CyRaptor

Hi there. You might have noticed that it’s been almost two and a half years now since I posted the last Transformers Legacy entry (or anything at all, for that matter). Some people certainly have, because I understandably get asked on probably a monthly basis when, or if, the next entry will be coming.

The short answer is the same as it’s always been: I don’t know.

The characteristically long answer is: I started Transformers Legacy nine years ago (to the day!), when Transformers Animated, a property I dearly loved, was arriving at its premature end. I adored how Animated cherry-picked elements from virtually every single Transformers incarnation that came before it and breathed new (and sometimes very different) life into them. Legacy was meant to be my own personal take on this philosophy: keep what I liked, throw away what I didn’t, and inject some of my own flavor along the way. The mission statement was essentially, “if I was in charge of Transformers, this is how I’d do it.” In my eyes, it was meant to be Transformers "perfected."

This was a vision very easy to stick to throughout the majority of Legacy’s initial run, when the two major ongoing franchises were the live-action films and Transformers Prime, two series which - while not entirely devoid of merit - I personally found extremely lacking in just about every department. This drought ended when I decided to get caught up on the IDW comics in late 2014.

In Furman’s, Roche’s, Barber’s and Roberts’ writing, I found complex and inventive stories that elevated Transformers fiction to a level that far surpassed anything before. As much as I love Beast Wars and Animated, they were, at the end of the day, cartoons created for children. IDW’s older audience allowed them to explore darker, more mature themes at times without losing the spirit of fun and adventure and camaraderie that permeated the best of its predecessors.

Legacy trudged on for another year or so after that, but as I continued writing stories in the Legacy universe, I found myself incorporating more and more elements from IDW: the Dead Universe, the colony worlds and functionism leading to the Decepticon revolution were all broad concepts I found creeping into my work, along with more specific events and character beats straight from the comics. Where Legacy was borne out of the desire to make the “best” incarnation of Transformers, along came IDW, who did better than I anything I could dream up. To me, IDW has become the “true” Transformers fiction, the perfection I endeavored to create, and has left Legacy feeling superfluous and irrelevant in comparison.

Now, having said that all that, I’m not definitively pronouncing Legacy dead in the water, but it may be easier to think of it that way for now. I know Legacy still means a lot to a lot of you, and despite my frequently brusque attitude I truly do appreciate it. Both in spite of and in recognition of that, I can’t force myself to phone it in going forward; I owe better to myself and to you and I think my indifference would be reflected in a lackluster end product. The fact of the matter is I’ve had pencils for the next entry (it’s Runabout and Runamuck by the way, who even cares at this point) sitting around for almost two years and have not had even the slightest inkling of a desire to finish it, even knowing that it’s the last entry in Series 2 and how little relative effort it would take to finish it. The inspiration for Transformers-related work has just not struck me in a very, very long time. With the recent announcement of the termination of the IDW continuity at the end of 2018, maybe that'll change sooner than later, but I can’t say for sure.

So.

Transformers Legacy may stay on indefinite hiatus, but I won’t. In the interim since my last update, I’ve actually been extremely productive, I’ve just been reluctant to post any other art before a new Legacy entry for fear of being eaten alive, so I’ve decided to address the situation here first. Over the next few days? - weeks? - months? I will be dropping a huge backlog of art from the last two years (I’ll try to dole it out a reasonable pace), and I’ll continue to post any new art as I make it. It may or may not be stuff that the majority of you are interested in, but hopefully better than endless silence.

Also, most relevant in terms of “what I’ve been up to”/shameless plug: I am currently on staff with “Dank Zine,” an independent video game-related monthly print magazine run by my friend Ann, for which I typically do one piece a month, and for which I've also done two covers. My art for it will be posted here the month after the issue is sent out. More info on the zine and where you can purchase it will be forthcoming as I post previous months’ art and/or in a separate journal post.

Hi there! Most of the offending posters are blocked at this point, but the comments section of Knockout's entry became so godawful that I feel like I need to stop such a travesty from occurring again! So here's a few of my most commonly asked and answered questions and comments. I love interacting with people and I definitely don't want to discourage comments, it just gets a little tiresome having to answer the same things over and over again, so I'm hoping this FAQ will save everyone some time!

