MtMtE #3 preview @ Newsarama

Did anyone else catch the insertion of the name "Rossum" in a scene? (its significance being that the early 20th-century play "Rossum's Universal Robots" introduced the word "robot" to the world)

^ Knew that was a reference to something, but couldn't put my finger on it!

I responded to a comment relative to the topic. If you don't like it, then ignore it. Jeez.

I think using the words 'Good' and 'IDW' in the same sentence is generosity of the equivalence of selling your house and giving all the proceeds to the cats home and living under a bridge in a cardboard box instead.

And nothing they make 'to me' is as visually appealing or as well written as the Prime TV show - they are not even really approaching Rescuebots in my view for franchise appeal or a basic understanding of what makes Transformers interesting to the potential consumer.

They combine a rehashed story style from the late Era Marvel with a highly questionable art style, unlikeable and poorly written characters (many of whom are non entities) that throws the baby out with the bath water in terms of brand recognition. and is a total 100% failure at maintaining or gaining brand interest.

If they can't even increase sales on the back of a Billion Dollar Movie Franchise - I think that shows how little appeal their comics really have to the massmarket and I know I'm not the only person with even a casual interest in the G1 continuity family who they have made 'quite angry' or if not angry then disappointed with their output choices. The whole All Hail Megatron debacle for example, Mary Sue Drift, not to mention randomising art styles and the Murdering super Spike Character.

This might be 'a form' of Transformers... but that does not make it a form I can currently give my full support too under the current management and choices they continue to make.

Luckily aside from Drift getting a toy they seem to have minimal impact on the rest of the brand so far so they can happily carry on making Comics that alienate the franchise fans to a degree bordering on or even exceeding on Michael Bay while they play to an ever decreasing audience.

I'm not bothered as one day their sale will go so low that even Hasbro wont be able to carry on with their head in the sand and will be forced to open up the licences to new bidders again.

However I suspect Hasbro is more interested in having artistic perks than they are in the comics themselves... which they probably don't care about any more than I do.

Only IDW and Devil's Due have made a comic where I've actually felt like I'd been mugged after I read it. and both those companies for me had in their time in my view harmed the franchises they have made media for be it Gi Joe Transformers or Castlevania.

In some ways I think that IDW have less understanding of the Transformers Characters and concepts than the makers of the Armada cartoon. and some of them don't really have an excuse for their scatty behaviour either like Simon Furman who really should know better by now. Yet somehow still doesn't.

Transformers Prime might get criticised for making it's Transformers dialogue to idiomatic but Furman turns that up to 11 to the point where it becomes actively absurd.

No I can't see IDW as the cutting edge of the Franchise - I see it as the kid scuffing it's heels meandering behind looking at the gutter kicking stones into the verge while the rest rides ahead in a convertible car at 80 miles per hour and disappears into the distance in a cloud of smoke except for Funpub who are trying to catch up on a rusty squeeking bicycle yelling 'wait for me' as they get left in the dust looking silly.

So you will hear no plaudits from me for IDW just brickbats. I look at MTMTE and RID and they kept saying this is a wonderful new era... etc.. and yet the art is still pretty sub-fan fic dreadful the writing and characterisation is still questionable, the colouring is lazy, even the speak balloons look rubbish and they persist in overusing characters very few people recognise or care one jot about if they did. If they only got one toy 25 years ago and have never featured before in a comic or cartoon then frankly I don't really care. Swerve, Tailgate etc.. are Cannon fodder not Characters.

I'm not saying this to rain on anyone parade - I'm just saying it as I think a lot of people avoid the comic forum like the plague and thus people on it only talk to each other about how wonderful it is to them.

So I'm just poking my head in from the outside of the bubble to say that not everyone else sees it like that and some would like a comic where the characters look like who they are supposed to be, where the dialogue is actually readable and makes sense, where random events don't just happen for no reason, and plot points get forgotten about over resolved or never again mentioned and so much time isn't wasted on jerk-bots like Rodimus.. I'm not tryin' to bait-hate here all I'm just trying to do is say that some people - myself included are deeply and wholly disappointed with everything IDW has done with Transformers so far and really lament the lack of a Transformers comic that can be found more enjoyable for so many years. Every time I make the mistake of reading one (in the falorn hope it might have gotten better) it just harms a character I previously had some interest or regard for like Kup for example _ I'm still getting over that one and not to mention what harm they have done to Jazz and Arcee, Mirage, Blurr & Perceptor. They even managed to make Sunstreaker look even worse and I knew he was a d*ck already.

The first rule should be "Do no Harm" instead it seems to be 'Wreck and rule' Prime tries to make Optimus Dull and The Movies make him crazy but IDW does that same character assassination on repeated characters for months on end leaving some readers with the taste of ashes in their mouth.

IDW need to do a lot better to even reach minimal quality standards let alone to be worth actually paying any real notice of as a primary continuity. darn I feel sorry for the kids in the UK having to wade through any IDW treacle when it gets reprinted in the UK comic - it probably make no sense to them at all.

Oh and I like Shrek .. so that's hardly an insult.