It's not just that he's "back in action," it's that he seems to be the leader of his group. How'd he get so many people's trust again so quickly?

 

Eh, I wouldn't think so... not if you read all the problems they were talking about in fixing him at the end of his Spotlight issue. The biggest one being that he wasn't compatible with modern Transformers tech because of his apparent 'stubborn refusal to upgrade his systems'. Sooo... it's at the very least something that needs to be adressed and not just a 'Hey, look who's back from his coma!' type of thing.

 

Remember how back in June/July last year I declared that this comic was originally written as an alternate universe "Elseworlds"-styled tale and McCarthy charged in here to hose that down?

Well, it's six issues in (SIX) without seriously referencing Furman's plots beyond throwaway dialogue. However, given the hostility AHM has endured from some parts of the fandom over this lack of continuity, I foresee that McCarthy will cram in references and flashbacks to Furman's stuff very soon

The dude deteriorated mentally and physically after an untold number of years trapped on that unstable Ore-13 hell hole planet, going insane, talking to a dead corpse, murdering friendly aliens who happened to crash land on the planet, as well as fellow Autobots sent to rescue him.

That's not the sort of thing one can just write off as "he got better" or "he got over it, because he's hard". It's the sort of thing that needs it's own story to resolve, preferably by Nick Roche, the man who came up with this plot in the first place.

 

That's one of the things that makes me wonder, what if Roche was the artist for AHM? How would that little Kup bit ended up working out?

 

IDW is going to have to stop with the whole forced miniseries thing. That is why TF books weren't doing so hot to begin with. If I recall, weren't the spotlights selling significantly better than the regular series? I completely understand that they want to do six issue TPBs, but that doesn't mean those six issues have to be one story. Just tell the writer he has to fit complete stories into those six issues.

 

I don't think it would have mattered, given the way things have turned out.