You know, at first I was really impressed with Jeffrey Brown's Balls. When I first saw Jeffrey Brown's Balls I thought it was a well written, clever parody. But now with the passage of time and especially after this interview with Brown that includes further material from Incredible Change Bots, I've incredible changed my mind. Now I just see it as a well timed attempt at capitalizing on the toy robots mania that may or may not exist around the release of the Transformers movie. That's fair enough and I'm all for someone trying to make a buck, but I'm thinking after seeing more pages that these are the same jokes we've all made a million times before when we were twelve. Just because I understand the obscure references he's making doesn't mean he's a brilliant satirist or that I have a degree in toy robots. It's Transformers. Some of the original Marvel G1 comics were already pretty retarded to start out with.
Honestly I was a little disappointed that Brown admitted he's not much of a fan and that he only recently bought the old cartoons and comics to research what exactly it was he would be working on. It would have made the experience more enjoyable if I knew the author was really as dorky as me. Now I just feel jerked around by another talented guy using my love of toy robots to get my money. It's like the comics work of Pat Lee compared to Don Figueroa. I can tell which of them had a genuine heartfelt interest in Transformers and which one was just using their talent to make an easy buck. It was kind of obvious when Pat Lee kept drawing Optimus Prime's truck mode with seven tires and the gas tanks in the wrong place.
Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge. There's a chance the new movie will be good and maybe the Incredible Change Bots is hilarious. So here's to Jeffrey Brown and Michael Bay and every other person poised to make money off Transformers even if they don't know what an Ultra Magnus is. Bandwagon jumping posers that are late to the party are often most qualified to contribute fresh new ideas. Besides, the guy who wrote the new comic adaptation of the animated Transformers Movie for IDW pretty much invented Transformers fiction and I thought that book sucked Balls.
2 comments:
I had spent a few years watching The Transformers cartoon show every day after school. It was great. Then, my dad took me to the local comic book store and let me pick out a few issues of the Transformers comic book. If I remember correctly, it was some time in 1988. I had never been exposed to the Transformers comic books before and thought they were really cool at the time. I picked out issue 6, 22, and one or two others.
A decade later, I had around 50 out of the 80 original Marvel Transformers comic books, but I got rid of them in 2001 when I moved. As I got older, I ended up hating the drawings which were usually sloppy, the colors which were usually wrong, and the stories which were usually stupid, but I collected as many issues as I could find anyway because I liked the Transformers. I even had the first four issues, which were supposed to be a mini-series.
I had never heard of the Incredible Change Bots before and just read a few preview pages of the comic book on the internet. It seems like something I'd enjoy, but you're right...the fact that creator Jeffrey Brown is barely a Transformers fan ruins the parody for me a bit. Like you've written, the concept now seems more like a get-rich-quick scheme than a loving tribute.
At least it's not as obvious a cash grab as the Transmorphers.
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