1) What is Transformers Legacy? / Is this for a comic/fanfic?
Transformers Legacy is basically an "if I were in charge of Transformers". It consists mostly of redesigned preexisting characters, but there have been a few originals sprinkled in here and there. I typically take my favorite bits and pieces of previous incarnations of the Transformers brand and stitch them together into a horrifying Frankenstein's monster of continuity. Legacy consists solely of character art and biographies for the individuals I deem interesting enough to include in the project. There is a loose story driving the "plot" of Legacy, which is told piecemeal through the bios. Although I'd love to do so in a perfect world with infinite money and resources, I don't have any plans to make Legacy into a comic, fanfic series, or animated series. And no, I'm not going to submit my ideas to Hasbro because that's not how the world works, kids.

2) Why did you do _____? / Is _____ a reference to _____?
Please read the whole description of an entry before asking a question! I spend a lot of time writing both the character's bio and commentary, which combined should cover just about everything about the character from an in-universe perspective as well as my creative process in designing them and what's an homage to what. If you have a question about the character that's not covered in the description, ask away!

3) Will you be doing [insert character here]? / Can you do [insert character here] next?
At least through the end of Series 3, the characters for forthcoming entries are set in stone. Since I want to preserve some manner of surprise, I'm no longer going to be addressing questions about who I'll be doing in the future. If you do enough digging, you might be able to find mention of a few characters I've confirmed that have yet to appear, but I'd like the majority of Series 3 to stay secret. And I can't do everyone's favorite character, sadly.

4) When is the next entry coming out?
I truthfully will never have a straightforward answer to this unless I'm a day or two away from finishing it. I think people take for granted how much work goes into each character for Legacy from the design stage through to the final illustration. The absolute best I've been able to manage is about one entry per month, and it usually doesn't last long. I often don't have the free time to dedicate to the more intensive aspects of the design process, and I have other interests and projects that frequently take precedence over Legacy. Asking when the next entry is going to be finished isn't going to make it come any faster - if anything, it's actively discouraging.

5) Your tech specs are wrong.
That's not a question, but a statement I detest so much I already wrote a separate journal addressing it!

I'm trying to be more patient when addressing comments, but if I continue to see people repeatedly ignoring the text portions of my submissions or generally having a shitty, entitled attitude, I'm just going to block them. Also, I have a zero tolerance policy for spammers - if you only came here to advertise your crap or bombard my notes with pictures of Power Rangers zords (why would you do this?) you're getting banned on the spot. Otherwise just use good judgment and you'll be fine.

I'm writing this journal entry to address the constant complaints I get regarding the tech spec numbers I give my Transformers Legacy characters. It's incredibly frustrating explaining this over and over again, so instead of responding to each comment individually as I have been, I'll just link to this long overdue post from now on and save everyone the trouble.

The main misunderstanding seems to be based on the fact that my tech spec numbers are relative, not absolute. In other words, each character (per faction per series, more on that in a second) is ranked in order by each attribute, rather than any all-encompassing objective measure. The way I've arrived at each number is to take all ten characters of a given faction in a given series (with Series 2 & 3 combined into one for these purposes) and rank them from 1-10 in each attribute. For example, let's take the Series 2/3 Autobots' Intelligence stat. Perceptor, as a scholar in multiple scientific disciplines, receives a ten. Bulkhead, who's a forgetful oaf with little to no formal education, receives a one. The other characters fall somewhere in the middle. This doesn't mean that Perceptor ranks among the smartest minds in Cybertronian history or that Bulkhead is literally dumber than a rock, it just means they're respectively the most and least intelligent characters of the ten. Same for courage and strength, which seem to be the two other stats that people take umbrage with most frequently.

I don't follow this system to the letter 100% of the time - sometimes I'll nudge a stat up or down a point or two if it feels wrong. In fact I wasn't abiding by it at all for the first half or so of Series 1, but a lot of the tech specs got readjusted when I did the series-wide revisions last year. But it's still the rule of thumb.

