It's actually good for things to be funny and for kids to learn about American history and film history. My problem with RID/TF/OP is that it's been four years of Optimus being like "hello people of Earth, I'm Optimus Prime, I'm the good guy", while the people of Earth are like "we don't care who you are, please stop invading our planet", and Op is like "but... I'm the good guy! " and that's it that's the comic for four years.
For everyone saying how glad they are that the"IDW" era of Roberts and Barber books may be ending and how glad they are, consider this..Aside from personal preference (which is fine. People like what they like) The MTMTE and RiD books brought a lot of new life into the comic realm of Transformers. Personally, I was a G1 fan, hated anything after (especially Beast Wars, but I'm getting over it ) and I had a huge stack of Marvel Transformers comics. I loved them. I had no interest in the IDW run until a friend tossed me a TPB MTMTE Vol 1. He told me, Read this and imagine your beloved Transformers in a zany original Star Trek vibe. I was instantly hooked. Love it or hate it, In the recent years we have seen so much characterization in characters AS characters, without the stale "good guy is good, unless for a plot twist he isnt, but it was mind control..MERICA! " and even when it is, it poked fun at itself. It broke the fourth wall because it had loveable characters. Silly at times? Yes. Inclusion of odd pop culture or socio-political satire? Definitely. But I came back to Transformers because of IDW. I had no interest in getting new toys to collect when it was Cybertron or Armada stuff. But I read LSOTW and I had to get a Wreckers team no matter the cost. Because it wasn't GI. Joe. It wasn't Cpn America. It wasn't predictable anymore. I'll be sad to see it end, but for now, this was my favorite era in TF history. With G1 being a close second and dear to my heart still. It grew the characters in a way I find reasonable and tasteful. Post war Megs eventually sees the error of the millions of years of murder, and becomes the idealist he should have from the start. Love it or hate it, making Snidley Whiplash villains who are just "eeeevvviiilllll" for evil's sake is old and boring. It also wasn't afraid to tackle the issue of "infallibility" with characters like Optimus or the Wreckers...there was a lot of shades of gray when you see characters for their motives and drive. I found it refreshing personally. So, if they "reboot" the series and it's all "Common Optimus, let's go get those dastardly Decepticons, they are attacking an oil derrick for fuel!" then personally, I am out. It would be a risk, but I say they make one book following a scaled down blending of a few of the current stories or characters (consolidation) and then focus on other bots or branch offs in universe. Scavengers having a series, for instance. Or, again in universe, why not make a whole new cast in a different scenario. They already opened up the series to include all these other planets with beast forms, or race forms etc.. Windblade and Nautica are well received characters and are now canon in TF fiction. Keep giving us new bots. I feel like there is still too much unseen in this wonderful universe Roberts and Barber started for it to just be erased. Either way, I enjoyed it while it lasted. I hope whatever they do, it's better than when HASBRO did a "sequel" to the PRIME TV series with "Robots In Disguise" the kid show.. ugghhh
I feel like it isn't all that grey, because when I read Megatron Origin my response was "wow, Megatron is the hero of this universe", and when I read Chaos Theory my response was "wow, Megatron is still the hero of this universe". But then people are like, "no no no, how can you say he's the hero, he ate 100,000,000,000 billion babies!?". Zizek recently reviewed Black Panther, which he compared to Paradise Lost and The Dark Knight Rises. They're all works where the villains (Satan, Bane, and Killmonger) come off as more sympathetic and heroic than the protagonists, and where "this basic fact is occluded by superficial and rather ridiculous signs of destructive evil". And yep, that's the same deal with the IDW Decepticons.
This is one of the bigger problems I had with Megatrons arcs in IDW. It’s incredibly difficult for me to reconcile that Megatron’s character (as presented in Chaos Theory in flashback, etc.) ever would’ve condoned half of the atrocities he did, but it feels like the atrocities were there to justify the Decepticons being bad. I’m aware McCarthy tried to explain this away a bit but it never really held for me.
For me IDW started going awry towards the end of dark Cybertron. Megatron suddenly having a change of attitude after the "death" of bumblebee and holding up the Autobot badge and renouncing the deception movement. This Megatron did not feel like the same megs from ahm and beyond. He felt like a different Megatron. It didn't sit well with me The whole redemption arc felt forced to the point where I felt it wasn't real. Megatron becoming an Autobot was wrong. Okay renounce being a con but don't slap on an Autobot badge and declare yourself an Autobot after millions of years fighting against what it meant. I know a lot of people liked it but I didn't. I'm sorry and that to me was when it felt like idw was starting to run out of ideas.
