Autobot/human relations: Single biggest difference between TF cartoons and comics?

I've noticed a general trend in Transformers cartoons on the one hand and comics on the other, which might be the biggest difference between TF cartoons and comics in general.

In the cartoons, Autobots are usually friends with humans, either work with them secretly or openly, and may even be hailed as heroes by the general public. The worst thing that could happen would be the Autobots hiding their existence, fighting their battles in secret, and when exposed to humans, they're usually able to prove their sincerity. "The Autobots are evil" is usually a story direction resolved at the end of the episode and exposed as a Decepticon plot.

In the comics, meanwhile, the humans either think Earth would be better off without the Autobots, because they've brought their war to Earth, or they're flat out unable to tell the difference between good and bad robots, and for dramatic reasons have a tendency to always attack the wrong ones (i.e. the ones not fighting back, because they're an easier target than those actually attacking humans).

The movies are a mixed bag, starting out with "unable to tell friend from foe", then shifting towards "humans secretly cooperating with Autobots, but some still think Earth would be better off without them".

Thoughts? Is there anyone actually bored by each medium usually sticking to the same basic concept?

And why the difference between mediums anyways?

NOTE: Comics explicitly set in universes with other "main" mediums (Animated: The Arrival, movieverse comics) are exempt from this.

Movies seem the most realistic representation of human-Autobot relations, because I've always thought in comics humans would need to be INCREDIBLY THICK if they still can't tell that the Autobots are the good guys after all of these attacks by the ones calling themselves the "Decepticons".

Well, to the humans in comics, there are often only "robots". They don't know there's different factions, and for some reason they can't tell the robots are fighting each other either.

And they're also extremely dense whenever an Autobot is trying to help or save someone. "Look, the building is crumbling and for some reason the robot is rushing there to do something with it! SHOOT HIM!"

Yeah, I have a real problem with that as well. Part of military intelligence is identifying factions among a population so your forces can differentiate enemies from potential allies.

There is no way, after a few run-ins where both factions were present, someone in the government or military wouldn't notice the differentiation and the behaviors that set Autobot apart from Decepticon.

I mean, you see 2 groups of alien war-machines battling. Okay, there are at least 2 factions since combatants are very consistent about fighting specific foes or groups and not just targeting any and everything nearby (okay, a few 'cons are like that, but you see my point).

They move and fight in units. Some seem to defer to others, indicating some sort of organizational structure.

At least one of the observed factions seems to be highly aware of collateral damage and several members of that faction have gone out of their way to protect humans from their foes.

And oh yeah, they speak English so we can actually understand them when they talk.

I don't care what sort of mongrel idiot you are, there's no way to miss what say...Bumblebee did in AHM #16 and misinterpret it after examining what occurred during the incident.

"Well sir, we came across some civilians camped out in one of these buildings and ordered them to evacuate. While we were dealing with that situation, one of the alien machines was located and we engaged. During the battle the building was damaged and the machine proceeded to hold the structure up, unable or unwilling to defend itself, until the civilians were safe. Then it was rescued by several much larger machines, one of whom stated 'You will leave him alone.' but did not actually attack or harm any of us."

I don't even care if the particular troops on site totally miss the implications, someone will read that report and have the thought, "It might be better to only have to fight half of these alien robots instead of all of them.".

Any opportunity to make the fight easier will at least be explored.

I don't imagine it will be easy or smooth, but frankly, it's almost impossible to imagine that humans wouldn't notice and at least try to make peace with the Autobots, even while making plans as to how to handle them if it fails.

- Coeloptera

I think part of it is born out of Transformers comics starting with Marvel.

Spider-Man is often mistaken for a villain, humans hate all mutants alike and think the X-Men are terrorists just like Magneto, etc.

Transformers comic stories under Bob Budiansky worked in the same tradition of humans not trusting, or being unable to recognize those trying to help them.

It's just that storytelling has matured over the years, and some plots that worked in the Eighties with maybe a young teen demographic in mind don't quite work anymore in the 2000s with a mainly twenty-something audience.

Human military being dense is one of those things.

Lennox in the first movie was the best example of a military guy being capable of noticing the existence of factions.

Sorry for the double post, but...

You KNOW how this report is going to read in comicland:

"Well sir, we came across some civilians camped out in one of these buildings and ordered them to evacuate. While we were dealing with that situation, one of the alien machines was located and we engaged. During the battle the machine was occupied trying to destroy the building and kill the civilians, thereby unable to defend itself. We tried to seize the opportunity and destroy the machine, but unfortunately several much larger machines showed up, threatened us and rescued their companion. Fortunately for us, we were able to make it out alive. We were prepared to write off the civilians as collateral damage, but fortunately all of them survived too."

The "all robots bad" comic human mentality is especially bothersome considering the Autobots always have a few human friends/allies, who usually yell at the military or whoever to stop shooting at the good guys, and are also usually not listened to. ("Don't listen to him! He's got Stockholm syndrome or something!")

But then there's always the other extreme of the G1 cartoon, where any random human scientist can seemingly get on the Batphone to Optimus Prime, asking to help defend some new invention the Decepticons might find interesting.

How the Animated toy line REALLY came to an end

The comics are incredibly badly written. That pretty much explains it.

Scientists being able to contact Prime in the cartoon makes sense. MTMTE establishes that humans aren't total fuckwits, and can see the Autobots kept stopping the Decepticons' nefarious schemes. When the Autobots ended up remaining on Earth, it seems reasonable that people with sufficiently high security clearance would be able to contact the Autobots,, especially if they're working on something likely to interest the Decepticons.

I couldn't disagree with you more. You blast the comic and then have the cheek to extol that the crappola-fest of a cartoon makes sense!?

I think most human reactions in the original (better written, or at the absolute very least as well-written-as-the-cartoon) comic series made sense. Even as a kid I thought the cartoon series rather simplistic "all humans love robots, and Prime's their best chum who comes a-callin' whenever their shoelaces are untied" was naive at best. And then these same humans turn on all the Autobots after Megatron offers them some suspect video "evidence"!!

You had a range of human reactions in the comics, and that makes most sense to me: Buster, Spike (whose reactions to getting caught up in the war were really well presented IMHO), Charlie Fong, Blackrock, Circuit Breaker, Joy Meadows, the girl that Magnus gets all cute on etc etc.

Disagree all you want, you're wrong.