Now as much as I like to harp on how horrible DW was their MTMTE profile books are by far the best thing they produced.

So I was wondering would you like for IDW to make one of their own? With their character designs and bios and histories. I loved the little bios in LSOTW and I can totally see a whole book of just Rung doing his thing with every IDW character.

They can even call it Autopedia. You would need something for the 'cons as well kinda like The Banzaitron files or the secret DJD files or something.

Plus it could flesh out chracters that were only in the background or just mentioned some more.

I don't know it sounds like a fun idea really.

 

Hell yes.

 

Only if it's done right.

And complete.

No point in doing a new profile book if you're going to leave out the obscure or even retroactive G1 guys.

So I'm all for it if they use Japanese, European, Brazillian Minicars, G2, Botcon, etc as well as ones added in recent years like Glyph, Road Rage, Rosanna, Heavy Load, etc, and not to forget ones they added to the fiction from other universes such as Lockdown, Bulkhead, and Lugnut.

If they can make it truly complete, then I'm all for it. If not, then they should probably wait until they can.

If anyone can do it, the folks at IDW can. It would just be a massive undertaking if they wanted to do it right.

 

Why limit it to just IDW? It's a pipe dream, but I'd like to see a series of profile books chronicling EVERY character from EVERY series.

I mean, we have G1, Armada, and Beast Wars. Why not finish the job? Energon, Cybertron, Animated, Beast Machines, Prime, RiD, all of them deserve their turn at the spotlight. Even the Movie series would be fantastic.

 

Well Animated has the Allspark Almanacs which is basically that so I don't think we need another one of those.

Prime would be tricky to do because of the whole Aligned bullshit of WFC/FOC and Prime being the same continuity.

 

Without a doubt Yes I'd like one.

 

I dunno how I'd feel about it. As I've seen it said elsewhere, if IDW did a profile series for just characters that have appared thus far in their comics, then it becomes out of date the moment somebody new shows up, and on the other hand, doing IDW continuity profiles for everybody ever would preclude interesting character reinterpretations like Tailgate in MTMTE. If IDW had previously published a profile for him that was some variation on his original bio, that couldn't have happened.

What I would totally go for is a nicely done book reprinting the full Budiansky bios and Tech Specs, with new art for each character. That'd be cool.

 

I would totaly go for it if the artwork is done by Guidi in his retro G1 style. It would be perfect.

 

An IDW profile book should only contain characters that appeared in IDW comics. Instead of actual profiles, it would summarise their lives as they appeared in the IDW comics. Minor characters would have their lives expanded upon from what little we saw of them in the comics.

 

Definitely. In fact, I think IDW is getting to the point where a set of profile books for their G1 continuity is almost essential, given how many of the characters are dramatically different from their portrayal in the G1 continuities with which people are more familiar (Marvel G1, the godawful Sunbow cartoon, etc) and how many new characters and concept there are. Plus, given the number of soft reboots IDW has had, they could use the profiles to smooth over some minor character and continuity issues without devoting time to it in the comics themselves.

Agreed, focus on the characters who have actually had some kind of appearance in the actual comics thusfar. If Japanese, European, Brazillian Minicars, G2, Botcon, Glyph, Road Rage, Rosanna, Heavy Load (etc) haven't appeared in the IDW G1 continuity, no profile.

This I don't agree with. I can go on TFWiki and read a chronological summary of what any given character has done in the IDW continuity...and that's free. If they're going to sell a profile book, it needs to have actual profiles to justify the $2 - $4 per issue.

 

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Guidi does the 'G1 animation model' aesthetic excellently.

My one regret would be that we only have full-length bios up to, what, '88, and we don't even have all of the '87-'88 ones. If someone found all those bios that never got published in as back-ups in the main Marvel series in a cardboard box somewhere, I would love them forever...

 

One major problem I see is which designs do we use?

Do we use E.J. Sue more G1 inspired designs but with detailed pistons and such? Do we use Don Fig's movie meets G1 style from the ongoing series? What about Milne's MTMTE cybertronian desgins?

DW at least had the one cybertronian one earth mode designs when it comes to character designs while IDW is (or was) all over the place with their character designs.

It seems like it normalised a bit right now but who know when the next shift to earth modes (which IS comming don't fool yourselfs it won't come) will be the return to the ongoing designs or someting completely new.

I'm just saying that it creates a bit of a problem.

 

For an IDW continuity profile book, I'd be happy with characters in their most recent body, in a sort-of artistically neutral style (think current Andrew Griffith or Milne in Chaos Theory).

 

So basicaly Don Fig's ongoing designs but with normal faces and a bit less details?

I could go for that. Really the only problem I had with the artwork in the ongoing was the skeleton faces and the bad colours. If the colours were done in the Drift mini style by guys like Perez or Tramontano or Lafuente the whole time the last ongoing could've possibly been my favourite earth based comic aestetics vise.

The writing would still suck hairy dugong balls but at least it would be nicer to look at.

 

I'd be at least tempted by such a product.

 

I once had a dream about an IDW profile book that also had a bunch of short prose stories. That'd be cool.

 

I would read it.

 

Only if it's done better than the BW profiles that IDW did, which were just terrible glorified fanfics.

 

If they made it a binder it would be easy to add new characters or the banzaitron files over time

 

No... I don't care for IDW characters.

Also, being responsible for a bunch of profiles in the DW book, I REALLY hated how they forced every artist in to draw like Dan Foagerea. I never liked his mangled Transformers, specially in a profile book.

What I'd really like is a colored version of the "The Ark" books (the ones with all the cartoon model sheets in). Add a bio for the characters and it'll be perfect, not the artistic mess DW MTMTE was.