And that is where a difference of opinion comes in. I felt like the dialogue leading to that point made a lot of sense. Megs is still decidedly proud of his actions and believes he has the moral highground all the way up until he realizes that the goals he was fighting to achieve were similar to what the autobots wanted in a way, and then Bumblebee's death cemented that epiphany in his head. I personally liked the change. I scoffed at it when I heard it was gonna happen, but I'm in the minority that believes this was a natural progression for villain with an originally noble purpose.
The initial premise of MTMTE was that Rodimus had set out on an adventure to find some way to redeem the Autobots. So when Megatron converted and joined the crew, that's who was really offered redemption -- the Autobots, not Megatron.
Rodimus was definitely looking to redeem the Autobots in some way. No one was innocent in the war. You look at early stories and you realise why Megatron did what he did. I think the entire race needs to be judged and maybe forgiven or punished. No one is blameless
News just reached that Chris Ryall, who was instrumental in bringing the Transformers franchise to IDW, is leaving the company after 14 years. This is the second staff exit at IDW this week, following the departure of P.R. manager Steven Scott. Not good news, is it?
Here is the link for anyone interested: https://www.newsarama.com/38969-chris-ryall-leaves-idw-after-14-years.html
Case off abandoning a sinking ship to me. Think IDW will restructure itself and maybe become a smaller venture long term. But people do move all the time. Depends who takes over the role.
This isn't really true, for McCarthy at least. Taking some points of comparison (harder for Furman's run because of the succession of mini series) with numbers from Comichron. Infiltration #1 - 45,453 Infiltration #2 - 35,815 Escalation #1 (overall 7) - 20,623 Escalation #6 (overall 12) - 14,441 Devastation #1 - 15,688 Devastation #6 - 12,658 All Hail Megatron #1 - 15,700 All Hail Megatron #2 -13,356 All Hail Megatron #7 - 11,830 All Hail Megatron #12 - 12,119 Death o Prime - 12,961 MTMTE #1 - 15,340 MTMTE #2 - 11,671 MTMTE #7 - 11,112 MTMTE #12 - 10,076 RID #1 - 12,234 RID #2 - 11,655 RID #7 - 11,229 RID #12 - 10,161 These are just physical sales numbers. That gradual decline lines up with the rise of digital comics and the introduction of day and date digital releases especially (a few months before Death of Optimus Prime) which really boosted digital as a viable alternative to print. McCarthy was in no way selling "substantially" better than Roberts or Barber. Factoring in digital sales, the post-war pre-Hasbroverse titles were doing as well or better than AHM. Furman was doing huge numbers initially, I'll grant you.
As long as there are tf fans there will be a comic of some sort. I know not every tf fan reads the comics but if there's a visible tf fanbase someone will publish one.
I want a story arc where Optimus Prime decides that Earth would be safer if all the humans weapons are taken away from them so they can't hurt each other. The Autobots are coming to take your guns away!
I think that's faded a bit with the parade of "let's deal with the *other* threats." And hey, in the annual, we got a movie production!
This is also a time when TF has gotten popular enough to sustain two, even three books at times, and unlike those earlier titles, have digital sales boosting things a few thou above the official numbers. One book has an easier time sustaining itself than two or three, and while I feel they did overextend a bit, having the two main ones be solid rocks for so long is impressive. Lemme break it to you gently about a Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court....
What makes those great numbers look even better is that we were still very much dealing with the ramifications of the recession during that time. The BEST transformers book right now is only still around 5,000 and the country is much better shape. And I've read that digital sales still only account for 12% of sales. Which has stayed pretty stable since it was introduced. The comics selling worse isn't because of digital. DYNAMITE! I hope they get the license.
We did start out with the atrocity-committing warlord and then find out that stuff later. And yea, he's changed a lot, but I'd argue that's the point. He wasn't born bad, he wasn't chomping at the bit to do evil, he is someone who became consumed by his conflict when he is the one who helped inspire the Autobots too.
Whatever the future I hope it has a cast and writing comparable to the best of MTMTE and stays as far away as possible from the kind of cast and writing we got with the worst of RID/The Transformers/Optimus Prime and Till All Are One.
