Review dc comic digital por E. Santalucia

Hum, no I won't :-P
Being number one doesn't automatically means quality. Or that a Laser-Lot comic is good for the brand.
I know some people would like to shout my mouth about this, but this is the internet baby!

I have my tehories about why the first MOTU digital comic released by DC comics and sold on Comixology is currently number one on their top selling list. And I don't think it's the quality of the art, the awesomeness of the writing, leaving also out it features a never seen before character in MOTU, Sir Laser Lot, Geoff Johns' childhood creature.

I think it has a lot more to do with the committment of a fan community that has no equals on certain things. I'll leave all that for another day, but let's be honest, should we actually believe this is because how awesome Sir-Laser Lot is and all of us were dying to know more about him? Hardly, as it's easy to say that at least half of the fandom don't care about this guy, with all due respect to Johns.

But, it's the first MOTU comic since 2005, while Transformers and G.I.Joe comic never went away. We can be sure of one thing: fans were eager to read something new. Still, the ranking will be used to say to us "heaters" that they were right, and Sir Laser Lot and Spector are going to save MOTU.

What's inside the comic itself? It can hardly be called a story, it is not. It's a prologue, there is not really a real story arc, just a couple of sequences that don't form a story. By the way, for those going to tell me it's impossible to tell a story in 8 pages, it's perfectly possible, and famous authors like Alan Moore wrote tons of them before becoming pouplar, learning the skills for the job on them.

This is not the case, but it's fine because those were problaby the authors' intentions. We get introduced to Sir Laser Lot, which is portraied as one of those dark anti-heroes from a random Image book in the ninenties. He's a dark, tormented figure, who lives reclused in the woods, guarding this skull of power after his master (King Grayskull) was killed.

The first problem I have with the comic, is this looks nothing like Eternia. Okay, shall we say this is a new take on Eternia? Fine, but there is no effort to make it look like an alien, magical world. It's just a generic wood, with generic clothed kids, running into another generic black guy (he doen't even wear his full costume), chased by generic Beast-Man-like creatures. Which looks really like X-Forces rejects. They are very generic humanoid creatures, their ape anathomy being barely developed, making them more suited for a superhero book than a fantasy book (hey, maybe that's how they see MOTU... superheroes...).

So, given the setting and the looks of the characters and leaving aside a bunch of names throw here and there, if it wasn't for the title of the book, the casual reader would have little this is a MOTU book. At least until the last page...

Not discorauged, our casual reader proceed reading, expecting some familiar faces popping out at any second.In the meantime our Sir Laser Lot doesn't mind smashing and killing those beast men with lots of blood flying around.Wow, MOTU just got more moder and mature! Nope, again , this is another throwback to the nineties and to those Image books. Graphic violence doesn't make anything more mature if it isn't justified by a story and good writing. That's what set apart stuf like Inglorious Bastards from lot of other action stuff (hold the tomatoes, of course not just that, but you know what I mean).

Oddly, but not surprising, something weird happens with this Skull of Power (which looks suspiciously like Horde Prime as sculpted by the Four Horsemen) and who gets mentioned? He-Man? The Sorceress? Gwildor? Zodac?
No, Agent Spector.
And something that has to do with disruption in time.
At this point our casual reader who believed to find giant green tigers and mighty barbarians is even more confused. And keeps flipping back to the cover and his account, trying to understand if there was a mistake and he downloaded the wrong book on his iPhone. (the only thing that make this scenario very unlikely is the fan's commitment I was talking about: we pay attention, so we knows exactly what is going on. Unfortunately)

And then, finally, he gets to the last page. Where we meet a bunch of cosplayers that didn't do their homeworks, dressed as MOTU villain's look-a-like.
Let's face it, somebody out there said it: if you saw that Evil-Lyn somewhere else, you had no chance to recogninze her as Evil-Lyn. None. Zero.
Being serious for a moment, let me just say I wasn't aware if Mr. Porter's accident so I can't really say if the quality of the art, especially in that page is due to that or not, neither I want to be offensive or indelicate. The fact is that proportions, anathomy, perspective in this last page really are not the best.
There will be time to really go into the character's redesign by Philip Tan later on.
For now, trust me, I'm not one opposed to changes, and reimagining properties. I work on Transformers, I was involved in reimagining the brand and some other Hasbro's properties.
We were also surprised by the redesigns because we didn't expect them. Somehow, we believed this was going to be the MOTUC book. I'm sure we made the wrong assumption, but I still think this new series should have been presented a bit more honestly to us.

I know a brand has to be kept fresh and current.
What they shouldn't do is to make MOTU not about MOTU. You don't see Transformers changed in a series about Drift and Lockdown. Those telling us we need to accept changes, should at least take the time to check if these changes in MOTU are good.
There are good redesign and bad redesigns. There are good changes and bad changes. But when you pair that with a story and characters that have little to do with MOTU, it's hard to accept any of this.
We need to accept that the brand has to move forward, to evolve? Those things are achived by making the storytelling current, adapting elements to current tastes and culture, redesigning wisely while keeping in mind what is important for each character (in this the 4H were masters)
You don't keep your brand fresh by turning it into something else. If people are so creative, just create another brand and pitch it to management, don't try to sell us your personal stuff (good or bad that is) under the name MOTU so we will all buy it.

Beast Wars, Tranformers Animated, Transformers Prime. Those are great example of changing and adapting a brand. And after all this years, characters and motifs are still the same because those are what resonate with kids and fans.
Are we sure that to make MOTU evolve it has to change from a quest about the ultimate power of the Universe, the fight against the Evil Horde empire, to a time travelling story with a bunch of purple dressed secret time agents?

Ser el número uno no significa automáticamente calidad.

heavy-eternium escribió:tengo ganas de que organicemos una cruzada en el facebook de matty como hicimos aquella sobre toyguru , en este caso apoyando los comics y tirando algun tiro por elevacion a quia pero sin mencionarlo.