There is so much literature out there on transformers.
Its a survival story; its a war story; its an adventure; sometimes a horror piece; and sometimes a mystery. However, due to the space opera and mechanical/robotic foundations there is a strong sci-fi element in every story.

Two ideas I've just had were that like cyberpunk was a genre of a near future technological mish-mash.... the TFs underwent a bio-punk, for lack of a better term, evolution with head masters, pretender shells and beast-wars type organic transformations. I think this is pretty well accepted although there is no terminology for it in the broader literary sence than the diminutive "blank-masters" gimmick. However I think there is a lot there to be explored. I'm hopeful the wood transformer in the latest issue of MTMTE will expand on this!

Another near idea, is that of the shared consciousness. Especially with the combiner technology, head master technology and powermaster technology I think everyone understands the gimmick... but the geist state hasn't been explored. Not just of the shared-mind, but the unquiness of consciousness between robots and then of robots and organics.

With the fantastic characterizations, especially in MTMTE, and the focus on psychology of the transformer mind - get well soon Rung! - I'm hopeful future TF stories can define new genres ... not just the gimmicks.

I know these aren't new thoughts or concepts... but if you have a new way of looking at a transformer story concept feel free to chime in here!

 

I think the hurdle that the current IDW comics have with influencing other comics is that most of the people buying and reading their books are already Transformers fans. I don't think the larger comic reading world has really given these books a chance, and therefore will not have as much of an impact on the rest of the comic genre.

 

I'm not keen on the Headmasters concept, so when Furman put Hunter O'Nion into the -ation series as a Headmaster I kind of groaned at it.

But I started to think of it like the sci-fi concept of "uplift", that the Transformers were using their technology to "uplift" the human and Nebulan races to new levels of consciousness and technological sophistication. The Ultra Magnus Spotlight deals with this concept, and how "uplifting" has been outlawed.

When I thought about it like that it became very intriguing to me...

...and then McCarthy destroyed that by killing off Hunter for no good reason. Boo.

I'd like to see the TF Universe tackle this concept at some point in time, but it looks like we're not going to deal with earth and humans any time soon again.

 

Actually I thought the HunterStreak concept was great and could have been really interesting.
Unfortunately, it never really went anywhere.

I'm hoping that Furman has something up his sleeves regarding Spike and Fort Max in Regeneration One. Knowing him though, Fort Max will have been dismantled off screen never to be seen again.