Absolutely, just look at Trailbutter, for a while he seemed to be just a B-Lister who showed up every now or then, but now he seems to be coming to the forefront.

 

That's true but some of the background characters need to appear more often IMO.

Turmoil should have been done better.

 

Turmoil was good as a background character. I liked him, but I wouldn't vote for his comeback (And certainly not in a miniseries or anything like that, unless at least he was given new body design. Oh well, now when he's dead it doesn't matter anyway.).
He was actually falling into the same weakness as Windblade, kinda. His personality was pretty realistic, blunt guy with no subtlety whatsoever. But because of it he was coming as a somewhat dull and boring when compared to characters with more archetypical personalities.
A good generic character, not overdone, and his body design was definitely generic (the first time I saw him, he reminded me of the Obscure Transformers website).

On the bright side, at least he was someone who could be killed by Screamer (and Starscream really should have more such moments, he's supposed to be a competent fighter when needed...) and no reader would miss him.
He actually reminds me of Straxus. When introduced in Marvel TFs, he was a very generic evil overlord guy.

Also, I think that Windblade should be given more time as a supporting character in other ongoings. That's where her personality is more visible - when she gets more interaction with established big players.
Her best moment was definitely when she reprimanded Prime about his lack of care about the people. That was great and played well with compassion shown to Waspinator in her series.
It also came very natural, since she was free of this common mindset about Optimus - that he's someone special and can do no wrong.
She's less visible in her own miniseries because she comes isolated from the bigger picture (not counting Starscream, as Ironhide isn't really "big" player).

 

I think Windblade and crew were introduced correctly as background characters but needed time to develop them in to stronger chars. I do not believe Windblade was ready for a solo gig in her comic book. However introducing females as background chars and slowly showing them interacting with others best route. I would not recommending forcible introduction or becoming a major character before he or she is ready. That is why there a hundred male characters right now introduced in the background. It works the best for new characters regardless of the perceive gender.

 

Not so sure about that. Clearly, sales have been strong enough for Windblade to warrant a follow-up mini series in 2015. And besides- every comic character everywhere had to start out somewhere.

 

Most characters in Transformers do not start out as the stars of their own solo self-titled miniseries. Sometimes characters need to develop naturally into favourites before getting thrust into prominence. Some might call this "earning" the spotlight first.

Windblade is treading the same path as Drift. And just because (grace a Roberts) people are now starting to warm to Drift, doesn't mean the character has enough goodwill yet to carry a new McCarthy miniseries.

HOWEVER... I'm not necessarily adverse to what seems to be IDW's new model... 2 ongoing titles, plus one miniseries on the go at all times, as a sort of replacement for the Spotlight stand-alones.

That said, I can think of very few IDW minis so far that have had the content to justify their existence. Solo bits like Drift, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Heart of Darkness... all were pretty weak. Megatron Origin was only really interesting for the history rewrite. Maximum Dinobots just felt like tying up loose ends.

Wreckers is the only one with any real staying power, I'd say.

zmog

 

I thought the Ironhide mini was well received? though I could be wrong.

 

^ Eh, I couldn't even finish it. But Alpha Trion was awesome in it, and it undid the wasteful death of Sunstreaker. [Obviously of Ironhide too, but 1) that same author caused that death and 2) the method of resurrection was problematic and may open the door to any and all resurrections by authorial fiat.]

I guess we indirectly got Bob out of it, which is so stupid that it makes me laugh EVERY. TIME.  

 

I'd disagree on that point, I think Windblade is a success whereas Drift really wasn't. Both were hyped but a lot of the hype for Windblade was driven by fans who were really excited to see her where Drift it seemed to me at least to nearly all come from IDW. Windblade has sold better than Drift so far and I think the character has been much more warmly received. People really love Windblade and she is getting a second mini-series while as you say people are only now warming up to Drfit.

 

Seriously, yeah...though I suppose it's worth pointing out that it bears some resemblance to the concept behind the "recorded identity crystals" that were used back in G1 Marvel (the origins of the '85 Diaclone Autobots)... the notion that you could just record the identity data from a TF brain, and do a "save point/back-up". Later, if you have the power of the Creation Matrix, you can download that into a new body and boom... instant Autobots.

I think it's problematic for sure... and I was never able to shake the implication that, as a result, there might actually be two versions of Skids, Tracks, Hoist, Smokescreen and Grapple out there...  

I do think it was nice to see Alpha Trion as a pretentious, self-aggrandizing egomaniac, even if most of it seemed to be in service to a few cheap laughs. Bob too. It's kind of funny to think that those two things are Costa's most positive legacy for IDW Transformers (I won't give him credit for Thundercracker, because McCarthy set those wheels in motion).