Is this the best system to use in determining tech specs? I don't know. At the very least I feel like it's more justifiable then simply picking numbers arbitrarily, at which point giving virtually any character a rank of 1 or 2 in anything would be indefensible, and at that point what's the point of the scale running that low? I'd rather have a broader variety of stats than have most characters floating in the mid-range for every single attribute.

In the end, though, do tech specs really matter? The only reason I even include them is because it's an old Transformers tradition, and it gets me nostalgic for cutting out the cardbacks on old Beast Wars and Beast Machines toys. I don't personally consider them to be very important - the bio underneath the picture is what you should be paying attention to to determine the true strengths and weaknesses of the character, not a series of meaningless numbers. It's not Top Trumps, not everything needs to stringently adhere to the idea of "power levels" like it's Dragon Ball Z. And you really, really don't need to take personal offense if your favorite character gets a 5 instead of a 6 in Firepower.

So please, don't bother telling me my tech specs are "wrong" because you don't like them. Ignore them or move on. The only time you should be call out the tech spec stats is if they are in direct contradiction of the bio. Of the hundreds of comments I have received about stats, I have relented exactly twice for that very reason.

If you continue to whine about tech specs after I've linked you to this post, it's going to result in you being blocked. There's no point in wasting your or my time anymore. Sorry not sorry.

To everyone else, the next Legacy entry should be up by week's end. Thanks for your patience.

Hi everybody! Remember about a year and a half ago when I destroyed my will to live by watching and reviewing every Godzilla movie ever made over the span of a month? No? Well, you'd better check out my otherwise empty tumblr! Anyway, against all odds, another Godzilla movie has been released, and it's my sworn duty to keep this train rolling, so here's my review of 2014's Godzilla:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

So I guess the most important thing to mention straight off the bat is - unless you count the English versions of the original 1954 Godzilla and 1984’s The Return of Godzilla, which featured significant amounts of newly-shot footage (I don’t) - this is only the second American-made Godzilla movie. The first, 1998’s similarly creatively titled Godzilla, was an abysmal film by pretty much any metric, but especially so to Godzilla fans as its monster bore almost no resemblance to his namesake. That version earned the derisive nickname GINO, “Godzilla in Name Only”, among fans, and was later officially renamed “Zilla” by Toho for taking the “god” out of Godzilla. So, sixteen years later, does Legendary’s Godzilla fare any better than TriStar’s abomination?

Not really.

Just kidding. Not only is this Godzilla worthy of the title, but the King of the Monsters’ thirtieth installment may stand among the best entries in the franchise. A few small details differ from past versions, but he looks like Godzilla, acts like Godzilla, and kicks monster ass like Godzilla.

The main difference between 2014 Godzilla and his previous incarnations is that, rather than being “created” by the atomic bomb, he’s kind of just always been around, having only been reawakened relatively recently by a passing nuclear sub. I guess it’s nice that they made the concession that Godzilla still subsists on radiation, but no longer being linked with the atomic bomb kind of misses the point that he’s an allegory for the destruction caused by said weapon. At first this bothered me, but honestly, that aspect of the character has become less and less relevant over the years, and the last thing this series needs is to rehash elements from previous installments. So I’m cool with it. Other than that minor quibble, Gareth Edwards’ depiction of Godzilla is just fantastic. He’s the perfect balance between animalistic wrath and godlike stoicism. I was really surprised that he was depicted as unwaveringly heroic - he’s played both sides of the fence over the years, but in the more recent films he’s typically portrayed as an amoral destructive force if not an outright villain. It’s refreshing to see him play the role of “Earth Defender” once more. As for his design, I think the design team did a great job of making him look more like a living creature than he usually does without straying too far from the tenets of his character. He’s a lot more robust and almost crocodilian in appearance, but he doesn’t look like a giant dinosaur like the last American attempt. I don’t love the columnar legs and stubby elephantine toes, but I’ll live.

