I ask this since people generally consider IDW's comics as G1 in spite of its art style and lore generally being different from what was considered G1
This is a loaded question and everybody is going to have a different answer Me I personally don't even know how to answer this question anymore but I will say this The art style and the lore of the series , or any series for that matter has nothing to do with whether it can be called G1 or connected to anything else The G1 comic books and cartoon a different art styles and different lore but they were still both G1
I believe IDW G1 is named that way to differentiate from the IDW comics based on other TF continuities (BW, Animated, RiD '15), as opposed to being part of the old '80's/'90's G1 continuities. I thin
I follow the wiki on this. + IDW Optimus Prime is not Eroll Flynn. He is clearly very similar to Sunbow or Marvel OP. The same cannot be said of Optimus Primal, RID Optimus... IDW Starscream is very similar to Sunbow Starscream compared to BW2 ss, UT ss... IDW Megatron is very similar to Marvel megs compared to UT Megs, RID Megs. Barrage... Sixshot... Goldbug... Bludgeon... I could go on.
Everything that features the same characters from the original incarnation in a slight variation is G1. There are different alternate G1 universes that might or might not share some key events, but mostly share the same characters, although differing in characterization. For example Prowl is different in Sunbow, Marvel, DW and IDW. But he's still immediately recognizable as the same Prowl.
"G1" has become a catch-all term used to describe - not just the original pre-G2 years of the franchise - but a vast array of toys and media that's still being added to in the present day, based on those characters introduced back in 1984. If I want to refer to just the old G1 stuff, I use the term "vintage G1", and I find people generally figure out what I mean.
Thisis an interesting question. Prior to IDW, I think most people would have gone for anything starring the original toy cast. That probably held for the initial IDW books as well, but as the designs moved more towards the Classics designs, you could see a shift away from the original G1. Drift is probably where it starts to skew off into a 'modern' or reimagined G1 properly. We had a new character with a new toy being promoted in G1 books for the first time since the original toyline. Since then we've had more new characters/toys, and the toyline has started to dictate the direction of the comics/characters included them. Oddly, G1 has arrived organically at the point a lot of toylines have tried to reach (Such as the MOTU series in 2002), with a successful reimagined series on the shelves/in fiction. This leaves us with an 'original' G1 and a 'modern' G1. They both have the same root, but have gone their seperate ways. Both have a legitimate claim to the title G1, to my mind anyway, but I can see why some consider it to have stopped with the end of the original toyline.
At one point we got a property called The Transformers. Toys, comic book, and TV show. Revised versions of this have been coming ever since. The term "G1", as used by fandom today, originated with Dreamwave's version of that original line's cast. It was used to distinguish that Transformers comic continuity from the other Transformers comic continuities they were publishing at the time, Armada and War Within. It's use has since spread to include virtually anything and everything resembling the initial version but there's one thing that, I can assure you, DOES NOT count as "G1". The Transformers.
Like your sig dude, but really it comes down to is the characters and the overall arc of the universe and if the comics fit and fill the gaps from the original anime. If the story or the art follows a similar fashion towards the anime, it's g1. I dunno, buy titans return or power of the primes or some stuff and compare it to the original g1 toys. Do you have any good anime recommendations btw.
For me it's all the cartoons, comics and other media released until about 1991, ending with Marvel #80, Transformers Zone/Battlestars, and Action Masters. The classics toys are the G1 characters but not really G1 (though for the purposes of play/display I don't really make a distinction. Nothing released after that fiction-wise qualifies for me. Nothing captures the spirit of G1 IMO. I barely acknowledge Dreamwave and IDW as Transformers, let alone G1.
