Comics or Cartoon?

Beach Head

I have just finished watching the entire G1 cartoon series.

On an earlier post I said it was crap. I apologise for that. Its not crap.

I believe though that in comparing the two media, the comics (British Marvel, American Marvel, Dreamwave etc) and the cartoon, the comics win. By a mile.

Does anyone else share this assumption or has this topic already been debated elswhere?

constitutionus

yup, agree with ya 100%. i think its because comics a niche industry so the more risky stuff slides in under the radar. ya dont have to worry about pesky focus groups debating the ethics of torturing characters in a storyline ala jazz in "target 2006" or the bad guys winning in "dinobot hunt". telly has hundreds of people involved to produce a show so the core story gets diluted, in comics it can pretty much be 3 guys. take the new comic out now, i just got through reading "escalation" number 1 and theres some fairly brutal stuff in it, and its the autobots doing it! i couldnt see what ironhide did in that issue ever making it onto the TV screen. furman hasnt been on a run like this in ages

still i have hope for the new series slated to come out after the film. god knows it cant be worse than the japanese stuff weve been getting recently (not the takara ones, theyre fairly cool. the armada, energon cybertron stuff!)

Beach Head

Furman is excellent, I agree. Budanski was good, I think maybe put under too much pressure to introduce new characters etc for Hasbro.

One criticism of Furman though would be the mucking about with time travel. I know that this led to his best stories and let him play with characters that the US forgot but I just dont like the whole time travel mucking about.

Still a whole lot better than most of the cartoon scripts.

GWolf

I like em both, but I like the cartoon more. Mostly cuse of the dinobots. In the comic their stronger then average, over zealous autobots. They'll fight for the cause but in their own way. Cartoon. The cause could throw it's self under a train for all they care, as long as they get to hurt someone. Plus their an alot stronger. Comics Dinos lost to Shockwave. Cartoon Dinobots, he had to call who knows how many battle robots just to capture them

monkeyfudge

Even as a kid I loved the comics way more than the cartoon series and always hoped they'd adapt some of the comic strips for the cartoon.

I remember being shocked at seeing an episode in season 3 about the Junkions that I'd already read in the comics... I really thought that we'd get more stories from the comics then... But I guess it is probably the other way around and the comic was based on the episode.

Belle Ende

The comic book series are infinitely more gripping, fun, intelligent, cool and substantive than the cartoon series.

Unfortunately, most people with a mere casual acquaintance with G1 Transformers only seem to know about the cartoon/movie. The animated TF medium was so much more prevalent/well-known compared with the panel-drawn TF medium, that some people even think of 'The Transformers' as "that 80s toon" - seemingly forgetting that... er... they were toys in the first case!

Anyway:

G1 cartoon = mildly amusing dumb kids' stuff
G1 comics (esp. Furman's) = awesome suspense, plot, characterisation and action for all ages


The cartoon has the spotlight, the comic has the worth.

monkeyfudge

The best thing about the cartoon was the voice acting. It really brought the characters to life and probably made the comics more enjoyable as you ran the voices over in your head as you read the comic.

Beach Head

monkeyfudge wrote:

I remember being shocked at seeing an episode in season 3 about the Junkions that I'd already read in the comics... I really thought that we'd get more stories from the comics then... But I guess it is probably the other way around and the comic was based on the episode.

Yeah, I think that "The Big Broadcast of 2006" was a gap filler in the UK while they were waiting on fresh stories from the US.

monkeyfudge wrote:

The best thing about the cartoon was the voice acting. It really brought the characters to life and probably made the comics more enjoyable as you ran the voices over in your head as you read the comic.

Totally agree.

Dont be at yourself

When I was a kid, I loved the cartoons - I remember being glued to the TV every Saturday morning. Twas way better than most of the other rubbish aimed at kids.

Looking back at them now though, they dont quite match up to my memories. Grimlock is not the takes-no-orders bad ass I remember him being, he's closer to Barney than Dirty Harry.

Which is why, as a 20-something year old kid, the comics are better. Look at Grimlock in The War Within - he is the character I remember from my childhood, but not diluted down to fit into kid's cartoons.

I'll always have fond memories of the cartoon, but I'd much rather sit down with a pile of Dreamwave comics nowadays!

GWolf

Barney...maybe after they mutilated him in s3. Other then that...

I only got into transformers a couple of years ago. I've seen every series, plus the comics. And I still think G1 cartoon is more enjoyable then the comic. Comic alays felt...I don't know, forced somehow. Characters going into speeches. I ike comics, but Prime going on for four pages is a but much.

Beach Head

Where have you read Prime speaking for four pages? I'll buy it!

Nuthin forced about the Dreamwave stuff, hardly any dialogue, excellent stuff.

sprinkles

Beach Head wrote:

Where have you read Prime speaking for four pages? I'll buy it!

Nuthin forced about the Dreamwave stuff, hardly any dialogue, excellent stuff.

I'd have to agree with you there.

constitutionus

im always surprised some fans have such vitriol for the dreamwave stuff. ok i prefer whats going on at IDW now and the upgrades of the alt modes work well, i never realised how dated some of the original forms have become till i looked back at the dreamwave comics after reading the new ones, but the books were still fun reading and looked amazing. pity it went down the tubes.

by the way anyone know how we could petition hasbro to animate the UK stuff in a direct to video release? the more i think about it the better i think it would be

Beach Head

Dont know how we could petition Hasbro. I would say that Marvel would own the rights to the stories and it could get messy. But interesting.

constitutionus

im not certain but im pretty sure hasbro own the rights to the stories which is why theyve been reprinted by at least two other companies besides marvel. i know they have a clause that says any character introduced in a TF comic is theirs by right which is why circuit breaker and deaths heads we're introduced in seperate comics to allow marvel to keep the copyright and furmans jhiaxus from the G2 comics is owned by hasbro and became a toy (which looks nothing like the G2 jhiaxus )

still hasbro and marvel have inked a deal to do toys for the marvel characters so i wouldnt be surprised if their working relationship would make the prospect of animating the comics easier. hell marvel practically wrote the bible on the characters and theres rumours marvel might have something to do with the new series (TF heros) so they seem to like each other. there could be hope yet

Beach Head

That would be excellent, but where do you start to lobby for something like that?