The other monster (well, monsters) is M.U.T.O., “Massive Unidentified Terrestial Organism” or some bullshit, which sadly doesn’t get a proper name so I’ll just pretend it’s not an acronym. The Mutos’ design isn’t the most original thing in the world, sort of a harder-edged Cloverfieldian tangle of limbs with a little bit of Zigra thrown in, but they nevertheless stand out among Godzilla’s existing rogues gallery. The EMP attack (or just passive ability, the movie seemed to contradict itself on that front) is again pretty unique and a great way to nullify any sort of threat from human weapons - good thing Godzilla’s on our side! The Mutos are definitely more bestial than Godzilla, only made antagonistic by their instinctual desire to mate. I’m not super in love with the idea of kaiju being able to sexually reproduce, and the egg-laying scene seemed a bit pointless when the threat was neutralized almost immediately. Overall, I didn’t dislike the Mutos, but I felt that they could have been replaced with a more interesting or recognizable kaiju, like maybe a couple of Rodans. But then maybe that’d just be mashing a square peg into a round hole just for nostalgia’s sake.

Where the Mutos really shine is in their interaction with Godzilla. The fight scenes are absolutely incredible, and put last year’s Pacific Rim to shame almost categorically. We get plenty of multiple long, unbroken, full-body shots of all three monsters duking it out. There’s a tremendous sense of weight and scale to the creatures and their interactions feel very authentic. When Godzilla busts out his atomic ray, I literally said “yes!” aloud in the theater, and the finisher was perhaps the best of Godzilla’s career. The only disappointment is how comparatively little the big man himself appears in the film, really only showing up in full for the final battle. However, there’s plenty of action with the Mutos throughout much of the first and second acts, so kaiju fans should be plenty satiated.

A lot of people have come down on the human element of the story, but I thought it was perfectly fine. Bryan Cranston acts the hell out of the rest of the cast as always, but I felt like his character’s story was a bit too techno-babbley for its own good and not necessarily in service of the story sometimes. Ford didn’t have a tremendous amount of charisma for a lead, but I never felt like he was holding back the story. Dr. Serizawa was a nice nod to the ‘54 film and it was nice to actually tie Japan’s nuclear history into the story, but I feel like Ken Watanabe was way too… quiet? …and it seemed like they could have done a lot more with his character. The remainder of the cast does a perfectly serviceable job, but they’re ultimately just fluff. While nothing about the human story was incredibly interesting or entertaining in itself, I never really felt like it got in the way of the action. In fact, two of the most tense action sequences in the movie (the two bridge scenes; the rail trestle and the Golden Gate) were mostly human-driven and only featured the monsters tangentially. The movie also does a great job of driving home the severity of the destruction occurring, showing plenty of fleeing people and displaced families and visually evoking recent disasters like the Fukushima meltdown and 9/11attacks  left and right. To the film’s benefit, it’s those sort of events that have replaced the threat of nuclear war as real-world horrors in the minds of the current generation.

One of the movie’s weaker points was its soundtrack. It was perfectly fine much of the time, but I feel like it got a little too over-the-top and cheesy at several points, like during Godzilla’s “true” introduction. It’s the one thing I think Pacific Rim did unequivocally better, although I don’t think that movie’s soundtrack would have been appropriate for this one. The sound design was also good, and helped to convey the monsters’ scale as much as the visuals did. Godzilla’s new roar works well; it’s more “realistic” to match the more realistic animal, but it still maintains the same general cadence and end flourish of the original. The Mutos made some cool noises too. Alright alright, I’m just grasping at straws now.

I liked Godzilla a lot. It’s not a perfect movie, but it does a fantastic job at both staying faithful to the original series and doing its own thing. I’m really happy to see how well it’s doing financially (it’s been out four days and has already made more domestically than Pacific Rim did in its entire run) and that a sequel has already been greenlit. I’d love to see them tackle a series staple like Mothra or King Ghidorah next, but I’m totally fine with something completely new if it’s pulled off with as much finesse as this one was. I’ll admit, I didn’t have high hopes when this movie was first announced, but every trailer and piece of media that came out made me more and more optimistic, and I’m thrilled that the final product actually surpassed my expectations. I think I might even give it… five Escaping Dogs out of five.

So what did you guys think?