Megatron and his wild hair

[sir_razorback.insanejournal.com]

Two requests for the price of one, a few pages from Megatron: Origins #2, including the scene that he takes his helmet off.
As a little bit of background, he was part of a miner riot in the previous issue and went underground.  Now he's part of an arena-fighting league that's very Roman.

BTW, does anyone have a good suggestion for an image hosting site?  Don't want to use Photobucket, I hear they're quick on the trigger for yanking images violating ToS.  Don't want to keep using LiveJournal because I think the oldest images get cycled out of existance after a while.

Comments

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I am really not being snarky, but could you kindly point me to exactly what I'm looking at? I cannot do this botstyle.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

(as in, in case I was unclear, the art type pokes me in my eyes and makes me weep oily tears.)

[nagaoka.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, same here. I ended up really disliking Megatron Origins as well as another TF book Stormbringer. Both were mostly for the same reasons. Everything gets really really cluttered with tons of cybertron-mode robots you can't properly recognize on every page (with tons of panel detailing). Origins has it even worse with everything being much darker/contrasted than normal.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

As well as the ridiculous levels of panel detailing (that has to count as skin disease on cybertron) I really thing that Transformers look much, much better when they're flat-coloured. Photoshop shine just does them in. They're already confusing to look at and further dehumanisation does not help!

[nagaoka.insanejournal.com]

Megatron and Cy-kill fight to the death. Eventually Megs transforms and crushes Cy. The crowd is shouting at Megatron to finish him already, but Megatron is hesitant. (Earlier in the book he was working in an energon mine where they were told they all had to leave per the government's orders. He argued against it and kinda flew into a rage and killed somebody, which he had never done before. So this is the reason.) Anyways he finally kills Cy-Kill. As part of his victory he takes his helmet-which-is-really-his-head-but-WHATEVER and airs out his (non existant!!!!) robot hair of silliness.

and everyone cheers

[scarlettwyst.insanejournal.com]

Oh jesus! I didnt realize that that spikey...ness... was his "hair" UNFOLDING. (mirite? i'm right... right?)

WTF.

[sir_razorback.insanejournal.com]

Aye, yourite.

[geoffsebesta.insanejournal.com]

Even after you explain it I still can't see it. Art fail.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Thank you!

[pyynk.insanejournal.com]

It makes me appreciate Wildman and Senior that much more.

[angelophile.insanejournal.com]

Oh hells yes.

I never did like the Dreamwave house style and dislike it just as much when it's being used in IDW.

To be fair, it's often not just the art, but the combination with the heavy Photoshop painted colours, that don't do it for me. And they get considerably more murky than this in stuff like The War Within and Stormbringer.

Honestly, All Hail Megatron aside, any TF comic since G2's left me pretty much indifferent.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I never thought I could appreciate Senior more.. but yes indeed.

[pyynk.insanejournal.com]

Issue 75 of the original Marvel run is still awesomeness incarnate.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Remind me which that is? I don't have them on hand just now.

[rorge.insanejournal.com]

That would be On The Edge of Extinction. In US issues, anyway. UK numbering would make #75 part two of In The National Interest, one of Furman's many Dinobot stories that were rendered moot by Budiansky's inept treatment of the characters.

Anyway, that's the big showdown with Unicron story. Pencils by Geoff Senior, colouring, unfortunately, by Nel Yomtov.

[angelophile.insanejournal.com]

Honestly, Nel wasn't even good by the standards of the time, but I honestly think the heavy, thick, dark Photoshop paints that have been applied to stuff like this, Stormbringer, War Wihin and much of the Dreamwave run in general are actually worse.

[rorge.insanejournal.com]

Dreamwave was pretty nasty, and the art in these scans is just incomprehensible. I think Yomtov grates more with me because even as a kid, collecting the UK Transformers run, the change from the US penned stories and their shonky artwork, to the far superior UK based stuff was jarring.

But Senior's art shone so much more when Steve White was doing the colouring, on stories like Fire on High and Galvatron: Wanted Dead or Alive. Any of the Marvel UK colourers (if that's the right plural) really.

It always just baffled me how there could be such a massive, obvious difference in the quality of the work, and the care taken by those involved.

[rorge.insanejournal.com]

Senior was fantastic. Best Transformers artist by a country mile.

I was never too keen on Wildman, though. Most of the time, his 'bots ended up looking like humans with armour on, right down to teeth, tongues and spit.

[pyynk.insanejournal.com]

I think I was just so happy that anyone besides Delbo was drawing the series that I would've been happy. That being said, I can definitely recognize Wildman's humanizing the Transformers, but it was so vibrant, so dynamic that I didn't mind that much at the time.

[nagaoka.insanejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this! I have this book but I just can't get over how silly the idea of Megatron having robot hair, particularly hair has ridiculous as that, is.



Also, perceptive readers will notice a certain Go-bot in the background.
I'm not just talking about Cy-kill.

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Right next to Ratbat when he's telling Mags to finish Cykill, y'mean?

[nagaoka.insanejournal.com]

I don't think Ratbat is in these scans...is he? He's a senator in Origins isn't he?

You might be right though. Are you talking about uh...what's his name? The one who leads the team and the event.

Anyways the go-bot I'm talking about is in the victory shot next to rumble and frenzy as well as in a few other shots like "now you know what it takes". She's hard to miss in that one.

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

It's been a while since I read it (when it first came out)...I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember Ratbat was secretly sponsoring the gladiator fights. But now that you mention it, he was just sponsoring Megs, wasn't he?

Anyway, yeah, that's the panel I was talking about. (Had a harder time finding the panel with the tapes.)

[fromtheaether.insanejournal.com]

And thus dies Cy-Kill, former foe of the Go-Bots.

[crinosg.insanejournal.com]

Poor Go-bots, get no respect.

Not that they deserve any, but still... It is kind of sad.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Sure they did! The evil leaders had fun dynamic.

[shanejayell.insanejournal.com]

The 'hair' makes me LOL because it reminds me of Appleseed.

[kamino_neko.insanejournal.com]

Anyone have the Dreamwave version of this? (Gladiator Megs killing Cy-Kill.)

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

That hair looks more like heat vents to me. :p

As for Photobucket, I've hosted stuff there for years and have never really had them delete anything but the obviously NSFW stuff.

[kagome654.insanejournal.com]

Awesome, thank you! Admittedly it's a little hard for me to follow, but I think I'll pick it up anyway. It looks like fun (even if the hair...fin...things are kinda strange).

Wish I could help you with the image hosting thing, but I've never used anything but photobucket.

[blake_reitz.insanejournal.com]

I rather like his head frills. They remind me of an Aztec god, or maybe the spitting dinosaur from Jurassic Park. Plus, when they're folded down they look a little like the black helmet of Marvel G1 Megs.

[tahngarth.insanejournal.com]

I thought Megatron:Origin was decent, but could have been a lot better. The art is painfully inconsistent, and some of the storytelling is weak.

Then again, it was a leftover Dreamweave title...

[chaoswolf1982.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

huge spiky robot-hair...

...it's Gokutron.