the break – and be sure to check out the full issue next week to see the comic debut of Fan-Built Combiner Victorion!
femmebotfangirl
Yeah I wasn't sure, I thought she might be on interior art but the only reference I could find was to her doing the cover.
Mort
Without checking, this looks nothing like Coller's art. Pretty sure she's listed as artist on the cover.
femmebotfangirl
I think its Casey Coller on interior art and Sara Pitre-Durocher did the cover? It's nice art.
ZeroiaSD
A lot of the ninja stuff may just be skill and experience.
Though, hm, what if he was trying multiple experiments on her? Like, prototype neural-connections, prototype joints, etc.. A testbed where the gender is just the most obvious.
She *does* seem to have a bizarre 'Jhiaxus-sense'. Possibly outlier?
Right. Load bearers, obviously. And who knows if there's others?
We do know he fought a heck of a ton during the old Tribes days, including killing a Prime- almost certainly a PoPer.
I do think Galvatron's at the high end of Point One Percenters,
Someone like Fortress Maximus or, say, Roller back when he was with Orion Pax's outlier band, are lower down.
God Ginrai
I really like this artist. IDW should've had her do CW instead of Livio, and I hope they have her do more in the future.
And Hasbro? Please make a Badgeless toy. I'd buy several.
Haywired
Looking at two heawyweight POPs…
Optimus withstood Monstructor.
Galvatron was wrestling Devastator.
Then he was dumped from the orbit and still was fine.
And of course tearing Megatron in half…
I think P.O.Ps are as powerful as mech can be without being a Phase-Sixer (except you still need to be a P.O.P. to be made a Phase-Sxer, so…).
But back to this comic book… I really dig the art. I hope this artist can do more Windblade or ExRiD. Or more IDW TF in general.
SMOG
Hm. So it's more "soft retcon and forget it happened" than anything else. I can't say I'm totally against that, since I think that was a stupid thing for Costa to do with Ironhide, but it would have been nice if Barber had at least tied it up a bit more neatly.
I think we can easily assume as much, though really, if "gender" was the primary focus of his experiments, where do "super ninja powers" come in? It's quite possible that Arcee was already a stealth operative even before she was kidnapped and experimented upon. We still don't really know much about her from before then… though we've been getting faint hints from Barber (via Galvatron).
Especially since PoPs seem to have some variety in how their powers can manifest. They may not all be "heavies"… there might be PoPs with other kinds of powers. And then we have Outliers, just to muddy the waters more.
Galvatron hasn't been much developed in IDW, so it's hard to say. A lot of it comes from his lingering reputation from the old G1, 86 movie and Marvel UK days. Historically he's also been used as a catspaw in IDW by powerful entities (Dead Universe/ D-Void) who may have given him enhanced powers at the time.
Still, he seems to be pretty hardcore. In Dark Cybertron, he casually tore Megatron in half, which should be pretty damn hard for ANYBODY, PoP or otherwise.
zmog
ZeroiaSD
Point on the Jhiaxus enhancements. Being an experimental prototype of his means she's probably tuned up to a very high degree. Sorta like how Hot Rod/Rodimus was noted for being enhanced for speed.
Then she's a very driven individual, who was obsessed with hunting down Jhiaxus and his works, so she'd train a ton and probably took down a number of monstrous creations over the millennia.
I feel that skill-wise and agility-wise, she's pretty much at the top, but a PoP body has it's own advantages.
How well those advantages are used, depending on the individual in question.
Galvatron is, of course, also incredibly experienced and skilled, but he has that PoP frame backing him up, so he can take hits that non-POPs can't afford to. Heck, he strikes me as tough even for a PoP.
Kaijumaster
I take it to be a Spark thing and move on with my day.
Autovolt 127
Prowl and Rung having a session needs to happen….hell it could even just be a skype chat under-supervision.
I hope someone at IDW realizes this eventually…and the other things you've just mentioned.
SPLIT LIP
Such gripping dialogue.
…
I'm not sure how you type in a deadpan tone. :/ Anyway, this looks just super boring. I've long since stopped caring about either of these characters, or what they're fighting over.
Oh my God I would actually pay far more than this issue's worth if this happened.
Jalaguy
Ironhide talked about "remembering" the missing memories in Combiner Wars Part 4, but there's been zero explanation as to how that happened.
I mean, the memories were explicitly missing from the Vector Sigma backup used in the resurrection, rather than being suppressed or forgotten or whatever. I suppose that you could retcon it to say that the memories were simply corrupted, and that time/effort/therapy allowed Ironhide to 'remember' them.
Negativedark
Honestly I would probably demand a Prowl therapy session with Rung, or a conversation between Cyclonus or Tailgate and Megatron. Oh and Sky-Lynx kicking some tailpipe. But I didn't find it as annoying as the Cartoon Network ads insisting that Teen Titans Go is my new favorite.
Honestly a ton of characters in IDW have only a name and a look in common with their earlier versions. Heck Armada Cyclonus has more in common with the Sunbow Cyclonus in terms of personality than IDW Cyclonus. Then we've got Star Saber, Tailgate, Whirl, etc.
