So I finally got to the very end of the IDW universe story. I've been thinking a lot about it. Revolution in particular as it was the thing that kick started this whole event. It was an attempt to tie together all the franchises and create a wider universe. By combining franchises such as Transformers, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Visionairies, Action Man, Micronauts and Rom, they hoped to make something akin to the Marvel or DC Universes. On paper, joining some of our favourite toy franchises together in one universe is actually brilliant. Many of us did it way back when we were kids. The only problem was that the execution: it felt rushed and a little pretentious.

No doubt, a lot of thought went into how to make something like this possible. Heck they scrapped the first idea (Unit:E) due to the very nature of crafting something like this the right way. How different should we make them? How much should we depend on nostalgia to sell this? Perhaps the difficulty of it all got to them that first time. Still tying all the Transformers to all the comic properties to keep the readers invested hurt more than it helped. Even on paper, that should have been a horrible idea, but I suppose the powers that be wanted to make certain that with Transformers in a G.I. Joe comic or Transformers technology in a M.A.S.K. comic, it was certain to keep the very vibrant and active Transformers community buying Action Man and Visionairies comics. The hope was that the constant reminder of what universe they were all in would keep them afloat. It didn't. Actually, it backfired hard.

Bare with me on this next part because I am no expert. I am going off of some things I heard, things I read and other people's opinions besides my own. Revolution was also a humongous gamble. They got to experimenting with various social phenomena such as gender or race issues in order to capitalize on the race and gender exploitation going on in comics. The idea was that it would help empower readers, but all it did was infuriate them. I found myself infuriated by MASK the most, for instance because of... well... everything about that story. G.I. Joe is second to that.

My thought on this has always been that IDW just didn't believe in the power of each franchise on their own. They thought that due to their time away from the limelight and their individual obscurity, they needed their hands held. This didn't make them seem like they were anything more than junior comics. This is not my opinion for all of the properties, but most properties suffer from seeming like the "sidekicks" to the Transformers line. Many people might agree with that too.

My overall opinion is that it could have been good had it been handled a lot better. The concept of Revolution before I finished reading everything after the event, caused me to buy figures reflecting each part of the universe. I have MASK, G.I. Joe, Visionairies, Action Man, Micronauts and Rom toys in my collection becuase of the concept. It felt that good to me. However, in the end, it just left me really disappointed at the risks and missed opportunities.

What do you guys think of all this? Any others with opinions?

 

I didn't really bother to read any of that.

I feel like it would've been better if they had given these franchises their own mini-series first to test the waters before trying to incorporate them into the Transformers universe. I mean GI Joe makes sense at least given their past histories but the rest, really needed to make sure if there was even a demand for them first.

also it's a shame Hasbro doesn't have Inhumanoids anymore, now that is a franchise I'd love to see a proper revival of.

 

Wait. Hasbro lost Inhumanoids??

 

Okay, I'm not particularly interested in doing this whole nonsense again, but here's the thing: the Hasbroverse wasn't a "powers that be" decision. It all came from the creative end, stemming from idle suggestions by Barber/Ryall/Gage of "what if the Earth that these new Micronauts come to was the IDW Transformers Earth" and "wouldn't it be cool if the human faction in the new Rom comic were G.I. Joes", which eventually ballooned into "what if we put all of them into a cool new universe, wouldn't that be rad".
As much as I liked the results (outside of MASK and the implementation of Visionaries), I won't deny that it wasn't widely loved, but... well, essentially, the creative teams genuinely didn't realise that people wouldn't be as enthused about it as they were.

Or, to put it in other words:

Jolene but like a ghost or something on Twitter

 

I see, I see. I was aware that they had a genuinely good idea to unite them all, but I still feel that they depended maybe too much on Transformers' world and popularity. I do appreciate their attempt as it's coming from good intentions. Thanks to you, the love for these franchises was genuine. The writers tried.

 

Maybe? The "Transformer on GI Joe" thing was admittedly a bit of a gimmick, but they didn't have another plan for Skywarp, and supposedly both Sitterson and IDW editorial essentially proposed the same idea simultaneously.
And, like... once you're launching a new MASK comic that's taking place in a shared universe with Transformers, it kiiiiind of feels obvious to make the connection there. (Even if the resulting comic was, uh, bad.)

Generally, I feel like the first year or so of the shared universe was done about as well as it could have been - you didn't need to read any of the comics to understand what was going on in the others. That kind of got muddied in the second year, with a GI Joe-focused crossover that only really had repercussions for the Transformers (on top of being waylaid from its Genuinely Pretty Good story in the last issue to promote Visionaries), and plot threads from Revolutionaries being folded back into Optimus Prime without explanation.

 

Here is my opinion on shared universe Hasbro:

Although I agree that Revolution was not great, Revolution was a good crossover, and it and First Strike were better than previous Transformers events (Chaos, Combiner Wars and Titans Return) and about the other comics that came out after Revolution: Revolutionaries and Rom were great, GI Joe and Micronauts were good and only Mask and Visionaries were bad . Besides Optimus Prime and TAAO have a good quality (OP has the same quality as exRID, so the crossovers did not affect anything and TAAO was considered better than the mini-series of Windblade), in fact all the comics are good to and the only one that may have gotten worse was LL and was the only one unaffected by the crossovers. And the comics from other franchises do not affect the comics of Transformers, you're not required to read them to understand the comics of Transformers, and Revolutionaries is practically a comic of Transformers because of the 4 main characters 3 are characters of Transformers ex-RID, and also have two Transformers (and the writer is Jon Barber). Even the GI Joe characters that appear in Optimus Prime are pretty much the same characters that were part of EDC, just changed the name of the organization and they have GI Joe stickers on some of the military vehicles. And about the crossovers only Revolution and First Strike you have to read to understand Barber's comics (although Revolution is not 100% mandatory but your comics contains some references to it) and they are good. You read exRID, after Revolution and the Transformers tie-ins and then you had to read Optimus Prime and Revolutionaries, after First Strike and then continue reading Optimus Prime until you get to Unicron. You were not required to read the other comics (there were Revolutionaries you had to read but it was a Transformers comic).

The crossover with Rom is great and the with Visionaries is awful. And Unicron it was a comic of Transformers since the characters of other franchises only appeared as extras.