No one *joined up* because of Hasbroverse, because no one cares about ROM or MASK or Action Man. People either tolerated it or stopped buying. It was a pointless, unforced error that just made the books less welcoming to newcomers.

Ever since about TF: Prime or so, Hasbro has been relying more on the comics to sell toys. The target audience of kids are growing younger, as they increasingly abandon toys once they discover YouTube bloggers. And if Young kids pick up TF comics now, they see that nearly all of the best-known Decepticons are good guys now and Bumblebee has been dead for years.... and Hasbro just can't sell toys with that. A lot of main characters haven't been sold for years (Drift, Ratchet, Magnus, Torchbearers). This makes Hasbroverse look even worse because they don't even have toys to sell.

Once the books went down to 5-6k per issue, we're lucky they kept the story going another half-year to finish it. I fully expect the "new" continuity to be the same 12 characters in Evergreen / Authentic / Cyberverse bodies as will be on toy shelves. That's how you market product.

 

The sales numbers are publicly available, to investors and non-investors alike.

 

Ha!

“Editor in Chief” couldn’t be bothered to edit his own sales pitch video...

 

I never read Marvel's G1 until they started re-releasing them in Vol. a few years ago. I bought the first vol. and couldn't make it even half way through it.

So are you saying this to say that complaining about it is hopeless or that you agree that stupid humans and crossovers in the TF-verse needs to stop?

 

I won't disagree that Hasbroverse ended up being a misstep. I don't think it sounded like one when they initially pitched it, that said - as far as ideas go it wasn't a bad one, it was more in the execution that things suffered a little.

Honestly Revolution as a launch event was fairly solid. And I did enjoy First Strike - what let it down more was the Visionaries swerve at the 11th hour, and I'm fairly sure that was by mandate going in. (Even then, Visionaries vs TF isn't a awful story; it's a story I don't think needed be told but one they wanted told so they hired a writer to tell it)

And I'm looking forward to the story ENDING because that's not something we get often enough these days -an actual END in western comics. I've genuinely been getting increasingly afraid for the day when a new creative direction forces personality/plot resets on the cast, and wrapping the continuity, with that in mind, is the best possible option.

 

The cover is an homage to Marvel’s Transformers issue #1 from 1984.

 

It seems so. It's not how you tell a good story though.

 

Same here.
I don't see how the current IDW team sans Roberts is going to be able to write halfway decent comic.
What I liked about IDW Transformers was Roberts and the pre-Costa era.
So if that's not in Hasbro and IDW's plans I guess I'll catch up on all of that old Transformers fiction I still haven't gotten to.

 

Despite the occasional great review, the Transformers comics sales have dropped SIGNIFICANTLY. (I've been following sales closely for the past 3 years or so) They simply cannot sustain the brand (or the company) due to the losses, to the point where IDW had to sell shares in order to raise 10 million dollars just to stay in business last year, and are currently reporting MAJOR quarterly losses this year that far exceed last year (all of this information is publicly available, btw).

Very true, especially TMNT and Star Trek. However, they just aren't enough to sustain the company, considering how many books they're publishing. Transformers is a major brand, but sales have fallen to 5K a month, with Optimus Prime threatening to drop below 5K at this rate. Lost Light saw a slight uptick last month to 5.8K units. I'm very curious how Unicron will do, so I'll be watching that closely. However, the quarterly losses for IDW are significant (reporting 4 million loss), so the company is basically bleeding.

Honestly, IMO Transformers should be in the mid double-digits at the minimum. It's a long-lasting brand and there's plenty of nostalgia going around to keep it hot. But there's been a LOT of "silent" controversy over IDW's current direction, which is being manifested in its massive sales drops. So yeah, based on the numbers, it's clearly a sinking ship, hence the reason they're giving it a proper ending. To be honest, the way things are going I think they'll have to do a drastic reboot to save the license (and the company for that matter), which might actually be their plan of attack. (and a good one at that!)

 

Okay, so maybe it IS sinking. But that isn’t the same as being sunk, which it isn’t yet!

 

It's never going be able to get those kinds of numbers and sustain them regardless of what anyone does; the comics industry just isn't healthy enough for a Transformers comic to sell around 50k, and nostalgia is far from enough to get those kinds of sales. Selling 8-10k has typically been enough for an IDW book (and most non-Big Two books) to make a profit.

Also, I really don't think IDW is depending on Transformers to survive like you're implying; it depends on a wide variety of books and publishing initiatives, not just one. Transformers alone wouldn't make a difference.

 

Man, gotta love threads where people who don't actually know how comic books or businesses work try to claim that a company they dislike is failing just because they're not doing things they like.

 

To be fair, most of what I’ve read in this thread simply says they’re failing because they’re not making money.  

 

Why are they not making money?

 

I agree. Several IDW people ran their mouths on Twitter which turned off some fans. This is a problem for most of the comic industry. Comics have become more about the egos of the people making them and less about the characters and their stories.

But this is just a part of IDW Transformers’ problems.

 

I'd just like to remind people to cool it on the personal attacks, in accordance with rules 1 and 13. As well, this thread seems to be going off-topic. If you wish to discuss IDW's sales figures, you can always make a new thread in the comic discussion forum, or use one of the pre-existing threads there that suit this topic better.

 

When Barber mentions "Secret special guests" while listing the art team, does that mean the back-up stories will have multiple contributors? I'm curious to see who's doing what since most of the common TF artists are working on the ongoings due to the double-shipping schedule.

 

I should have said maximum. 50K is wishful thinking, but I agree with you, I don't think the market is stable enough for it to maintain that sales level consistently. More realistically, as a brand I think it should be bringing in between 20-30K. I could cite some Comichron sales examples in the last year of smaller brands maintaining that range, and some consistently selling low titles climbing the ladder (like Spawn sales tripling since April from its long-held 12K standard to near 40K), but as you mentioned before, that's a topic for another thread or discussion, so I won't digress any further.

As for the topic at hand, Milne's looking to be doing some killer work on Unicron, and I've already checked out Unicron #0 and I'm pretty amped for more! I'm also curious to see how the Pyra Magna storyline pans out.

 

The Optimus Prime book is lucky to sell 5K. It's been awful for a long time. The only way the art could get worse would be to put Livio Everything-Everywhere-Is-Stone Ramondelli on it. The story sure dragged on with lots of nothing for a long time too. There's only so much of "dur hur, we must work together, be patient because reasons" pontificating Optimus Prime can do before it becomes tiresome. Frankly the only reason I even pick up the books is to have an excuse to support my local comic shop. Lost Light was the only halfway interesting one; just about everything else I enjoyed reading has been cancelled.

Yeah, almost as fun as watching the I-Like-Everything-110% crowd flop around trying to pretend like anybody should value yet another ringing endorsement of a product they haven't even seen but already know is the bestest EVAR!1

 

Another day, another IDW thread on TFW2005 descends into people waving their embarrassing hate-boners for IDW around.

Yes, yes, dears, we know you think IDW makes boring garbage comics for people who hate America, that's nice.

Anyway, I'm writing up a review of Unicron #1 today, and can confirm that it's a good issue! Barber's work since he originally stepped down as editor (Optimus Prime, Revolutionaries, Rom vs. Transformers...) has been his best ever, and Unicron is set to continue that based on issue #1!