Logan does sometimes benifit heavily from popularity power though. Remember the time he won against Lobo because of it being a fan vote? For those of you who don't know, Lobo is a space biker who can fight Superman to a standstill. Even the writers couldn't figure out any way Logan should have won that one, so they just didn't show the fight, and later said Logan paid Lobo to take a dive. I also recall one Iron Man writer talking about how a fight between Iron Man and Wolverine would go. Basicly Iron Man flies up 50 feet in the air and opens up with the repulsor rays and everything. Wolverine hides under a table.
SMOG
This actually looks decent. The art's kind of nice, and I do find that Scott is generally better at handling character interaction and dialogue than Barber.
I hope we stick with a sort of unequal relationship between Cybertron and Caminus… the fact that Camians have been practicing ceremonial, perhaps performance-oriented martial arts in their culture, as opposed to all-out war like Cybertronians, for me suggests that this fight really should be one-sided…. not to bolster Arcee's badass rep, but just because it makes a certain amount of sense.
Also, while we don't know how much she actually participated in the Great War, Arcee HAS been established as a terrifying weapon, either because of enhancements by Jhiaxus, or even just due to being an exceptionally skilled warrior before then.
I don't like the way she was sometimes treated as an unbeatable pink super-ninja. I think she needs to hover around the "top level normal" range, rather than being an iconic heavy-hitter… but in this case, I think a proper stomping is warranted. Chromia should be outmatched.
Mind you, Chromia seems to be more of a pragmatic soldier type than a fancy fighter, so I don't want to diss her. Her tough, no nonsense demeanor and role as bodyguard is probably why she and Ironhide seem to get along… they have a similar temperament and attitude. I don't mind seeing that played up at all, though not necessarily in a shippy way. Also, for old time's sake, it would be nice if Ironhide called her "kid" or something every now and again, seeing as how he's supposed to be so old and all. Kup doesn't have to be the only geezer around.
(though… can someone fill me in? Did Ironhide ever get his memories back? Because after his death in the Ongoing and resurrection in his own limited series, wasn't the "new" Ironhide missing a gap of memory that basically included the entire Great War? Has that been actively retconned or fixed, or is it a case where we're just supposed look the other way and try to forget Costa ever happened?)
Anyway, this looks better than expected. I'm in.
zmog
Haywired
You do realise that trying so hard to be dismissive does little to prove your point, but somewhat works to prove mine, because you go all defensive? Don't you?
So again, what break down you'd try to write?
Those parts when Arcee was attacking:
– Decepticon prisoners who were disarmed and locked in Kimia, and certainly did not expect her,
– Constructicons, who are hardly a top notch fighters if they aren't in their combined mode,
– Bombshell, who's not a powerhouse either, and he was hardly expecting being shot down,
– Ammonites,
– or this last fight of her with Galvatron when he started with trying trying to talk, then rammed her into satellite despite her trying to run away, then she did drop him all the way down to Earth from orbit still doing basically no harm to him? Because she wasn't dominating this fight.
That's hardly being overpowered. Not bad, but not overpowered.
Yes, you definitely should move on.
Mort
Art looks very promising.
YoungPrime
Aw you're still typing….?
Something tells even if I did break down what should be the obvious you'd either ignore it or make some lame attempted to flip it around still serving no purpose as if Barbar and company have never made a d@mn Retcon post-Furman before. So lets just fast forward to the part where we simply just move on.
I'm looking forward to this oneshot never the less.
Haywired
Carry on alone because your point still doesn't stand. It remains based entirely on "I don't like this character". You still can't provide an example in continuity where exactly the character in question is soo out of line with her previous portrayals.
And, funny as it is, in-universe she's even of the same generation with Galvatron and Cyclonus…
Also, better for Galvatron to not have any remaining links to the Dead Universe, because canonically it should made him weaker. DU-linked individuals in Dark Cybertron were show dying when they went back to Cybertron.
And Wolverine is back after the Secret Wars, anyway. Actually, he's already back in SW. At least one version of him.
YoungPrime
Oh, I'm sorry I thought I was talking to someone up to speed with what's been going on in the last 13 or so months. So you're either blind or simply living up to your name right now. Either way carry on alone.
My point still stands and I hope that Elita One is a better character than Arcee is in any case.
PS. They did actually kill Wolverine so IDW following suit with her wouldn't exactly hurt my feelings in this case either. I mean they did kill Bumblebee which was nice! :0)
Haywired
Yes, I am going to do that because new writers did nothing new with her.
She's only as good as she always were. Good enough to engage UM and be defeated and good enough to engage Galvatron and not die because he did not want to kill her.
Both times she was facing a heavyweight P.O.P. and outcome was fairly similar.
Nothing chaged.
They aren't demoted in any way because Arcee was clearly established as one of them long time ago. By the writer who basically did build IDW continuity at the very beginning.
Liking or disliking the character should not be a reason to ignore continuity. I dislike Arcee's SL. Very. Much. But it's all there and it started there.
I also dislike Marvel's Wolverine, very much, but I'm not gonna seriously argue that Logan is a weak fighter or should be made weaker.
So my point stands, entirely.