Broken Promise 2: The Promising

[loopy777]

When it comes to the Avatar franchise, it's either boom or bust. Since the original Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon series ended in 2008, little has been released for the property aside from an Art Book in 2010, but that was but a brief sip of water to the thirsty fans traveling across a four-year-long desert. (Then again, it could be worse;

Comments

[avocado_love]

You know, I think I'll stick with not reading those comics. I'll let you take that bullet for me, and I'll just sit back and enjoy reading these recaps. You have such a flair for them.

I hardly know what to say? Zuko going to Ozai for advice? Toph teaching metal bending to practical non-bendrs in three days? Inexplicable time/location jumps? (Well okay, atla had that a'plenty). Aang thinking about taking out Zuko?

I don't know what this is, but it isn't canon. Not my canon at least. ;D

[loopy777]

Considering I get these at a discount through my Barnes & Noble membership, I'm actually getting my money's worth just out of ripping them apart on the internet. It's a lot of fun. :D

I can totally get behind a desire to de-canonize these. I'm also a follower (it's been years since I've been a "fan") of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and that at least had a strong start. It's a shame we have to, at best, wait around for Avatar's EU to get good.

Of course, being obsessive about canon and continuity, I'll probably still acknowledge these comics in my fanfic, albeit in a satirical way. ("Hey, Zuko, remember when you became evil again and I tried to kill you?" "Yeah. I was actually on crack at the time. What's your excuse?" "Sokka had been lacing my food with cactus juice for months." "Ah.")

[loopy777]

Ironically, that's exactly what the LoK website is doing. "Promise? What promise? We're just here to talk about Yu Dao becoming the United Republic. Zuko and Aang worked together and solved the problem, slick as can be."

[ljlee]

Much like avocado_love, I don't feel the need to read The Promise because this is magnitudes more amusing. I don't think we've seen any really good writing for the franchise since ATLA aired its last episode, and it's a bit frustrating. Oh well, we'll always have fanfic.

[loopy777]

Very true. And there's always hope for the future. (Yee, since when am I an optimist?)

[fairladyz2005]

Can't say I hate The Promise. But I did find part 2 so much fun to make fun of in the Avatar Spirit thread. Maybe I'm hoping for part 3 to have it all make sense since that's how Yang's works usually don't come together until the third act. I like a lot of the concept the Promise offers, I just question the execution. And what is up with Mai? That part was just painful to read.

I think you said before that part of your problem with the Promise is that you've seen other comics handling similar post war politics a lot better, such as some of the Transformers books. Which ones did you mean - RID or MTMTE or parts of Chaos or some combo of the above? I've switched to trades with the most recent "reboot" of issue #1s so I've only just picked up the first MTMTE trade, but as a fellow TF fan I'd be curious as to your current opinion of the books if you're reading any and what you think they are doing better than the Promise (aside from Roche/Roberts being a quality duo in general). I don't mind spoilers.

[loopy777]

I was referring to RID. (I think. The one that Barber is writing.) The main contrast is that people are disagreeing on Cybertron, sometimes violently, but it doesn't immediately lead to people saying, "Well, that's it! Start the war again!" And even the people who might be inclined to push for a violent solution are mitigated by characters who are profiting more from the current state of peace. (You'll love how Starscream adapts to the new situation.) So, while Transformers has a lot of varied people with varied goals and varied ways of pursuing them, all coming into conflict and having adventures, Avatar seems to be going with nothing but extremists on just two sides in an attempt to make me worried that the war will be restarting. I'm much more interested in how Starscream uses promises of free elections in the future to undercut Bumblebee, than the Earth King launching an army to possibly wipe Yu Dao out. And when Prowl gets extreme in how he deals with "threats," people call him out on it and he loses more credibility. (Or he

[fairladyz2005]

Thanks for the RID info. I love Bumblebee and the premise of the series, but I was concerned when I learned Barber was writing it, since I didn't like the Heart of Darkness mini at all. But I love the shifting pov thing and am looking forward to picking this up now

[loopy777]

Well, put your fears about Barber to rest. He wasn't involved with Heart of Darkness. That was Abnett & Lanning, and that just goes to show that no one's past work is any indication of success, because I love their "Cosmic" Marvel work. Barber's only previous TF work was in hashing the Bay/Movie continuity into something coherent via the various tie-in comics

[chordatesrock]

Your Long Feng idea is great. :)

[loopy777]

Thanks! I found Long Feng to be a better villain than Ozai or Zhao, and easily the best of the temporary threats, so I've always been sad that he hasn't been seen since Book 2 ended.