And yeah, we got Sunstreaker and Ironhide back. But, like... who cares? I'm glad they're back, but that didn't actually make the series any better, right?

I think the Ironhide mini gets some points with fans for the "too-G1-Cartoon-for-me" Casey Collier art (I find him a bit boring) and just for bringing the character back to life. But it's pretty lame otherwise...

zmog

 

I liked it, I could have sworn it was well received as well. It gave us our best Alpha Trion too.

 

I think that in terms of the marketing, the two are rather identical... well, aside from Windblade being poll-driven (for whatever that is worth).

But I think you're being a bit bold there. I think there are many fans who are NOT fond of Windblade; she received a LOT of criticism upon her reveal, and deserved most of it. She remains a pretty horrible design, based on problematic archetypes... practically the same archetypes we saw with Drift, only more overstated and sexualized. I think she gets a lot of support simply because she's a fembot... not because she's actually an interesting character-concept/design.

This is not to say that the problem is that she's a fembot, but rather that being a fembot, in of itself, is not actually what I would consider an adequate reason to be popular.

Moving past her introduction, to the actual miniseries... IDW and Scott have at least avoided the Drift missteps by not focusing too intently on Windblade's "hero's journey"... the series is not solely her show, nor is the series about how awesome she is. In that sense, they're handling her much better than anybody had any reason to expect based on how she was introduced initially.

Other than that, I still find her dull... but inoffensive at least.

zmog

 

I am going have to agree. Marketing Windblade is superior to Drift mini. I mean I am reading Nautica I find I like her a whole lot better than Windblade she is actually interesting.

 

Drift is getting second miniseries as well, so there is no big difference in success between him and Windblade. Aside from Windblade's toy being voted by fans.

I think a lot of hype around Windblade is because she's partially undoing/giving workaround around all the problems with Arcee's spotlight book. Which is a good thing.

Still, her debut is better than Drift's. The guy who for the long time had being very good with the sword as his only character trait.
Windblade doesn't has this forced awesomeness that was putting Drift very close to the Mary Sue territory. She's here, she does her stuff, but without overshadowing everyone else. It feels much more natural.

With Drift, well... All his weaknesses as a character concept were made obvious in MTME when he was near to Cyclonus who had very similar character traits. Not only it made Drift looking very redundant, but also Cyclonus managed to be more interesting doing the same things.

I think that Scott recognises that, frankly, no character in the TFverse has enough to pull miniseries based entirely around them (even Megatron Origin worked mostly because it was as much about early Decepticons as about Meg himself). Hence her miniseries not being strongly focused on the main character.

 

Success? Hm. I'm not sure what the numbers were for their respective sales... but I don't think the situation is the same at all. Drift is getting a second mine because A) IDW is shifting to a regular cycle of miniseries, so they need content in that format, and B) people actually care a little bit about Drift now that Roberts has made him interesting. I question whether McCarthy can carry through on that, but since I actually didn't think AHM was that bad, it's nice to see McCarthy get some work again.  

Well, there is a certain amount of attention she is getting because with her and the other Caminans (Caminians? Camians?) IDW is finally (almost) addressing the Fembot issue... sort of. But that is not all about Windblade, and it's not all hype. It's a lot of debate and contention and questioning in the fandom... which of course is still good for IDW, because it shows that people are actually paying attention them.  

To be fair, his more salient character trait was suppose to be that he was a reformed Decepticon who took up with an esoteric cult. Also, a former junkie.

But yeah, none of that really translated into having a personality, I agree.

With Drift, his forced awesomeness was mostly implied by the marketing hype. In practice, he didn't do that much in the comics to merit his "mary sue" monicker (arguably, Sniperceptor was hogging all the glory). By comparison, I think everything implied by Windblade's unveiling hinted at a similar "I'm so awesome" ninja-girl-badass archetype. Fortunately, Arcee already had that stereotype nailed down, so IDW wisely sidestepped the obvious cliches, and instead made Windblade rather normal... even... banal.

So now they just need to make her a little less banal.  

I disagree. I don't think they ever seemed redundant at all, nor were they "doing the same things". Drift's gig was redemption, and a possibly stretched-too-thin spiritual optimism that made him both a foil for Ratchet, and a potential powder keg.

Cyclonus was cynical, unrepentant, deeply conservative... their narrative purposes were not even in the same ballpark. Clearly Cyclonus was a big hit, but I think it's inappropriate to see he and Drift as serving similar or competing functions. I think that's a superficial reading, because they're both ostensibly former "bad-guys" who (eventually) have swords and religion (albeit diametrically opposed religious perspectives).

zmog