Honestly, I think the whole 'What if?/Deviations' genre in comic books is little more than bad fanfiction, both in idea and execution.

There's an idea I've seen touted that mainstream film used to be about plot, then it started to become more about characters, and now, in the era of Marvel movies, it's about 'universes' - which means, essentially, that every story is just writers taking toys out of a box, playing with them for a while and then putting them away tidily again. Alt-universes are obviously a device that enables precisely that approach to writing - you don't have to worry about consequences because everything can be reset.

Now, personally, for me, this just isn't interesting or nourishing. A dramatic event is no longer a dramatic event if it's all going be tucked away forever by the end of 22 pages. The fiction I like, that seems to engage with the world we live in, is fiction where, for example, you find yourself at the end of a chain of impactful events, and be able to look back to where it started and see the thread of causality.

 

And what is not fiction nowadays in TF? Like 70% of TF fiction is made by fans, and some of the best stories were by those fans. Animated, MTMTE, TAAO, the Beast Wars: Uprising prose stories (btw, read them, they're great) and the list just goes on.

 

I wake up every day hoping everything from Revolution and onward was just a Deviation Nightmare

 

Let me just say that I am glad that I got the only TF Deviations issue for free via Youtube (the video is gone now, probably for the better). No, I don't want more Deviations issues unless they got competent writers.

 

Remember when Regeneration 1 hadn't come out yet, and IDW was totally blindsided by there being far more demand for a TFA comic rather than a sequel/finale to Marvel G1? Yet they never did anything with that? Good times, good times.

 

They can actually be interesting and fun if written well. Unfortunately Transformers Deviations wasn't any of that. It really was someone's bad fanfiction. Remember the days when editors would tell the writer to go back a rewrite a section to make it better or more clearer to understand? That just doesn't happen any more.

 

No. As a one off it was ok. It was interesting to read a what if regarding the movie but beyond that no.

 

No.

Just no.

 

I could rant for hours about regeneration one and this isn't the thread for that but no deviations sorry. I wouldn't mind a season 4 ten or twelve partner but beyond that ad I've said no to a deviations ongoing.

 

Wait, really?

 

there was an IDW panel at botcon 2011 where the panel was surprised that the audience was more enthusiastic about the possibility of a tfa continuation than more g1 stuff

link

 

I want a one-off story where having completely defeated the Decepticons (in any continuity), Optimus Prime decides it upon himself to rid the Humans of all their offensive weaponry. Against our will. The Autobots are coming to take our guns away.

 

While I love ongoing fiction with character development and complex plots, I think a series of one-shots (or very short runs) that don't have to fit into any continuity would be cool. TF Mosaic was kinda like this IIRC.

There's a lot of cool stories you could tell that are hard to fit into a ongoing series. I like to think of the movie Logan. It was set in a really bad ending world where most of the X-men you knew were all long dead (and more died in the film itself). It worked well as a standalone movie that didn't have to worry about being linked to any movie before or after. (Although I know people have various theories on where it fits in the timelines).


In the end, I don't think I'd want a series that is ONLY "this previous continuity you know, but X happened differently" - but a series of short weird stories would be great.

 

Can we forget the Logan movie and remember Old Man Logan? That was even darker and bleaker - Wolverine killed all the X-Men himself, decieved by Mysterio into thinking they are enemies.

 

Old Man Logan is garbage.

 

No.

Yes.

 

Not to bump the Deviations discussion thread, but I just now wondered what would happen if Optimus Prime did shoot and kill Hot Rod to get to Megatron? Not intentionally of course.

 

Or if he shot Megatron and did not hit Rodimus, because Optimus is Optimus and never misses the mark?

 

Then there would be no difference to the Deviations we did get. Megatron still dies, Optimus Prime and Hot Rod live.

 

OH, I forgot what happened. The book sucked.